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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 1994)
PAGE 13 and fishing. Northwest timber outfits are invited to give up the hassles with environmentalists who wsh to preserve the scant remains of North American forests and decimate the immense forests of Siberia. Incredible environmental damage has been done to Eastern Europe as a result of reckless Soviet projects. Yet Yeltsin offers the same devastation in exchange for boosting the Russian economy. He has little patience for such comparisons. Environmentalism is a concern of the well off, he says. Russia is starving and needs relief now Hyperbole, I say. Russia can’t be any worse than during communism. You are very foolish to sell off your resources, I say. You won't benefit much in the short term and your longrun prospects are shot because you sold the farm. Harry Hopkins doesn't apply here: He said during the Depression when he worked for Roosevelt and handed out money to the poor that his critics missed the point when they thought directly assisting the hungry only hurt in the longrun. "People don't eat in the longrun," Hopkins said. 'They eat every day." He doesn't apply because Yeltsin doesn't have to sacrifice Siberia's forests. Raw materials are after all a colonial business. Russia possesses immense natural talents which a world trade can be built upon. Do they have enough time to avoid sacrificing the resources necessary? The helpful Americans are more inclined to take out what's left, our usual wolfish approach to industry, and so regale the Rus sians wth short term prosperity through deals of decimating its forests and strip mining the tailings of imperial and communist greed. Yeltsin's power depends on short memory. Politics is actually intense concentration on attaining and retaining power which itself depends upon daily fabrications. Power, however supreme, is a day to day thing. Its very fragility is the cause of its most brutal excesses. Power is like a butterfly, brief and beautiful, and almost as immediately corrupt and decadent. You have to leam everything, I said to Yeltsin. I wasn't smug. Au contraire! I was grim and harrowng like an old witch. You don't know anything about democracy, I said. "Sovereignty, independence and equal rights" do not come easily and never stay long without constant feeding and watering. It took a long time for people to be convinced of the necessity for freedom, even though our predecessors inherited a powerful but thwarted tradition of childhood unity and equality. Our own revolution was in fact the result of bitter disappointment that the mother country did not recognize the loyalty to ancient principles its colonies in North America felt they had exhibited in resisting what they considered illegal and proscriptive acts intolerable to honest and loyal English subjects. We separated because our parent failed to recognize our growth to maturity. We have evolved to world supremacy, which has been the ambition all along despite fearful and protective tendencies toward isolation. FDR knew, as World War 2 became imminent, that the western hemisphere's aloofness was a deadly illusion. The oceans that separated the North and South American continents from the rest of the world were also wide highways for any strong invader, by air as well as water Intercontinental missiles were developed to such a finite edge that total obliteration of an enemy half a world away was only a matter of minutes. More than once the precision of mutual terror that controlled humanity's existence on the planet depended on realizing in time when a 13-cent part malfunction ed and almost launched a missile attack that would have been immediately retaliated against. Thank god we are dismantling our nuclear arsenals. The••• missile silos are empty. Yeltsin winked. "You are dismantling them, aren't you?" I demanded. Only yesterday Boris & Bill promised the world they would. 'W e are complying wth our agreement," he said evasively. 'W e never said we would dispose of our nuclear weapons faster than your country. We have detargeted you. 50 missiles used to be pointed at your Pacific coast." So you play nuclear poker to keep power, I said to him to myself, glowering across the table at him. Soviet nuclear stuff is hot on the black market. Nukes are bootlegged to renegade regimes like Iraq and North Korea despite the blackmail paid by the U.S. to eliminate the trade. Boris the Gangster! You are hypocritical, Yeltsin yelled. You are the super power. You would like to exercise power in the traditional way but you cannot. You do not have the power. He was about as gleeful as I saw him when he said that. His huge slab of face opened for the briefest moment like a blast of dynamite on a rock. Yeltsin appeared in Seattle wth a scourge of Kremlin Kapitalists who flocked like bats among indigenous corporate vampires. 