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Culture Recent Post World August 17, 2024

History reminder: The 90′ Russian Presidential Elections

Photo: mediafax.ro/Ion Cristoiu

The simple browsing of the Western press is enough to convince us that, after the victory of the nationalist-communists in Russia, the West puts all its hopes in Boris Yeltsin. As long as “The Friendly Bear” is in the Kremlin—this seems to be the reasoning—we can quietly eat our portion of bread and butter from breakfast. Added to the statements made by the politicians, this unanimous conviction of the international media animates us in the thesis that the West will make hell for Boris Yeltsin not to lose the presidential elections, the real turning point of the battle for power in Russia. However, as shown a day earlier, the Russian president will be forced, taking into account the signal of the legislative election, to take into account the national nostalgia for the great Russia under the countries and no less the great Soviet Union under the prime ministers secretaries. As a result, he will go out of his way to prove to the Russians, in the short break until the presidential elections, that Russia is not a servant of the West. Given the accusations brought so far by the red-browns, as western journalists call the two victorious parties, Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky, it is more than likely that Tsar Boris will jump over the horse in an effort to prove that Moscow has a say in the lives of Europe and the world. Thanks to a predictable mechanism, he will reach exaggerated reactions and positions in his opposition to the West—reactions and positions that he would not have even thought of before the victory of nostalgia for the USSR.

Until now, he has done a lot of talking about the expansion of NATO to the east, the imposition of peace in Bosnia, and the dominance of the USA in the Near East! Let’s see what he does from now on! And the West, devastated at the thought that the good old man could be replaced by the anti-Western machine called Ghenadi Ziuganov or the anti-American madness called Zhirinovski, will no longer know how to tickle him.

The main victims of this lumping will undoubtedly be the countries of the East. As far as is known, they are dying to rush her to the West to enter, like a dog and a pig, in NATO. A state of mind that the Russians do not like at all. First of all, because, after decades of Bolshevik political-ideological education about the danger of American imperialism, the average Russian trembles when he hears about NATO. And when he is told that this NATO intends to expand to the foothills of Mother Russia, he is shocked! Secondly, there is a huge economic interest in Russia that the former communist countries do not join NATO and that they do not join the Western economic circuit.

Moscow’s stubbornness against the expansion of NATO to the East was explained, not without cynicism, by Vladimir Şumeiko, the Russian counterpart of Oliviu Gherman. His lordship said clearly, when he came to visit Bucharest, that, in the last resort, everything comes down to the issue of arms sales. The entry of the East into NATO means for Moscow the loss not only of an area of political influence but also of a profitable market for MIGs and Kalashnikovs. It is clear that the arrival of a country from the East in NATO presupposes, first of all, giving up Russian armaments in favor of Western ones. What happens in the military plan is also valid in the broader economic plan. The integration of the former communist camp into Western structures means for Russia the loss of a huge economic space. We must not forget that, above all, communism in the East was a diabolical formula for the savage economic exploitation of some European countries by the USSR.

Not by chance, taking advantage of the weaknesses of the liberal Khrushchev, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe asked Moscow in the years after Stalin’s death to loosen the suffocating economic noose. And Romania’s declaration of independence in April 1964 had its main cause in the revolt against the Valev Plan, a plan that condemned Romania to the role of an agricultural province of the USSR. After the elections in Russia, it is likely that Boris Yeltsin’s indifference against the expansion of NATO to the East will turn into the snoring of a wild horse. Will the West be able to afford to ignore him now, when, in the face of the danger represented by the possible arrival of Zyuganov or a Zhirinovsky to the Kremlin, the lesser evil called Boris Yeltsin is preferred?

By Ion Cristoiu

Source: https://www.cristoiublog.ro

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