AIAA San Francisco Section Newsletter April 1996 Russia Redux The Sturdiness of History by Brenda Forman drbforman@aol.com It is a face well documented in history that once a revolution has spent its initial fervor, it will typically revert to something bearing a strong family resemblance to what went before. (For some splendid dissections of this phenomenon, read Crane Brinton,s The Anatomy of Revolution, or Simon Schama,s Citizens.) Russia is currently in the throes of its second wrenching revolution in this century. This well-documented historical dynamic therefore raises the question of what that dynamic may mean, as it plays itself out, for the future of U.S.-Russian cooperation space, and particularly the International Space Station. To be sure, pre- and post-revolutionary governments resemble but don,t duplicate each other. Nevertheless, the structure, the decision making mechanisms, the ruling elites and most particularly the governing STYLE of post-revolutionary systems bear very powerful resemblances to their predecessors. Stalin,s ruthless secret police was the direct descendant of the czarist Okhrana and his absolute, tyrannical power was precisely what both his czarist predecessors and their subjects expected of Russia,s ruler. Ditto Mao: the egalitarian firebrand leader of the early Chinese revolution inexorably transmogrified into someone eerily similar to the isolated, absolutist imperial Manchus, while the current growing alienation of the central government from the Chinese people echoes ever more clearly the political unease that gave birth to the Maoist revolution in the first place. And of course, Napoleon wasted no time in having himself crowned Emperor; Louis XVI had at least contented himself with the title of king. There are two very good reasons for the repeated subsidence into earlier patterns, though, and both are increasingly apparent in Russia today: First, after the early flush of anger and enthusiasm begins to wane, people just plain get tired on constant upheaval, flux and change. When that fatigue sets in, the standard human reaction is to return to what is familiar, regardless of whether it is, or was, pleasant. In this light, the growing romanticization among many Russians of communism and the old Soviet Union makes perfect sense. Second, the post-revolutionary ruling class is heavily recruited from its predecessor because those are the people who are accustomed to authority, who are used to running things and who know how to attain and hold power. In this light, therefore, it also makes perfect sense that some of the most powerful and successful entrepreneurs in today,s Russia are veterans of the KGB. By this early 21st Century, therefore, it is entirely possible that Russia will have stabilized into something very different from the democratic polity and free-market economy that Americans -- in their eternal conviction that the rest of the world yearns to be just like us! -- choose currently to believe. In all likelihood, power will be strongly centralized again -- because that is the only political tradition that Russia knows. Freedom of election may well be curtailed anew. Civil liberties, while probably not so ruthlessly suppressed as in czarist and Communist days, may well be under considerable pressure. And while the economy is unlikely to revert to the utter chaos and irrationality of the Soviet command economy, it is equally unlikely to turn into anything that Adam Smith would recognize. The only thing I see slowing this steady reversion to old patterns is the fact that repression and aggression alike cost money -- and the Russian state may just be too broke to afford them. We can but hope. So what might all this mean for U.S.-Russian cooperation space? For privately financed undertakings, the prospects may be troubling. A defining characteristic of a centralized autocracy is the absence of any rule of law. But without a rational legal code and a predictable judicial system, the future of business relationships resting on contractual agreements look rather murky. If cooperative undertakings are to succeed in such a context, it will require that we learn the style of secrecy, indirection and personalization that such a system demands, It remains to be seen whether Americans -- or at least, the American scientific and engineering community -- can readily learn skills so alien to their training. At the governmental level, though, the trend I,m positing may -- paradoxically -- make the International Space Station more secure than is currently the case because the station will be a powerful symbol of continued Russian technological accomplishment and a vivid embodiment of national pride. Even now, despite the fearsome budgetary pressures at work on the Russian space industry, the Russians have been careful to maintain their commitment to the station (although they have successfully asked for some rescheduling). The station,s value as an international prestige symbol, therefore may well work to consolidate rather than weaken its standing with the Russian government I expect to emerge from the post-revolutionary confusion we are witnessing today. It would indeed be ironic that the future stability of the station, conceived as a symbol of international comity and scientific freedom, should be enhanced by a decline of the values in the Russia of the next century. But history is, in general, more of a paradox than a march of progress. History is not, by and large, a happy story. But it gets a lot unhappier if we choose not to understand it.