The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse. Volume 2: The Promise of “Democracy” during the Yeltsin Years 9781644696514

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The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse

The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse Vo l u m e 2

The Promise of “Democracy” during the Yeltsin Years David Cratis Williams, Marilyn J. Young, and Michael K. Launer

BOSTON 2022

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Williams, David Cratis, 1955- author. | Williams, David Cratis, 1955- editor. | Young, Marilyn J., 1942- editor. | Launer, Michael K., 1944- editor. Title: The rhetorical rise and demise of "democracy" in Russian political discourse. volume 2, The promise of "democracy" during the Yeltsin years / David Cratis Williams, Marilyn J. Young, and Michael K. Launer, [editors]. Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022004281 (print) | LCCN 2022004282 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644696507 (v. 2 ; hardback) | ISBN 9781644696514 (v. 2 ; adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781644696521 (v. 2 ; epub) Subjects: LCSH: Rhetoric--Political aspects--Russia (Federation) | Democracy--Russia (Federation) | Russia (Federation)--Politics and government--1991Classification: LCC P301.5.P67 R49476 2022 (print) | LCC P301.5.P67 (ebook) | DDC 808--dc23/eng/20220302 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022004281 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022004282 Copyright © Academic Studies Press, 2022 ISBN 9781644696507 (hardback) ISBN 9781644696514 (adobe pdf) ISBN 9781644696521 (epub) Book design by PHi Business Solutions Cover design by Ivan Grave Published by Academic Studies Press 1577 Beacon Street Brookline, MA 02446, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

Contents List of Photos Acknowledgements Contributors  Note to Readers

ix xi xiii xv

Alexander Yuriev Alexander Yuriev

xvi xvii

Dedication: Alexander Ivanovich Yuriev (1942–2020)

xix

Alexander Yuriev

xxxi

Preface

xxxiii

Marilyn Young at a Political Communication Conference

xlviii

Introduction to Volume Two

xlix

Yeltsin and Gorbachev 

lvii

Part One: Framework for Understanding the Immediate Post-Soviet Political Environment: Ecological Depredation, Economic Challenges, the Press, and National Identity

1

Yeltsin Standing on a Tank 1991

3

1. A New Day for the Soviet Environment 2. The Former Soviet Union Leaves Environmental Legacy of Shame 3. Review of Environmental Management in the Soviet Union by Philip R. Pryde

4 7 9

4. Russian Scientists Struggle to Survive 5. Review of The Russian Press from Brezhnev to Yeltsin: Behind the Paper Curtain by John Murray 6. Argumentation, Globalization, and the New Nationalism: Implications and New Directions Part Two: Politics and Political Argumentation during the Yeltsin Years and Cultures of Communication: The 7. Democratization  Mission of the International Center for the Advancement of Political Communication and Argumentation 8. The Role of Public Argument in Emerging Democracies: A Case Study of the December 12, 1993, Elections in the Russian Federation 9. Analysis of Political Argumentation and Party Campaigning Prior to the 1993 and 1995 State Duma Elections: Lessons Learned and Not Learned 10. Argument and Political Party Formulations: A Continuing Case Study of Democratization in the Russian Federation 11. Russian Electoral Politics and the Search for National Identity 

14 23 25 31

33 43 62 88 100 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

for Russian Identity: Arguing the Past, 12. Frameworks  Defining the Future 136 13. Historical Metaphor and the Search for National Identity in Russia 146 14. Russia’s First Elected President Buries Its Last Czar: Reclaiming Cultural Memory in the Search for National Identity 155

Part Three: Yeltsin’s Multiple Political Profiles (The Three Faces of Boris)

165

15. Yeltsin  as an Autocrat: The “Constitutional Crisis of 1993” as the Beginning of the End of Russian Democracy

167

Shelling of the White House Shelling of the White House Shelling of the White House

201 202 203

16. Yeltsin as a Democrat: A Lexical Content Analysis of His Presidential Addresses to the Federal Assembly 1994–1999 17. Yeltsin as a Man of the People: A Case Study of His Campaign Rhetoric during the 1996 Russian Presidential Election

204 228

Yeltsin on the Campaign Trail “It is still not easy living in Russia”

265

Part Four: Looking Backward, Looking Forward

267

Clinton and Yeltsin Shaking Hands

268

 Years of Frustration: Transitional Rhetoric and 18. Ten Democratization in the Russian Federation  Fear of Politics and the Politics of Fear in Russia— 19. The Images in the US Media  of Berlin 1989: Post-Soviet Discourse and the 20. Echoes Rhetoric of National Unity  Policy Challenges and The Historical “Anchors” 21. Foreign of Russian Federation Foreign Policy after September 11, 2001

269 289 301 331

Alexei Salmin

350

 Democracy: Rhetorical Crises and the Russian 22. Instant Federation, 1991–2007

351

Yeltsin and Putin in the President’s Office

366

Afterword Bibliography Index

367 371 399

List of Photos 01

Alexander Yuriev

Source: Maria Aleksandrovna Yurieva

02

Alexander Yuriev

Source: Maria Aleksandrovna Yurieva

03

Alexander Yuriev

Source: Maria Aleksandrovna Yurieva

04

Marilyn Young at a Political Communication Conference

Source: Maria Aleksandrovna Yurieva

05

Yeltsin and Gorbachev

Alamy

06

Yeltsin on a Tank 1991

Source: Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pushmin – Yeltsin Center

07

Yeltsin Campaign Photograph

Source: Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pushmin – Yeltsin Center

08

Runoff Election Sample Ballot

Source: Jack Parker

09

Choose or Lose—Campaign Button

Source: Dmitry Pushmin, Alexander Rouchnik, David Cratis Williams, Marilyn Young

10

Choose or Lose—T-shirt Front

11

Choose or Lose—T-shirt Back

12

Choose or Lose—Globe and Barbed Wire

13

Choose or Lose—Jeans Jacket and Prison Garb

14

Shelling of the White House

Source: Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pushmin – Yeltsin Center – Aleksandr Chumichev

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The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse

15

Shelling of the White House

Source: Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pushmin – Yeltsin Center – Sergei Kivrin

16

Shelling of the White House

Source: Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pushmin – Yeltsin Center – TASS

17

Yeltsin on the Campaign Trail Source: David Cratis Williams “It is still not easy living in Russia”

18

Clinton and Yeltsin Shaking Hands

Source: Alamy

19

Alexei Salmin

Source: David Cratis Williams

20

Yeltsin and Putin in the President’s Office

Source: London Review of Books/ Alamy

Acknowledgements

M

any individuals have participated in making this project a reality. Professor Igor Nemirovsky, Director of Academic Studies Press, first conceived the idea of collecting our studies and making them available to a new generation of Slavists and rhetorical scholars. His letter to Marilyn Young in 2019 initiated this process. Ekaterina (Kate) Yanduganova, the ASP acquisitions editor for Slavic, East European, and Central Asian Studies, has shepherded the publication process for this volume tirelessly and efficiently, as have the members of her copyediting team, particularly Stuart Allen. Michele Pedro has been indispensable on our end proofreading and formatting the elements that make up our manuscript. We also express our appreciation to Florida Atlantic University, the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, and the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies for their generous support to facilitate publication of Volume Two. Our special thanks for their assistance go to Dr. Aimee Arias, Associate Dean of Research and Creative Achievement in the College, and Dr. Carol Bishop Mills, Director of the School.  Maria Aleksandrovna Konovalova—Alexander’s daughter and an accomplished scholar in her own right—has graciously allowed us to reproduce some of her father’s pictures, which she has collected over the years. Masha and her mother, Valentina Fedorovna Yurieva, have been dear friends for nearly thirty years now. Our thanks go out to the late Russian politician Aleksei Vladimirovich Yablokov for exchanging views with us during his visit to Florida State University in May 1991. We are especially grateful to Russian physicists Oleg Beguchev, Aleksandr Gurshtein, Vitaly Lystsov, Yuri Sivintsev, and Semyon Tevlin for participating in discussions regarding the plight of higher education and scientific research during the early post-Soviet years. We wish to express our deep gratitude to the following archivists who assisted us in searching for the documentation underlying our research:

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The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse

Robert Parnica at the Central European University Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest, Hungary; Anatoly Vsevolodovich Shmelev at the Stanford University Hoover Institute Library and Archives in Palo Alto, California; Martins Zvaners at RFE/RL in Washington, DC; and especially Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pushmin at the Yeltsin Center in Ekaterinburg, Russia. It is impossible to overemphasize the valuable assistance provided by the research librarians who worked at ABC, CBS, and NBC (New York)— sadly no longer functioning—as well as staff members at Voice of America (Washington) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Munich). We also wish to thank Daisy Sindelar (Acting Director at RFE/RL) and Dr. Tiffany Cabrera (State Department Office of the Historian). We appreciate the support of Karin Beesley, Wendy Fernando, Annabel Flude, Jean Mercer, Sean Ray, Rachel Twombly, and especially Mary Ann Muller—as well as the organizations they represent—for facilitating the process of receiving permission to republish articles and reviews that appeared in the books and journals they curate. We also thank friends and colleagues who read draft versions, provided research support, participated in the writing of individual studies presented here, or otherwise assisted us in the preparation of this volume, including Randall Bytwerk, Kelly Carr, Scott Elliott, Maksim Fetissenko, John Ishiyama, Svitlana Jaroszynski, Carol Kessler, Debbie Launer, Irina Likhachova, Raymie McKerrow, Dan Miller, Jack Parker, Alexander Rouchnik, “J. R.” Russell, and Alexander Yuriev. Unless otherwise indicated, translations from Russian into English were provided by Michael Launer.

Contributors Scott M. Elliott, PhD, JD. [email protected]

Scott teaches at Kansas City Kansas Community College and coaches a nationally ranked debate team.

Maxim B. Fetissenko, PhD. [email protected]

An organizational development consultant at Fetissenko Consulting in Providence (RI), Maxim has been an AmeriCorps administrator, taught at Northeastern University, and worked as a program director at a Rhode Island state agency.

John T. Ishiyama, PhD. [email protected]

John is University Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. For several years he was editor-in-chief at American Political Science Review.

Michael K. Launer, PhD. [email protected]

Michael is Emeritus Professor of Russian at Florida State University. He is an experienced technical translator and interpreter.

Irina E. Likhachova, MA. [email protected]

Previously employed at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Moscow in the early 1990s as a staff assistant, translator, and interpreter, Irina has worked for the International Finance Corporation/World Bank Group since 1997, where her current title is Lead for Biodiversity Finance, Climate Business.

Alexei M. Salmin (d. 2005), kand. nauk

Alexei was a leading light at the Gorbachev Fund, head of the Russian Public Policy Center, and president of the Russian Political Science Association.

David Cratis Williams, PhD. [email protected]

David, a recognized authority on Kenneth Burke, is professor of communication and rhetorical studies at Florida Atlantic University, where he also serves as executive director of the International Center for the Advancement of Political Communication and Argumentation (ICAPCA).

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The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse

Marilyn J. Young, PhD [email protected]

Marilyn is the Wayne C. Minnick Professor of Communication Emerita at Florida State University. She has published numerous essays and monographs on the general topic of democratization in Russia.

Note to Readers

T

o facilitate the reading process—and for economy of space—all citations within the text have been referenced to a numbered comprehensive bibliography placed at the back of this volume. Citations are presented by number alone, by number and page(s), or by author(s), number and page(s). Also, within the text of the individual chapters, place names (e.g., Moscow), proper names (e.g., Yeltsin), and familiar terms (e.g., glasnost) have been rendered in spellings that are familiar to Western readers.

Alexander Yuriev Source: Maria Aleksandrovna Yurieva

Alexander Yuriev Source: Maria Aleksandrovna Yurieva

Dedication Alexander Ivanovich Yuriev (1942–2020)

W

e dedicate this volume to our friend, colleague, and collaborator Alexander Ivanovich Yuriev, who passed away November 26, 2020, from Covid-19. In the preface to this series, reprinted here in Volume Two, we introduced readers to Alexander, or at least to our introduction to Alexander, in the tale of our 1992 visit to what we called “Stalin’s Dacha.” The result of that visit was a years-long collaboration, replete with exchanges, visits, discussions, and affection—a relationship that lasted until Alexander’s death in 2020. We came to know his wife, Valentina Fedorovna, and his daughter, Maria Alexandrovna Konovalova (Masha). And we were devastated by news of his death, especially coming right after what we had hoped would be another opportunity to visit Alexander and his family—a conference in St. Petersburg that had to convert to a virtual format because of the Covid-19 virus. Alexander Yuriev was an innovative and forward-looking scholar. When we first met him, as we noted in the preface, he was running a training workshop for the regional governors, all newly appointed by Boris Yeltsin, teaching them, among other things, how to interact with the media—something Soviet politicos and apparatchiks had never had to do. Alexander was born in 1942, in the village of Bolshoe in the Yaroslavl oblast, about 170 miles from Leningrad; his mother, pregnant with Alexander, had evacuated from Leningrad over the ice on Lake Ladoga. Although the German Army encircled Leningrad in the Fall of 1941, some evacuations of women and children continued through March 1943. (346) They returned to the city in 1945, just before Alexander’s third birthday. According to Masha, little Alexander was given a large teapot to take care of during the journey home, something he often talked about. Alexander’s father was an engineer and his mother a teacher. As a young man, he first worked at a ship-building factory (1960– 1962), then was drafted into the Army (1962–1965). During his Army

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The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse

service, which overlapped the Cuban Missile Crisis, Alexander was sent to Cuba; he worked monitoring US military communications, likely including bases of the Air Defense Command (ADC), the Strategic Air Command (SAC), and radio communications to and from pilots. It was this experience that sparked Alexander’s interest in politics and led him to pursue political psychology. David learned of this in a roundabout way in 1992, while driving Alexander from Iowa City, Iowa, to Kirksville, Missouri, a route that passes close to a number of current and former US missile silos and other defense-related sites. After his tour of duty, Alexander worked at the Northern Machine Building Factory (1965–1969), which was part of the Soviet military nuclear industrial complex. Then, in 1969, at the age of twenty-seven, he enrolled at Leningrad State University, graduating from the Faculty of Psychology in 1977. Upon completing his degree, Alexander began working in the area of psychological assessment of professionals and the special psychological preparation of personnel for work under extreme conditions. For this work he received the USSR State Prize. We believe it was during this period that he worked at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Zvezdny (Star City), evaluating prospective cosmonauts to determine their psychological fitness for the program. In 1982, Alexander embarked on a career in teaching and research at Leningrad State University (after 1992 known as Saint Petersburg State University), focusing on the development of political psychology as a new scholarly field in Russia, and in 1989 he created the first department of political psychology in the USSR. His work gained international attention at this time, and in 1990 he joined the International Society of Political Psychology, wrote the “Ethical Code of the Political Psychologist,” and began serving on the editorial boards of several foreign academic journals. He also wrote a number of monographs, including Introduction to Political Psychology (1992) and Systematic Description of Political Psychology (1997). In short, he laid the foundation, in the nation’s universities, for the training of specialists in political psychology, consulting for political parties, government officials, and members of the public. He viewed politics as the science for the study, design, formation, and implementation of governmental power; and he understood political activity to be an extreme form of professional work. He believed that the ability to set political goals was the primary basis for obtaining real power.

Dedication

During perestroika, Alexander began putting his philosophy to work, developing workshops to prepare experts as consultants to government and political parties in the USSR. Beginning in 1986, he developed training workshops for Party and government leaders at the federal and regional levels in the “Diuny” Center (Дюны) outside Leningrad. In 1991 he led the training of the first cohorts of Russian governors and presidential representatives at the “Osinovaia roshcha” (Осиновая Роща) academic center outside Leningrad (which is where David and Marilyn met Alexander in 1992, along with Vladimir Vasiliev. Vasiliev was Director of the center, while Alexander was Chief Scientist). Upon returning to the United States that January 1992, David, Marilyn, and Michael formed the International Center for the Advancement of Political Communication and Argumentation, based at Florida State University in Tallahassee, with chapters at Northeast Missouri (now Truman) State University and at Saint Petersburg State University in Russia, including—at least initially—the training center at “Stalin’s Dacha.” Later in 1992, David and Marilyn arranged for Alexander and Vladimir to come to the United States on a “speaking tour”; they visited and made presentations at the University of Iowa, Northeast Missouri State University, and Florida State University. In addition, they attended the Speech Communication Association annual convention, held in Chicago that year. An account of their visit follows at the end of this dedication. From 1993 through 1996, Alexander served as an adviser to the government of the Russian Federation, specifically working with Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. For example, he was part of the Russian team for the (Vice President Al) Gore-Chernomyrdin talks in the mid-1990s. It was toward the end of this period that he was the victim of an attack that remains officially unsolved. (An account of the attack follows below.) Alexander eventually recovered from the assault, resuming his work at the university. In 1999 he joined the Center for Strategic Research in Moscow as an expert consultant; he continued in this position until 2017. Also in 2017, approaching retirement, he and Valentina sold their dacha and bought an apartment in the suburbs; meanwhile, Alexander left the faculty at Saint Petersburg State University and, along with several of his colleagues, transferred to A. I. Pushkin Leningrad State University near Tsarskoe Selo (Pushkin), where he became Director of the Institute for Political Psychology and Applied Political Research. Here he continued

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the work he had begun in 1986 and pursued until the end of his life. According to Masha, Alexander even took work with him to the hospital as he made his life’s last journey: With him to the hospital, he took his summaries and tables, hoping not to interrupt work on them, even when he was sick with Covid. It’s always been like this. He took work with him on all trips and vacations. He couldn’t stop thinking; working was his natural state, not an annoying necessity. He was also an optimist and continued to believe in people despite painful disappointments. He didn’t consider politics a “dirty deed”; he claimed that politics should be scientific, and political activity should be hard work. For this, many considered him a dreamer. But, no, dreamers don’t start their lives with a trade school, army, and factory. He very practically believed that an illiterate political project, made of rotten materials, would inevitably collapse and bury all of us. He loved life and wished everyone well. He did everything he could.

Throughout his life, Alexander Yuriev was also a devoted family man. His wife, Valentina Fedorovna, was by his side throughout; the light of his life, daughter Maria Aleksandrovna Konovalova—who also became an academic, taught with him at Saint Petersburg State University, and transferred with him to Pushkin—carries on his work and his legacy; his great joy was his grandson, “Aleksander II,” also known as “Little Sasha.” Besides his beloved family, Alexander left many devoted colleagues and former students, and friends, such as the three of us. **************

Two Stories The following are two stories involving Alexander that we recount from personal experience. The first is both humorous and insightful, while the second, an account of the assault on Alexander, is a sad commentary on the state of politics in 1996 Russia. 1

From David: October, 1992 Da!

