In 1991, policy evolved from a different starting point, but ended up in the same place. The economic and political models that the 19 91 reformers set about introducing, market economics and liberal democracy, were Western models. The intention was explicitly for Russia to join the West. Gorbachev regularly spoke of the 'Common European Home'.
But again Russian patterns reimposed themselves. In the chaotic and demoralised circumstances of the 1990s, liberal democracy in Russia couldn't be made to work, and the transition to market economics was accompanied by social and material catastrophe. The result, accentuated by a series of Western 'humiliations' of Russia (most notably the expansion of NATO), was a sharp resurgence of Russian nationalism. The regime searched for a 'Russian' response to these pressures. It revived Orthodoxy, emphasised patriotism, and stood increasingly firmly (most notably in Georgia and Ukraine) against what it now saw as the predatory aims of the West.
Both revolutions, of 1917 and of 1991, were on behalf of universal values that ended up taking on some very traditional Russian features. In both cases Russia's foreign policy after an initial radical disturbance reverted to its familiar form. The key drivers have again become intense nationalism, fear of Western dominance and determination to protect a Russian sphere of influence. After the high hopes of 1991 the West has had some difficulty adjusting to this. One wonders if the outcome could ever have been different.
D] THE AUTHORITARIAN IMPULSE
The fourth obvious parallel between 1917 and 1991 is that in both cases a powerful social movement intent on democratising Russia led the country, via a period of chaos, back to authoritarianism. The story of 1917 has been traced in detail in the above chapters. As I have argued here, while Bolshevism was not the inevitable outcome of the chaos around 1917, the most likely alternative was not democracy but some other (probably right-wing) authoritarian regime. Russia's democratic tradition was too weak, and its democratic politicians too feeble, to be able to surmount the crisis. The perceived need for dictatorship (already being plotted even before Nicholas II fell) would almost certainly have become irresistible.
In the years after 1991, like the second act of a Beckett play, the same drama played itselfout in paler form. The dissolution ofthe Soviet Union left a truncated Russia in a state of social disorder, economic collapse, civil war (in Chechnya), and with entirely untested governmental institutions. One key difference from 1917 was that Yeltsin, as directly elected president, had the democratic legitimacy that the 1917 Provisional Government had lacked. But even so he was forced into an increasingly dubious set of expedients (sending the tanks in against the Russian Parliament in 1993, 'buying' the election of 1996) in order to maintain power. The way was thus paved for the installation at the end of 1999 of Vladimir Putin (chosen in the expectation that he would be 'Russia's Pinochet') as Yeltsin's successor. What followed was the imposition of an increasingly 'managed' system of government in which the press is muffled, opposition activity hampered and elections manipulated.
One particular common feature between the 1917 and 1991 experiences is worth underlining. In both cases, after the upheaval the security organs of the state took on a central role in the way Russia was subsequently run. Critics of the 1991 revolution have argued that it was the lack of any 'lustration' - clean-out of the old guard - that made the eventual authoritarian outcome significantly harder to avoid. They may be right. But it is worth noting that in 1917 the lustration could not have been more thorough, and authoritarianism (to put it mildly) nevertheless followed.
It would of course be wildly premature to conclude from the 1917 and 1991 cases that Russia is in some sense doomed to authoritarianism. But it is clear that Russia's size, unmanageability and lack of democratic traditions make it peculiarly difficult for representational government to take root and function there. Given recent Russian history, the strong Russian popular preference (regularly reiterated in opinion polls) for 'order' over 'freedom' is not hard to understand.
VI: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT?
The 1991 revolution was a massive rejection of the inheritance of 1917. Two of its most symbolic moments were the felling by a large crowd outside the headquarters of the KGB in Moscow of the Dzerzhinsky statue, and the unexpected decision by the inhabitants of what since 1924 had been Leningrad to change the name of their city back to St Petersburg. Lenin seemed dead. The next few years, famously, saw the 'End of history' with the United States dominating world affairs, and even the handful of countries which continued to describe themselves as communist in fact beginning to liberalise their economic systems - with the expectation in many minds that political liberalisation would follow. It was possible to see the 1917 revolution as profoundly important in the events it gave rise to, but, finally, one of history's great dead ends, like the Inca Empire.
Indeed, one of the key inheritances of the revolution has been negative. It has taught us what does not work. It is hard to see Marxism making any sort of comeback. As a theory of history the revolution tested it, and it failed. The dictatorship of the proletariat did not lead to the communist Utopia, but merely to more dictatorship. It also failed as a prescription for economic governance. No serious economist today is advocating total state ownership as the route to prosperity. While market economics undoubtedly has its problems, and the 2008 global crash did briefly raise Karl Marx to the top of France's non-fiction bestseller list, not the least of the lessons of the Russian Revolution is that for most economic purposes the market works much better than the state. The rush away from socialism since 1991 has been Gadarene.
The verdict on political Leninism is less definitive. Certainly the one-party state is past its prime. Following the stagnation and collapse of Soviet Communism, Western-style free market democracy looked like the only show in town. Starting in the late 1970s, and sharply accelerating after 1989, more than forty countries divested themselves of their single ruling parties. About two thirds of the world's nations are now democracies. And, in a world of vertiginously growing communication, trade and travel, there can be little prospect of resurrecting the sort of hermetically closed economy and society that underpinned the Soviet system. Even North Korea is now on the internet.
Nevertheless there is a real question about how much further the deLeninisation of the world will run. The rising tide of democracy shows signs of having reached its peak. In places (notably Russia itself) it has in fact begun to recede as regimes find ways of controlling their internal political processes while still forming part of a highly interconnected world. The most conspicuous case is of course China, still an explicitly Leninist single-party state, which, having junked Marx for the market, is now well on the way to becoming the world's largest economy and the greatest single challenge to the West's global dominance. Given the key role the USSR played in creating and shaping Chinese communist rule it is hard not to see today's China as by far the world's most significant inheritance from the 1917 revolution.