Slate's Bizbox
the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Daniel and David Bell

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: David Bell

Weimar Russia

Posted Wednesday, Dec. 15, 1999, at 3:56 PM ET

Dear Dad,

Well, I'll accept "recycled platitudes" as covering most political life in the United States and the U.K. these days, and I certainly don't want to devote any more of this space to the dreadful Taki. So let me turn from the ridiculous to the sublimely horrible, and from Britain to a place where they can only dream of a politics of contented, recycled platitudes: Russia.

Has ever a man been a better metaphor for the society he governs than Boris Yeltsin? He stands there, an awesome wreck: drunk, corrupted, angry, in pain, delusionary, his vital organs putrifying, but still possessing surprising reservoirs of strength, and still capable of delivering vicious and unpredictable blows. In his shambling gait and glassy, uncertain stare he reminds me all too closely of another awesome wreck of a man who led another awesome wreck of a country: Marshall von Hindenburg at the end of his life. And that scares me, because the similarities between Hindenburg's Weimar Germany and Yeltsin's Russia seem all too exact. In both cases there is the society in a state of collapse, the government tottering dizzily from crisis to crisis, and the people increasingly gripped by resentment and rage against a West they blame for abandoning, betraying, and exploiting them. Does Russia have a Hitler in waiting? Putin? Lukashenko? Lebed? Zyuganov? It's hard to take any of them seriously. But then, again, Hitler wasn't taken very seriously at the start, either, with his preposterous rhetoric and silly little moustache.

Of course, historians easily get carried away by historical comparisons. But, if you forgive me for tooting my horn a little, you may remember a little piece I wrote for the New Republic in 1988, called "Paristroika," laying out the uncanny similarities between the situation of the then-Soviet Union and the situation of France on the eve of its 1789 revolution (the pompous Sovietologist Jerry Hough wrote a condescending letter to the editor, scolding me for my ignorance in failing to realize that the Russians would never let things get to the point where Ukraine or Lithuania might secede. Oops). I devoutly hope I am wrong this time.

But assuming things do continue to get worse in Russia, what should the United States do? We can always sit around and flagellate ourselves for letting it happen through our "antagonizing" of the Russians with NATO expansion and the Kosovo war (and look! Here's Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, running up with a selection of nice, dry, leather bullwhips). Personally, I doubt that there was anything we could have done, given the thieves and thugs thrown up into leadership positions by the Soviet collapse, and the disintegration of anything that might have evolved into civil society. Check out David Remnick's excellent column in this week's New Yorker for more on this, and on Al Gore's willful blindness to the corruption of his good friend Viktor Chernomyrdin.

But regardless of how we interpret our own actions in the 1990s, it seems to me that there is one critical historical lesson we can't afford to forget. In the 1930s, the road to appeasement was paved by Western guilt over post-World War I policy toward Germany--over the harshness of the Versailles Treaty and reparations. The Germans have a point, the statesmen said. We were too hard on them. Give them a little slack now, and everything will even out and get back to normal. Well, we know how well that policy worked. So by all means, flagellate away. Lay in with a strong will and a strong arm. Howl to the heavens that our earlier Russian policy was a failure. But don't let it stop us from having a strong will and a strong arm when it comes to what Putin and Yeltsin are doing in Chechnya, or it will encourage them to do it again somewhere else.

Love,
David

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: David Bell

Weimar Russia

Posted Wednesday, Dec. 15, 1999, at 3:56 PM ET
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Daniel Bell is professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard and the author of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, which was recently re-issued (click hereto buy it). David Bell, Daniel's son, teaches history at Johns Hopkins University, and is the author of the forthcoming The National and the Sacred: Religion and the Origins of Nationalism in France.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES
Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
The Great Debate
Marcus | Forget Biden. I'd like to see McCain face off against Palin.
Toles: Another McCain SurpriseStumped: Where's Palin's Baby?