Russian capitalism and Russian democracy: are they partners, or are they adversaries? American capitalists and democrats naturally assume that their Russian counterparts are partners. Our conception is based on two mistakes. First, democratic impulses are not nearly so rare in the Russian past as we imagine. Second, they have been distinctly hostile to competition and enterprise.
If authoritarianism has been a prominent feature of Russian life under both the czars and the Soviets, so has a populist and egalitarian kind of democracy. There are several examples. Best known was the peasant commune, the mir or obshchina, spontaneous democratic socialism at the grass roots. Ever so often the land belonging to the village commune was redivided in order to provide equality of economic opportunity for each household in the village. Second was the artel, a commercial cooperative operated in the same spirit. Third was that busybody forum which settled domestic disputes in urban housing during Stalin's time, the comradely courts. Fourth was--and still is--the somewhat obscure but fascinatingly provocative criminal society, glimpsed in most of the memoirs from the camps. Fifth, and easy to overlook given their subsequent history, were the impressive Soviets of 1905 and 1917.