'We have achieved stability," Boris the Bat told the vampires. "You are investing in a great country wth a huge mar ket." This is where the rubber meets the road and the fang bites the neck, the vampires said. This is vtfiere the rubber meets the neck and the fang bites the road, the bats said. Ideology surrenders like a helpless lover to cold cash. I wondered if Yeltsin's dreams of Russian prosperity mimicked Busby Berkley's extravagant mosaics of opulent sensuality that were staged for Depression-era moviegoers looking for escape from bitter poverty. Paradoxically, socialist opposition to the tuxedoed class that drives our classless society was at its peak ■He dWn'Hiy V denle,'did h e r DON PETRIE'S ITALIAN FOOD CO. 613 NW 3RD, NEWPORT 503/265-FOOD during those years and got as close to real power as it ever would in this country - despite Senator McCarthy's later claims of imminent communist takeover by treachery and conspiracy at the highest levels of American government. Even the hippies abandoned their brief peculiar form of tribal socialism to make money and invent highscale low-cholesterol yuppy lifestyles. None of this interested Yeltsin. He was not in the U.S. to discuss the failed prophets Marx and Lenin. He was here to promote prosperity and his continuance of power. His purpose was to convince America that he alone was Russia. I admit to being scornful of Yeltsin. I was not nearly as cordial to him as I might be wth Gorbachev* whom I lingeringly admire as much for his failures as his successes. It is difficult to regard Yeltsin wthout conjuring up his mentor Gorbachev. 'You rode Gorby's coattails almost to the top," I said, thinking that Sancho Panza has exceeded Don Quixote. Gorbachev saw clearly that the moribund Soviet Union needed a strong infusion of original principles, but just as they are here, original principles are difficult to pin dowi and incred ibly problematic to apply to an evolving modem society. U.S. Supreme Court nominee Bork lost his chance as a Justice by his insistence that he would adhere to what he called the original intent of the Constitution; in other words the rule of propertied white men. The Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments clarify that original intent was not as restricted or unadjustable as Bork and other so-called strict reconstructionists claim, but is instead as originally constructed an amendable document able to reflect and serve a continually changing society despite the hardship, frustration and bloodshed that attends the amending process. The original framers had at least the foresight to recog nize that the interests and problems of succeeding generations would most certainly be different than their owi. Contrary to that, Soviet proletariat dictatorship tolerated no revision. Socialism in the name of equality demanded total control of government and society, and as a result extinguished equality as well as any hope for liberty or democracy. The last- minute reformed communism of Gorbachev failed and gave way to the revolutionary demagoguery of Boris Yeltsin. The corrupt and rigidly centralized Soviet collapsed rather than revived with infused liberty and decentralization. 'You and Gorbachev rose to power conforming to strict Bolshevik doctrine," I said. 'You publicly extolled the Marxist- Leninist gospel. Why did you change, and so rapidly?" "I did not change as rapidly as you suggest," Yeltsin said. 'You must realize that I have considerable experience wth the communist party. I became powerful in the party, though of course I was expelled for being too anxious for reform." "Are you confusing your desire for personal power for a greater purpose of Russian freedom and independence?" 'There is no confusion," Yeltsin said. "I began public service in a despotic system but I rose to the top as a reformer. When my reforms were too advanced for Gorbachev, whose purpose was to preserve Soviet communism through reform but not precipitate a revolution to overthrow it, I joined the people vho wanted freedom from the Bolsheviks. I was elected to the Parliament and led the movement to make Russia independent as it was in ancient days. The burden of empire combined wth the cold war was too much. Being a superpower capable of blowing up the world or flying into space was no compensation for personal poverty and misery " He looked out the northern window. Mashed potato clouds stacked up over the mountains across the river Street sounds wafted up from below "I sincerely believe your country and my country - the entire world - is very lucky that the more fanatic or unstable members of our separate societies did not or were unable to push the buttons of our mutual obliteration." 