By Dmitry Furman

        Just one remark to begin with: When we speak about missed opportunities, we usually mean good opportunities that have been missed. This is the wrong approach. At any given moment of the country's history — like in a life of an individual — there are a whole range of opportunities, only one of which becomes reality. Usually, it is neither the best nor the worst one.

Russia's opportunities during the past 10 to 15 years has been relatively few. In 1985, when perestroika began, Russia was a mature organism whose national psychology, memory of its past and habits had already been formed. It was not a baby that could be brought up again. Nonetheless, it had certain choices.

If our history since Mikhail Gorbachev could be considered a gamble, we hit the jackpot in the beginning. The Soviet power was doomed. But the collapse of the Soviet power could have taken various forms. When Gorbachev emerged at the top and consistently, for six years, dismantled the system, it was with a lot of luck that one of the most improbable opportunities came true.

For example, when the Russian monarchy collapsed, such an opportunity was not realized. In theory, Nicholas II could have been the person to lead the country to a constitutional government and the story of Russia would have been different and, most likely, better. But that did not happen.

Six years of Gorbachev's reforms had to a large extent prepared the people for the fall of the totalitarian regime. That we still have many achievements of democracy, I believe, is largely due to those years of preparation.

Could Gorbachev have stayed in power? He could have, but only at the expense of a radical slowdown or even complete freeze of the democratic process. I think that would have been a better opportunity than the one that was realized, because slow progress, even a stop on the way forward, is better than a rapid leap backward. A revolutionary achievement of freedom by an unprepared country leads to a loss of that freedom. Tyrannies brought to life in such a way are usually worse than the old regimes. The "semi-constitutional monarchy" of 1905-1917 was not a democracy, but it was immeasurably better than the tyranny that took hold after the short-lived freedom of 1917. Six years of Gorbachev rule were the preparation without which the downfall of Soviet power could have become a real catastrophe. If this preparation had lasted 20 years, it would have been better still.

However, there was one opportunity that definitely did not exist at all. I cannot imagine Gorbachev leading an absolutely unprepared country to a real democracy. At best, he could have created a "semi-democratic" regime with a renamed Communist Party as the only ruling party with weak right-wing and left-wing oppositions that gradually carried out market reforms and dismantled the Soviet Union. In that case, we could have avoided much blood and disillusionment. The privatization process would have been slower but less of a robbery. Less of the population would have been The impoverished. By now, we would have been somewhat closer to the democratic norm. But we would still not be a full-fledged democracy. We would still need some transition crisis to a real democracy, although it could have been milder after such preparation.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party — with a total absence of civil society, developed parties, democratic traditions, with people used to blindly obeying the authorities — inevitably led to presidential authoritarianism. In addition, the new Russian authorities from the very beginning — the Belovezhskaya Pushcha agreement of December 1991 — conflicted with the aspirations of the majority of the population.

Of course, somebody "more decent" than Boris Yeltsin could have popped up and we could have avoided the bloody coup of 1993. Some conflict between president and parliament was inevitable. It was conceived by the unclear separation of legislative and executive powers inherited by the new Russian state from the Soviet Constitution. It could have been worse than it was. But under any scenario, we would have shifted to an authoritarian presidency. When power is seized by a group of people who are restrained by neither party discipline nor democratic procedures — by nothing at all — the privatization process could not have turned into anything but the plundering of state property and accompanied by the radical pauperization of the people.

Perhaps I lack imagination, but I don't see any major opportunities for a completely different development, and I don't think that the worst opportunity has become a reality. For example, we thankfully avoided many possible conflicts with the former "brotherly" nations.

Of course, some of the relatively favorable opportunities have been missed as well.

For example, not so long ago we had an opportunity to elect to the top post — for the first time in Russia's history — a person not appointed from above. That would have definitely moved us a great deal toward democracy. When Yeltsin did not choose a successor for a long time, the elite began to organize itself and nominated a candidate in the form of Yevgeny Primakov. If the circumstances had been slightly different — say Primakov was a different kind of man or Yeltsin postponed his choice even further —we would have had two candidates from the "party of power" and something very close to democratic elections.

Apart from this unlikely opportunity, any Yeltsin appointee would have become president. Our party system and political watersheds are such that any opposition candidate, right or left, is a greater evil for the majority of the population than the candidate from the party of power, no matter how much this majority disdains the authorities. Such is the political culture and psychology of the majority formed by all of our history — both the tsarist and Communist regimes, its memory of the brief period of freedom and uncertainty that led to the victory of the Bolsheviks, Civil War and terror. Our majority always prefers the certainty of powers-that-be to the uncertainty of freedom.

That is why the real struggle for power was not during the election as such but during the court intrigues surrounding the successor's appointment. This struggle was real and its outcome was open.

What would be different if we had another president today? Not much. President Vladimir Putin, I think, is not the best opportunity but not the worst one either. Of course, he introduced some "style" changes (both good and bad) into the politics and history of our country. But the main thing is what any successor to Yeltsin would have done: Putin is putting the system "in order," trying to make it more manageable and fighting the forces born by the revolution: separatism, autonomy of regional authorities and oligarchs. And Putin is gradually distancing himself from the revolutionary past while establishing his power as a "normal," traditional Russian power.

Obviously, the present regime based on the succession of presidential power, which is then subjected to approval at the polling stations, is not eternal. It is one of many transitional, "semi-democratic" regimes that emerge in countries which are psychologically and culturally unprepared for democracy but don't have ideological alternatives. Ultimately, a crisis is inevitable that will bring around another range of opportunities and serve as a bridge to a real, "alternative" democracy.

But that will not happen before the presently active generation passes away.

History professor Dmitry Furman is a senior research fellow at the Institute of European Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This comment is an excerpt of an article that first appeared in the Rodina historical magazine.