Parliament is expected to approve a bill "On the Public Chamber", February 18. As the bill has it, the chamber will have a membership of 126. President Vladimir Putin is to appoint an initial 42. These will co-opt an equal number of national public leagues' spokesmen. The 84 will next elect another 42 to represent regional and interregional organizations.
The Public Chamber will certainly not replace civil society. One swallow does not make a summer-but summer will never come in, if not for the little bird's appearance. As the Kremlin is setting up the chamber, it gropes for sprouts of the civic spirit throughout the country. Will the Civil Congress help the Kremlin or stand aside? That was what the debates were about.
The discussion turned out an utter failure. A majority on the gathering thought too high of their reputation to admit that they would ever come together with the President-appointed people, whom they evidently considered disreputable. To enter the Public Chamber merely to quit later, and bang the door as loudly as possible, was the greatest compromise the debaters offered. "Involvement on the chamber will do tremendous damage to civil society," warned Gary Kasparov, world chess champion and the most dynamic, for today, of Russian democratic activists.
Characteristically, no one of the congress people appeared to have even the slightest doubt of being the cream of the nation, and Russian public conscience personified. Thus, Valeri Borschev, Social Partnership foundation president, had objections even to Leonid Roshal's Public Chamber membership, says the Commersant, influential Moscow-based daily.
The community activist was referring to Dr. Roshal, renowned pediatrician who bravely attended to hostages at the terrorist-seized theatre in Moscow's Dubrovka Street, and was rescuing hostage kids in the Beslan school two years later. Reader's Digest recently made him Man of the Year for Europe.
The same old story repeats in Russia, century in, century out. Diametrically opposed historical personages alone stay in the public memory. Today's archetypal Russian of whatever education remembers Emperor Nicholas I as evil incarnate, and Decembrist revolutionaries as paragon of good.
As things really are, the greatest contribution to the national cause comes from moderates who care about their country's destiny more than about their own reputation, and who are not so finicky as to shun whatever contact with the powers-that-be. Count Speransky might be accused of excessive compromises-but it was he who brought the Russian legislation into full conformity with the highest European standards, and found Nicholas I's enthusiastic support for his efforts. Now, the high-minded Pestel his contemporary, a revolutionary martyr, stooped to profiteering on army breeches! Hundreds of unassuming petty officials worked in the numerous local landholding councils during the reign of the same big bad Nicholas I to clear the road for serfdom abolished under his successor to the throne, Alexander II. We can quote an endless number of similar instances.
Meanwhile, the people who think themselves Russia's best are loath to promote evolution, just as their likes were loath in the past. Every time they choose the revolutionary way. Now, they are finding fault with the Public Chamber even before it is established. As for the Orange Revolution, it has won their boundless enthusiasm. These people think it is right a thousand times in each of its moves, though the Ukrainian revolution is only budding, and no one can be sure what will come of it.
We Russians came through similar moods. We all know what they brought-the revolutionary bloodshed of 1917. Are we to do it all over again, as the fiery chess champ is calling? Or shall we do better to recall a warning by Alexander Galich, unforgettable bard and dissident? "Shun the one who says, 'I know what to do!' more than anyone else," he called.
The Kremlin does not know what to do, to all appearances. Why not help it for the start, even on the Public Chamber, despite all our prejudice against it?
