By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Russian President Boris Yeltsin has been readying another "presidential coup", to be launched immediately after the April 25 referendum. Unlike his preparations in March for the imposition of "special rule", there is nothing covert about his latest plans to overturn the parliament, the constitution and the Constitutional Court. The key measures the president intends to implement have already been mapped out in his statements and discussed in detail by journalists.
In the referendum, voters will be asked whether they have confidence in the president; whether they approve of the social and economic policies he has sought to implement since the beginning of 1992; and whether they want early elections for the presidency and for the parliament. Yeltsin has called for a "yes" vote on all questions. Knowing that the president was likely to use a personal vote of confidence as cover for an attempt to seize dictatorial powers, the full Russian parliament stipulated that in order to be passed, each question would have to win the approval not just of those who turned out to vote, but of a majority of eligible voters.
The Constitutional Court ruled on April 21 that Yeltsin would need only a majority of those voting to win the questions of confidence in him and approval of his policies.
Opinion polling has been intensive enough that the referendum results can be forecast with considerable confidence. In the first months of this year, only about a third of Russians were expressing support for the president, and around 40% were indicating that they intended to take part in the referendum which Yeltsin was demanding.
In March, Russians witnessed two dramatic sessions of the full parliament, the Congress of People's Deputies. During the second of these sessions, Yeltsin narrowly survived a vote of impeachment. These developments created a wave of sympathy for the president, and of willingness by Russians to consider turning out to vote in the referendum to which the congress eventually gave its approval.
But in the weeks since, people have had a chance to reflect on how their living standards have fallen since the introduction last year of the president's economic "shock therapy". Accordingly, the figures in the opinion surveys have been sliding back toward those of February.
Almost certainly, fewer than 50% of eligible voters will take part in the referendum. A useful pointer here is a survey conducted for the paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on April 13 and 14 in the podmoskovye, the areas of Moscow Province outside the national capital. With about 7 million people in a mixture of cities and villages, the podmoskovye can be considered a representative slice of Russia. Of those who took part in this survey, 43% said they intended to vote. In elections during the past few years, about 5% fewer people have turned up at the polls than have said they mean to; this suggests a national participation rate of barely 40%. Of those who vote, a solid majority are likely to express confidence in Yeltsin; as a proportion of eligible voters, this is likely to be around 30%. Rather more voters will want early elections for the parliament.
Striking paradoxes will arise in relation to the question on social and economic policy. Long before he became president, Yeltsin was cultivating his image as the defender of ordinary people against the party-state apparat. The thought of his ceasing to be head of state still alarms many Russians — "If Yeltsin weren't there, who would protect us?".
The same people, however, are often bitterly hostile to the president's monetarist economic policies, under which their buying power has collapsed. What large numbers of Russians would like is to have Yeltsin in power, introducing a market economy — which is still associated in the popular mind with Western-European-style affluence — but using quite different methods.
In the survey of opinion in Moscow Province, 58% of respondents opposed the social and economic policies of the president and the government. Even in the traditionally pro-Yeltsin capital, a poll conducted on April 1 showed support for these policies standing at no more than 21%. The rejection by Russians of their president's strategies was also seen in elections for governorships and deputies' posts in a series of provinces on April 11. Yeltsin appointees and supporters lost badly to candidates from the local managerial and political elites.
Yeltsin is thus likely to emerge from the April 25 referendum with some kind of mandate for staying on as president — of people sufficiently motivated to vote, more are likely to want this than oppose it — but with no mandate whatever for continuing his neo-liberal "reforms". His response and that of his team will simply be to deny that any contradiction exists. "Confidence in the president automatically means confidence in his policies", first deputy premier Vladimir Shumeiko was quoted as declaring early in April.
In a speech to reporters in the Kremlin on April 14, Yeltsin pledged that immediately after the referendum he would begin implementing a "packet of measures" whose goals would include "neutralising" the Supreme Soviet, Russia's standing parliament. The president's first moves will undoubtedly include claiming control of the Central Bank, against which he has conducted a long-running battle over credit policy. At present the Central Bank is answerable to the parliament, as is usual in countries with a presidential system.