'We're getting much older," I said, sticking to my theme of homo senilis. 'The nations don't squabble, compete or war against each other like children any more We are maturing. We want peace and the good life. No more stress." I listened to Yeltsin boast about his warm reception in the two Washingtons. History is preposterous, I thought. Only inches from me across a small restaurant table ranted a man who not especially long ago chose to politically advance his ambitions within the communist party which ruled its vast gulag with terror. He raised himself to the top levels of a system grimly intolerant of opposition. He probably sought high position within the sacred inner party and might have reached it if the Soviet Union had not started to unravel. I really can't offer any suggest ion as to why Yeltsin suddenly emerged as a radical reformer, far more advanced and revolutionary than his mentor Gorba chev, who originally attempted to save party rule by injecting a few reforms Obviously Yeltsin was quick to understand the public's antipathy toward the Kremlin and instead of futilely responding with tepid reforms he rode to the top by making himself champion of the people. He lived on the edge as anyone with his ambitions must, a dramatic figure as subtle as P.T. Bamum. The People's Czar. Communism's destroyer. A Rotarian now. A shameless handshaking booster for Russian capitalism. Does he bother to reflect on his contradictory career, his huge success in the seemingly opposite realms of tyranny and democracy? Is he destabilized or more on plumb than ever? Why do I detect a deeper ruthlessness as his true compass? A few ships passed our downtown eyrie. They seemed to dwarf the city but were themselves diminished from our eight storey perch. We ordered dinner at sunset as the restaurant filled up for the evening rush. I noticed that though many being seated at tables at wndows around the huge room were locals, many others made an effort at travel to dine at the Top Of The Astor Food streamed out of the kitchen The bar flourished. Waiters and waitresses moved among diners like flushed quail. Dishdogs replaced clean for dirty. Yeltsin watched the surge of life into the restaurant, the quick pattern of routine that settled the initial chaos. People unable to be seated waited at the southend next to windows that overlooked the city's hills cobbled with century old houses. 'This is what Moscow needs," Yeltsin said over a din of voices at tables crowded up near us. 'We need this kind of prosperity. It is alien to us, impossible under the czars and the communists. But now we have a chance." His eyes seemed to glitter but that might have only been reflected from the sudden turning on of lights after the sun disappeared. Lights bloomed all over the city underneath us. Ships anchored in the river glisten ed like ballrooms in lights layered up their decks. I wondered if Yeltsin was aware of the irony or if he was already too far along the road from Bolshevik to bourgeoisie. He portrayed himself as a phoenix risen from a failed ideology, eager to embrace the irresistible gloss of capitalistic prosperity which happily coexists with various democratic forms of govern ment. But democracy is indeed varied, and it should not be sur prising that the Russians and the other newly spawned republics of the tyrannical old empire do not have any other tradition than autocratic oppression which is reflected in their rather stiff inter pretations of democracy. Here was Boris Yeltsin. Former devoted communist party boss. Victorious revolutionary. The people's hero. Glowing as brightly as the sun at ostentatious decadent capitalism. That's how I last remember him. Yeltsin faded into a ruddy blur, as did the Top Of The Astor. Lucky it was only a dream, I thought sleepily clutching my glass of wine in the swiftly atomizing restaurant. I might have sabotaged the shaky remnants of perestroika. I dreamily conjured Yeltsin's revenge at my impudence, calling off his deals wth American timber companies and other corporate scavengers because of my bad attitude with him. Later that day I walked downtown to the J. J. Astor I stared up its white walls to the top floor Sharp spikes rose from plaster minarets like Chinese fingernails. Impossible maybe but the guys who worked on the old hotel its last facelift were right Top Of The Astor would have been a natural, and who knows, it might have brought Yeltsin to Astoria ♦Earlier dreams featured Gorbachev in two previous issues of the NCTE (Gorby & I Go For A Walk, June 1990 and Gorby & I Talk Trash in June 1992). * «
