WAITING FOR STALIN

(This is the first part of a diptych built around my 1992 MIJ/Gannett article Waiting For Stalin. In the original version both parts were placed together in a single eponymous entry, but later I decided to separate them into two distinct parts.)

Waiting for Stalin was one of my numerous articles commenting on the events in Russia, written around the tragic time of the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Published by Marin Independent Journal on January 12, 1992, and carried by its parent news organization Gannett Company, Inc. this article needs to be revisited in its entirety, rather than in excerpts, to recreate its authentic spirit: nothing added, nothing subtracted. Submitted to the publisher at the time when the Yeltsin era was just starting, I was commended, as always, for writing something that nobody else was, as if anybody in their own mind would ever have dared to say what I was saying, that is, foretelling the old “Putin” future for the new Russia.
So, here is the full and unabridged text of my published article.

“Russia has always been a mystery to the world. Today we are witnessing how great that mystery is. The winds of change have blown away the fog, leaving behind a mirage.

“A country in distress. Yesterday’s villains begging for food. Agitprop masters confessing their lies. KGB bosses giving away state secrets... An incredible plunge from ‘super might’ to super misery, dramatically underscored by Mikhail Gorbachev’s chilling farewell to ‘the people who ceased to be citizens of a great nation…’
“On the surface, and by all accounts, the USSR is dead. It has lost its vital signs, and even its name. But in reality it is very much alive and well.
“Militarily, its awesome nuclear power still remains intact. In fact, by cleverly playing up the proliferation scare, it has now gained an unprecedented leverage against the United States.
“Politically, the current collapse of the Soviet empire has a clear and unmistakable precedent in early Soviet history when deliberate fragmentation was used to achieve a tighter ‘union’ and a greater control over society. Today that history is carefully recreated.
“Economically, Soviet resources are inextinguishable. Russia has enough food to feed its people, and one of the most effective distribution systems known to man. All past and present shortages, including the tragic famines, have been artificially induced for political purposes.
“The recent lifting of price control, unsupported by an adequate land and property reform, demonstrates the double-dealing substance of Russia’s newest economic policy. In a situation where the state still owns practically everything, the bitter medicine of free market becomes deadly poison for Russian democracy.
“Watching the events unfolding in Russia since last August, I have come to the conclusion that Russia’s leaders have no intention of following the road of meaningful democratic reforms. They are deliberately instigating chaos, persistently aggravating national misery and humiliation, making sure that the country, hurt and confused, would seek deliverance in firm totalitarian control, and overwhelmingly embrace the pending neo-Stalinist dictatorship.
“Unlike the fake August coup, the real one will be a cinch. Betrayed by their false leaders, the nation’s democratic forces will be quickly rounded up and neutralized, just like those dissenters of the first Soviet glasnost of the 1920’s crushed by Stalin’s purges, or the dissenters of Mao’s thousand blooming flowers, the Chinese version of glasnost, crushed by the Cultural Revolution.
“The old totalitarian power structure will reemerge from its current obscurity brushed up from more than thirty years of corruption. It will restore law and order throughout the land, cracking down on crime and ethnic violence, making sure that every home gets enough food and essentials to keep the people happy.”

…That was the end of my Stalin article. I was sincerely hoping then that America would never really resort to gloating over the prostrated body of her Main Adversary, seeing that dismissing Russia for dead and buried, and dancing on her imaginary grave, was bound to result in great calamities not only for the United States, but for the rest of the world as well, rolling back the cause of reason and common sense into the dark ages of political psychology and human collective self-awareness. Today I blame the ongoing clueless “War on Terror,” and all other plagues inflicted on the international community in distress, on America’s reckless disregard for sound judgment in the wake of the USSR’s sudden collapse, just as eleven years ago I saw the tragedy of 9/11/2001 as a symptom of the malady brought about by the same.

(The second part: Stalin Is Back!, will be posted tomorrow.)