
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, December 17, 1993                   TAG: 9312210240
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A22   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MORE CAUSE TO HELP RUSSIA

RESULTS of Russia's parliamentary elections this week are a reminder: that anti-democratic impulses do not necessarily disappear with the arrival of democracy, that the transition from a command to a free-market economy has not been and won't be easy, that people in uncertain times often turn to demagogues who purport to offer easy answers to difficult questions.

The elections, however, have not altered the West's task: to help nurture, within the limits imposed by proper respect for another nation's sovereignty, Russia's fledgling democratic institutions. Strengthening of those institutions is, in the end, the best guarantor that demagoguery of neither left nor right will prevail.

The irony is that a democratic framework has in this instance produced winners whose commitment to democracy is, to say the least, questionable.

Western worry is induced by the showing of ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose neofascist party won about 25 percent of the vote, more than any other party. It is also induced by the showing of the presumably discredited Communist Party, which managed to get 13 percent of the vote - not much less than the party of democratic reform most closely associated with President Boris Yeltsin.

Of the other eight parties that qualified for the ballot, some are more favorably disposed than the Communists or Zhirinovsky's inaptly named Liberal Democrats toward the basic Western concept of constitutional democracy: majority rule, but with respect for individual and minority rights. Even so, pro-Yeltsin reformers are expected to have only about 160 of the 450 seats in the new Duma, or lower house.

Russian communists, of course, need no introduction. During their seven-decade ascendancy in the Soviet Union, they mismanaged a resource-rich economy into impoverishment, suppressed individual freedoms, and waged an aggressive foreign policy that contributed mightily to the Soviet economic collapse. The chief question now is the depth of their cynicism: Will they ally in the new parliament with their theoretical archenemies, Zhirinovsky's nationalists?

And how deep is Zhirinovsky's cynicism? Is he a true believer in his own anti-Semitic, imperial expansionist rhetoric? Or does he, like many another demagogue, spout it merely as a means to another end, the acquisition of personal power? If the latter, and should his quest for power succeed, he would still be a dangerous man - but a measure of common sense might rein in such dreamy demands as U.S. return of Alaska to Russia.

It's essential to observe, however, that the ultranationalists' quest for power has not succeeded, not yet anyway. There are enough parallels between Zhirinovsky and the rise of Adolf Hitler to give pause, but there are also significant differences that distinguish the Russia of 1993 from the Germany of six decades earlier.

For one, Nazi Germany happened. When the stench wafts over the globe, the world today can more readily identify its source. Apart from European Jewry, no people suffered more from Hitler's mad ambitions than the Russians. Perhaps they won't let the parallels, and potential consequences, go entirely unnoticed.

For another, Yeltsin's is far from the figurehead presidency of pre-Nazi Germany; he remains the man in charge.

Indeed, the Russians giving more of their votes than expected to the ultranationalists and communists were at the same time granting approval to the new Yeltsin-proposed constitution. This suggests that votes for the extremists may have been cast as much in protest - during the campaign, Zhirinovsky downplayed his more atrocious views - as in support of either fascism or a return to communism.

Too, the focus on party results may underestimate the democrats' strength. The party of Yeltsin's allies wasn't the only pro-democratic game in town, nor is Yeltsin necessarily the only democrat. Yeltsin himself declined to endorse any party; in the upper house, where the voting was for individuals rather than parties, reformers did considerably better.

Western jubilation that greeted the fall of Soviet communism has given way to more sober concerns about the staying power of democratic institutions in the new Russia. But, far from offering an excuse for the West to back off on its commitments to economic aid to Russia, the election results underscore the need for the West to do as much as it legitimately and effectively can to ease the Russian people's transition into a new economic order, and so to lengthen Russian democracy's life expectancy.

by CNB