The Russian president will also move swiftly to set in place a new constitution. Pro-Yeltsin lawyers have reportedly almost finished work on a draft of this document, whose main principles are to be published by April 25. The draft is reputed to be tightly "presidential", concentrating the vital powers of government in the executive and ure almost to a consultative role. Under the document, the current parliament would be abolished and replaced by a much smaller two-chamber body.
Since Yeltsin does not trust the existing parliament to discuss and vote on a new constitution, the democratic way for him to proceed would be to demand the election of a body specifically entrusted with this task — a constituent assembly. But he does not dare to do this, since the results of such elections would almost certainly resemble those of the provincial elections of April 11 — a crushing defeat for the pro-Yeltsin forces.
Consequently, Yeltsin will have to find some other way to legitimise a form of rule very close to permanent presidential dictatorship. In his April 14 speech, Yeltsin said he intended to ask leaders of the Russian Federation's republics, provinces and regions to adopt a new constitution. Although the presidents of the republics would oppose a centralist constitution that would limit their states' autonomy, Yeltsin might well round up a majority in a gathering of local leaders — for the simple reason that the governors of Russia's provinces and regions are in many cases his own appointees.
Also in the president's "packet of measures" will presumably be elections to the new parliament. The pro-Yeltsin forces would be most unlikely to win — but with the parliament's slight powers, it would scarcely matter.
Russia, of course, already has a constitution, and a Constitutional Court to enforce it. But Yeltsin in recent days has shown plainly that he regards both as having less legitimacy than his prospective vote of confidence — even if, as seems certain, he obtains the support of fewer than the 50% of eligible voters needed for the result to be technically valid. After meeting with Constitutional Court chairperson Valery Zorkin on April 15, Yeltsin was quoted as saying:
"I told him that the authority of the Constitutional Court had dropped in my eyes during the work of the Congress.
"I would not address any appeals to the Constitutional Court, including an appeal on the vote count."
Of course, the argument that a vote of confidence from a third of eligible voters — or, for that matter, from 90% — would give Yeltsin the right to overturn the constitution and "neutralise" the parliament is a complete monstrosity. Yeltsin and his "democrats" are now in the process of abandoning democratic posturing to take up raw coercion in the interests of the modern-style capitalist class they aim to become. This was explained in unusually blunt fashion by the Moscow journal Business World Weekly in an editorial on April 2:
"Russia needs a strong, authoritarian government that can restrain public discontent within limits not threatening economic reforms and ensure the development of private enterprise. This government must remain authoritarian until the economy becomes efficient enough to offer good wages and salaries to the people and thus to make protests
"This was how things developed in Greece, Chile and Taiwan where the government relied on elite troops, or in South Korea, West Germany and Japan in which the USA had major military bases or troops stationed."
The critical question is whether Yeltsin has the support this time to carry off a coup. Despite strong backing from Western capitals, and a near-complete monopoly of the Russian electronic media, he faces extremely long odds.
His main social bases are among entrepreneurs, the intelligentsia and youth. The entrepreneurs are not a wealthy property-owning bourgeoisie, but a struggling commercial middle class with strong criminal overtones, making up no more than about 3% of the population. The intelligentsia have moral authority and a modest ability to stage demonstrations, but, like the pope, they have no divisions to put into the field. Young people are among the most alienated of all social layers from the political process. While sympathetic to Yeltsin, they are very difficult to mobilise, and in the podmoskovye no more than a third are likely to vote.
Yeltsin's opponents have a widely popular leader in Vice-President Alexander Rutskoi; a solid hold on large-scale industry; the support of the local managerial and political elites in most of the country outside Moscow and St Petersburg; the leadership, though not the ranks, of most of the labour movement; and a considerable popular organisational base in the half million members of the revived Communist Party.
Against this line-up, Yeltsin's coup might be expected to fold within days. In fact, its consequences are likely to be worked out over a much longer period, and to exact a horrifying toll on Russia's collective life. Republics and provinces can be expected to take advantage of the divisions and paralysis in Moscow to seize much greater independence. Will the armed forces then fragment, and military units align themselves with local power centres, presenting an extreme danger of a civil war in which both sides are armed with nuclear weapons? That is one of the things we in Russia are waiting to find out.