Gorbachev and Yeltsin were a part of the Soviet system: Politburo members. However, with their active participation, this system ruined. Let us not discuss whether it was positive or negative. Putin was a part of comparatively a new and comparatively democratic Russia’s ruling system, and in this role, he commenced his way in the team of intellectual Anatoly Sobchak and then in Moscow by holding different positions in Yeltsin’s administration.
However, for several years, Putin is trying to lead the country in the opposite direction – the “Soviet” direction (again, let us not discuss to what extent it is possible). If Gorbachev and Yeltsin were dissidents in the Soviet period, or if Putin were a member of any Communist group during the tenure of Yeltsin, they definitely would not be successful in implementing their goals.
The problem, of course, is not so unequivocal. One can be outside of the system and influence and contribute to the collapse or radical transformation of the system. To contribute rather than to implement. In other words, Yeltsin reconciled with the opinion of Soviet dissidents and intellectuals having more or less liberal views (for example, with the same professor Sobchak), Putin certainly sees the opposite side of the “pendulum” – the public sentiments expressing the desire of “restoring the imperialistic glory of Russia”. However, the acting staff is usually from the system, even Saakashvili was working as a Justice Minister in the office of Shevardnadze.
It is the case, certainly, not only in Russia, Georgia or Armenia. In the United States, the Democrats and Republicans, in Germany – the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats, in the UK – the Conservatives and Liberals, all of them, certainly, are equal parts of the same system. Simply, in Russia and similar countries, the Communist defeats the Communists, the “democrats” rejects the democracy while in the developed countries, these groups have different names.
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The main mechanism of change is the palace coups and the intrigues. In Armenia, the first president’s fellow-soldiers demanded his resignation, the second president peacefully transferred the power to the third president thinking that he would rule the country from the “shadow” but since it failed, different parties are ruling from the “shadow” who definitely are parts of the same system. This, I repeat, is normal. If you want to implement a program, you need to be “inside.”
Which is our, the ones who are outside of the system, mission? Without cherishing great hopes but at the same time persistently, without despair and depression, to contribute to the ideas and principles but not the groups, the difference of which, as I mentioned above, is purely “nominal”. The principles and the ideas, which we believe in.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