Dedication

In October 1992, Alexander Yuriev and Vladimir Vasiliev trav­ eled from Saint Petersburg to Iowa City to begin a four-stop “tour” that Marilyn and I had arranged as a way for them to speak to American audiences, especially students, and in doing so to promote the new International Center for the Advancement of Political Communication and Argumentation. From the University of Iowa in Iowa City, the two Russian scholars were to travel to Kirksville, Missouri, then on to Chicago for the Speech Communication Association (SCA, now named National Communication Association or NCA) annual conference and, finally, to Tallahassee, Florida. Before making the three-hour drive from Northeast Missouri State University, located in Kirksville, Missouri, I received a call from Bruce Gronbeck, the University of Iowa professor who was hosting the two Russians. There were problems. Alexander and Vladimir had had a falling-out, and they were no longer willing to share hotel accommodations. Indeed, it was not clear that they were even speaking to each other beyond what was minimally necessary. Although their presentations were able to proceed without difficulty, other arrangements had to be changed at the last minute. Professor Michael Calvin McGee agreed to host Alexander at his home, while Vladimir remained in the hotel. After securing new directions on where to pick each up in Iowa City, and now very much uncertain of what to expect, I began the drive to Iowa. Knowing that neither Alexander nor Vladimir spoke English, I had arranged for a Northeast Missouri State student then in his second year of Russian language study to accompany me as an interpreter, albeit one with quite limited proficiency. It was the best that could be arranged under the circumstances, because both of the Russian language faculty members were engaged in teaching classes and preparing a reception for Alexander and Vladimir to be held at my house that evening. Upon arriving in Iowa City, I went to McGee’s home first to pick up Alexander. He and McGee had evidently really hit it off, and McGee reported having had fascinating discussions with Alexander. I was relieved because that indicated Alexander’s housing change had not been an unappreciated burden on the McGees. But I was mystified, because so far as I knew, McGee knew no Russian, and of course Alexander spoke no English. How, I wondered, had Alexander and McGee managed a discussion without an interpreter present? It was a mystery to which I never learned an answer.

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After picking up Vladimir from the hotel, I turned the car south toward Missouri. Both Alexander and Vladimir were enthralled by my car, a white-vinyl-topped, bright red 1976 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Had it been fifteen years earlier, they would have been riding in style. But they were not disturbed by the age of the car: it was an American Cadillac, and it seemed to represent to them a taste of the American Dream. Efforts at conversation in the car did not succeed well: the student lacked the proficiency to conduct an unscripted conversation or to interpret one. He could recognize occasional words and convey broad topics that might come from those words, but his training to that point was insufficient for much more. By the time we had driven south on Highway 218 to Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, efforts at conversation had dribbled out, and we mainly rode in silence along the two-lane road from Mt. Pleasant to Ottumwa, Iowa. As we passed the sign announcing our arrival in Ottumwa, however, Alexander surprised everyone by saying, “Ottumwa. Da.” The student asked what that was about, or at least he tried to. But Alexander did not respond, and it was unclear whether he understood the student’s attempt to frame the question in Russian. At Ottumwa, we turned south toward Kirksville on Highway 63, another two-lane road through an area that was mostly farmland. Silence again reigned in the car. But when we passed the sign welcoming us to Lancaster, Missouri, Alexander rather excitedly proclaimed “Lancaster. Da!” Again, no further explanation was attempted—and I was befuddled. Alexander could not know the small Missouri town of Lancaster; most people in Missouri did not know the town of Lancaster. I knew that Alexander’s only previous trip to the United States had been to Hofstra University on Long Island, which was where Marilyn, Michael, and I had met in February with Alexander and Vladimir to prepare the official documents to charter ICAPCA. What was going on with Alexander? The silence was again interrupted as we passed Queen City. “Queen City. Da, da!” exclaimed Alexander. The student and I looked at each other with arched eyebrows, but no one said anything. A few miles down the road, and only about ten miles north of Kirksville, we passed the sign for Greentop, Missouri. Greentop is very small. It may have had a traffic light, but it may have only been a blinking yellow light. There is no real commercial district. Even so, Alexander jerked upright in his seat and loudly proclaimed, “Greentop!! Da, da, da!!!” Again, no explanation. But we were only eight miles from Kirksville, where the reception was

Dedication

waiting. We were fortunate that the hotel was not full, and we could secure another room, so that Alexander and Vladimir would not have to share accommodations. There was a large turnout for the reception. It was less than a year after the dissolution of the USSR, and curiosity about the radical changes in Russia was quite high. Among those gathered were professors Shannon Jumper and Faith Beane (who both taught Russian language courses), as well as Patrick Lecaque, John Ishiyama, and Mike Davis, who were also in varying degrees proficient in Russian and were affiliated with our local ICAPCA chapter. Thankfully, they would all serve as interpreters. As the reception progressed, I asked one of the Russian speakers to ask Alexander what was going on when he was proclaiming “Da!” as if in recognition of those small Iowa and Missouri towns through which we had passed. What emerged was a story that exceeded even my wildest imagination. The following paragraph represents my recollection of Alexander’s story as relayed to me through one of the interpreters present at the reception. In 1962, young Alexander began his military service in the Soviet Army. He was immediately sent to Cuba, where he was assigned to the group whose task it was to sight the new Soviet nuclear missiles that were being sent to Cuba by the USSR. The missiles were targeted on the United States, and Alexander’s task was to sight missiles designed to reduce the American offensive and defensive capabilities in the event of a war, targeted at known US missile silos and at US Strategic Air Command radar installations in the Midwest. There are reportedly many missile silos hidden in and beneath the fields of southern Iowa and northern Missouri. Alexander did indeed know all of those small towns through which we had passed that day, but he knew them from the unusual perspective of having sighted potential targets for the Soviets missiles in Cuba! However, Masha provided us a different version of Alexander’s military assignment, this from his memoirs: After being drafted I completed radio school, and for two years—day after day, month after month, day and night—I would listen in, write out, and print live [communications] that were intercepted. A very strong impression was created by the actual communications of B-52 pilots, that carried nuclear weapons on board as they approached our borders, and 24/7 teletype comms on the White House-Kremlin line (discussions between US Secretary of State Dean Rusk and USSR

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Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko), nearly daily encounters with American RB-47 reconnaissance aircraft in USSR territorial waters in the Baltic and Barents seas.

Trying to reconcile this account with my memory of that 1992 conversation with Alexander, we did a couple of things. Marilyn and I tried to verify the local references to Greentop as a SAC radar base and discovered that that was not technically correct. The radar station was built in 1952, affiliated with the Air Force, and part of the Air Defense Command (ADC) and, later, NORAD.2 (401) Michael consulted some friends who had experience in this area and are old enough to be familiar with 1960s technology. What we determined is that either version is plausible, so we have presented both of them here. While the second account is not as dramatic as the first (at least from our perspective), it is fascinating in its own right and provides a snapshot of the tensions surrounding that moment in history. During their stay in Kirksville, Alexander and Vladimir gave public programs about the political and economic changes in Russia. They showed taped footage of Gorbachev while he was held captive in Crimea during the August 1991 coup attempt. They analyzed his nonverbal communication, and they talked about the Presidential Representatives and the political transformations then occurring. They also spoke with students directly as guest speakers in political science, communication studies, and Russian classes. In an interview by a writer for the Kirksville Daily Express, they emphasized their work training “political leaders” of the new Russian Federation. Vladimir “explained that one week after the Soviet Union was disbanded, every region had its own representative from Boris Yeltsin. It is these leaders the center [the Center for Social Stability, Justice, and Social Ecology] works with currently.” (8: 14) Alexander explained the dire need for such training: since most of the new Presidential Representatives “have come from industry and science backgrounds,” they are ill-prepared to slide directly into political leadership roles. Using a metaphor that seemed designed to appeal to American audiences, Alexander expounded on this need for training for the new Representatives: “They look like an inexperienced rider on a bucking bronco. It’s hard for them to determine their location when they are bouncing around so much.” (8: 14) But it is the other metaphor—not the bucking bronco but the vehicle of

Dedication

“location”—that shaped Alexander’s central message. He compares Russia to a ship, lost and in some distress Russia resembles a ship sailing on the ocean. We have torn sails and now we have a mission to save this ship. . . . Our state doesn’t know where our ship is in the ocean. We need a scientific map. We have to figure this out on our own. . . . It’s the same as in personal life. Whether you’re a student, a poet or a gangster. Each of us has to look at where we’re located on this map . . . the Soviet Union no longer exists. Only Russia remains. We have to establish our coordinates in the political system. And that’s not all. We also have to figure out the direction of travel. (8: 1)

“And how well did they think the training was working to overcome the challenges facing the new political leadership?” In the interview, Alexander suggested it was a difficult process, with the article indicating that “most of the political figures they consult are difficult at first, but then they listen to what is being said to them.” Alexander compared it with going to the doctor: “It’s like a sick person going to a doctor when they have no other way. Then they listen.” (8: 14) Following their visit to Kirksville, Alexander and Vladimir joined other Communication faculty from Northeast Missouri State and me in traveling by car to Chicago for the annual conference of the Speech Communication Association, where Marilyn and I had worked with SCA President Dale Leathers to secure a program slot for a panel discussion including Alexander, Vladimir, Marilyn, and me on the topic of “Collaborations in Argumentation Studies between the International Center for the Advancement of Political Communication and Argumentation and the Organization for Social Stability, Justice, and the Ecology of Personality (St. Petersburg, Russia).” Dale also arranged an SCA-sponsored reception for Alexander and Vladimir following the program so they might meet other interested communication scholars. ************** From Marilyn: Saint Petersburg, 1996—The Attack I was in Saint Petersburg with a student group from Florida State University when I learned Alexander was in the hospital. We had been

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trying to reach him to organize a visit, without success, when a Russian friend told us that she had seen on television a story about Alexander being attacked. We finally reached Masha, who arranged for me to visit him in the hospital. Never having been inside a Russian hospital, I did not know what to expect; but I have to say I felt as if I had traveled back in time, to a Hollywood movie set depicting a 1940s hospital. At the same time, it was very clean, and I knew Alexander was receiving the best care available in the best hospital in the city. Still, it was an eye-opening experience, even though, by 1996, I had been to Russia, especially Saint Petersburg, many times. Nevertheless, Alexander was in good spirits; Valentina was there with him, and through my interpreter, then and later, I gradually learned the story of the attack. Working at home on April 29, 1996, Alexander received a call, purportedly from the university, telling him that a student would be bringing papers to his apartment for him to sign. Here, in Alexander’s words, is what happened next: [T]he bell at my apartment rang; I went to the door, and through the peephole I saw a young woman who was holding some papers in her hand. . . . Through the door she told me she was a student in the Philosophy Department. She was asked by the Dean’s office to bring me some mail. My mind was fixated on my next political project and, without thinking, I opened the door. I instantly understood that I had acted incorrectly, but it was too late: the door was pulled open brusquely from the outside and a hulk of a man in camo and a black mask with eye slits appeared. The next moment I felt a terrible slicing pain in my eyes and on my face with such force that I involuntarily collapsed onto the floor. Then everything went quiet. After a minute I rose blindly from a stinking puddle of acid, made it to the telephone, and also blindly dialed the telephone number of Viktor Kruchinin, staff director for A. A. Sobchak. I told him I had been attacked and needed medical help. Then I managed to reach the kitchen and, again only by feel, found a jar of baking powder, poured it out into a bowl, filled it with water and began to rinse my eyes. Very quickly a medic from the 62nd police precinct rushed in, an ambulance arrived along with a crowd of unknown people, and I was taken to the hospital. I had been maimed, but because of the baking powder there remained a chance for the doctors to save my sight.

Dedication

Alexander spent the next two years recovering, receiving medical treatment at the Military Medical Academy in Saint Petersburg, plastic surgery in Tallahassee, Florida, and postoperative care in Finland. He and Valentina made two trips to Tallahassee during this time, first to meet the plastic surgeon who would repair the scarring on his neck, discuss the process, and learn about the costs; the second trip was for the surgery itself followed by a recovery period. Michael and I had approached our physician in search of a surgeon who could help Alexander by repairing the scar tissue, which was becoming a problem. She recommended Dr. Louis Hill, who graciously consented to work his magic in one operation rather than the four that were projected by Alexander’s Russian surgeon. During both trips, Alexander and Valentina lived with Michael and me at our home in Tallahassee, which led to at least one humorous incident I would like to share. One evening, Alexander and Valentina stayed home while we went out. Upon returning, we noticed a car in the driveway. “Oh, Debbie’s here,” I commented, thinking nothing about how strange that was. Walking into the kitchen, we encountered a very sheepish Alexander and Valentina sitting at the kitchen table with our friend Debbie. “You missed the excitement!” Debbie proclaimed, while Alexander began conversing in Russian with Michael. It seems that they (Alexander and Valentina) had tried to make some toast, which burned and set off the fire alarm. The alarm service had called our house, but, of course, Alexander (who answered the phone) could not understand them, nor they him. So the service called Debbie, who is our “person to call if no one answers at the house.” The operator explained that they had called and someone did answer, but “the man was speaking Spanish or something”; the operator could not understand him and had dispatched the fire trucks. “Well, that would be Russian,” Debbie responded before hanging up and driving over to our house. When she arrived, there were fire trucks out front, lights flashing, and firemen tromping through the house, looking for the fire. Of course, Debbie does not speak Russian, so she could not find out exactly what had happened until we returned and Michael could interpret for her. Nevertheless, having found no flames, the firemen had departed, and by the time we got home only Debbie, Valentina, and Alexander were left. Contrite over the disturbance, Alexander and Valentina were concerned about what we would be charged for the false alarm. We had no idea, but, as it turned out, no fine was ever levied.

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Aside from the reasons for their visit, we very much enjoyed having Alexander Ivanovich and Valentina Fedorovna live with us for a month. Meanwhile, the motives and the persons behind the attack remain obscure. A criminal investigation was opened but produced no results. At the time, we understood that Alexander was working on the re-election campaign of Anatoly Sobchak, then running for re-election as Mayor of Saint Petersburg, and the assumption was that political rivals were behind the attack. But Alexander’s written account of the incident disputes his role in Sobchak’s campaign, and we never heard any speculation about its being connected to his work for Chernomyrdin. Typical of Alexander, he put it behind him and moved on. —Marilyn Young, David Cratis Williams, and Michael Launer July 2021

NOTES 1. Alexander’s daughter kindly provided information about her father for this volume. She read a draft of our Dedication, filled in some gaps in Alexander’s biography, pointed us to some autobiographical information, and corrected some misapprehensions on our part. In some areas, Masha contradicted the description of events that are embedded deep in our memories of conversations that occurred twenty to thirty years ago. With apologies to Masha, we have recounted those events and conversations as we remember them. If nothing else, they informed our understanding as our work and friendship with Alexander developed through subsequent years. However, out of respect for Masha and Valentina Fedorovna, and to acknowledge Alexander’s account of his time in the Soviet Army, we have included the alternate version below. 2. The actual location of the radar was nearer to Sublette, an unincorporated community two miles southwest of “downtown” Greentop (and roughly six miles from Kirksville). The facility was originally designated Sublette Air Force Station, but was renamed Kirksville Air Force Station in 1953. The Kirksville Air Force Station radar was associated with a “gap-filler” radar station in Washington, Iowa, located loosely between Iowa City and Kirksville. (402)

Alexander Yuriev Source: Maria Aleksandrovna Yurieva

Preface

T

 he Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse is a multi-volume series that orbits around analysis of rhetoric, public address, and political argumentation from the late Soviet period through the contemporary discourse of Vladimir Putin. Collectively, the volumes examine significant moments and evolving trajectories in Russian political address: from its emergence due to fissures in the ubiquity of Soviet information control occasioned by political disasters such as the 1983 shootdown of a Korean airliner (KAL 007) and technological and environmental disasters such as the Chernobyl nuclear accident; through its “promise” in the open and relatively democratic Yeltsin years; to its slow strangulation under Putin’s creeping authoritarianism. This has been an enormous project, spanning nearly forty years of research and writing. But it was not planned that way; indeed, it was not really planned at all. Rather, this project began in the early 1980s when Michael Launer and Marilyn Young, an academic couple at Florida State University, found rich ground for collaboration in intersections between their respective disciplines. Michael was a professor of Russian language and linguistics (as well as a technical translator and interpreter), and Marilyn was a professor of argumentation and rhetoric, with a focus on the discourse of the Cold War. She was also the Director of Debate. Together, they began to analyze Soviet public arguments, which perforce meant they were restricted to those initially rare times when the arguments were public. It became clear much later that those times were also the occasions that slowly forced openings in Soviet information control, allowing for public and political contestation of official declarations and positions. Singly, in tandem, or sometimes with another collaborator, Michael and Marilyn published several articles analyzing and evaluating Soviet public arguments (including the use of evidence) that had emerged from events such as KAL 007, Chernobyl, and the 1988 shootdown of the Iran Airbus. They also coauthored a book focusing on the use of evidence in arguments advanced about KAL 007.

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In August 1991, even as the coup attempt in the Soviet Union was beginning to unfold, David Cratis Williams, a professor of rhetoric and communication at what was then Northeast Missouri State University (and a former Director of Debate at Wake Forest University), attended a biennial argumentation conference in Utah, where he learned of the upcoming “Conference on the Practical Application of Argumentation Theory to Politics, Business and Industry” to be held in Leningrad, USSR, in January 1992. A former student and debate assistant, who was a colleague of the American co-organizer of the conference, encouraged David to submit a paper proposal. “When will you ever get another opportunity to go to the Soviet Union?” the debate assistant asked. David was enticed, even though his work to that point had been focused on the rhetorical theories of Kenneth Burke, connections between ideology and rhetoric, and public argument in specific US case studies (including pro-slavery argumentation). He had no academic background concerning the Soviet Union. Marilyn attended the same argumentation conference in Utah. She and David knew each other through debate (she had judged him several times at college debate tournaments, and later they coached teams that competed against each other), but their relationship did not really extend beyond the debate connection. Neither recalls any conversations with the other during that Utah conference. As it happens Marilyn had also received a flyer about the Leningrad conference and had already begun to make plans to attend. Marilyn was especially excited, because, although she had been to the USSR twice at that point, both times as a tourist, this upcoming conference was exactly the kind of opportunity she was looking for. Michael had been to the Soviet Union in 1972, and again in 1978, as a Fulbright Scholar; in 1974 as the faculty chaperone for the US National Debate tour; and by the late 1980s was going regularly as an interpreter/translator for post-Chernobyl assistance programs. Marilyn developed a proposal for a paper along the lines of the conference theme, detailing the ability of local action to change government policy, and submitted it to the conference. While this paper looked only tangentially at argument and rhetoric, Marilyn and Michael hoped it would enable them to make contacts in Leningrad that would further their long-term research goal of testing the applicability of Western theories of rhetoric and argument in an information-restricted society.

