In Judgment in Moscow, Vladimir Bukovsky exposed the crimes of the Soviet regime, using relevant documents from the Communist Party’s own archives. But there were certain things that Bukovsky could not do, perhaps because they were beyond the capabilities of any one man. He could not convince the West that the crimes of the Soviet Union were the inevitable fruits of the Soviet ideology, and that the only way to free Russia of the legacy of communism was to use the truth about the past to discredit the ideas on which communism was based.
As Bukovsky wrote, what Russia needed was “moral cleansing” and for this, “the entire system and the crimes it perpetrated needed to be put on trial.” Despite Bukovsky’s efforts, reflected in this book, such a trial never took place. In the new, post-Soviet Russia, the ideology was rejected, but only formally. Its roots, in particular the conviction that the individual is raw material for the purposes of the state, were left in place. They spawned a new system that was not diametrically opposed to the old system but organically related to it. That new system almost immediately began to commit new crimes.
Viewed from the perspective of 2018, the entire 27-year history of post-Soviet Russia is a tribute to the failure to eradicate the influence of communism. The “young reformers” identified themselves as free-market radicals, but the attitude toward their fellow citizens was a communist one. “Above everyone,” wrote Solzhenitsyn, “stands a power that is endlessly indifferent to the fate of the people… and even whether they survive or not”. The reformers were determined to introduce radical measures while society was dominated by an atmosphere of confusion. Their concern was to reach a “point of no return” beyond which the economic changes they were introducing would be irreversible (in this way, they repeated the behavior of the Bolsheviks in 1917). Putting property into private hands was a goal in itself.
As the privatization process got underway, many of the beneficiaries were criminals, but the reformers believed the market would separate out the efficient owners from the inefficient owners and the efficient owners would prevail. In fact, in Russia, the reforms led to a competition to carve up the remains of the Soviet economy with the help of criminal methods, and once property was put in criminal hands, efficiency was no longer an issue. The criminals had no intention of giving it up.
The pillaging of the country, however, led to economic collapse. In the period 1992–98, Russia’s gross domestic product was cut in half. In 1999, as Yeltsin’s second term in office was coming to an end, opinion polls showed that he was supported by only 2 per cent of the population. The same level of support was recorded for Yeltsin’s hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, the prime minister and former head of the Federal Security Service (FSB).
In September 1999, however, four apartment buildings were blown up in Moscow and in two other cities, killing 300 people. The bombings were blamed on Chechen terrorists. Putin was put in charge of a new enterprise—a second war in Chechnya under circumstances in which he could pose as the defender of the Russian people. The second Chechen war was even more brutal and indiscriminate than the first (1994–96). However as a result of initial success, Putin’s popularity rose and he was elected President of Russia.
As it happened, however, a fifth bomb was discovered in the basement of an apartment building in the city of Ryazan, and the people who placed it there were captured and found to be not Chechen terrorists, but agents of the FSB. Since then, a mass of overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence has accumulated showing that not only the failed attempt to blow up a building in Ryazan, but also all four of the successful apartment bombings were the work of the FSB. The murder of hundreds of randomly chosen innocent Russian civilians who died in the blasts was the means by which the new “democratic” leadership preserved its hold on power.
Once he became President, Putin showed that he had no use even for the remnants of democracy that had been tolerated under Yeltsin. First, the press was subjected to control, especially the national television stations. Next, the business community, which grew out of massive 1990s corruption, was subordinated with the help of the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of the Yukos Oil Company, who had tried to act independently politically. In 2004, Putin eliminated the direct election of governors. Meanwhile, the place of gangsters and corrupt businessmen was increasingly taken by state officials and the appropriation of resources by officials reached epic proportions.
To a degree which is extreme even by the standards of kleptocracies, the Russian “elite” today behave like occupiers in their own country. Vladislav Inozemtsev, a prominent economist, said “There is not a single country in the world where officials… became wealthy so quickly and on such a scale, [and] people showing such a lack of professionalism achieved such success.” These people, in turn, are oriented toward the West. Insofar as corrupt wealth in Russia is a product of patronage and the political constellation is always susceptible to change, Russian oligarchs and major businessmen establish a second life for themselves in the West where they keep their bank accounts, property and families. Many of them spend as little time as possible in Russia. An American lawyer familiar with Russia’s new rich said, “The lack of patriotism is astounding.”
The situation that Bukovsky foresaw in 1995 has come to pass. His most important point, that without a proper reckoning with the past, Russia will never have a decent future, was confirmed repeatedly under Yeltsin and Putin, and particularly in the 1999 bombings which saved the corrupt Yeltsin entourage and brought Putin and the FSB to power. Now, just as after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the need for a historical reckoning has to be faced, with the sole difference being that it is not only necessary to face the truth about the communist period, but also about the post-communist period. This is the only way to achieve the moral cleansing that Bukovsky called for when Judgment in Moscow first appeared, and for Russia to establish a system based on law that attaches value to human life. Only such a reckoning can expunge the legacy of the events of November 1917, and by reaffirming the value of individual human life, create the conditions for Russia’s moral and political resurrection.