After eight years with Boris Yeltsin at its helm, Russiaremains mired in political and economic crisis. As Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky explains, not only has Russia failed to rebuild from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, it could be in the first stage of its destruction as a sovereign state.

Icons of radical reform under Yeltsin's patronage: privatization chief Anatoly Chubais (left) with economic liberalizer Yegor Gaidar in their days of power earlier this decade. [photo: The Russia Journal]

What is happening today in the Kremlin and in the

government is no secret, and no euphemisms are needed to describe the situation. What is to be done is also no secret. We need a new president, a different government and amendments to the constitution. It is no good offering help and advice to those presently in power because their interests lie elsewhere.

The following comments are a warning that what is happening now could signify not just the end of the post-Soviet era, but the prologue to Russia's demise as a sovereign state.

I doubt greatly that we can speak of a system in this context. By definition, a system is something stable. Without stability, even temporary stability, there is no system. Now take a look through the Yeltsin years for signs of anything stable.

At the beginning of 1998, the Yeltsin constitution seemed to have produced a political system that could lay claims to a stability of sorts. But after going through three governments in less than one-and-a-half years, the facts are staring us in the face - a constitution that provides no checks and balances to the president's heavy hand cannot contribute to stability. Sooner, the opposite is true.

Until August 1998, Russia looked like it had a stable ruble - the foundation for future economic growth. The events of August 17 not only completely shattered these illusions, but also punished those who had believed the illusions and placed their trust in banks.

Yeltsin is given credit for not getting rid of or persecuting political opponents - something anyone in Russia would be grateful for. But earlier on, Gorbachev had already put an end to these practices.

We now have a prototype of a multi-party system, and that is indeed an achievement. But it is a fragile one that could be destroyed if the threat to stop holding elections by party lists is actually carried out.

The country's laws now recognize local self-government, but the federal authorities, in abolishing local taxes, have sentenced it to extinction.

Everything that at some point or another could have been called an achievement of the Yeltsin era -- a stable currency, the banking system, an emerging middle class -- have proved to be so many soap bubbles, burst in an instant. Does that mean a new government would have to start over from scratch? No. Starting from scratch would not work anyway, we are no longer in 1991, and in many respects, the country has actually lost ground compared to back then.

One need only turn to the statistics. Russia's GDP shrank by half between 1990 and 1998, the share of gross savings in the GDP fell by one-half, and investment in capital assets tumbled by a factor of four. New housing construction was down, with 30.3 million square meters in 1998 compared to 49.4 million sq. m. in 1991. The ratio of the average wage to the subsistence minimum, a crucial indicator, stood at 3.16 in 1992, and was down to 1.48 in the first quarter of 1999. Life expectancy decreased from 69 years in 1991 to 66 in 1998.

Then take small business, an economic and social force in any capitalist society. Small business forms the backbone of the middle class and is the ferment for normal market development. The best conditions were in place for small business development on the eve of the Gaidar-Chubais reforms, and were then destroyed by those very same reforms. The hyperinflation of 1992 wiped out the first entrepreneurs who rode the cooperative movement wave of '80s. That was followed by a privatization program that saw property going not to those who could buy it from the state and manage it effectively, but to those who, through vouchers, could snap it up at fraudulently low prices, taking advantage of legal loopholes, official power or ties to power.

This opinion piece by liberal economist Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the Yabloka political movement, originally appeared in Obshchaya Gazeta [photo: The Russia Journal]

The consequences are there for all to see. The economic sectors that kept the entire Soviet Union going for an extra 15 years despite an appallingly inefficient economy are now pots of gold monopolized by a mere few thousand people. It is precisely these "super rich" who constitute today's warring clans that fight it out for power at the top.