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Neither Marilyn nor David knew the other had submitted to the planned conference. Both submissions were accepted and— independently—David, Marilyn, and Michael prepared for travel to the Soviet Union. But things changed dramatically before the conference convened in late January. David’s airline ticket to Leningrad instead took him to St. Petersburg, which he knew from the handwritten sign in English posted outside the reception area at the airport: “Welcome to St. Petersburg.” David soon thought it might as well have said, “Welcome to the Wild West” (minus the gun battles). With the magnitude and rapidity of changes attendant to the sudden national independence of the Russian Federation and the declared democratic aspirations of President—and national hero for his opposition to the August coup attempt—Boris Yeltsin, the city seemed nervously euphoric. The old norms of life were vanishing, and what would follow was a great mystery. Tremendous optimism and hope mingled with fear and anxiety against a backdrop of food shortages, material deprivation, political uncertainty, and economic chaos. Conference participants stayed at the Oktiabrskaia, a traditional Soviet hotel off Nevsky Prospect near Moskovsky train station, while the conference venue was St. Petersburg State University. Given the disruptions in “normal” life, it should not be surprising that it was not a normal academic conference. The first day, a chartered bus carried conference participants along Nevsky, crossing the Neva River to the University for registration, payment of fees, and official welcomes. Paper presentations would begin the next morning. Following the reception, conference participants learned there was no bus back to the hotel. Indeed, there would be no more buses between the hotel and the University for the duration of the conference. Every day after that, they walked the length of Nevsky, shivering in the January cold. They met in unheated classrooms, breath condensing as papers were delivered. There was no program; there was no set order for paper presentations. Participants would ask each other, “Have you gone yet? Do you want to go next?” Yet, somehow, Russian college students appeared for each talk to serve as interpreters. When David presented his paper “Argumentation, Rationality, and Ideology: The Case of the Ante-Bellum American South,” which looked at the roles of argument and rhetoric in social change, his interpreter was a student who introduced himself as Maxim. Following the presentation, Maxim engaged David in

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conversation, asking more about rhetoric and public argument. Russians, he said, did not know much about such topics since they were banned from the curriculum in the early days of the Soviet Union (excepting narrow considerations of “rhetoric” strictly as a concern with style, primarily meaning literary style). Maxim then indicated that his major professor, who—he quickly qualified—was not associated with the rather chaotic conference, was very much interested in the subjects of argumentation and social change and would like to meet and discuss them. They would send a car (a car!) to the hotel and drive to see his professor. He encouraged David to invite another American scholar with similar interests to join him. David immediately thought of Marilyn since he knew her, had some familiarity with her work, and understood that she had a good deal of knowledge about the Soviet Union, even if she (like him) did not speak Russian. Moreover, he had by then learned that Michael was a Professor of Russian and a translator and interpreter, which struck him as a good omen, even though Michael would soon leave the conference for an interpreting assignment in Western Siberia. At the appointed time, Marilyn and David waited together in the hotel lobby. Soon Maxim appeared accompanied by a middle-aged man wearing a grey, seemingly wool, military-style trench coat and a black rabbit fur hat; he had a pale complexion, a virtually expressionless face, and pale blue eyes that were initially obscured behind sunglasses. Maxim introduced him as Vladimir. Here, thought David and Marilyn, was the major professor. But he spoke no English, so questions and further explanations were deferred. They all quickly scurried outside, where sure enough a car awaited them directly in front of the hotel. Instead of a Lada, which they had expected, it was a black Volga, a “Party car.” And there was a partially uniformed driver who wore a military-style jacket, a jaunty driver’s cap, and Western blue jeans. He was not introduced, and it soon became evident that he did not speak English either. They piled into the car, Vladimir up front and Marilyn and David on either side of Maxim in the back. Although not new, the car was clean on the inside and shiny on the outside; there was a large, wide console between the driver’s and front passenger’s seats. As they merged into traffic leaving the hotel, Marilyn and David expected a quick drive up Nevsky Prospect to the University and the faculty offices. Instead, the driver turned in another direction. Maybe an alternate route? A shortcut? But as

Preface

they asked questions, Maxim’s English began to waver. Although he had been David’s interpreter, his spoken English was not in fact very strong, and for some reason it deteriorated the farther the vehicle got from the City Center. Marilyn and David began exchanging questioning looks as two things slowly became clear to them: they were not going, by any route, to the University, and Maxim—for whatever reason—was not going to provide illumination. Soon they were on a major highway, probably a ring road. Their anxiety elevated, Marilyn and David unsuccessfully began to press Maxim about where they were going. But they were interrupted by the wails of a siren—and they were pulled over by the police. Without waiting for the officer to reach the car, the driver and Vladimir jumped out and intercepted him as he approached. A vigorous and fairly loud discussion followed, but since it was in Russian Marilyn and David had no idea what was going on. Soon the driver and Vladimir marched back to the car with the policeman in tow. They opened the front doors, and then the driver opened the large console between the seats, revealing to Marilyn and David’s shock and amazement a built-in car telephone. He dialed a number then handed the phone to Vladimir, who spoke quietly and quickly into the receiver before handing it on to the policeman. The officer listened, responded with one of the very few Russian words David could recognize (“Da!”), then handed the phone back to Vladimir, saluted, returned to his vehicle, and drove away. As their car pulled back onto the road and continued toward wherever they were going without any word of explanation offered to them, Marilyn and David again shared perplexed and anxious glances. It was evident to them that things truly were far from normal, that someone—presumably the major professor— must be very important. Eventually they turned off the highway onto a two-lane paved road that wound eastward into a forest of tall, telephone-pole-straight birch trees. (Later, they would learn that the entire area was known as Osinovaia roshcha—Aspen Woods.) The road narrowed, the shoulder virtually disappeared, and the sun did disappear, blocked by the density and height of the forest. Shadows punctuated the road even as the forest swallowed most of the sun’s illumination. Yet on they went. Increasingly anxious, Marilyn and David kept exchanging glances permeated with apprehension. As they later discovered, they were each re-running in their memories every grade B Soviet spy movie they had ever seen. For all practical purposes, Maxim’s English had withered to nothing.

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Soon a painted concrete or mortar wall appeared on their right side, running parallel to the road and set back just a few feet from it. It was seven or eight feet tall and appeared to be thick and solid. They drove parallel to the wall for what seemed like several hundred feet before the road abruptly and sharply curved to the right, suddenly revealing a very large, two-lane wide solid gate in the wall. Two uniformed men carrying automatic weapons, presumably Kalashnikovs, guarded the gate. The car stopped, and the driver got out to speak with the armed guards before returning to the car. The gate swung open, they drove through, then—slam!—the gate closed behind them. They had arrived. Where, they did not know. All they knew at that moment was that they would be there until such time as someone escorted them back through the gate. They were in a compound with a small number of buildings and, judging from the length of the wall, a sizeable bit of land. The main building was a fairly large but unprepossessing house, a farmhouse by appearances. They were silently guided into the kitchen, where there was a small cluster of people. Maxim regained enough English to introduce them to the central figure in the small cluster: Dr. Alexander Yuriev. He, not Vladimir, was Maxim’s major professor, and he was clearly in charge of whatever was going on. One of the others there was an experienced interpreter. After resolving the important initial question of tea or coffee, Marilyn and David slowly began to get detailed explanations from both Alexander and Vladimir. The compound at which they had arrived was a governmentowned dacha that Stalin had used when in Leningrad during its long siege. Now it was often referred to simply as “Stalin’s Dacha.” Alexander Yuriev was Professor of Political Psychology at the University, but he was also Lead Scientist of the Organization for Social Stability, Justice, and Ecology of Personality (or, as was written on the English language side of his business card, the SSSEL), a research and training center loosely associated with the University. Vladimir Vasiliev was the Executive Director. In addition, Alexander served as an occasional advisor to Boris Yeltsin and, later, Vladimir Putin (whom he knew from St. Petersburg city government). When Marilyn and David visited Stalin’s Dacha, Alexander and SSSEL were conducting a specially developed training program to prepare Yeltsin’s newly appointed Presidential Representatives to facilitate Russia’s transition to a democratic state. The entire program, they were carefully warned, was absolutely Top Secret.

Preface

David, who knew little about governmental structure or operations in the USSR, let alone in the Russian Federation, did not understand. So while Professor Yuriev attended to other matters, he and Marilyn sat in Vladimir’s office and were briefed about structural plans for governance and decision making in the new Russia. Maxim, perhaps relieved by no longer having to protect secrecy, regained his English voice and interpreted. But as Vladimir took multiple phone calls, Maxim did much of the actual briefing. Each of the eighty territorial entities (e.g., oblasts, krais, and republics) of the new Federation would have an appointed Presidential Representative who would work with a Council of Deputies to implement Yeltsin’s vision for a democratic Russia. Later, the appointed positions would be phased out in favor of elected governors. As Marilyn and David talked with Maxim, Vladimir increasingly focused on his phone calls. Speaking Russian, he was unconcerned about their presence, knowing they could not understand what was being said. After lunch, Marilyn and David sat in a conference room and talked about their research, as well as that being conducted at the dacha. Alexander and Vladimir questioned Marilyn about the book she and Michael had written on the Korean Air Lines flight, asking specifically what Russian sources they had used. Michael had taught Marilyn how to pronounce the Russian names of the newspapers and journals they had consulted, and she rattled them off without hesitating. Later, again in Vladimir’s office, waiting to be taken back to the hotel, Marilyn and David noticed that Vladimir began taking his phone calls in another room. They decided he thought they had been sandbagging him about their not knowing any Russian! Alexander explained that the activities, indeed the charge, of SSSEL moved in three directions: 1) research on the political psychologies of different regions in Russia, including tests of both leaders and everyday people; 2) training of top leaders of the state to be democratic leaders (to underscore the need for that, he emphasized that roughly half of the leaders of the new Federation Council had previously been members of the Supreme Soviet); and 3) teaching students to become democratic leaders and citizens (here he smiled and added, “students like Maxim”).1 As directed by Yeltsin, SSSEL was deeply engaged in training programs for the newly appointed Presidential Representatives in an effort to transform them from their previous status as Soviet apparatchiks to that of democratic leaders and change agents.

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Yeltsin had authorized SSSEL to establish a training center at Stalin’s Dacha, and he also authorized another one outside Moscow. Each was to prepare half of the eighty Presidential Representatives but in groups of no more than eighteen at a time. And there were in fact eighteen of the Presidential Representatives in residence at the time of this initial visit. Alexander shared with David and Marilyn the curriculum and regulations of the twelve-day training session. Participants (all powerful leaders in the Soviet system) were required to stay in the compound at all times, to wear tracksuits and sneakers (e.g., non-power clothing), to surrender their mobile phones, and remain incommunicado from family, friends, or anyone else during the training period. The first two days of the program were dedicated to “psychological evaluation,” which included sleep deprivation and other techniques designed to break down the previous presuppositions of the participants, to—in Alexander’s words—“turn them into pupils.” This was followed by role playing exercises, debates against former Communist leaders and ideologists (to learn how to defeat them with arguments), briefings on democratic theory, practices, and procedures, and democratic skills-training (how to run a meeting, how to conduct a press conference, etc.). In short, the objective was to break down a Communist leader and rebuild him as a Democratic leader. Marilyn and David were then introduced to the group of eighteen Presidential Representatives in residence at that time (they were not introduced by name); one had been a leader of an influential union that called the strikes that contributed to the economic collapse of the USSR. Before Marilyn and David left, they again sat with Alexander for an extended conversation. He asked if they could recommend some academic literature to help him better understand various argument techniques, and then he stunned them by proposing a series of projects for collaboration, ranging from student/faculty exchanges to joint research projects (e.g., cross-cultural research on the relative effectiveness of various techniques of argumentation in different cultures, such as Russia and the United States, or similar research on differences in allowable debate topics, debate formats, debate types and functions in Russia and the United States). Marilyn and David quickly agreed to collaborate, although they noted that they could not engage in much of the stress-related research because of US guidelines for conducting human research. Alexander did not see that as a barrier, and he told them that he would be traveling the following month to Hofstra University in order to initiate a similar exchange and

Preface

research relationship with the psychology program there. It would be his first trip to the United States. Marilyn and David thought the relationship needed to be formalized, so they agreed to draft a proposal to establish a legally registered international research center based on a consortium of SSSEL, Florida State University, and Northeast Missouri State University. They would then travel to Long Island, meet with Alexander and Vladimir, and sign the documents to legally charter their Center. It had been quite a day for them. Marilyn and Michael and David were suddenly research and writing partners. And Alexander had floated prospects of their returning to St. Petersburg to teach classes in his program or to participate in future conferences, some of which would be under his direction. As Marilyn and David reviewed the events of the day back at their hotel, they were somewhat overwhelmed by the magnitude and improbability of what had occurred. How was it possible that two American academics, neither with any kind of reputation or presence in Russia, who had been in the country for less than a week, and who had no well-placed Russian connections, had ended up at a top secret government training center charged with preparing leaders for the nascent national transformation from autocracy to democracy? It certainly reinforced Marilyn’s and David’s recognition that, at that moment, things were very far from normal. Marilyn, Michael, and David met with Alexander and Vladimir on Long Island in late February 1992 and signed documents registering the International Center for the Advancement of Political Communication and Argumentation (ICAPCA) as a not-for-profit center to be based at Florida State University. Marilyn was selected as International Director, with Alexander and David on the Board of Directors. David also became Director of the Northeast Missouri Chapter of ICAPCA. Under the auspices of ICAPCA, and with cooperation from the Communication Department at the University of Iowa (especially Professors Bruce Gronbeck and Michael Calvin McGee), Alexander and Vladimir came back to the United States the following year for a speaking tour that included the University of Iowa, Northeast Missouri State University, Florida State University, and the Speech Communication Association, whose annual meeting they attended that year in Chicago. The following summer Marilyn delivered a series of four seminars in St. Petersburg stretching over two months. In addition, Alexander organized lectures, seminars, and

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conferences that kept Marilyn and David (and sometimes Michael) traveling to Russia frequently over the next twenty years. While The Path from Disaster toward Russian “Democracy,” Volume One of The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse, focuses on openings created in Soviet information control by environmental and technological disasters, openings that permitted argumentative challenges and rhetorical opposition to gain public visibility, the subsequent volumes in this series begin with consideration of Russian political discourse from roughly the time of our collaboration with SSSEL through the present day. Volume Two, The Promise of “Democracy” during the Yeltsin Years, is primarily comprised of articles and papers written under the auspices of ICAPCA, with additional authors involved in several of the papers. As the title indicates, the essays in this volume examine political discourse from the years of Yeltsin’s Presidency, although the focus is not on Yeltsin’s rhetoric per se. Among the topics discussed are the early Duma elections, debates and arguments surrounding national identity, arguments about the new Russian federalism and the roles of political parties, as well as positions advanced by Yeltsin in his Presidential Addresses. During the early Yeltsin years, Russia was probably more socially and politically open than at any other period in its history: freedom of speech blossomed, the free and unregulated media exploded, and the entire fabric of society relaxed. The time was as good for rhetoric and public argumentation as it was bad for economic stability and prosperity. It was mainly during these years that Alexander facilitated many opportunities for Marilyn and David. They attended the Second Annual Russian-American Seminar on Democratic Russian Institutions in August 1993, and presented a co-authored (with Scott Elliott), theoretical paper on democracy and what they called “cultures of democratic communication.” David’s colleague at Northeast Missouri State, John Ishiyama, a political scientist who was newly active in ICAPCA, also presented some results of his research on voting patterns and political party formation. During the conference, they all worked to get to know the Russian participants, aided immensely by John’s passable Russian, and were richly rewarded. They talked at length with Professor Alexei Salmin (it helped that Alexei’s English was impeccable), then affiliated with the Gorbachev Foundation, who described himself as one of the few political scientists in Russia. The Americans were quite taken with and impressed by Alexei, and, as fellow political scientists, John and Alexei really hit it off, especially

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after they discovered they were both studying the development and roles of political parties in Russia. Following the model that had been so productive with Alexander, Marilyn and David invited Alexei to make a similar speaking tour, albeit with stops only at Northeast Missouri and Florida State. From that point on, whenever Marilyn and David arrived at Sheremetevo Airport in Moscow, Alexei—as a gesture of friendship and gratitude—always had his car and driver waiting for them. They maintained a strong working relationship with Alexei as he moved from the Gorbachev Foundation to help found the first non-governmental political research organization and “think tank” in Russia, the Center for Political Technologies, and then to become the first President of the national professional organization for political science. A member of Boris Yeltsin’s Presidential Council from 1994 to 2000, Alexei died unexpectedly in 2005 at the age of fifty-four, a great loss to Russia—and to all of us. The most dramatic of the opportunities Alexander facilitated for the Americans was a “moveable conference” he arranged in July 1994. Alexander convened the “Conference on Language, Persuasion, and Human Behavior” in St. Petersburg and presided over a brutally long day of paper presentations, featuring a keynote by Yuri Moskvich, a university professor and the Presidential Representative from the Krasnoyarsk region who might well have been a pupil of Alexander’s in one of the training programs. Marilyn presented a paper, and David also presented with co-author John Ishiyama. They then defied State Department recommendations, hopped on a domestic Aeroflot plane, and flew to Krasnoyarsk where Moskvich, who had flown ahead on a private charter, met their flight. He arranged the second stage of this “moveable conference” at his university in Krasnoyarsk; but first he gave everyone a grand tour of what had been until only recently (earlier in that year) an officially designated “closed city.” Most notably, they saw the massive hydroelectric dam on the Yenisei River, still adorned with an equally massive image of Lenin indelibly embedded across its front. After the conference, Marilyn and David were to fly by chartered Aeroflot turbojet (a Yak-40) to Irkutsk. But first they had to have a beer—and a tour of the newly renovated brewery of the domestic beer company, Pikra: the beer of Krasnoyarsk. The company was looking for rich investors; the Americans were looking for good beer. In the end, only the Americans left truly happy. So, after several cases of good Pikra beer were loaded onto the plane, Marilyn and David joined several

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others from the conference, including Moskvich and his wife, and flew to Irkutsk, where they were met by some dignitaries, including the local Presidential Representative, his wife, a businessman named Boris, and Boris’s bodyguard. They traveled immediately to the docks on Lake Baikal, where they crammed into a large Russian yacht (that turned out to be a converted fishing boat) for a two-day cruise on the lake with the Presidential Representatives, their families, and a few others, including an out of work physicist from Moscow who was part of Sakharov’s group. Moskvich spoke excellent English, and with Ishiyama’s Russian they ensured that Marilyn and David were also able to communicate with others. Most of the conversations gravitated around political, social, and economic issues, at least until the vodka caught up with everyone (What happened to the beer?), at which time the songfest began. Experiences like this enriched their understanding of some concerns in the regions and some of the alignments among political parties. During the Yeltsin years, Marilyn and David returned to Russia many, many times: they went places, interacted with people, and learned things that at other times—both before and after—would never have been possible. But even before Yeltsin resigned and, effectively, anointed Vladimir Putin as his unelected successor, the wide open, Wild West tenor of the initial years had already faded. ************** What we consider in this series to be the “Yeltsin years” is not coterminous with the years he served in office. The “democratic path” along which Yeltsin tried to lead Russia is the same path that our analysis shows Putin followed initially. In our view, the Yeltsin years didn’t really end until the path began to turn, and Volume Two of this collection concludes with articles taking retrospective perspectives on what generally was presumed to have been the first ten years (more or less) of the Russian democratic experiment. But the trajectory began to bend shortly after Putin won the Presidential election of 2000. The change of direction came, as it had during the Soviet period, as the result of another technological and human disaster: five months after Putin’s inauguration, in August 2000, the nuclear submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea. With the President on vacation in Crimea, the early response by his government closely resembled that of the Soviets during the two tragic crises of the 1980s: stonewalling and

