Yeltsin parodies Clinton?

President Boris Yeltsin, in a recent interview in “Izvestia,” denied
the latest rumor about his presidency. According to this rumor, there
exists a secret group in the Kremlin. It is called “the family.” It
consists of advisors who supposedly write a script which Yeltsin then
follows. In other words, Yeltsin is said to be a puppet who has been
placed on stage before the “world audience.”

In the “Izvestia” interview Yeltsin admitted to having many advisors.
But these, he said, “Dare not push me. I am not easily pushed.”

There is no doubt, however, that Yeltsin is reciting from a script.
Those who follow his statements closely have long suspected that his
intellect is drunken mush. Without prewritten lines his impromptu
comments verge on the absurd. All too often his stumbling hulk is shoved
into a back room while his spokesmen clean up the resulting confusion.

Sadly, an actor who drinks too much shouldn’t improvise.

In this context, some Kremlin watchers divide Russia into two
political camps. One is the camp of drunken Boris, which is supported by
a coalition of weak political parties. On the other side you have the
Communists and nationalists, with more than half the electorate behind
them. These have grown politically stronger in recent months —
especially since the NATO attack on Yugoslavia. From the Western
perspective, the Communists and nationalists have failed to thwart
drunken Boris because they keep bickering among themselves. But make no
mistake. The secret police are behind the nationalists and the
Communists, which suggests that any disagreement between these groups is
being used as a kind of psychological camouflage. There is reason to
think that a new political combination is being arranged for Russia. And
it is a combination that will prove anti-Western to the point of malice.

By every indication, a situation is now being set up in Russia which
will further discredit the party of Yeltsin. This situation is
developing before our very eyes.

Everyone knows that the men pulling Yeltsin’s strings have controlled
the Russian state these past seven years. Taken at face value, these
people portray themselves as favoring a market economy and closer
relations with America. However, by some trick or another, a market
economy has not honestly been tried in Russia. Worse yet, Russia seems
to dislike the West more and more. When all the money is counted, and
the smiles turned to sneers, the desire for closer relations with the
West appears to have been a cheap trick to get large blocks of cash — a
way to finance the modernization of Russia’s nuclear forces. Yeltsin’s
people, in this respect, have been deceiving us. It is therefore time to
admit that Yeltsin has, indeed, been following a script. It is a script
written by the Communists who have been lying low since the collapse of
the Soviet Union.

What is frightening, at present, is that the script of these
Communist writers is coming to a head. The ground has been laid for
proving that Yeltsin is a pawn of Western money interests, that he was
elected with Western money and will stay in power with CIA backing. A
subtle propaganda is contained in this. It whispers that Russia has been
secretly conquered by the United States, that Russia’s sufferings are
those of an invaded country. Slowly but surely, even now, the Russian
people are being turned against Boris Yeltsin, and against the
democratic capitalism he falsely represents.

But there is something oddly sinister here. When you go over the
Yeltsin script, there is the nagging feeling that you’ve seen it
somewhere else. Think back — but not very far — and ask yourself: When
has the president of a nuclear superpower been suspected of being bought
with money from foreign agents? Where has this theme appeared before?

Consider the following similarities between Yeltsin and Clinton.

In the last several months, Yeltsin and Clinton have both faced
impeachment threats. Yeltsin and Clinton are both accused of undermining
national defense. Yeltsin is accused of taking Western money for his
reelection bid. Clinton is accused of taking Communist Chinese money for
his reelection bid. Yeltsin and Clinton are both said to have
addictions — one to alcohol, the other to girls. Yeltsin has been
accused of involvement with the Russian Mafia. Clinton is accused of
involvement with the Dixie Mafia. Both are opposed by “patriotic”
elements. In Russia there is speculation that President Yeltsin will
declare a state of emergency to extend his term of office. In America,
there are rumors that Clinton will use the Y2K crisis to extend his
presidency.

To what can we attribute these strange and coincidental parallels?

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the accusations against
President Clinton are true. Suppose that by blackmail and money
corruption the American presidency has been “penetrated” by Eastern bloc
agents. Further suppose that this penetration is exposed by an FBI or
congressional investigation. What better comeback could there be for the
Communists in Russia, than to accuse the West of penetrating Russia’s
presidency and corrupting Boris Yeltsin? In Moscow they could easily
say, “You did it to us first, so we did it to you.” In a crisis of
exposure, the Kremlin has a reasonable answer to make for its actions.
It is the age-old argument of tit for tat. Given enough fabricated
evidence by the Russian secret police, any denials by the CIA would be
politically worthless.

There is yet another aspect to the strange parallels between Clinton
and Yeltsin.

In writing good fiction, it is a rule to model your fiction on
something real. If the Kremlin has set up a cast of actors to portray a
“bourgeois” government in Moscow, and they want to make a convincing
performance, they would naturally base their script and characters on
the leadership of a real democracy. In doing this, they can exaggerate
the failures of that democracy, and the dangers of its economic system.
In its essentials, their script would be a direct parody of what they
inwardly mock and detest — namely, the West.

After all, in terms of propaganda, what is better? Denouncing Western
democracy as a sham and capitalism as mere thievery — or setting up a
supposed democracy in Russia which proves disastrous? In truth, a
concrete example which conforms to the model of Communist propaganda is
better than propaganda. It is a living testimony which favors socialism
and discredits capitalism. Everyone is impressed by what they see. And
if what they see is carefully scripted, it is no wonder that Russians
remain suspicious of the West. It is no wonder they hanker after the
“stability” of the Brezhnev era. It is no wonder the Communists and
nationalists are gaining popularity and political momentum. This
outcome has been carefully arranged and prepared in advance.

Every script has a beginning, middle and ending. And a good
scriptwriter knows the ending he wants. He therefore designs every
scene, every act, to make his pre-planned ending as believable and as
dramatic as possible. And that is what appears to be unfolding in
Russia.

If socialism is to be reborn in Russia, it must devise for itself a
new justification, a new legitimacy. The same holds true for China. In
creating this new legitimacy, it is not enough to show the weaknesses of
democratic capitalism. It becomes necessary to fabricate an apparently
successful new combination of Marxism and “controlled” nationalism. One
thing the Communists have learned is that Marxism does not animate the
people. It animates a few ideologists within the Communist Party, but
the people are better animated by national feeling. The objective of the
Communists, in this case, is to turn nationalism into an
internationalist weapon. For seven years the Kremlin has been groping to
set up a new socialist commonwealth in which nationalism will be used to
smash nationalism, just as Western democracy is used to smash Western
democracy, and capitalism (under Communist control) is used to smash
capitalism.

The attempted maneuver is a difficult one. It is sophisticated,
long-term, and few in the West have seen through it. Until we open our
eyes to the underlying machinations of Moscow’s Communists and
militarists, Russia’s internal politics and the ongoing failure of
Russia’s alleged capitalism will continue to baffle us. And so will the
odd parallels that exist between Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton.