The Stolypin Project for the Russian Defense Industry

Konstantin MAKIENKO

We have already written about the economic advantages that we believe privately owned companies in the military industrial complex have. These advantages include – more effective management, the aspiration to diversify production along military-civilian output lines, a more cooperative relationship with the Russian Defense Ministry, undoubtedly greater attractiveness to foreign partners in joint projects and, most importantly, the crucial access to investment resources on the stock market that government-owned companies lack.

However, in addition to these economic advantages the private defense industry in Russia can also perform a vital social and political function, namely, serve as the right-wing conservative foundation for the modernization of the country.

The right wing and modernization

A fundamental flaw of Russian reforms in the late 20th century was that they were carried out by a bureaucracy that lacked public support, ideology and all national sentiment. The Soviet-era middle class that became the social and political foundation for the anti-Communist revolution not only failed to become a similar foundation for modernization, but also turned into one of the main victims of the reforms. The limited nature and ineffectiveness of the reform process and its enormous social price – which, despite all of the efforts of the official propaganda is tenaciously regarded by the population as the third (after the Bolshevik genocide of 1917-1937 and the terrible sacrifices in the anti-Nazi war of 1941-1945) national disaster in less than a century – were precisely the consequences of the fact that the reform had been carried out by the bureaucracy, and for the bureaucracy, which has in fact become the chief obstacle to modernization.

If the head of state were an indisputably charismatic figure, and if Russia had a store of emotional energy and social time, it would have been useful to conduct a campaign to extract big sections of the bureaucracy from the governing structures by force along the lines of the Maoist cultural revolution that paved the way to the four modernizations of Deng Xiaoping. In the absence of these conditions long-term persistent efforts are necessary to eradicate the economic foundation for government interference, i.e. the continuation of privatization.

Historical experience proves that all successful modernizations of the 20th century were either conducted by right-wing nationalists or secured by foreign military occupation. In the latter case, the modernized countries could not be called fully sovereign. Pyotr Stolypin, who delayed the triumph of the Red Menace in Russia by a decade; General Franco, who destroyed it in Spain; Mustafa Kemal Pasha, who pulled Turkey out of the pending historical oblivion; Charles de Gaulle, who put an end to the dementia France existed in after the losses of World War I - all these leaders were united by unshakeable nationalist convictions and the historic success of their undertakings.

The tragedy of the current Russian modernization lies in the absence of a regular right-wing movement. The Union of Right Forces only unconvincingly mimics a right-wing party, while, ideologically, it is, at best, a devalued equivalent of the politically bankrupt Constitutional Democrats of the early 20th century. The inextinguishable theatric nature puts it closer to the operatic socialist parties of the bourgeois regime established in Russia in February 1917. In fact, if the Communists were not genetically connected with the obsessively Russophobic Bolshevik regime, and had they the courage to denounce the Trotskyite-Leninist crimes against humanity, they would suit the role of a conservative traditionalist right-wing party much better than the liberals from the Union of Right Forces.

In the meanwhile, without an influential, publicly-supported right-wing movement, current modernization will remain incomplete at best, dooming Russia to an infinite game of playing catch-up.

Private defense industry and the right wing

The absence of serious right-wing forces in Russia probably has an objective foundation: the social base for such a movement (farmers and the national intelligentsia) had been physically destroyed. However, this also means that the entire process of reform does not have a social or political foundation, with the exception of the corrupt and collaborationist bureaucracy. Therefore, the state should actively promote the appearance of social groups interested in reform but oriented on preserving Russia's national and political identity. This would be some sort of a Keynesian project except social, rather than economic.

It must be said that Russia already had experience with such a program of positive social reform from above - the agricultural reform of Pyotr Stolypin. We find that the owners, managers and personnel of private high-tech enterprises will be a part of the social foundation of the national right-wing forces in the way that, in Stolypin's conception, peasants freed from the supervision of the rural communities were to become a conservative foundation for modernization almost a century ago. Only a part, since the high tech sector alone is not a sufficient social foundation for modernization. But, first, the private defense industry must take the initiative, consolidate its political interests and organize a united front of resistance to socialist revanchists.

It is the non-government sector of the defense industry that may become the primary social and political base of right-wing forces. Experience shows that the heads of private companies are amazingly receptive to the Russian national, cultural and religious traditions. For instance, it is the private high-tech companies that sponsor the reconstruction of Russian Orthodox monasteries in the upper reaches of the Volga, and the restoration of the Trinity St. Sergius Monastery in Sergiev Posad. Additionally, economic imperatives force non-state arms manufacturers to resolutely advocate Russia's political and technological independence. Government institutions – both bureaucratic and economic – on the contrary, demonstrate a tendency to lobby the economic interests of foreign companies and an amazing indifference to, if not scorn for, the historical fate of Russia.

Thus, the offensive of the Russian bureaucracy against the private defense industry not only has destructive economic consequences, but also signifies an attack of corrupt compradors on the advocates of social and political modernization. Resistance to this attack goes far beyond the framework of fighting for one's business, and is a part of a broader movement for the successful revival of the country and nation.