Preface

attempting to control information. However, the media landscape had changed dramatically since 1986, and—faced with blistering criticism in the press, on television, and from the families of the trapped sailors— Putin belatedly interrupted his vacation and traveled to Severomorsk to meet with the families. Still, he refused aid offered by the United States, Great Britain, and Norway until it was too late: everyone aboard the submarine who survived the initial blasts had perished. This tragedy marked a turning point in Putin’s relationship with democracy, in general, and the free press, in particular. The path laid out by Yeltsin took a new direction, one marked by a diminution of both press freedom and standard democratic rhetoric. At least through Putin’s first two terms, the lexicon of democracy was still employed, but its meanings began to shift. Thus, Volume Three of our project is entitled Disaster, Putin, and the Redefinition of “Democracy”: 2000–2008. After the Yeltsin years, the texts for our critical investigations increasingly became presidential speeches—Presidential Addresses to the Federal Assembly, Inaugural Addresses, Russia Day and other ceremonial speeches, and selected special addresses (e.g., Putin’s 2014 Crimea speech). That was not a planned constriction of focus but rather one which more or less unconsciously followed Russia’s own consolidation of power into what Putin rather euphemistically calls “the power vertical.” Even as Putin increasingly restricted freedom of the press, reversed or subverted democratic structures and procedures (e.g., the election of Regional Governors), his Presidential Addresses concurrently retained much of the core lexicon of democracy, but he used those words differently. Much of our subsequent work has focused on Putin’s redefinitions of those words and phrases of democracy and on the changes in rhetorical stance that flow from them. For this portion of the project, Marilyn, Michael, and David rely on theories of definition and definitional argument developed by philosophers and critics such as I. A. Richards and Kenneth Burke and by argumentation scholars such as David Zarefsky and J. Robert Cox. In the aftermath of the Kursk tragedy the discursive environment changed. Shaken by the attacks he suffered in the press, and personally insulted by Bush’s refusal to collaborate in the war against (Chechen) terrorism, Putin began pushing back against the West and reorienting his administration towards Eurasia. In articulating that process, he began moving away from the rhetoric of democracy, adding significant adjectival

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restrictions: “managed democracy,” “sovereign democracy.” The studies in Volume Three reveal changes in Putin’s political rhetoric over the first years of the twenty-first century as he degraded the essential elements of a democratic political system, signaling a move towards a more autocratic form of government that continues to this day. These essays, written more or less contemporaneously, analyze the arc of Putin’s rhetoric from the sinking of the Kursk to the end of his second term in office, as he began to look backwards as well as forward for the rhetorical touchstones and ideographs that would move Russia closer to its totalitarian past and farther from the free-wheeling days that promised a democratic form of government, rule of law, and basic individual freedoms. As Marilyn, Michael, and David began gathering their articles and papers for these volumes, they realized they had written little about Dmitri Medvedev. Some of his discourse, including excerpts from his Presidential Addresses, is discussed in papers that focus elsewhere, but they do not have sufficient directly relevant work to offer coverage of the Medvedev years in this series. And Medvedev’s influence on the rhetorical trajectories of Russian political discourse was lost after Putin’s 2012 return to the presidency. It would have been interesting to see how the history of Russia played out had Medvedev served a second term. Volume Four of this series, The Demise of “Democracy” after Putin’s Return to Power, offers essays detailing Putin’s further retreat from the discourse of democracy, literally from the moment of his Inaugural Address in 2012—in the middle of massive anti-government protests—through the present time. Some emergent themes over Putin’s most recent years as President include the redefinition and even disappearance of the lexicon of democracy; concurrently, there has been a noticeable shift in the definition of Russian national identity, from the “citizen participant” in the Yeltsin era, to redefinitional truncation, to an identity grounded quite literally in the history of mythic Russia. This transformation provides the basis for the rhetorical justification of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and is a noticeable theme in Putin’s March 18, 2014, speech explaining that event to the nation and the world. As a way to bring the broad picture of changes in Russian political discourse in the Russian Federation from its beginning to the present time into better focus, Marilyn, Michael, and David have engaged in a longitudinal study of Russian Presidential Addresses to the Federal Assembly (PAFAs), beginning with Yeltsin in 1994 and continuing to the present.

Preface

One facet of this study—which has the working title “Russian Democracy: Defined, Re-defined, and Disappeared”—encompasses the gradual redefinition of terms such as “democracy” in Putin’s speeches over the years; another describes the declining frequency of what they have called “stand-in terms” (such as “civil society” and “the rule of law”) in these speeches. Collectively, these four volumes will provide a comprehensive view of the discursive changes that took place in the USSR/Russia over the thirty-seven years from 1983 to 2020. This rhetorical and narrative arc discloses not only how language choices drive public understanding of pivotal events, but also how such events can alter our view of the world around us. Through rhetorical and argumentative analysis, the subtle strategies and tactics of Soviet and then Russian leaders to control the discursive environment and therefore public understanding are made apparent. David Cratis Williams January 2021

NOTE 1. Maxim, who was really the catalyst for our long collaboration with Alexander, was still an undergraduate at the time of that first St. Petersburg conference. The paper he gave that day caught our attention, and, after finishing his degree, he came to Florida State for graduate school, finishing a Master’s and a PhD in communication studies. Ultimately, Maxim became a US citizen and remains a good friend.

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Marilyn Young at a Political Communication Conference Source: Maria Aleksandrovna Yurieva

Introduction to Volume Two

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nless readers have a professional interest in the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation, it is unlikely they have a clear understanding of how quickly the USSR collapsed and ceased to exist as a nation, devolving into its constituent parts. Mikhail Gorbachev was named General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) on March 11, 1985, the third to hold that post in quick succession after the deaths of Yuri Andropov (November 12, 1982 to February 9, 1984) and Konstantin Chernenko (February 13, 1984 to March 10, 1985). The Soviet Union was already in severe decline both economically and as an empire controlling its own territory and the subjugated countries within the Warsaw Pact. The Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred just thirteen months later (April 26, 1986), followed by the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Many observers—including the authors of this series—believe Chernobyl hastened the final demise of the USSR, and opening Eastern Europe to the Western world in 1989 signaled the practical end of Soviet domination. As the years have passed, it is increasingly easy to forget that 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall did not mean the end of the Soviet Union, although it did presage that momentous event. Even so, the destruction of the wall and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Germany and Eastern Europe were occasions that mesmerized those of us who came of age in the post-World War II Cold War. We remember when the wall was built and, as we grew up, that wall symbolized what seemed to be the immutable barrier between Eastern and Western Europe, between the USSR and the United States; rapprochement appeared an impossible goal. So its demise was, we hoped, symbolic of a new relationship. Boris Yeltsin was named Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR in 1989; in June 1990, the First Congress of People’s Deputies of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) passed a “Declaration of Sovereignty” (125) for the Republic of Russia, which stated that

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its laws took precedence over the laws of the Soviet Union.1 The date this legislation was passed—June 12—was later declared Russia Day, considered to be the Independence Day of the Russian Federation. A year later, in August 1991, reactionary Communist leaders in the Soviet Union attempted a coup, which was not successful in large part thanks to Yeltsin’s rallying the populace in opposition to those who had plotted the takeover of power. Most of the world probably remembers having seen pictures of Yeltsin standing on top of a tank in Central Moscow waving a Russian (not Soviet) flag—an act that drew worldwide acclaim and cemented his popularity throughout Russia (if only temporarily).2 Almost immediately, the Baltic States (Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania) declared independence, which was formally recognized in September 1991.3 Within four months of the failed putsch, on December 8, 1991, the Belavezha Accords were signed by Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, officially withdrawing from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The remaining Republics (except Georgia) declared their independence and charted a new course in the CIS in the Alma-Ata Protocol, signed December 21. Four days later, on December 25, 1991—less than seven years after he had first assumed control of the USSR—Gorbachev resigned as President of the Soviet Union, leaving Yeltsin in control of the Kremlin and the country—and the nuclear launch codes. The Soviet flag over the Kremlin was lowered and the tricolor flag of Russia raised in its stead. Technically, the USSR survived on paper until the next day, when the Soviet of the Republics, the upper chamber, passed Declaration 142-N, recognizing the independence of the various Soviet Socialist Republics and formally dissolving the Union—hence voting itself and the USSR out of existence.4 (341) ************* In the Preface to Volume One, reprinted here as well, we describe how we came to be interested and involved in this line of research. As we note there, one of the drivers of that interest was the opportunity to test Western theories of argumentation and rhetoric against formerly information-restricted societies. The vehicle for that research, and for our collaboration with Professor Alexander Yuriev, was the International Center for the Advancement of Political Communication and Argumentation (ICAPCA). We broadened our mission to incorporate research into

Introduction to Volume Two

the development of a language and lexicon of politics where none had previously existed; we were also interested in fostering the study of rhetoric and argumentation in Russia as a means of promoting democracy. Watching the news reports about the transition taking place in Russia, we quickly became concerned about the ways in which the development of a market economy was being conflated with the development of democracy. Thus, a corollary theme that emerged in our writing was illuminating the connection between communication and the public sphere—communication as a requirement for democracy to flourish. However, we did not abandon our original goal of examining rhetorical and argument theory in situ. Two essays included in this volume highlight the connections described here. In “Democratization and Cultures of Communication,” we, along with then graduate student Scott Elliott, elaborate on the connection between a “culture of communication” and the development of democratic traditions; and, in another essay, “Argumentation, Globalization, and the New Nationalism,” we describe the need to locate rhetorical and argument conventions in the culture, so that they can illuminate the connections among these concerns. These two foci quickly became a feature of the work of ICAPCA. This volume focuses on the 1990s in Russia, as Communism breathed its last breath and Russia attempted to reinvent itself as a democratic nation. Many of these studies were written contemporaneously; others are more retrospective. Because they were written at different times—and for different audiences—there is of necessity some overlap and redundancy. We now know what experts and intelligence officials already knew: that the Soviet economy was buckling under its own weight. When Gorbachev came to power in 1986, we watched in wonder as his new doctrine of perestroika and glasnost (and the mostly ignored uskorenie) unleashed pent-up forces that ultimately undid the Soviet experiment. Boris Yeltsin thus became President of the Russian Federation, suddenly an independent country—the largest and most consequential of the Soviet Republics. In this volume, we take a rhetorical look at the path Yeltsin charted as he tried to lead the nation to recast itself as democratic, with a market economy. Accordingly, this analysis provides a different take on the end of the twentieth century in Russia than Volume One did on 1980s USSR. Building on some of our work about the Chernobyl nuclear accident, we use rhetorical and argumentation theory to examine the democratization process and Yeltsin’s tenure as president.

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This approach presents some problems that we had not encountered earlier. Namely, how to communicate enough of the situational factors extant in 1990s Russia for our readers to appreciate the rhetorical constraints, while balancing that against the actual analysis. Rhetorical analysis generally takes a deep dive into the linguistic choices that rhetors make, teasing out the ways in which the speaker constructs arguments, uses evidence, and creates the audience. Over the years, various scholars have developed theories of rhetoric that provide a framework for this analysis; some of these theories have their origins in classical Greek and Roman treatises, while others are the product of a modern understanding of communication processes. At the same time, the present approach enables us to envision how an example of rhetoric “works,” in the sense of inspiring, persuading, informing an audience(s). But the process is made more difficult when working across languages. Most contemporary rhetorical scholarship relies on Western models and is designed to elucidate Western texts that have originated in English. Addressing the texts that stem from any language other than English imposes some constraints, which limit the depth of analysis available to the critic. No nonnative speaker can ever completely understand the nuances of a language other than her or his native tongue. As a result, the conclusions drawn must necessarily be more broad with respect to appeals made and their (potential) effect. Working in translation, even with “official” translations, presents an additional layer of difficulty, as the words of the translation are those chosen by the translator and are sometimes selected to achieve particular effects, which may be different than those derived from the original text. That is, they may be constructed to appeal to an audience other than the primary, or immediate, audience. Nevertheless, we believe there is much to be gained from analysis of the Russian texts we have examined here. They are official addresses rendered in official translation and published for foreign consumption; to that end, we have no doubt that the words of the translation are carefully chosen. If nothing else, they tell us the story that Russia wished to present to the outside world. Further, these analyses can reveal differences between Russian and Western approaches to argumentation, evidence, and other persuasive appeals; these differences can become pathways to the discovery of cultural links to Russian rhetorical and argumentative style by a native speaker of Russian.

Introduction to Volume Two

In our analyses we have relied on a number of theorists, most prominently the philosopher Kenneth Burke. In addition, we found valuable insights through the work of Edwin Black, Walter Fisher, Lloyd Bitzer, and others. Burke’s theories of identification were especially useful as we examined the efforts to construct a new national identity for Russia; similarly, Hammerback’s notion of reconstituting the audience provided insights into the ways Yeltsin and others asked Russians to rethink their identity as a people. This volume consists of four thematic sections. In the first, we set the stage, through a series of reviews of the situation in Russia— ecological depredation, economic challenges, the press, and national identity. The second section looks at politics and political argumentation during the Yeltsin years, while the third section examines Yeltsin as leader and campaigner. In the final section, the focus is on what has been achieved and what has not—the future and how it is informed by Russia’s past. Kenneth Burke (400) and, later, Lloyd Bitzer (73), teach us that all rhetoric is situational. That is, according to Bitzer, rhetoric is “called forth” in response to exigencies found in situations. Some of those situations are formal requirements, such as a State of the Union Address (United States) or a Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly (Russia), while others are reactions to crises or other situations that involve the rhetor or speaker. In turn, each of those situations occurs within a context that constrains and animates the rhetor. Very few speeches outlive the situation that created them, a realization that underscores the situational, and, therefore, transitory nature of oratory or rhetoric. Most are forgotten as people and nations move on; others are enshrined in an archive because they mark some formal occasion. A small number are preserved as historical markers that moved the audience—both present and future, immediate and remote—in some way. Thus, in the first section of this volume, we present for the reader several discussions of the context—the reality—that confronted Yeltsin and the reformers as they embarked on the task of remaking Russia as a democratic nation with a market economy and the rule of law. That reality served as a constraint not only on the plans for reform, but also on the rhetoric that accompanied the reform efforts. Thus, the rhetorical lens through which we consider the material analyzed in this book is informed with that context in mind.

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Woven throughout sections two through four are a number of themes that recur as we examine the 1990s and the attempts to redefine the future of Russia. Perhaps foremost of these is the effort to reconstitute Russian national identity from an authoritarian state with a controlled economy to one with greater individual freedom and the elements that make such freedom possible, along with a market-based economy. The search for identity, both for the individual and for the nation, is so central to the reordering of Russian society that it becomes more than a leitmotif; it is, rather, an overarching quest that dominates the discourse and makes an appearance in one form or another in virtually all the essays in this volume. Other themes that emerge thus become vehicles through which one can examine that search. For example, three chapters (8, 9, and 10) analyze the 1993 and 1995 Duma elections and the inability of political parties to accommodate themselves to the arithmetic of the electoral procedures in effect at that time. This failure meant that the parties also failed to coalesce around candidates, thus helping to keep the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) in a position of influence,5 thereby confounding the search for a new national identity. In contrast, the presidential election campaign of 1996, particularly in the runoff, clearly asked voters to choose an identity for the future of Russia. Another theme running through the volume is an emphasis on Yeltsin himself, including a view of him as a complex individual, both personally and politically—both a democrat and an autocrat, a leader who dissolved the Duma (Parliament) and shelled its “White House” in 1993, calling for new parliamentary elections in order to resolve intransigence over reforms, yet who campaigned as a democrat for reelection three years later. In Section Three, for instance, three differing views of Yeltsin are presented: as an autocrat, as a democrat, and as a “man of the people.” In addition, we present a broad view of the entire Yeltsin era, extending into the early days of the Putin administration. We emphasize the Russian presidential election campaign of 1996, as it was not only pivotal for the future of Russia, but turned out to be the only truly competitive national election to date in Russia. In that campaign, Yeltsin’s diminishing popularity became clear, as the CPRF’s Gennady Zyuganov garnered more votes in the first round and the President barely managed to force a runoff. Changing tactics for the second round, Yeltsin focused on the youth vote and what would be lost were Zyuganov to win; he traversed the country reminding voters of life

Introduction to Volume Two

under Communism and asking them to choose a different future and a new identity. Some have argued that election fraud, intimidation, media bias, lavish spending, and misuse of public resources are the reasons for Yeltsin’s victory. Likhachova discounts this claim in the excerpt from her master’s thesis (Section Three). It has always been true that the better funded candidate has an advantage, and there was no reason for Russia’s elections to be any different. There is evidence of intimidation and ballot stuffing, but there is no question that Yeltsin campaigned tirelessly throughout Russia, asking his countrymen and women to make a stark choice for their future. Additionally, McFaul supports Likachova’s conclusion, noting that the sheer magnitude of Yeltsin’s margin of victory could not have been produced by fraudulent means alone. (209: 73) The size of that margin indicates that Yeltsin’s message resonated with voters young and old. It is important, too, to recall the real import of the 1996 presidential election. As noted above, the way things have turned out, this was the only competitive presidential election Russia has held. Its significance lies in that fact, and in the fact that four years later, for good or ill, it produced a peaceful transfer of power to Yeltsin’s successor, a feat replicated eight years later, when Vladimir Putin followed the Constitution and allowed his successor to assume power. In Section Four, we turn our attention to an overall assessment of Russia’s progress towards a democratic form of government and what remained to be done. Democracy is always a work in progress, no matter the setting, and Russia is no different. The final entry in this volume is an essay by the late Alexei Salmin, former President of the Russian Public Policy Center in Moscow and a close adviser to Gorbachev. Salmin, a friend and collaborator, did much to facilitate the work of the International Center and always made himself available during our trips to Moscow. Sadly, he died too young, in 2005. We owe him a great debt of gratitude for his friendship and his contributions to our work. In the essay included here, Salmin examines the impact Russia’s nine-hundred-year history, its progress toward democratization, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York had on foreign policy going forward. Whatever one’s assessment of Russia’s current situation vis-à-vis democratization, there can be little doubt that things changed dramatically in the decade of the 1990s after the dissolution of the USSR. The economy

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tanked and the ruble was devalued; Russia lost its international standing; corruption abounded; a wealthy class was created; the war with Chechnya raged and then faded; national identity was in flux. At the same time, a president was elected and reelected via popular vote. A Constitution was ratified and amended. A Duma was elected, dissolved, and elected again. The press enjoyed great freedom to report. National symbols, such as the flag, the state seal, and the national anthem were updated. Nevertheless, in recent years, what little progress had been made in the ’90s appears to be diminishing in favor of Putin’s “strong state,” a topic we examine in the next volumes in this series.

