The New Nation - Internet Edition

Dr.Abdul Ruff

The author of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (reform) in Soviet Russia and the last Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is planning to return to active politics. Mikhail Gorbachev and his close business partner Alexander Lebedev, a maverick ex-KGB officer turned Russian billionaire banker are founding a new political entity, the Independent Democratic Party (IDP), as an opposition group which is scheduled to make its debut in the 2011 State Duma elections. The two men are already partners in the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Gorbachev, now 77, and Lebedev, who is 48, have become close after taking over a 49 percent stake in Novaya Gazeta, Russia's last genuinely opposition newspaper.

As a billionaire ranked the 358th richest man in the world last year by Forbes Magazine, Lebedev belongs to the unpopular caste of oligarchs - even if he is less hated than most of his peers. Lebedev has an interesting background that combines KGB, Ph.D. and CEO on one resume. Now holding significant stakes in several banks and Aeroflot, Lebedev's doctoral dissertation was titled "The Problems of Debt and the Challenges of Globalization." He left the intelligence services with the rank of lieutenant colonel and immediately did so well in the private sector that he was tagged "the spy who came in for the gold."

Even after quitting his political and government offices, he continues to play active role in Russia. Otherwise busy with socio-political activities at home and lecture tours abroad, Gorbachev is keen to reinvigorate his openness agenda in politics and fight corruption in society and government apparatus. Both are preoccupied with plans for a future Russia.

A widely respected statesman, the Nobel peace laureate Gorbachev backed the Kremlin's position over last month's war with Georgia, however, he attacked the official tendency to resort to Cold War rhetoric and says that the West is 80 per cent responsible for the breakdown of relations with Russia. However, blamed for causing the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev is widely reviled in Russia.

Gorbachev has championed freedom of speech in a country where journalists are frequently harried or even killed for opposing the authorities and he has conspicuously avoided direct criticism of Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister. But he also insisted that his party would not be a toothless cipher and would be prepared to criticize Putin when necessary. By his own admission, Lebedev says his party will be the "polite" opposition, eschewing the firebrand tactics of former chess champion Garry Kasparov's The Other Russia movement, which was banned from contesting last year's parliamentary election. The Kremlin was not very tolerant of other such challengers in the 2007 Duma election and the 2008 presidential election, when the price of oil was high and the world economy stable.

While Gorbachev is more likely to play a role as elder statesman in the party, Lebedev could emerge as its leader. He already sits in the Duma with a Kremlin-created opposition party, A Just Russia. However, he is prepared to list things that he believes Putin got wrong in his eight years as president and which his party will seek to reverse. He even attacked Putin's decision to end the practice of electing regional governors and criticized his administration's failure to reform the judiciary. He also condemned the violent manner in which police disrupted rallies by The Other Russia, while expressing his personal antipathy for Kasparov and his colleagues.

Unable to successfully overcome the anti-communist strategies of US-led capitalist countries to end communism as one of two key threats to its supremacy (the other is Islam) and to do anything about rampant corruption in Soviet society and overwhelm the Soviet citizens with more creative ways, Gorbachev did away with communism in Russia. His successor Boris Yeltsin also tried his best bring Russia closer to the Western civilization, but miserably failed, mainly because of the unipolar policies and unilateral actions of USA. Gorby criticized Yeltsin for his flawed rule of new Russia. However, he somewhat favored Vladimir Putin for his economic endeavors, although he killed thousands of freedom fighting Chechens.

As a usual strategy of the US-led West to contain Russia and restrain its global influence, Western media have been harping on the return of authoritarianism in Russia. Although there are already rumors in Moscow that this IDP party will be used by the government as a sort of Potemkin village of democracy, this is no doubt only the Russian weakness for operatic hyperbole that thrives in a vacuum of trust and reliable information.

It's perfectly possible that the Independent Democratic Party will prove a quixotic venture. Fearing their own proclivities to larceny and anarchy, Russians may decide that democracy is at best a dubious luxury for a generation or so. But even if this new party does not perform especially well in the next Duma elections, its real importance lies elsewhere. As much as anything, Russia needs institutions and examples that feel homegrown, not imported from USA. The Independent Democratic Party can provide an example of what a political party can be. The other Gorbachev-Lebedev venture, Novaya Gazeta, is an example of what a free newspaper can be. It was not, however, the co-owners of the newspaper who faced danger but its journalists, like Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered two years ago.

Although widely respected in Russia and abroad for his broad visions, Gorbachev as a politician remains unpopular in Russia. He received less than 1 percent of the vote in the 1996 presidential election, and he probably wouldn't have done any better if he ran in 2008. If he were truly popular at home and had a solid power base, that might put him and his new party in jeopardy. Chess champion Garry Kasparov can be dismissed with a few bureaucratic dirty tricks, but someone like former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had a real power base, had to be dealt with more radically. So, in an odd way, Gorbachev's unpopularity at home can buy him some time to build his political structure.

Conversely, the fact that Gorbachev remains famous and respected outside of Russia could also contribute to the success of his venture. It is one thing to move against Kasparov, darling of The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker, but quite another to move against the statesman who presided over the Soviet Union's soft landing and received a Nobel Peace Prize. The scrutiny of the world media makes direct attacks less likely, especially after witnessing the capital flight that occurred after Russia's defeat in the court of public opinion following its victory in the Georgian war.

The focus of IDP party's opposition is likely to be in the financial sphere, where he accused the government of failing to improve infrastructure and spending too much money on defense and extraneous projects like the 2014 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Russia. Yet even on these issues he refuses to blame Putin entirely. How marketable the duo is to the Russian public, 88 percent of whom approve of Putin according to opinion polls, is a matter for some doubt.

Russia under Putin and Medvedev would not like to tolerate any steps that would undermine the importance of Russia in international arena or affect adversely its economy and both are seen gearing up Russia to reengage the world as an emerging super power. In this context, Gorbachev's role in cleansing Russian polity to some extent is surely undeniable, even though he could not make Russia totally free form all evils. His continued participation in political and poll processes keep the fields some what free from any possible extreme authoritarian trends in Russia.

Gorbachev and Lebedev deserve applause for creating a new political party in a hostile climate, but the best tribute the outside world can pay them is to keep a sharp eye on that party's fate in the Russia of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev.

Gorbachev is to be commended for his genuine courage because he is knows too well his party cannot come to power in Russia and the Kremlin hardly takes a more-the-merrier attitude toward political parties other than the dominant United Russia and the tolerated Communist Party. Of course, this new party poses little real threat to the status quo, thanks to soft politicking being engaged in by former and the last General Secretary of Soviet Union. The Kremlin can be expected to be even less tolerant in times of shock and volatility, when suddenly nothing seems solid or sure. Gorby is not unaware of all these emergencies of Russia. And he is not too keen to be back in power which he himself had decided to leave voluntarily in 1990s.