The next Russian revolution: Dismemberment may be Russia's fate, and only a strong extremist leader will put it back together again, warns Peter Reddaway

Each week it becomes harder not to feel a deep foreboding about Russia's future. The many warnings that Russians themselves - including Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin - have issued since 1989 about trends towards breakdown, fragmentation, anarchy and civil war sound steadily more real. True, last month's Congress of People's Deputies just avoided becoming the brawl it threatened to turn into at one point. But the cost was postponing painful decisions and weakening Mr Yeltsin to the point where Mr Gorbachev's charge that he is 'losing his grip' rang true.

It is still possible to sketch a more hopeful scenario for the future, based on the legendary stoicism of Russians in the face of chaos and deprivation. And we can be certain that the heroic efforts made in recent years to develop businesses, build democratic institutions, strengthen religious freedom and foster a free culture will not have been entirely wasted.

In the short run, however, the odds are overwhelmingly against success. First, Russia's rebirth as an independent state came much too suddenly. Society was not ready, and the environment was not favourable. The 14 other countries created by the break-up of the Soviet Union were politically unstable and full of both anti-Russian resentments and large cohorts of Russian expatriates. Three of the new states - Moldova, Tajikistan and Georgia - soon descended into civil war, while others, notably Uzbekistan, became dictatorships, and two more - Armenia and Azerbaijan - stepped up the intensity of their war against each other.

Second, in October 1991, Mr Yeltsin committed the fatal mistake of maximalism. To the already incipient revolutions in politics and society he added the unrealistic goal of transforming a deeply entrenched socialist economy into a capitalist one in a couple of years, although most of the political and cultural prerequisites for success - especially a national consensus - were absent. To conduct three wrenching revolutions simultaneously would have produced overload in the best of circumstances. But the Russians were deeply divided about all three. They were also traumatised by a succession of humiliations and upheavals: their military defeat in Afghanistan, the collapse of their imperial buffer zone in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of their 'internal empire', the trends to disintegration in Russia itself and the increasing hardship of daily life, caused by economic decline.

In launching the three revolutions, Mr Yeltsin's government was good at destroying many of the old institutions and symbols. Without a national consensus about the future, however, it failed to create viable alternatives. This bred growing popular feelings of insecurity, fear and despair. In the economy, for example, the system of running everything from the centre was largely destroyed, but too few elements of a genuine market appeared in its place. There were no bankruptcies, real incomes went down by 50 per cent in six months, unemployment remained very low, production plummeted and prices failed to fall.

In politics, Mr Yeltsin compounded his mistake over shock therapy by failing to turn his popular support into a usable political base by appeasing, not replacing, the conservative, largely Communist, parliament and by putting too many eggs in the wobbly basket of Western aid. He came to look more and more like the Gorbachev of 1990-91. Last month he was repeatedly defeated and humiliated by the conservative majority of the Congress, an institution with a popular approval rating of 54 that is responsible, in practice, to no one. He lost his Prime Minister, Yegor Gaidar, he lost his special powers, he lost the right to appoint key ministers without parliamentary approval, he lost his closest political allies by removing them from their posts in return for loose assurances of support from the 'Civic Union' group of disunited centrists, and he lost when he demanded a quick referendum on whether the people trusted him or the parliament. Instead, he was forced to agree to a referendum in April on the basic principles of Russia's long-delayed, post-Communist constitution. This exercise may well end up resolving nothing.

The parliament is rivalled in unpopularity by Mr Yeltsin's administration, which is increasingly tainted with corruption and lacks even minimal unity and cohesion. The Vice-President, Alexander Rutskoi, regularly denounces the President's policies. The Minister of Defence, Pavel Grachev, widely seen as incompetent, presides over a military in serious decay. Pervasive draft evasion and desertion are producing a shrunken army with many chiefs and few Indians. Army personnel will quietly sell almost any equipment to anyone. Morale is also low among the government's supporters.

It is a situation reminiscent of 1917, where political divisions are profound, centrifugal tendencies strong and economic conditions critical. In such circumstances the overriding need is for a leadership that will have strong, legitimate authority, a viable plan for reversing the negative trends and an ability to work well with provincial leaders. Tragically, Russia does not today have such a leadership - nor, at present, the prospect of obtaining one. Through assault and battery, the parliament and its crafty, strong-arm speaker, Ruslan Khasbulatov, have gained inordinate power over the administration, thus paralysing government and deepening the conviction of the provinces that they must seek their salvation elsewhere.