NOTES 1. See also (6). 2. And where did all those little Russian flags—the small ones waved by people in the crowds that gathered in Red Square and elsewhere—where did those flags come from? 3. The Baltics had already replaced the Soviet flag with their own national flags. 4. The lower house (the Soviet of the Union) failed to achieve a quorum and simply faded away. (341) 5. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was initially outlawed on Russian territory in November 1991, but was allowed to return to politics in the form of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) in 1993. (340)

Yeltsin and Gorbachev Source: Alamy

PART ONE

Framework for Understanding the Immediate Post-Soviet Political Environment: Ecological Depredation, Economic Challenges, the Press, and National Identity

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n this section we establish the background for what we are calling the Yeltsin Years, approximately spanning the 1990s, but overlapping a bit both the late 1980s and the start of the new millennium. Westerners, in general, and Americans, in particular, have little understanding of conditions in Russia when that country emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union with the signing of the Belavezha Accords on December 8, 1991. (44) Despite the fact that the Communist Party had lost its grip on the nation, with widespread freedoms flourishing in the last years of the Gorbachev era, the country itself was in terrible shape. Not only had the national economy already been in serious decline for a number of years, the official inflation rate in 1992 was an incredible 2,539 percent. (138) Moreover, during the first four years of Russia’s existence as an independent country, the nation’s real GDP—adjusted for inflation—had fallen 15–35 percent annually. Unemployment was rampant, and even when people did not lose their jobs they often went three or four months without getting paid. Food insecurity—a perennial problem in the countryside—appeared even in Moscow and Leningrad/St. Petersburg. Moreover, the ecological situation that Russia inherited was a total disaster. (141; See also 140, 219) It was estimated in the West that the worst areas in the former Soviet Union could not be remediated in less

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than a century, if ever. For example, the Aral Sea—once a major body of water situated in what had become the independent countries of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan—has essentially disappeared due to diversion of water from the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers to irrigate cotton fields that had been established in the desert! (215) The combination of these circumstances resulted in dreadful public health issues, (139; 142) characterized by declining life expectancy and population numbers. This is the situation Boris Yeltsin faced when he assumed the presidency of the Russian Federation.

Yeltsin on a Tank 1991 Source: Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pushmin – Yeltsin Center

CHAPTER 1

A New Day for the Soviet Environment Marilyn J. Young and Michael K. Launer Provenance: Originally published in FORUM for Applied Research and Public Policy 7, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 134–135. Copyright Holder: “The contents of this publication are part of the public domain, are not copyrighted, and may be reprinted freely.” Jean Mercer, MRA, CRA—assistant vice chancellor for research and director of the Office of Sponsored Programs, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Office of Research and Engagement. Description: A review of three books that describe the calamitous state of the environment in the Soviet Union that was inherited by Russian Federation in 1991.

Philip R. Pryde, Environmental Management in the Soviet Union. (250) Mildred Turnbull, Soviet Environmental Policies and Practices: The Most Critical Investment. (323) Charles E. Ziegler, Environmental Policy in the USSR. (390)

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eldom does a writer find that his or her topic has ceased to exist; but such is the fate of the authors of these books. More importantly, the situation they describe helped to precipitate the disintegration of the USSR. One may compare the Soviet Union to a centrifuge: unexpected events first caused the separation of small chunks from the periphery (the Baltic republics, Moldavia, Armenia); this increased the speed of revolution, resulting in a distinct possibility that larger pieces nearer the center might also split away (Kazakhstan, the Ukraine). Finally, the entire union disintegrated in the aftermath of the failed August coup. A good case can be made that environmental concerns fueled the debates that have led to the demise of the Soviet Union, with Chernobyl serving as the floodgate for expressions of public consternation and political disenchantment regarding a variety of policy issues and crises,

A New Day for the Soviet Environment

Events did indeed overtake Environmental Policy in the USSR, which first went to press shortly before the Chernobyl disaster. Barely updated with a brief introduction, the Ziegler book seems an anachronism, although it provides a comprehensive historical overview of environmentalism in the Soviet Union. Writing from the perspective of political science, Ziegler describes interactions within the Soviet bureaucracy that are indispensable for a full understanding of the difficulties facing environmentalists. He utilizes a state corporatist framework, explaining that historically no issue could be discussed in the media or receive serious legal consideration without approval from the power structure. Because Soviet law traditionally stressed the dominant structure (their military-industrial complex), “virtually all phases of environmental policy . . . were initiated and controlled by the Communist Party.” Central leadership and all bureaucratic organizations assigned a low priority to environmental concerns. Political priorities translate directly into appropriations and legislation. Mildred Turnbull’s study Soviet Environmental Policies and Practices provides a wealth of data regarding investment and capital construction in the Soviet Union’s heavy industry. The problem, in her view, was money. It was impossible to compile accurate figures, but the anticipated cost for the construction, installation, and operation of needed pollution control equipment far exceeded the total capital construction allocation in virtually every industrial sector. In addition, budgeted funds didn’t always get spent, and what was spent seldom achieved the desired result—because of poor technology or insufficient operational maintenance. The most comprehensive book under review is Philip Pryde’s Environmental Management in the Soviet Union. Although interested primarily in the specifics of pollution and environmental protection within the Soviet Union, Pryde describes the bureaucratic imperatives that operated in the ministries of the Soviet Union’s centrally planned economy. Economic targets (the “plan”) were based exclusively on production. All perquisites—from broad-based ministerial policies to individual salary bonuses for each employee in each enterprise—were based on reaching those targets (“fulfilling the plan”) monthly, quarterly, annually, and over each Five Year Plan. Neither ministries nor their individual enterprises were expected to produce a “profit,” but efficiency and productivity gains would enable the organization to reach ever-larger targets within budget.

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Financial resources expended on externalities such as pollution prevention or abatement failed to contribute to the primary institutional goal. Soviet economists did not place a monetary value on natural resources. Thus, there was no economic stimulus to conserve. Long-term pollution costs were not considered in overall cost or profitability either for a specific enterprise, an industrial sector (ministry), or the system as a whole. In the short run, it always pays to pollute: that is true regardless of a society’s economic structure. For example, it is generally accepted that 20 percent of all Soviet health care costs were related to pollution-induced illness, but these expenses found no accounting beyond the Ministry of Health. Anti-pollution enforcement was lax, both systemically and practically. Ziegler reports that only one-fourth of water polluters ultimately faced charges, and fines were negligible compared to the damage incurred. Reasons for this lack of enforcement pervaded the Soviet system. There was no single “super agency” such as an Environmental Protection Agency. Nor did regulatory bodies possess the means to enforce environmental legislation. If there is cause for optimism, it rests in the fact that the new political situation offers hope for long-term change despite short-term economic woes. In 1990, when the republican government in Estonia began to assert its independence from the national authorities in Moscow, one of the primary causes was local environmental concerns. In Pryde’s opinion, “one of the individual issues which has fanned the embers of ethnic nationalism is regional environmental deterioration.” The ministerial system has ceased to function, even in Russia. In the timber industry, for example, what was previously a regional branch of the forestry products ministry has become an independent entity: the Arkhangel timber products association now sets its own policy, signs export contracts independent of national authorities, and retains fifty percent of all hard currency revenues, as opposed to only twenty percent under the old system. Economic difficulties and political turmoil may hinder practical implementation of the new environmentalism. Nevertheless, given the emergence of the republic’s autonomy, it is apparent that public sentiment, firmly and loudly expressing its support for resource conservation and punishment of industrial polluters, will ultimately reorient both legislative and funding initiatives.

CHAPTER 2

The Former Soviet Union Leaves Environmental Legacy of Shame Michael K. Launer Provenance: Originally published in FORUM for Applied Research and Public Policy 9, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 152. Copyright Holder: “The contents of this publication are part of the public domain, are not copyrighted, and may be reprinted freely.” Jean Mercer, MRA, CRA—Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research and Director of Office of Sponsored Programs, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Office of Research and Engagement. Description: A brief review of a 1993 book that describes the calamitous state of the environment in the Soviet Union that was inherited by Russian Federation in 1991.

D. J. Peterson, Troubled Lands: The Legacy of Soviet Environmental Destruction. (239)

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n researching Troubled Lands, D. J. Peterson, a Rand Corporation research associate, spent a year in the former Soviet Union and took advantage of increased Western access to official Soviet and post-Soviet data. The result is a keenly perceptive but disheartening book with observations that environmental specialists and non-specialists alike will find troubling. While the general reader may be familiar with Chernobyl and other well-publicized Soviet environmental disasters, it is unlikely that he or she is aware of the scope and severity of the ecological crisis that now afflicts the vast territory that was the Soviet Union. Peterson’s volume provides a comprehensive and reliable overview of this ecological depredation, highlighting many of the less celebrated environmental crises that have contributed to the region’s decline.

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One of the book’s more chilling portions includes maps showing huge areas that are sufficiently despoiled to be considered beyond remediation even over the next century. As distressing as the current state of the environment is in the former Soviet Union, the prognosis for future improvement is even more hopeless, according to Peterson. Indeed, staggering inflation, the political stalemate in Moscow, and the continuing indifference of many business managers toward environmental concerns do not bode well for the region’s future. Furthermore, except in the area of nuclear power production, public protest has all but disappeared. It seems that people are too concerned about feeding their families to worry about less immediate problems. In the long run, of course, ecological concerns do impinge on the health of the economy and directly affect the quality of life. Troubled Lands, therefore, will prove invaluable to anyone interested in the fate of the Soviet Union’s successor states or the people who inhabit them.

CHAPTER 3

Review of Environmental Management in the Soviet Union by Philip R. Pryde Michael K. Launer and Marilyn J. Young Provenance: Originally published in Nationalities Papers 21, no. 2 (Fall 1993): 223–227. Copyright Holder: © Cambridge University Press, reprinted by permission. Description: This book is one of the most substantial analyses of the ecological situation inherited by the nations of the former Soviet Union.

Philip R. Pryde, Environmental Management in the Soviet Union. (250)

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he Soviet Union is no more, but the ecological mess created over the last seventy-five years remains; and the situation will get worse before it gets better. The awesome natural beauty, abundant fresh water, and untold mineral wealth of imperial Russia had survived largely untouched under the Czars. But the country remained backward throughout its history, and the Bolsheviks inherited a war-ravaged economy that was poor and feeble by comparison with other states of Europe. Ideologically, the Soviet drive toward modernization and creation of an industrial might second to none led to the “common perception during the Stalin and Khrushchev eras that nature [was] merely a challenge for the engineering profession (or worse, an annoying obstacle that must be decisively defeated).” (245) Amidst all this, the heart of the problem—which remains to this day—was an “abysmal lack of environmental understanding and concern” pervading the vast Soviet economic establishment that is, on the whole, “environmentally illiterate.” (284)

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Such is the assessment of Philip Pryde, who has analyzed Soviet efforts in this domain (and the lack thereof) for well over two decades. Compared to the situation Pryde described in 1972, “the inescapable conclusion arises that Soviet environmental problems have become more profound.” (249: xvii) The current work is roughly divided into three broad subject areas: existing environmental problems, current efforts at preservation, and the politics of conservation efforts at home and abroad. The discussion of environmental problems focuses on three areas: energy resources, with particular attention to the effect of Chernobyl on the future of civilian nuclear power; industrial pollution of the air and water; and depredation of the land and forests as a result of resource extraction. Among the preservation and conservation efforts described are prospects for developing renewable energy resources, recent efforts to establish a system of national parks and reserves, and programs designed to manage wildlife and protect endangered species. Finally, the last three chapters examine Soviet participation in international environmental efforts, the emergence of public concern over the domestic environment, and the confluence of environmentalism with nationalism in the Gorbachev era.1 As Pryde notes, “[o]ne of the individual issues which has fanned the embers of ethnic nationalism is regional environmental deterioration.” (254) Indeed, sparked by the Chernobyl crisis, this last factor was instrumental among the centripetal forces that culminated in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Two of the book’s sixteen chapters were written by other highly respected scholars: Kathleen Braden describes the management of Soviet forest resources; and Philip Micklin analyzes the water crisis in Soviet Central Asia. In addition, Pryde makes effective use of earlier works by Joan DeBardeleben (113), Barbara Jancar (175), David Marples (208), Douglas Weiner (334), and Charles Ziegler (390). A particular strength of this study is the reliance on Soviet sources. Preeminent among these is the ground-breaking work by Ze’ev Vol’fson (writing under the pseudonym Boris Komarov), who first revealed the scope of Soviet ecological chaos and spread that knowledge beyond the narrow confines of Western geographers. (372) Pryde also draws heavily on Soviet sources through 1990, thus combining analysis of the most recent data available with a broad historical perspective to produce a comprehensive, authoritative discussion of the current state of the environment within the territory once known as the USSR. The result is an

Review of Environmental Management in the Soviet Union by Philip R. Pryde

excellent survey that should become the centerpiece for university courses in Soviet geography and international ecological issues. In our opinion, the best parts of the book deal with the water supply, including Micklin’s (215) chapter on the “dire . . . situation in Central Asia,” (250: 218) and with water quality problems. Among the crisis areas analyzed are: pollution of the Baltic; Lake Ladoga and the Leningrad water supply; Lake Baikal’s unique characteristics and the threat posed by coastal development and logging; economic losses in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the Caspian Sea; and, of course, the Aral Sea disaster. As Pryde frequently reminds us, the short-term, production-oriented economic goals and incentives that were built into the Soviet Union’s command economy were not conducive to environmental protection because financial resources expended on externalities such as pollution prevention or abatement failed to contribute to the primary institutional goals of ministries, enterprises, or their managers. In the short run, of course, it always pays to pollute—that is true regardless of a society’s economic structure. But a system that considers air, land, and water free goods to be used or abused at will in the search for narrowly defined immediate economic benefit will produce tremendous residual economic and ecological distortions. For example, Pryde cites information derived from Aleksandr V. Yablokov, an esteemed biologist and environmental activist in the Soviet Congress of Deputies, to the effect that “pesticide-treated Kuban rice fields yielded the state about 1.5 billion rubles in profit, but caused more than 2 billion rubles in damage to fisheries in the Azov basin.” (102) By the mid-1980s, the total catch in both the Sea of Azov and the Caspian had declined from pre-World War II levels by over 90 percent. (175) In addition, fish stocks throughout the country have been depleted due to over-extraction, intensive development of hydroelectric facilities, and chemical discharges. Environmental Management in the Soviet Union is an excellent study. But it is marred by persistent expressions of credulity and optimism on the part of the author, who appears to take Soviet statistics at face value; given the book’s intended audience, more frequent expressions of the requisite skepticism and caution would have been preferable. For instance, it is clear that maximum permissible concentrations of various pollutants are an example of pokazuxa, a kind of ecological Potemkin village; as Pryde himself indicates, the standards are typically stricter than American limits, and “it would be difficult if not impossible to actually comply with

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them.” (80) Similarly, the author cites 1989 Soviet statistics indicating an increase in polluted water discharges nationwide from 15.9 billion cubic meters in 1985 to 28.6 billion in 1988. Pryde’s comment: “An increase of 80 percent in four years begs for some elaboration but unfortunately no explanation for the rapid increase is given.” (75) Surely one’s first impulse must be to distrust the accuracy of the earlier figures, which probably were lowered for political reasons when originally reported. Elsewhere Pryde states that a “sizable number of Soviet officials apparently remain convinced that the safety of their commercial nuclear program can be guaranteed.” (54) Our work over the past several years has brought us into steady contact with officials and engineers among both the producers and the regulators of nuclear power in the USSR; there is, in our opinion, no reason whatsoever for observers to take such public utterances at face value.2 Similarly, after detailing for fifteen pages the meager efforts made by Soviet authorities to promote research and development in the area of renewable energy resources, Pryde concludes the relevant chapter with the tautological but overly optimistic statement that “increased emphasis on appropriate renewables . . . should permit an eventual reduction in carbon dioxide and other harmful fossil fuel plant emissions.” (72) Equally pollyannaish is the statement: “Soviet ideological leaders need to stop viewing environmental problems in other countries as . . . solely a consequence of presumed capitalist exploitation.” (289) We doubt you could find a single bureaucrat or ideologue who actually believed such a claim. The book abounds in muted, understated criticism: The first significant environmental agreement among the CMEA countries was signed in 1971. In that year, an agreement on joint cooperation on environmental protection went into effect, and to coordinate these efforts a Joint Council for the Protection of the Environment was established. Given the extent of current environmental problems in Eastern Europe however, its effectiveness would have to be questioned. (271)

Such statements, coming as they do so frequently throughout the book, gnaw at the reader. Instructors who adopt this study for classroom use must be certain to point out this flaw. Perhaps the author was afraid of “commie bashing” criticism from Soviet and Western reviewers. It is

Review of Environmental Management in the Soviet Union by Philip R. Pryde

unlikely, however, that a scholar with Pryde’s experience and encyclopedic knowledge of the true state of the environment in the Soviet Union can view his source data with such apparent aplomb. Inside observers like Yablokov, for example, are not at all sanguine about near-term prospects. In a 1991 interview, Yablokov expressed extreme skepticism regarding chances for passage of the omnibus environmental legislation that Pryde pins so much hope on.3 As events transpired, his fears proved justified, and all hope must now be transferred to the legislatures in each of the newly independent republics. However, given the financial exigencies of the current situation, it would be foolish to anticipate that ecological concerns will head the political agenda any time soon.

NOTES 1. See (195). 2. See (192) and (187). 3. Interview with Aleksandr V. Yablokov, Tallahassee FL, May 1991.

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CHAPTER 4

Russian Scientists Struggle to Survive Michael K. Launer Provenance: Originally published in FORUM for Applied Research and Public Policy 10, no. 3 (Fall 1995): 125 –129. Copyright Holder: “The contents of this publication are part of the public domain, are not copyrighted, and may be reprinted freely.” Jean Mercer, MRA, CRA—Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research & Director, Office of Sponsored Programs, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Office of Research and Engagement. Description: This commissioned article—one of six in a special section, entitled “Science and Technology Issues,” devoted to the fate of Soviet science—describes an interview held in the Spring 1995 with leading scientists employed at various organizations that had fallen on hard times after the disintegration of the USSR.

