Window on Eurasia

The Spectre of Lustration Again Haunts Russian Politics

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 28, 2006 – After the collapse of communism, many in both the post-Soviet states and the former Soviet bloc called for
lustration, the exclusion from government activities of all those who had served in senior positions of the Communist Party or the security agencies of the old regime.

But with rare exceptions – the Czech Republic being the most
prominent – few of the new regimes were willing to go along. On the one hand,
many of the officials in them would have been excluded by any
conceivable lustration regime. And on the other, both they and Western
governments believed that any lustration would be “destabilizing.”

Now, the spectre of lustration has reemerged in the Russian Federation
– and just as was the case 15 years ago, its advocates believe that
removing those connected with authoritarian institutions is a
precondition for democracy, and its opponents are convinced that such
steps would be threaten the stability of the country.

The latest call for lustration appears in programmatic documents of the
“Other Russia,” a collection of opposition leaders who believe
their country will become a democracy only if it excludes from political life
not just former communists and KGB officers but also members of United
Russia and other pro-Kremlin parties.

The authors of the “Other Russia” document argue that in Russia
since 1991 “a completely distinctive class of party-economic
bureaucrats numbering no fewer than a million who implement the
decisions of the Kremlin-oligarchic hierarchy” has emerged and must
be destroyed for democracy to flourish.

Among the members of this class, journalist Aleksandr Kraychek writes,
yesterday, are those in “pseudo-party bureaucratic strcutures” like
United Russia. The psychology of those in these groups is “hopelessly
depraved and directed exclusively at personal enrichment”
[http://utro.ru/articles/2006/09/27/587301.shtml].

Because of that, this document says, there must be “a mass purge of
the administrative-economic apparatus both at the center and in the
localities” if Russia is to have the chance to create conditions for
the effective democratic transformation of the country.

Among those who must go, the document specifies, are “all those who
have been in the CPSU, United Russia, the Party of Life, Rodina and in
a number of other such pseudo-party structures.” The number of
officials who fall into these categories, Kraychek suggests, would be more than
two million.

Because the number of CPSU apparatchiks still in positions of power is
relatively few, he continues, the animus of the document is clearly
directed less at them than at post-Soviet, pro-Kremlin political
parties.

And that in turn, Kraychek continues, inevitably raises the same
question that was raised about lustration 15 years ago: is this about
sanitizing the political system or is it part of the struggle for
power? While writing that this question remains “open” in the current
case, the Utro.ru journalist leaves little doubt where he stands.

To make his case that this document is enmeshed in the political
struggle, Kraychek quotes it at length: “After the forces of the
united democratic opposition acquire full power in Russia, the country
must cleanse itself” from those who seek to restore Soviet-style
totalitarnianism or extend post-Soviet authoritarianism.”

“In the first instance, this involves the nomenklatura party United
Russia,” an organization, the document suggests, that must be
prohibited and dissolved, “its anti-constitutional activity
investigated by parliament, and the “criminal actions of its leaders
and functionaries evaluated in terms of the law.”

Those members of United Russia who do not leave its ranks volunmtarily
before the end of President Vladimir Putin’s term will be subject to
lustration. They will not have the right to occupy any positions in the
central, regional or municipal administrations, including elected ones,
for ten years.”

Such a proposal is unlikely to be accepted -- and for many of the same
reasons domestic and foreign that it was not applied 15 years ago --
but the spectre of lustration nonetheless may play an important role over
the next year: striking fear in the party of power and making its
members unwilling to tolerate any real change in 2008.

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