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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
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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).
*
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