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n 1993, Russia’s official rate of inflation approached 1,000 percent. The Western media have reported extensively on the economic chaos that has followed this advent of hyperinflation. Many observers believe that Soviet science—particularly in such defense-related areas as physics—is near collapse. To assess the impact that these dramatic changes have had on the lives and careers of Russian scientists, I asked Aleksandr Gurstein, a former official in the Soviet moon landing program and now a historian of science within the Russian Academy of Sciences, to arrange a series of meetings with his fellow Russian scholars. The meetings, which were more like informal chats, took place in Moscow last spring. Physicists in the former Soviet Union were members of an honored profession who enjoyed close ties to the nation’s powerful military establishment. The research community was divided into three key segments: academy science, industry science, and university science. Those who took part in the conversation represented all three segments. For example, Oleg P. Beguchev is secretary of Russia’s Academy of Sciences Nuclear Physics Division; Vitaly N. Lystsov, formerly a research professor at the I. V. Kurchatov Nuclear Physics Institute, is now Deputy

Russian Scientists Struggle to Survive

Director of the Department of Ecological Security in the Russian Federation’s Ministry for the Protection of the Environment and Natural Resources; Yuri V. Sivintsev, winner of the USSR State Prize in physics, currently is a research professor at Kurchatov; and Semyon A. Tevlin, winner of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union Prize, is now a faculty member in the Nuclear Power Plant Department of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. For the past half-century, nuclear physicists in the former Soviet Union, like many of their counterparts in the United Sates, performed highly classified work that remained hidden from public scrutiny. In fact, these conversations could not have taken place five years ago. Physics research was conducted at super-secret institutes across the country, many located in “closed cities” in Siberia that remained inaccessible even to the relatives of staff members. The Kurchatov Institute, located in a section of western Moscow that once lay outside the city limits, was at the heart of the Soviet militaryindustrial complex. Even today, many of Kurchatov’s activities remain classified. Included among the applied research activities directed by institute officials were approval of blueprints for civilian nuclear power plants, industrial applications of underground nuclear explosions, and design of nuclear waste storage facilities. This research, which was vital to the Soviet Union’s international status during the Cold War, remained Top Secret. For all intents and purposes, physicists at the Kurchatov Institute not only remained shielded from public observation, but also isolated from interaction with the international scientific community. The curtain of secrecy extended beyond academy and industry science and into the realm of university science. In the course of our conversation, Sivintsev recalled that many of his college courses in nuclear physics carried just numbers, no names. More significant, faculty, staff, and students were all subject to security regulations. In fact, courses in nuclear submarine reactor design were conducted under armed guard, and all instructional materials, including student notes, were surrendered before leaving the lecture hall. Not surprisingly, all the scientists who took part in these conversations cited the recent dramatic decrease in security as one of the new system’s few advantages. Authorities no longer tell scientists what projects to pursue or which research the ministry will find acceptable. The only obstacle standing in the way of research—and it is a considerable barrier to success—is funding. Russian scientists, in fact, are no longer prohibited

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from participating in international conferences, provided they can secure money for travel and lodging. Furthermore, the findings of scientists must no longer conform to the government’s political goals. Sivintsev, for example, proudly let the others know that a team of Russian researchers recently rejected the Ministry of Nuclear Power’s proposed plan for radioactive waste management. Before the fall of communism, ministries created expert commissions for the sole purpose of certifying, not criticizing, government goals. Conclusions, in effect, preceded the research. Given the prestige bestowed on scientists in the former Soviet Union (only high-level Communist party members and Olympic athletes held higher status) and the exorbitant amount of money spent on military matters, it should not be surprising that Soviet physicists were among the nation’s highest paid workers. In the late 1980s, at a time when monthly salaries in the Soviet Union averaged 180 to 200 rubles ($275 to $300), physicists with the rank of full professor earned about 750 rubles ($1,200) per month. Noted professors could earn additional money by teaching or consulting, and they often enjoyed such perks as paid vacations. All these “goodies” could boost their salaries by 50 percent or more. During the discussion, Lystsov offered an odd “rule of thumb” to compare the status of Russian physicists today with their status in the former Soviet Union. With butter costing about 2.5 rubles ($4.15) per kilogram (kg), his purchasing power in pre-inflation days equated to about 300 kg a month. In May 1994, he earned 120,000 rubles (which, when adjusted for inflation, equals about $65) a month, but he could only buy 30 kg—or one-tenth as much—butter at the current price of 4,000 rubles ($2.10) per kg. The bottom line is this: real income for scientists, even among physicists who held elite positions, has plummeted. In fact, Lystsov lamented, one now has to plan six months ahead to buy shoes or a coat.

IMPOVERISHED PROFESSION In May 1994, Russian authorities defined the poverty level as 22,000 rubles ($11.50) or less per month per family member; citizens at or below this level spend upwards of 95 percent of their income on food. Sivintsev and Gurstein estimate that most families headed by research scientists earn

Russian Scientists Struggle to Survive

180,000 to 200,000 rubles ($95 to $105 at May 1994 exchange rate) per month. They spend 75–80 percent of their disposable income on food, which means their incomes barely exceed the poverty level. For a professor without outside income, buying books (the tools of his or her trade) has become a luxury. One scholar, an acquaintance of Sivintsev and Lystsov who is also skilled as a bricklayer, recently earned half a month’s salary in one weekend building fireplaces in countryside dachas being constructed for Russia’s nouveau rich. Even worse than poor salaries are no salaries at all. That’s been the case lately for many scholars who have not been paid on time. In the summer of 1993, for example, the Institute of Russian Literature failed to pay its faculty and staff for four consecutive months. Similarly, in June 1994, the Russian National Nuclear Power Plant Research Institute (VNIIAES) had its receivable accounts frozen because it had not covered the cost of its basic expenses, including salaries and utilities. VNIIAES is an industry science research institute. Its funding comes from Rosenergoatom, which is responsible for all operating Russian civilian nuclear power stations except the Leningrad Nuclear Station. Russia’s electricity consumers, both institutional and individual, owe the nation’s nuclear industry billions of rubles—the result of five years of unpaid bills. On the one hand, the government is reluctant to force payments because it knows these institutions and people do not have the money to pay for the electricity they use. On the other hand, the government is not about to shut down industries or turn off the lights on those who are delinquent in their payments. The uneasy stalemate of non-payment without penalty may make sense in a larger political context, but it has had dire consequences for Russian scientists, especially those who work for VNIIAES.

EDUCATION ON THE RUN Russia’s dire economic situation has undermined higher education in several ways, not the least of which is a steep decline in the number of students enrolled in universities. As Lystsov notes, when menial work, such as selling newspapers on street corners, earns one hundred thousand rubles (fifty dollars) a day, it is difficult for young people to be lured by college scholarships that offer twenty thousand rubles (ten dollars) a month, which is below the official poverty level. Lystsov, Sivintsev,

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and Tevlin acknowledge that university students now work many hours outside of school to make ends meet, often at the expense of their studies. For this reason, it has become increasingly difficult to persuade young people to move to small towns to study or work because it is virtually impossible to earn extra money in rural Russian villages. Among the affected facilities are the renowned Nuclear Physics Institute in Obninsk and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Studies in Dubna, each located at least two hours from Moscow, and the Nuclear Reactor Research Institute located several hundred miles away in Dimitrovgrad on the Volga River. Students find it impossible to earn extra money in the small Russian villages where these institutes are located. To underscore this problem Tevlin recounted a situation that arose about two years ago. He had found a job for one of his physics graduate students at the Kola nuclear station, which is located beyond the Arctic Circle. The job carried a monthly salary of fifty thousand rubles—twice Tevlin’s salary. The graduate student turned down the offer. Why? Russia’s new banking system needs programmers and other computer-literate employees, and its newly created international ventures require personnel who can speak foreign languages. Physics majors in Russia, as elsewhere, are among the nation’s best educated people. As a result, new private businesses in Russia were offering physics PhDs hard currency salaries of two hundred to four hundred dollars a month, and the work was located in Moscow. The Kola job, in contrast, paid the equivalent of fifty dollars a month. Beyond salaries, dramatic changes also have occurred both in funding levels and the way scientific research is funded in Russia. As Beguchev noted in our conversation, academic research in the former Soviet Union was financed entirely by the central government in Moscow. In fact, academy physics—like other major disciplines—had its own line item in the national budget; industry science was funded directly by the ministries to which the institutes were attached; and university science was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education. Unlike their counterparts in the United States, most Soviet physicists worked in academy or industry science, which are akin to our national laboratories. Academy science focused on basic research; industry science pursued a mixture of basic and applied research; and university science had primary responsibility for teaching, which often fell under the rubric of educational science.

Russian Scientists Struggle to Survive

Even during the best of times, as Gurstein noted, Soviet research budgets and capabilities suffered institutionalized constraints—most notably, the absence of a domestic industry for providing scientific instrumentation, tools, and other equipment essential to both quality research and the effective use of industrial capacity. While often discussed at the highest levels of the government, this problem was never resolved. Simply put, the former Soviet Union lacked the science infrastructure to conduct world-class science consistently. As a result, grandiose and expensive projects often failed to produce anticipated results. Gurstein, an astronomer by training, tells of the government’s persistent inability to procure or produce photographic equipment for telescopes; primarily for this reason, Soviet astronomers failed to make significant breakthroughs despite having, for many years, the world’s largest telescopic dish. The problem of not having a domestic instrumentation industry was compounded by a continuous shortage of hard currency, which prevented research institutes from purchasing equipment from foreign suppliers. Even if security considerations had not been a factor, Gurstein believes capital shortfalls would have prevented Soviet researchers from having the most up-to-date equipment. This problem is most acute in the computer industry. In fact, the backwardness of post-Soviet society is no more evident than in the absence of computerization. Many control rooms in Soviet-designed nuclear power plants lack the computer power of a typical upper middle-class American household. The sad truth is that no matter how well educated a Soviet physicist might be, he or she was hamstrung by a lack of precision equipment and advanced computer technology. Researchers found it difficult to access even the most basic tools of the academic trade. In fact, a shortage of capital conspired with the government’s devotion to secrecy to create an academic environment that stifled the exchange of ideas. Gurstein reports, for instance, that few researchers enjoyed the convenience of a photocopier and that typewriters often would be locked up during weekends and holidays so that no one could use them unsupervised. As far as staff support is concerned, Beguchev and Gurstein estimate that most Russian research institutes in the humanities have one laboratory assistant, staff member, or support person for each fifteen scholars. In the sciences, and particularly in the defense industry, this ratio is one

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laboratory assistant, staff member, or support person for every seven or eight scholars. The corresponding figure in the United States is one-toone in the hard sciences; in fact, in many science research facilities in the United States, support personnel outnumber researchers. “University” science scholarship in Russia has all but disappeared. Academic presses are defunct. Nauka, the internationally renowned press of the Academy of Sciences, has ceased publishing in the humanities. In 1992 and 1994, Florida State University underwrote the publication of two volumes in the scholarly series entitled Dostoevsky: Materials and Studies, (148) published by the academy’s Institute of Russian Literature in St. Petersburg. The subvention was less than $1,500 per volume; yet without such assistance, neither collection would have been printed. University institutes are destitute because the national government is broke (the federal budget for fiscal year 1995 projects a 40 percent deficit; the US federal budget, in contrast, has run less than a 5 percent deficit each year during the past decade). As a result of Russia’s budget constraints, funds for higher education are barely adequate to cover utility costs and meager staff salaries. The only source of funds for research equipment or travel, in fact, is grant and contract money. Fortunately, the prospects for such funding have improved. Western and Japanese foundations, for example, now offer at least limited financial support as a gesture toward increased international scientific cooperation in the post-Cold War world. The West’s response to the crisis in science in the former Soviet Union has been slow, but it still outpaces the response that has taken place within Russia itself. Observers can only point to small glimmers of hope. In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev, at the behest of Russian academics, created a special Basic Research Fund that has served as a prime source of financing for high-priced physics projects. Competition for these funds from other disciplines, including chemistry, biology, and environmental science, recently has undermined the effectiveness of this program; nevertheless, for researchers who are handicapped by inadequate funds, the importance of this avenue of hope should not be underestimated. Beguchev estimates today only one-third of the thirty billion rubles (sixteen million dollars) that it costs to run Russia’s research institutes is derived from government line-item appropriations. Regardless of the source, Russian physics research—like all other research—is burdened by

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the absence of tax exemptions for educational or governmental agencies. Even worse, all sales and services are subject to a 20 percent value-added tax in addition to import duties and excise taxes. Kurchatov Institute recently achieved a political first—a line item in the federal budget separate from the funds it receives directly from the ministry. Moreover, it has opened several quasi-private organizations that compete for government research contracts. As a result, Kurchatov is slowly freeing itself from its historic reliance on Moscow. When a contract is won, institute staff are hired as subcontractors on an ad hoc basis, and the work is performed at the institute with institute equipment. Such halting steps have not prevented a flood of researchers from leaving science. With few young scholars in the pipeline, this trend spells disaster for the future of Russian science. For the moment, however, the prestige of the academy remains largely intact, and the desire of young doctorates in the provinces to move to a major city continues to be a significant lure. Moreover, as Gurstein suggests, staff attrition, while distressing, is inevitable. Soviet science has employed too many people for too long. The current number of researchers in all disciplines, despite recent losses, remains unsustainable. The main question for Gurstein and others is not how to stem the loss, but how to arrange for the transition in a way that minimizes the pain both to society as a whole and to individual researchers. Old physicists hang on because their pitiful salaries remain higher than the fixed-income pensions they would receive as retirees. Further, as Gurstein suggests, given the current situation, forced retirements would be self-defeating for the larger society because no cadre of younger scholars is now prepared to replace those who would leave.

THE WEST TO THE RESCUE? Can the United States help Russian scientists through this crisis? The Russians who participated in this conversation offered several suggestions on how. Some were pie in the sky; others were more down-to-earth. Gurstein says Richard Nixon was right when he stated, shortly before his death, that the United States should create a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. A grand idea, but that proposal has failed to spark much enthusiasm from either congressional representatives or the American people.

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Lystsov and Sivintsev’s suggestions were less grandiose yet more pragmatic. Lystsov’s department employs fifteen professional staff members but has only one personal computer. Any surplus office equipment— even outdated 286-microprocessors, dot matrix printers, and worn-out copying machines—would represent a step forward, and electronic mail would be a godsend. Yet without the enactment of a bill to exempt research equipment from import duties, even free equipment would likely remain too expensive for most Russian scientists. Sivintsev also noted that a lack of hard currency has forced the Kurchatov Institute, which is one of Russia’s most prestigious research facilities, to cancel all foreign journal subscriptions. In fact, no foreign publications have been ordered in the past two years. He said offering overrun copies of journals on a regular basis would be another virtually cost free source of significant aid. The long-term health of Russian science and, ultimately, the Russian economy demands that the country not lose an entire generation of scientists. The current trend in this direction could become an irreversible reality unless steps are taken to make science research more attractive to today’s Russian students. Gurstein notes that an exchange program to bring young Russian scholars to the West for six-month post-doctorate stints might entice them to stay in science. It might, however, be more feasible and less expensive to supplement salaries (for example, by two hundred dollars per month for four or five years) of a thousand young researchers in exchange for a commitment on their part not to abandon science research for jobs in the private sector. In the absence of external intervention, the future of Russian science remains grim. Such prospects carry consequences that extend well beyond Russia’s borders. If you don’t think the West has a stake in the future of Russian physicists, just ask the German guard who uncovered a stash of plutonium in a locker at Frankfurt’s airport.

CHAPTER 5

Review of The Russian Press from Brezhnev to Yeltsin: Behind the Paper Curtain by John Murray Marilyn J. Young and Michael K. Launer Provenance: Originally published in The Russian Review 54, no. 3 (July 1995): 480. Copyright Holder: © Blackwell Publishing, a subsidiary of John Wiley & Sons, used by permission. Description: This brief commentary highlights the tension between Boris Yeltsin’s autocratic impulses and his support for freedom of the press.

Murray, John. The Russian Press from Brezhnev to Yeltsin: Behind the Paper Curtain (220)

L

eonid Brezhnev died in November 1982. Three years later, Mikhail Gorbachev announced his uskorenie-perestroika-glasnost triad of policy initiatives; in 1992, only ten years after Brezhnev, freedom of the press was given legal status after the astonishing dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the last seven years of the Soviet Union, from 1985 to 1992, the media underwent a startling transformation. Prior to Gorbachev and, indeed, for the better part of his first four years, the primary function of the media was to promote the policies of the Communist Party, the government, and the country’s leader. Newspapers were the dominant medium, as they had been since Lenin’s day, and the watchwords of the press were “uniformity” and “unanimity.” With the elimination of a uniform voice, powerful conservative forces under the leadership of Egor Ligachev used their access to the media to oppose the policies of a leader who not only tolerated limited dissent but actually encouraged it to some degree. Now, in the mid-nineties, in the post-Gorbachev era, television has become the dominant medium,

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in part because its immediacy has been unleashed in ways unheard of previously, but predominantly due to the balkanization of the press and to rampant inflation, which has made newspapers too expensive for many citizens. Along the way, government censorship was progressively ignored, marginalized and, eventually, eradicated. Murray’s new study is part of a series on the transition of socialist systems in Eastern Europe. The book consists of three segments: an overview of government/press relations during the Communists’ hegemony, which sets the stage for the second portion; a detailed description of events and the changes wrought under Gorbachev and Yeltsin; and, third, interviews with such important figures as Vitaly Korotich. The first section summarizes information that has been discussed elsewhere by Peter Kenez (178), Mariana Choldin (100), Ellen Mickiewicz (214), and the current reviewers. Little here is new, but the organization makes it an excellent guide for graduate students in international affairs or political communication. The interview transcripts take up a large portion of the book but provide little of current interest. The heart of the book is its middle sections: here one sees how the whole system of media control came apart at the seams. Murray traces changes in the method of selecting editors for national publications, the collapse of censorship, and the rise of a special interest press. Most importantly, he chronicles the fundamental philosophical change that brought high-level policy arguments out into the open. The conflict between the gut-level, reflex reaction of both Gorbachev and Yeltsin to exercise oldstyle control and whatever intellectual comprehension each had of the need for a free exchange of ideas regarding national policy development is both fascinating and enlightening. The Russian Press from Brezhnev to Yeltsin should be read primarily for these middle sections.

CHAPTER 6

Argumentation, Globalization, and the New Nationalism: Implications and New Directions Marilyn J. Young Provenance: Previously unpublished, this chapter is a slightly revised version of an invited address entitled “The State of the Field: The Impact of Globalization on the Study of Argument,” presented in June 2000 at the International Society for the Study of Argumentation/Wake Forest University Eighth Biennial Conference on Argument in Venice, Italy. (380) Copyright Holder: Author Description: This presentation challenges argumentation scholars in the United States and Western Europe to study the development of public discourse and political argumentation in areas of the world (specifically, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and China) that historically have not had a tradition of free speech, recognizing the difficulties posed by language and by a lack of knowledge about the cultures in such societies.