The only hope of perhaps producing a viable government would seem to lie in new elections for both the parliament and the presidency. But such elections are not required by law for two and three more years respectively, and neither Mr Yeltsin nor the Congress appears to relish the risk of facing an apathetic and hostile electorate. An alternative much touted by pro-Yeltsin ministers and others would be to abandon the democratic revolution - for a time, at least - and impose authoritarian rule through a state of emergency. In the view of Yuri Skokov, a senior, hardline member of the administration, however, even Mr Yeltsin's much-less-drastic plan of insisting on a quick referendum 'could lead only to general chaos and the disintegration of Russia'.

The present government seems unlikely to get anywhere. Its members span much of the political spectrum, with their centre of gravity at present in the middle but likely to move - with the probable ousting of the Foreign Minister, Andrei Kozyrev, to the centre-right. The centrist Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, favours some probably unfeasible recentralisation of the economy, such as his recently announced price controls on food, while the more liberal director of economic strategy, Boris Fyodorov, will pull in the opposite direction. If this produces both deepening hyperinflation and mounting unemployment, then the government will surely fall. At that point it is hard to see where Mr Yeltsin could turn, except farther to the right, since the democratic left has lost its credibility through its sponsorship of shock therapy.

Some influential rightists see this scenario as probable and are adjusting their tactics accordingly. Instead of impeaching Mr Yeltsin, as they previously demanded, they now say they will strip him of all real power but keep him as a figurehead, at least for a time. But they are also aware of their as yet very limited public support, and of Russia's fragility, and admit that they, too, may prove unable to rule the country effectively. The future may therefore see a succession of weak governments in Moscow, exercising less and less control over the regions. This could easily change, though, if one such government, frustrated by the permanent gridlock and enraged by Russia's endless humiliation, tried to impose a dictatorship by force. Then the country would break up and, as between 1918-21, a brutal civil war could all too easily ensue.

How frayed, then, are the ties that still hold most of Russia together? Economically, they are weakening rapidly. The provinces pursue policies without consulting Moscow, and send Moscow as few taxes as possible. Legally, while implementing only a small proportion of Moscow's decrees and laws, they have recently passed 16,000 acts that violate federal statutes. Politically, provincial leaders make cosy arrangements with local police and military units, often depriving Moscow of effective control over them. Like their Moscow colleagues, some of them work with factory directors and 'mafia' elements to acquire state assets for themselves, thus causing ordinary people to reckon that not only political but also economic power is mostly in the hands of the more flexible section of the Communist elite (ie, more or less where it was before).

In the ethnic republics many politicians appeal for popular support by espousing anti-Russian secessionism. In the north Caucasus, the example of the Chechens' unpunished secession could lead to the whole region, with five million inhabitants, moving even more out of Moscow's control than at present. Meanwhile, the unconstitutional but successful declaration of independence by the Tatars increases the danger that the Bashkirs, Chuvash and others will follow suit, and that Russia will be virtually cut in half. In that case, flourishing independence movements of Siberia may seize their chance and, as they did 75 years ago, form their own republics. The sinews of the Russian state are weak and becoming weaker.

They will not, alas, be helped by Russia's relations with the outside world. While Western assistance will hopefully mitigate some difficulties, Russia's immediate neighbours are likely to have a much bigger and mainly negative influence. Since most of these states are as unstable as Russia itself, Russia is likely to be drawn constantly into armed conflicts within them and between them, as has already happened in Moldova, Tajikistan, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. If this trend escalates, Russia could be fighting wars on behalf of its many expatriates while its own provinces secede from it in disgust.

If these pessimistic speculations prove to be somewhere near the mark, and Russia in the next year or two fragments, the consequences would be serious for many countries. And probably not only in the short term. The most likely thing to reunite a dismembered and humiliated country is a powerful political movement with an extremist ideology. This, in the form of Bolshevism, is what reunited most of Russia in 1921. In 1996 or so, extreme Russian nationalism might perform this function. If so, for as long as it remained in power, not only anti-Westernism , but also Serbian-style 'ethnic cleansing', so admired by Russia's hard right, would probably be on the agenda.

The writer is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs

at George Washington University, Washington DC.