Transforming this monopolistic, oligarchic capitalism into a civilized democracy will prove far more difficult than transforming Soviet society as it was in 1990. For a start, the state no longer has the same resources it had then to reform the economy and foster the development of a middle class. Once again, the state will have to resort to primarily political measures to promote free competition on the market, collect taxes, keep criminal elements out of the economy and enforce bankruptcy procedures against ineffective owners.

Second, today's oligarchs have little in common with perestroika-era Soviet monopolies. Soviet monopolies could only have dreamed of having the kind of political clout wielded by today's oligarchs.

Third, and perhaps most important, public confidence in democratic and market reform has reached a critical low.

When Yeltsin came to power, there was no real opposition, either communist or nationalist, to democratic reform. The Yeltsin years have breathed new life into a communist movement that has grown and become better organized. As for Russia's fascists, they can thank Yeltsin for their emergence as an active political force and for their swelling ranks.

At the beginning of the '90s, Yeltsin inherited from Gorbachev a country that was coming apart at the seams, but that had maintained intact an administrative system. The federation subjects were ready to swallow sovereignty as greedily as they could, but the Kremlin, it turned out, did not know where to draw the line between greater autonomy and total loss of federal authority.

The federal authorities are today unable to fully guarantee observance of fundamental civil rights in the regions or to ensure a common legal and economic framework for the country. They cannot control even their own representatives in the regions. Regional governors have taken control of regional prosecutor's offices, Interior Ministry and other Ministries' local departments.

Boris Yeltsin is personally responsible for the direction the country has taken. Half-baked economic reforms can be blamed on the "young reformers," biased legal specialists can be blamed for the flaws in the constitution, but responsibility for Russia's drift into feudalism sits squarely on the president's shoulders. He is the one who, in return for political loyalty, closes his eyes to the way regional feudal lords make a mockery of citizens' rights, the law and the authority of the state. It is no coincidence that the Kremlin is so welcoming of alliances between the governors in the run-up to elections that will reduce federal presence in the regions to zero.

There is much talk these days about the possible break-up of Russia. The break-up of a state can be a lengthy, gradual and initially barely perceptible process. I take responsibility for asserting that the Yeltsin era is a time of just such gradual collapse. The economy has collapsed, bankrupting the country. The state has disintegrated into a confederation of feudal principalities. Society has decayed, sinking into crime and moral decadence.

It is not Yeltsin's system that has come apart, Yeltsin never built a system. It is the Soviet system that has collapsed. The task facing Russia's first president was to check the disintegration of the old system and begin building a new system of political, economic and social relations in its place. But to achieve this, not just a man was needed (not even as imposing a man as Yeltsin was), nor even just a politician. A statesman was needed, and Yeltsin could never lay claims to that title. Yeltsin was skilled at the art of acquiring and keeping hold of power, but he never knew what to actually do with it. Such a president could not stop the process of collapse, and that explains why all his attempts to build something stable were swept aside by the ongoing disintegration that continued on its own momentum.

Today, he is falling victim to his organic inability to think like a statesman. Having failed to create a stable political or legislative system, he finds himself hostage to the unpredictable logic of events. No one in Russia today, not even the president, can guarantee that the current regime, its laws and constitution won't be overturned by opposition forces.

In this highly unstable situation, the Kremlin seeks at all costs to keep Yeltsin in power as the only guarantee of personal survival. To save their own hides, Kremlin strategists will go to great lengths, from a crazy union with Belarus to handing over parcels of the country to regional barons or letting criminal clans take control of the country's financial flows.

But there are still glimmers of hope on the horizon. The elections, for a start. Of course, no one can guarantee for sure that they will be held lawfully and on time, but that is the concern of politicians and political parties. The priority for politicians now is to ensure that nothing stops the country from using the elections to bring new forces to power that would stop the process of disintegration and open a new page in Russia's history.

But the ultimate outcome depends not so much on the politicians as on the voters. At the end of the millenium, Russia is being given one last chance to enter the twenty first century as a great and independent nation with a culture to be proud of. All hope lies with the reason and good will of Russia's people.