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nternational influences on argumentation are nothing new. Over thirty years ago, Stephen Toulmin (318) and Chaim Perelman (238) left indelible marks on our discipline with their treatises on argumentation. More recently, Habermas’s theory of the public sphere has impacted our notions of how argument operates. (394) Others, such as Foucault, (393) have influenced argumentation theory at the same time they have caused a realignment of our understanding of rhetorical discourse. But it is important to note that these scholars have altered the ways in which we conceive of argumentation as it operates in our own society. It is not surprising that the focus of argument theory has been public discourse in Europe and America. It is after all, the Western democracies that have fostered the climate that values oppositional discourse as a necessary precursor to civil society. However, we are at a crossroads in our discipline, one which may not be recognized by a majority of scholars. The push to globalization of the world’s economies presents a unique

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challenge to the study of argumentation. This is true on several fronts: in addition to the arguments for and against globalizing the economy itself, there is the question of apprehending the argumentative styles of other cultures. One of the arguments made for integrating economic relations is that through trade and commerce, repressive societies can be influenced in a positive direction. The articulated goal here is the improvement of attitudes toward human rights, including movement toward a democratically elected government, for example China. But our experience in Eastern Europe has demonstrated that democratic values do not follow naturally from the demise of totalitarianism. At the risk of sounding jingoistic, if intercourse with other nations is supposed to result in improved relations on the human front, we are going to have to engage the problem of assisting those with no history of self-determination to learn the value and values of democratic institutions such as argumentation and oppositional debate.1 But this cannot be accomplished through the heavy-handed imposition of Western institutions, even by well-meaning academics. Russia is a case in point. In the heady days following December 1991 and the fall of the Soviet Union, everyone thought that the newly energized Russian Federation would emerge a full-blown democracy in a few, relatively short months. The rhetoric of democratic change was tied to the rhetoric of economic reform. Market solutions were oversold to a public eager for Western goods and willing to mouth Western phrases. Goods appeared on the shelves within a year or two; democracy did not follow. Russia today is no closer to democracy than it was eight years ago; indeed, in the view of some, it is moving in the opposite direction, as fear of crime and the ravages of corruption take their toll. The reasons for this debacle are multitudinous. But at its heart is the endemic corruption that was a way of life under Communism and that has soared to new heights as the state divested itself of the means of production. The West’s failure to apprehend this—our inability to comprehend how discursive strategies intermingled with economics and politics—has left us floundering for an approach to this “new” Russia. Yet, as Beer and Boynton point out, “Globalization and democracy are key tropes in the millennial international rhetoric that, many believe, masks the American drive for hegemony.” (69: 585) Nevertheless, there is an opportunity here for argumentation scholars. The opportunity exists on two levels: first, of course, is the standard

Argumentation, Globalization, and the New Nationalism

attempt to teach argumentation strategies and values; the second is to analyze and understand the arguments themselves. The assumption I am making is that all cultures engage in argumentation, though not all cultures view arguments in the same way that Westerners do. We need to apprehend argumentation where it lives, to understand the different modes and forms it can take. The easy assumption is that globalization will lead to homogenization and that communication across cultures will become easier. That is a dangerous assumption. Moreover, while we in the West assume the inevitability of globalization, the new nationalism that continues to inform much political discourse appears determined to undermine this trend. If globalization represents a centripetal force pulling us together, increasing nationalism represents a centrifugal force that threatens to pull us apart. This trend, too, presents argumentation scholars with significant opportunities. As scholars who find our calling in the center of dispute, we need to consider the locus of dispute in the clash of cultures. What is the role of argumentation in the globalization debate? This is the question that scholars must answer. My argument is that the answer must break new ground. We can test our current theories against the discourse of other cultures; in some ways this process has already begun. Essays that examine discourse emanating from other cultures determine, in effect, whether that discourse makes sense in light of Western argumentative constructs. My own work on Russian political rhetoric is an example of this, as is the excellent essay by Carol Winkler at the 1999 Alta conference: With the recognition that values and claims can translate across cultures, an examination of the symbolic reformulation of Western and Islamic views of international relations appears warranted. Vital to an understanding of how nations and cultures are positioning themselves in the global arena of the post-cold war era are the argumentative strategies employed by national leaders. Argumentation theory is particularly well suited to excavate the potential sources of convergence and divergence between various nations’ rhetorical visions. Such an approach provides a means for assessing relevant points of controversy and agreement, for understanding when transcendence among competing claims is possible, and for identifying mutually exclusive rhetorical stances. (368: 479)

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Winkler tests arguments offered by Presidents Mubarak of Egypt and Clinton. Her analysis illustrates the manner in which argument theory can illuminate congruent discourse. However, what it cannot tell us, because it uses solely a Western analytic framework, is how these arguments appeared to the Egyptians and other Muslims. Yet a basic premise of all communication is audience analysis. To achieve this, arguments must be evaluated on their own terms, not only as they appear through the Western analytic lens. This is the challenge of globalization; unless we as argument scholars take up this challenge, our theory risks becoming increasingly sterile. For it is in the process of globalization that the potential resides for the “clash of civilizations” that Huntington predicted in 1993. (164: 22) Huntington predicts cultural/political clashes between several major civilizations, including Western, Confucian, Islamic, Slavic, and Latin American. Like so many other cultures, each of these has a distinct world view and potentially a distinct argumentative style that may or may not be susceptible to Western analytic frames. What is significant here is that these clashes will be fueled by globalization as it transgresses national boundaries and threatens cultural identity. Indeed, that is an inevitable result of globalization in almost any form, even in the form of “sweatshops” that produce goods for the Western markets. Inherently, given enough time, encroachment by Western-owned factories will open new possibilities and ultimately will make it more difficult for indigenous institutions to maintain their hegemony. Certainly in its present form, which is primarily as a source of goods for American markets and as a market for American goods, globalization represents a threat. Thus, in an ironic twist of fate, the breaking down of trade barriers will likely fuel nationalistic urges, even if those urges are satisfied at an economic cost. This is particularly true where nationalism is undergirded by religion. Again, then, the question arises: what is the role of argumentation in addressing the inevitable political conflicts born in nationalism and sparked by the threats of globalization? Not surprisingly, the rudimentary answer is much the same. We must test our notions of argument against the discourse of other political cultures, not just in ways that make sense to us, but in ways that reveal the way these arguments work even in cultures that do not engage in anything we in the West would recognize as argumentative discourse. This will require that we continue to investigate

Argumentation, Globalization, and the New Nationalism

the relationship between argument and identity, because cultural identity is a key to understanding argumentative forms. It will also require, of course, that we find ways of overcoming the language barrier. The simplest and, possibly, the most effective way to do this is to collaborate with colleagues who are immersed in the language and culture of the region under study. In the end, this will foster globalization beyond the economic sphere currently envisioned. Finally, if we are going to encourage “emerging democracies” in their quest for civil society, we must find ways to transmit the values of argumentation in ways that are consistent with the political and cultural history of non-Western nations. The charge for this conference was to examine the “state of the field.” Judging from the presentations heard here, the field is in very good shape. But, in order to realize the potential of argumentation studies, we must broaden our notions of argument. Certainly, in many ways, this has already happened: we examine argumentation in many settings previously ignored—interpersonal communication, family discourse, scientific discourse, and so on. I am suggesting that we need to take this expansion a step further and consider whether theories of argument derived and nourished in the Western democracies, with their tradition of free speech and press, have any real salience in non-Western settings. In analyzing non-Western discourse, political and otherwise, are we simply reconstructing that discourse in a form that makes sense to us? If so, then what form does argument take in other cultures? How might we apprehend it? How can we reconcile it with argument as we know it in order to facilitate greater understanding and better communication? If we fail to do this, I fear we will be left behind in the race to globalization and the tensions it produces.

NOTE 1. Stables and Panetta (310) in their excellent essay presented at the Alta Conference (1999), discuss the “emerging democracy” phenomenon and the rhetorical strategy of so labeling certain countries of Eastern Europe. It is also true, however, that by labeling them “emerging democracies” we transform their argumentative style into one that is more easily understood. Whether this works for Eastern Europe is dubious; it is an even more serious question with respect to Eastern, African, Islamic, and South American nations.

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Politics and Political Argumentation during the Yeltsin Years

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s described in Section One, the newly independent Russian Federation faced numerous intractable problems, not the least of which were economic and environmental. But the political challenges were equally daunting. How were the instruments of a free society— independent courts, competitive markets, robust media, a functioning Constitution, public safety, among others—to be created and/or managed? How would a system of competing political ideologies and parties be established and function? How was the nation to reconstitute itself as a democratic people in the absence of any such tradition? In this section we explore three major themes: • Yeltsin’s wavering attempts, despite his autocratic impulses, to energize the populace in support of democracy and civil society. • The interplay of political parties and charismatic individuals in shaping electoral successes and lost opportunities. • The continual philosophical struggle among three prominent factions within Russian society—the reformers, the Communists, and the nationalists. Yeltsin’s immediate task politically was to begin the process of reorienting the citizens of this newly created country from their Soviet past to a new national identity as citizens of a free nation. Accordingly, the search for national identity—the most significant political and philosophical controversy facing Russia in the formative years of its new existence as an independent country—remained salient throughout Yeltsin’s tenure, and

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beyond. As such, it was woven into the fabric of every election conducted during the 1990s. If anything, this thread became more prominent under Vladimir Putin: indeed, it continues to the present day. As always, our focus is on argumentation and rhetoric as foundational to the process of nation building. What persuasive strategies and tactics did politicians employ to gain the support of voters? How did the various individuals and factions promote their vision and themselves in national and regional politics? To what extent were political actors able to create a culture of communication—the hallmark and necessary condition of Western democracy? To what extent did Yeltsin’s presidency facilitate or impede the transition from a top-down, state-controlled, one-party political system to a system in which individuals, groups, and coalitions understood and exercised agency in their daily lives and within society as a whole?

CHAPTER 7

Democratization and Cultures of Communication: The Mission of the International Center for the Advancement of Political Communication and Argumentation Marilyn J. Young, David Cratis Williams, and Scott M. Elliott Provenance: Previously unpublished, this paper was presented at the Second Annual Russian-American Seminar on Democratic Institutions, St. Petersburg, Russia, August 1, 1993. (When the presentation was developed, Scott Elliott was a graduate student intern in the Florida State University offices of ICAPCA.) Copyright Holder: Authors Description: This essay was the first report requested by Alexander Yuriev within the framework of the collaboration between ICAPCA and the training center at Osinovaia roshcha. It was intended to introduce future democratic politicians in the Russian Federation to Western principles of argumentation and rhetoric and to describe the umbrella organization under which joint studies would be conducted. The paper describes the symbiotic relationship between rhetoric and democracy and the essential tension between argumentation and propaganda.

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ne of the images of political oppression that is prevalent at least in the United States centers around the suppression of free expression. Given a cultural climate of fear and intimidation, free speech is chilled, and with the silencing of opposition voices, deliberation and debate about issues of public policy are stifled. Collective decision making—a fundamental component of democracy—is precluded as diverse viewpoints and orientations, diverse “voices,” are submerged in the tyrannizing univocality of the “party line.” However accurate this image of political oppression may be, there is a common corollary to this image—in effect its obverse—whose accuracy seems to us quite problematic. In this corollary, or obverse, image, when the shackles of political oppression are lifted, free expression emerges naturally

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from the previously quieted throats, and with free expression comes vital public debate, which improves collective decision making and culminates in a fully and freely functioning democracy. Some versions of this corollary image go even further: with the lifting of the shackles of political oppression comes a freeing of the human spirit, which translates into passionate and inspired expressions of long suppressed “truths” about the human condition. There is an emancipation of the individual: the “expressing self ” repressed by the univocality of authoritarianism is released and now at long last able to articulate itself. We view this corollary image as problematic because it takes a naive, although quite common, view of human communication. Specifically, there is a tendency to equate freedom of speech with the ability to speak—and presumably to speak well. In this view, the lifting of the political and governmental restraints on the right of free speech automatically translates into articulate voices vying for favor in the democratic marketplace, the public sphere of discerning citizens and rational voters. It is our contention—and it is the belief underlying the academic disciplines of speech communication and argumentation studies—that effective communication is not necessarily a “naturally occurring phenomenon,” even under the freest of political and economic conditions; rather, communication training is a necessary precondition for what we are terming a “culture of democratic communication,” which in turn is cognate with political democracy. The first section of this paper will develop in broad terms our perspective on the culture of communication and its relationship both to democracy and to the process of democratization. In the second section, we will introduce you to the International Center for the Advancement of Political Communication and Argumentation, a relatively new consortium that has as its general objective making a contribution toward the nurturing of cultures of communication globally. The proposition that effective communication is not a naturally occurring phenomenon may at first seem somewhat counter-intuitive; after all, all human societies throughout history (regardless of their respective political organization) have featured communication. Indeed, communication is part and parcel of the experience of being human, so why should we find it necessary to train for what by all appearances is one of the few things that all humans do naturally, whether or not they experience any sort of formal education? We believe that this line of thinking falls victim to a naive myth: the belief that communicative competence is

Democratization and Cultures of Communication

a natural condition and, therefore, that the ability to communicate equates to the ability to communicate well. There are two pertinent aspects to this myth of natural communicative competence: First, we each presume a fundamental communicative competence. After all, communication is something in which we engage every day and in virtually all our waking moments. We know how to talk; we know how to listen. We know how to interpret, how to evaluate, how to weigh various appeals. We do all that every day—so we must do it fairly well, naturally. That, at least, is what we perceive to be one pertinent aspect of the myth of inborn communicative competence. The second aspect is oddly somewhat at tension with the first. That is, although we each presume a fundamental communicative competence, there is, at least in the United States, a tendency to place “great communicators”—especially powerful public speakers—on a different order of humanity: you are either born a great speaker or you are not, just as some would say you are either born with leadership qualities or you are not. And, of course, those two beliefs are not unrelated. Why do we call these beliefs a myth, and why do we deem their discussion pertinent to our concerns at this conference? The very omnipresence of human communication has, oddly, resulted in relatively little direct attention being paid to it, with the result that, to paraphrase Samuel Taylor Coleridge, too often instead of communication processes and mediums helping to improve our thinking, they come to do our thinking for us. (404)1 Since communication is not only something in which we engage virtually all the time, but also something which has no “end” or telos in itself, naming instead the process by which humans facilitate the doing of things together, the tendency has been all too often to overlook communication itself. It is so omnipresent in our culture that we tend not to “see” it and thus not to reflect much upon the processes by which it works—or does not work. It is much like wearing glasses, or perhaps more precisely wearing contact lenses, all the time: we forget about the lens through which we look. We do not “see” the lens and come instead to take it for granted—and any perceptual effects of the lenses are taken to be accurate visions of the state of nature. In human communication, our symbol systems function as the equivalent of a contact lens. Our linguistic categories and distinctions shape our orientations to the world around us. These linguistic distinctions form what American rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke calls “terministic screens.” The screens, to paraphrase one of Burke’s more cited phrases,

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function not only to select the “reality” to which we attend, but also to reflect and to deflect that reality. (89: 45) The result is that much of what we take to be a “reality” is instead, in Burke’s terms, but a spinning-out of the implications of the terms by which we talk about that reality. (89: 46) From this orientation, it becomes possible to “see” some of the influences of our “lens” of language and communication: there is a whole order of human motivation constituted and modified in, by, and through our symbol systems. It is precisely this symbolic order of motivation that interested classical scholars and practitioners of “the art of rhetoric.”2 Although, as we indicated earlier, humanity has tended to neglect communication in itself, the classical Greeks and Romans did expend a great amount of intellectual energy on the study and practice of “rhetoric,” understood broadly to be concerned with the process of persuasion. In a general sense, the classical concern with an art of rhetoric is the same as our concern with effective communication, that is, communication which is purposeful, which is designed to accomplish certain kinds of results. One contemporary American rhetorical scholar, Lloyd Bitzer, refers to it as “functional communication.” (74) Some theorists—perhaps most notably Richard Weaver—maintain that all language use is at some level persuasive and hence rhetorical because of the very predicative structure of language itself. In opposition to the myth of natural communicative competence, the point is that individual effectiveness in communicative and persuasive encounters—whether it be as a speaker, a writer, a listener, a reader, or whatever— can be improved.3 Classical rhetorical theory understood this, at least in relation to public speech, whether that speech was deliberative (concerned with public policy issues), forensic (judicial), or epideictic (ceremonial). With the fall of the Roman Republic, rhetoric—when understood as including the art of deliberative persuasion—fell from popular, intellectual, and political grace. Only in this century has intellectual energy returned to rhetoric with anywhere near the fervor with which it was treated in antiquity. The revival of rhetoric in what is often termed the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, literature, and other academic areas has indeed brought back rhetoric, but with a difference that I shall discuss shortly. Our own thinking about “rhetoric” is informed by both classical and contemporary traditions, and we believe that such a synthetic approach to rhetoric discloses not only the myth of natural communicative competence, in both aspects, but also how a culture of communication is cognate with democracy.

Democratization and Cultures of Communication

Before elucidating more fully our meaning of the term “rhetoric,” it may be instructive to observe a distinction drawn in the classical period between the practice of rhetoric (or rhetorica utens) and the theory of rhetoric (or rhetorica docens). Rhetorica utens concerns the practice of rhetoric, for instance the giving of speeches for the purpose of persuading an audience. Rhetorica docens concerns theorizing about rhetoric, ranging from philosophical inquiries about the relationship between words and realities to textbook style compendiums of “rules” for effective rhetorical practice. Rhetorica docens and rhetorica utens should be complementary endeavors, with rhetorical practices informing and refining rhetorical theory, which in turn reforms and improves rhetorical practices, and so on. However integrated rhetorica docens and rhetorica utens may have been in classical times, they were certainly severed by the Middle Ages. The contemporary revival of rhetoric in humanistic scholarship has clearly been a revival and transformation of rhetorica docens, with the emerging theoretical interest in the reflexivity of language and in how language functions to constitute perceptions of reality. These are important theoretical advances, and they affect rhetorical practices at the level of criticism, in the understanding and evaluation of the symbolic action of particular rhetorical acts. The contemporary revival of rhetoric, however, has done comparatively little to restore rhetorica utens to a place of intellectual or, perhaps more pointedly, pedagogical prominence. We believe that in order for current democracies to thrive and for emerging democracies to sustain the process of democratization, rhetorica docens and rhetorica utens—both the theory and the practice of rhetoric—need to be given equally prominent places in our intellectual and pedagogical worlds, for it is by this process that cultures of communication are nurtured. Burke treats rhetoric as a process of “identification,” a psychological process by which human agents come to identify with certain linguistic constructions of the world and hence to construct their own senses of identity, both individually and collectively. While there are broad philosophical implications of this perspective, our concern here is more with the pragmatic implications of this view of rhetoric as the process by which human agents are induced symbolically to identify with and become motivationally infused by certain linguistic constructions. Burke’s perspective encompasses much of classical rhetoric, but his emphasis on the constitutive and psychological functions of language itself extend the classical treatment of rhetoric. Classical rhetoricians—from Isocrates to Aristotle

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to Cicero—emphasized audience analysis in order to best adapt appeals to the values and interests of the audience. Artistic rhetorical proofs were identified as ethos, or proof by character, pathos, or proof by emotional appeal, and logos, or proof by rational construction of probabilities. Our view of rhetoric retains these classical components, but it retains them within a broader rubric of the psychological processes of identification, alienation or individuation, and re-identification. From this viewpoint, rhetoric names the forms of symbolic inducements that function, in Michael Calvin McGee’s terms, to “coalesce a ‘people.” (210) That is, the collective identifications that cohere group identities and facilitate collective actions, for good or ill, are rhetorical creations. Here the connections between rhetoric, or effective communication, and democracy are manifest: power in a democracy resides in the abilities of various leaders, interest groups, parties, factions, etc., to persuade others of the viability of their public agendas, to get others to identify with their programs. John Quincy Adams, a former American president but also an accomplished rhetorical theorist (he was the first to hold the Boylston chair of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University) put the point bluntly: “In the flourishing periods of Athens and Rome, eloquence was POWER.”5 Accordingly, we assert that rhetoric is democratic and that democracy, per force, is rhetorical in its essence. The reflexive nature of rhetoric and democracy is underscored by historical associations between the two. In ancient Greece, for instance, itinerate teachers of rhetoric—the Sophists—were willing to teach rhetorical skills, that is to say persuasive power, to any who could pay their fees, whether the students were of the nobility, the aristocracy, or the emerging commercial classes. This move in a very major sense dispersed avenues of power across the citizenry. The teaching of rhetoric contributed to a democratization of Greece in the sense that it opened access to the avenues of power for a large portion of the citizenry.6 The opening up of Greek society also contributed to the rise of rhetoric, because decisions— both deliberative and forensic—increasingly became resolved through persuasive rather than dictatorial means, leading to heightened interest in both rhetorica utens and rhetorica docens. Rhetoric and democracy flourished together, each sustaining and nurturing the other. Not all Greeks, of course, embraced democracy; neither did all Greek citizens embrace rhetoric. Some saw it as heresy (as did Protagoras, with his shocking contention that there are two sides to every proposition, including

Democratization and Cultures of Communication

one emanating from the Gods); others, such as Plato, saw rhetoric as a pernicious form of pandering designed to lead away from Truth; still others viewed rhetorical training as simply ineffectual. There was—and, we believe, often still is—a tendency to think of communication competence and communication skills as innate qualities of the person, as we discussed above. Eloquence, for instance, may be said to be a part of the genius of the individual, a quality that cannot be taught. We believe that history has disproven this belief. It is not our claim that everyone can be taught to become eloquent, or that with proper training anyone could become a Cicero, a Lenin, or a Martin Luther King Jr. It is our claim, however, that with effective training and constant nurturing, the communication skills and hence the communication effectiveness of individuals can be markedly improved. With effective and widespread communication education among leaders, citizens, and students, it may be possible to inculcate a culture of communication even in human societies that have not traditionally fostered such a culture. What do we mean by a culture of communication? We mean a culture that values communication in itself, one that not only engages enthusiastically in the free exchange of ideas and appeals, but one that also reflects with relative detachment upon the processes and techniques of symbolic inducements made. A culture of communication strives toward what Burke has termed a “maximum consciousness” of the influence and implications of symbolic action both in general and in specific, politically situated, instances. (87: 171) Components of a culture of communication would be things such as not only a commitment to, but also a guarantee of free speech, an appreciation of the art of rhetoric (including both rhetorica utens and rhetorica docens), and a social valorization of the practice of critique and evaluation. It is through a social valorization of critical thinking that the excesses of rhetoric and democracy might best be checked: through exposure in the eyes of a rhetorically sensitized citizenry, the sham arguments used by rabblerousing demagogues lose persuasive authority. No less an authority on propaganda than Joseph Goebbels is said to have noted that “propaganda becomes ineffective the moment we are aware of it.” (313: 209; see also 349: 300) Similarly: Even entertainment can be politically of special value, because the moment a person is conscious of propaganda, propaganda becomes

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ineffective. However, as soon as propaganda as a tendency, as a characteristic, as an attitude, remains in the background and becomes apparent through human beings, then propaganda becomes effective in every respect. (emphasis added, 335: 57)7

Further: A good idea does not win simply because it is good. It must be presented properly if it is to win. The combination makes for the best propaganda. Such propaganda is successful without being obnoxious. It depends on its nature, not its methods. It works without being noticed. Its goals are inherent in its nature. (emphasis added, 94)8

In such critique, logos becomes the featured mode of proof, but as was the case with the classical concept of rhetorica docens, the concept of logos is itself transformed in a reflexive examination of the structure and functioning of rhetoric as a form of symbolic inducement. Reflexive critique in this manner addresses the question of what forms of evidence and reasoning are sufficient to justify belief in a given claim. The contemporary academic field of argumentation focuses closely upon that very concern. We realize that what we are calling a culture of communication is nothing more than an abstract ideal, that in the real situated lives of mere humans we all remain susceptible to the abuses and excesses of both rhetoric and democracy; nonetheless, we believe that however real the risks, the theoretical and historical connections between rhetoric, democracy, and civil society make communicative competence both beneficial and necessary. The process of democratization entails a revival of rhetoric. Such rhetoric might take the form of demagoguery, or it might take the “high road” of responsible persuasion. It could fall upon what Goebbels might have called an “unaware” citizenry, or it could create a questioning and critiquing citizenry, one striving for “maximum consciousness” of its own linguistic and symbolic world. We believe it is imperative that efforts at communicative competence should go hand in hand with efforts at democratization. Leaders need to be rhetorically effective, yet ethically responsible; citizens need to be rhetorically effective and also critically aware. One thing is certain, effective communication is essential to democratic government; without it, only authoritarianism can thrive. ********************

Democratization and Cultures of Communication

While a culture of communication might remain an ideal, concrete steps can be taken to improve communicative competence in both existing and emerging democracies. The International Center for the Advancement of Political Communication and Argumentation (ICAPCA) hopes to take some steps in that direction. The center was established at Florida State University in 1992 for the express purpose of providing a space for study of and training in argumentation and communication skills for emerging democracies, particularly those of the former Soviet Union. Its mission includes promoting traditions of public discourse, while striving to discover which elements of argumentation and communication theories are culture-specific and which are culture-invariant. The goal is to enable newly formed democracies to use analytic and presentation skills to craft a democratic state. Activities of ICAPCA will include solicitation of external funding to support the following programs: 1. Collaborative research projects with colleagues at Baltic State University; Saint Petersburg State University; and Omsk State University. 2. Faculty/student exchange programs for the purpose of attending conferences and symposia (such as the present one), presenting workshops, and consultation. Students from Russia are encouraged to attend Florida universities for the purpose of studying argumentation and political communication. 3. Collaborative information exchange between colleagues in Russia and the center in Tallahassee. The materials of this exchange will include journals, textbooks, articles, papers, and videotapes of speeches and legislative deliberations.9 Initially, there are two chapters in addition to the center headquarters at Florida State University in Tallahassee: Northeast Missouri State University in Kirksville, Missouri and a center in Saint Petersburg, Russia.11 The center will seek to establish collaborative arrangements with other institutions in order to expand the academic and practical expertise available for the activities listed above. Further, additional chapters in either the United States or the former Soviet Union may be added to the center upon successful application. Through cooperation facilitated by ICAPCA, we hope to establish an international collaboration that will study and spread the culture of democratic communication and help build democracy around the globe.

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NOTES 1. When “two distinct meanings are confounded under one or more words,” the “equivocation” may be removed “either by the substitution of a new word, or by the appropriation of one of the two or more words, which had before been used promiscuously.” Furthermore, “[w]hen this distinction has been so naturalized and of such general currency that the language does as it were think for us . . . we then say, that it is evident to common sense.” (404: 158, note 28) 2. The effect we describe here can be seen by thinking about vocabulary with respect to, for example, snow. To the person who lives in an area where there is little snow, “snow is snow.” But to the professional skier, or even the recreational skier, there are many kinds of snow, each with a different name, and each impacts the skier’s ability to perform. This same differentiation can be seen in any number of phenomena. 3. Again, a comparison to the physical world: Performance can always be improved. The direction and extent of improvement depends on the goal; we can all run, but virtually all of us can also improve our ability to run, depending on what we are trying to accomplish: a 5K road race, a marathon, a sprint. Ability and talent have a role, but improvement is possible for all. 4. From Burke’s perspective, motives are in language. A change or shift in the terministic screen through which an observation is made also changes motivation toward the reality thereby “observed.” 5. Adams is also one of the few—perhaps the only—American examples of a strong integration of rhetorica utens and rhetorica docens. 6. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the restrictions on citizenship itself were severe; nevertheless, most citizens had the resources to procure the training of the Sophists if they so chose. 7. We are grateful to Professor Randall Bytwerk of Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a leading expert on Nazi propaganda, for this reference. 8. At this site one can also find the following statements by Goebbels:   It is not only a matter of doing the right thing; the people must understand that the right thing is the right thing. Propaganda includes everything that helps the people to realize this. . . . Propaganda as such is neither good nor evil. Its moral value is determined by the goals it seeks. (emphasis added) 9. An example of such collaboration is chapter 9 in this volume, which was translated and published in the journal POLITEIA. (389) 10. In June 1995, the name of NE Missouri State University was changed to Truman State University. 11. In 2005, with the retirement of Executive Director Marilyn Young, the headquarters for the center moved to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, with David Cratis Williams as Executive Director.

CHAPTER 8

The Role of Public Argument in Emerging Democracies: A Case Study of the December 12, 1993, Elections in the Russian Federation David Cratis Williams, John T. Ishiyama, Marilyn J. Young, and Michael K. Launer Provenance: Originally published in Argumentation 11, no. 2 (May 1997): 179–194. An earlier version of this paper was presented in 1995 at the Third International Conference on Argumentation, International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA), Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and published in the Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, June 16 –19, 1998, ed. Franz H. van Eemeren et al. (Amsterdam: SICSAT, 1999), 329 –341. Copyright Holder: © Springer Nature Switzerland AG (Springer-Verlag), used by permission. Description: In the 1993 Duma elections it was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, led by Gennady Zyuganov, that incorporated rhetorical values and audience adaptation into its campaign strategy. Finding its discursive ground limited by history, the CPRF gradually shifted its rhetorical posture and argumentative strategies, redefining itself in the process. This evolution allowed the CPRF to employ the ideographs of “democracy,” “will of the people,” “citizen,” and other key terms of Western-style democracy, while retaining—albeit in transformed meaning—traditional Communist ideographs such as “justice” and “spirituality.” In addition, the CPRF was able to borrow selectively from the history of the USSR between 1917 and 1989, thereby imbuing their political appeals with historical force and cultural memory.

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n December 12, 1993, the citizens of the Russian Federation for the first significant time in cultural memory flocked to the ballot box to elect a founding Parliament and to approve a constitutional referendum legitimizing democratic-style self-governance. One among many of the genuine ironies of the election is that the campaign rhetoric and its accompanying political argumentation suggest that both the Communist Party

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of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s so-called Liberal Democratic Party—in distinct contrast to more liberal democratic blocs such as Egor Gaidar’s Russia’s Choice—recognized and utilized the force of persuasion to transform the political and cultural scene. In the frenzy of post-election analyses, emphasis has been placed on the success of Zhirinovsky’s campaign, or, conversely, on the failures of the more genuinely liberal democratic blocs, especially Russia’s Choice, the pre-election favorite. Virtually none of the commentary has focused on the remarkable success of the CPRF. Analysts typically identified a series of factors as responsible for Zhirinovsky’s success: his use of the media; his highly emotional nationalistic and ethnic pandering to the fears, dreams, and prejudices of the Russian people, especially the less educated; his promises of simple, rapid, and painless solutions to Russia’s problems. All of these, and perhaps some appealing aura of his personality, are widely credited as the reasons for his astounding electoral success. In a post-election analysis, Anatoly Chubais of the Russia’s Choice bloc acknowledged, “[t]he entire success of Zhirinovsky’s propaganda consisted in the fact that he was telling the people exactly what they wanted to hear. This was a brilliant instinct, brilliantly executed.”1 In addition, Chubais noted that Zhirinovsky benefited from the democrats’ failure “to understand the real political situation in Russia”; hence their tendency to focus their efforts against “parties and blocs which are close to them” in philosophy enabled a “fascist threat” to emerge from the right.2 Similarly, it is reported that in Gaidar’s opinion, “Zhirinovsky’s success is also connected with miscalculations in the democratic camp, with its inability to achieve unity of actions.” During the campaign, the reformist parties frequently concentrated on criticizing one another, failing to notice “a serious threat on the part of national extremism.”3 The failures of Russia’s Choice typically are accredited to, inter alia, unreasonably high expectations; internecine squabbling both among themselves and with other democratic blocs; residual effects of perceived close alliance with President Boris Yeltsin, particularly in the wake of the events of October 4–5;4 and unpolished and ineffective campaign techniques, especially in the use of the mass media. However, one factor not frequently mentioned is the failure of the democratic blocs to recognize the importance of communication and persuasion in the determination of political and cultural outcomes; instead, in the fashion of old-style dialectical materialists, they tended to view political and cultural transformations

The Role of Public Argument in Emerging Democracies

as the determined effects of material and structural causes. Gaidar, for instance, maintains that the success of the “extremists is a result of a new social economic formation which Russia is now experiencing as well as a split in the camp of the Democrats.”5 While structural reform and unification of the democratic blocs is necessary for a democratic victory, Gaidar further stresses, the “real chance to avoid a new victory for fascism lies in making the economy grow.”6 Change in the structural and economic conditions is not only seen as a precursor of genuine democracy, it is in fact perceived as a causal agent somehow producing a public belief in and identification with democracy: political communication, be it propaganda or more rational argumentation, is not perceived as the agency of change. The vision of democracy is a democracy not of rhetoric and persuasion, as has been the case since the ancient Greek citizen orators, but rather of a democracy achieved solely by economic propulsion. There is little doubt that the democrats failed to recognize theoretically or to employ pragmatically the resources of public argumentation and persuasion; it is also clear that they did not fully comprehend the theoretical and historical associations between rhetoric and democracy. How much this oversight contributed to their subsequent disappointment at the ballot box remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the poignancy of the irony becomes all the more piercing with the discovery that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), the at best bastard sons of Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialists, appears to have recognized those associations and worked self-consciously to exploit the resources of rhetorical adaptation in the December elections. Political results within democratic cultures, they recognized, are not simply the products of structural and material conditions but also of rhetoric and communication, of the resources of public argumentation. The connections between rhetoric, argumentation, and democracy are integral and inseparable: diminish any of the three, and all three wither. Without rhetoric to inspire citizens to the possibilities of change and of cooperative self-improvement, the machinery of democracy deteriorates and eventually freezes in the grinding friction of apathy and alienation; without argument, taken here somewhat narrowly as the more “rational” mode of appeal, the sway of passion, prejudice, and pander reigns untemporized by the restraints of prudence; and without the freedoms of democracy, neither the unheralded possibilities of rhetoric nor the critical checks of argumentation long remain possible. What is

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not so clear is how the traditions of public argument and political rhetoric develop in societies where no prior tradition exists; the emerging states of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe provide us an opportunity to discover that process and to test the ties between public communication and democracy. The International Center for the Advancement of Political Communication and Argumentation, a group which the authors of this paper represent, is a consortium of American and Russian universities and academic centers dedicated to the study of the connections between rhetoric, argumentation, and democracy and the processes of democratization.7 The recent series of elections in the now sovereign states of the former Soviet Union, and in particular the ironies evident in the December 12, 1993, Russian elections, provide fertile ground for study of the relationships between communication and democracy and democratization. It is the thesis of this essay that the CPRF, finding its discursive ground limited by its history, gradually shifted its rhetorical posture and argumentative strategies. From the time of its February, 1993, Unification Congress through the December elections the CPRF made a conscious effort to broaden the base of its electoral constituency by adapting to public opinion and by opportunistically seizing advantages arising after the events of October 3–5, 1993. Specifically, it is our belief that the CPRF underwent substantial evolution. In the spring of 1993 it was an ideologically defined political party, one bound to Marxist–Leninist principles and saddled with a history of repression and economic determinism. In a very short time, however, it became a pragmatic organization that not only accepted the procedures of democratic governance but became increasingly adept at utilizing these new methods to promote its traditional political and economic program. At the same time, the CPRF never wavered in its commitment to socialist regulation of the economy and its belief in the need to ameliorate the havoc that free market capitalism was wreaking on the economy. This evolution allowed the CPRF to employ the ideographs of “democracy,” “will of the people,” “citizen,” and other such key terms of Western-style democracy while retaining—albeit in transformed meaning—traditional Communist ideographs such as “justice” and “spirituality.” In addition, the CPRF was able to borrow selectively from the history of the USSR between 1917 to 1989, thereby imbuing their political appeals with historical force and cultural memory. In this paper we will (1) describe the political context of the 1993 elections; (2) examine the corresponding changes in public opinion relative

The Role of Public Argument in Emerging Democracies

to key political issues; and (3) analyze the argumentative and rhetorical adjustments of the CPRF in an effort to account for the party’s “surprising” success in the December elections.

BACKGROUND TO THE 1993 ELECTIONS Immediately after the national referendum of April 25, 1993, in which nearly two-thirds of Russian voters supported holding new parliamentary elections, there was widespread expectation that the election would be held by the end of the year. Nonetheless, Yeltsin took most political parties and their leaders by surprise when, after abolishing the existing Parliament in September, he called new elections for December, thus giving his opponents little time to prepare. On December 11–12 voters in Russia elected members to both chambers of the Federal Assembly—the Council of the Federation (178 seats) and the State Duma (450 seats). In addition to the parliamentary elections, the Russian voter was also faced with a referendum on the proposed Constitution—a document that granted enormous powers to the Presidency. There were several factors that conditioned the political environment framing the elections, including institutional factors, the general weakness of the party system, and the general disaffection of Russian voters. These factors presented the Russian Communist party with political opportunities upon which to capitalize.

1. Institutional Constraints In terms of institutional factors, the greatest prize of all—elections for the Russian presidency—were postponed at least until 1996. Thus an important factor conditioning political opportunities and affecting the parties’ political strategies was effectively removed; from the beginning of the campaign, the argumentative situation was constrained. In addition, individual candidates running in the single-member constituencies had to present signatures of at least one percent of the eligible voters to qualify for a place on the ballot; in this process, most candidates concealed their party affiliations. According to the electoral formula, the seats to the Council of the Federation were based upon two member constituencies with individual candidates.8 Of the 178 deputies elected, only twenty-seven identified

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their party affiliation and only one party—Russia’s Choice—issued a list of Federation Council candidates (see table 1). Of the twenty-seven who identified their party affiliation, ten stated they were members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation9 with five identifying themselves as belonging to Russia’s Choice. The Party of Russian Unity and Concord received one seat and the Russian Movement for Democratic reforms received another. The remaining ten identifiable seats were divided among organizations that had not registered a list of candidates for the elections. (317: 4) The formula governing the elections for the 450 seats of the State Duma was based on two different principles. Half of the seats (225) were elected from single member districts, using a simple plurality rule. The remaining 225 seats were elected according to a proportional representation system, using a five percent threshold with a largest remainders formula to allocate “unused” votes. Table 1 illustrates the results of the party list vote and seat allocations in the State Duma.10

2. The Weakness of the Party System Another factor that conditioned the political environment surrounding the elections was the general weakness of the party system. Part of the reason for this, as Anatoly Khimenko argued, was that the long period of Communist dominance “discredited the very concept of ‘party.’”11 In addition, the Russian democratic parties fell victim to a dissolution of the party structure prior to the elections. In general the democrats had failed to enhance their popularity or to consolidate their political organization since the August 1991 coup. (369) Further contributing to this weakness was the fragmentation of the democratic movement on the eve of election, the result, perhaps, of the heterogeneous nature of the Russian liberal democrats (which included the Democratic Russia Movement and many smaller “organizations”). The situation was additionally complicated by the fact that none of these parties and movements was coherent organizationally; rather, they were established as “Byzantine” political formations all of whom fought among themselves for influence with the President. Despite the fact that immediately prior to the election the parties sought to distance themselves from the president, none was able to establish a “strategic plan or a clearly defined political and economic program.” (266: 3)

The Role of Public Argument in Emerging Democracies

Table 1. Distribution of Seats in the State Duma of the Federal Assembly— December 26, 1993 Party or Electoral Bloc % List Vote

Total Seats in Single Seats on Mandate Party List

Russia’s Choice 15.38 (radical reformist)

96

56

40

Liberal Democratic Party 22.79 (radical right)

70

11

59

Communist Party of the Russian Federation 12.35 (communist)

65

32

33

Agrarian Party 7.90 (agrarian left)

47

26

21

Yabloko 7.83 (moderate reformist)

33

13

20

Party of Russian Unity and Concord 6.76 (moderate reformist with strong regional policy)

27

18

9

Women of Russia 8.10 (centrist)

25

04

21

Democratic Party of Russia 5.50 (centrist)

21

07

14

Civic Union