Ernest Ametistov
LL. D., Judge,
the Constitutional Court
of Russian Federation
On Freedom, Tolerance and Justice
In his speech in Riga on July 6 of this year US President Bill Clinton has called the peoples of Baltic states not to deprive others of the rights and equality which these peoples achived for themselves "because freedom without tolerance is freedom unfulfilled...".
Having said so Mr. Clinton meant the special and complicated situation of so called "Russian-speaking minority" in three Baltic states and I shall return to this question in the end of my intervention.
But first I should like to look at the problem of freedom and tolerance in a more broad aspect because this is a real and actual problem for my country and supposedly for many other post-totalitarian states. This problem in its turn leaves its imprint on the inter-state relations in Europe and other parts of the world what is the subject of our present discussion.
Indeed what are the relations, the intercommunions, the mutial dependence between freedom and tolerance? Where are the limits of these both? If freedom has won should it suppress its former and potential foes to defend and preserve itself? Who could be such foes - only individuals or also some social, political and even national groups and stratas and what means might be used against them to defend freedom? And the most important question: is there a danger of transformation of freedom into its opposite as a result of suppression of its enemies and what are the guarantees against such transformation?...
This is only a handful of the questions which arise in the frameworks of the theme.
Surely you can answer me that all these questions are as ancient as this world and the best brains of humanity have already them hundreds years ago. It's enough to remind the old truth, which it's possible to discover in all principal national and international documents on human rights, that everyone may enjoy his or her rights and freedoms until violates the same rights and freedoms of other people.
But this abstract and quite just legal and philosophical provision faces serious problems on every new stage of history and in every new country. And these specific problems insert serious corrections in the general provision. The history of my native country Russia proves this experience.
If to regard Russia in the context of the given theme this country may be named "The Land of Impunity". After more than 70 years of terrible atrocities, suppressions and crimes committed by its rulers - from the first bolshevik killers of 1917 to the August plotters of 1991 and October mutineers of 1993 - almost nobody of them was punished. What was even worse almost no one of this army of hangmen and criminals never repented in their misdeeds. By the way this the important distinction of contemporary Russia from post-totalitarian Germany which survived really total retribution and repetance...
This vicious circle of impunity reproduced new and new crimes and violations of human rights on the each new stage of Russian history. And whith the beginning of perestroika period, especially after the crash of Communism in 1991, many people of my country demanded and hoped that all crimes of the totalitarian regime would be exposed and punished and the triumph of justice would come at last.
They have made a profound mistake... True, many crimes of Communism were publicely unmasked, hundreds thousands of victims of the terror were formally rehabilitated - most of them posthumous. But there were no one trial against the KGB torturers or the Communist party corruptioners. There were no any limitations or lustrations of former rulers and functionaries. The Communist Party - the main core of the totalitarian regime which was politically responcible for all crimes comitted by this regime was prohibited only provisionally and - after the proceedings in the Constitutional Court of Russian Federation in 1992 - has renewed its activity - still with some restrictions - as one of the main groups of the political opposition. Even the leaders and active participants of both coups d'Etat - in August 1991 and October 1993 - were amnestied and their cases were stopped except one.
How to appraise this paradoxial phenomen - how just one more triumph of impunity and failure of justice or how the manifestation of true tolerance and wise political calculation?
As to me, I'm not ready to give a simple reply to this question.
As a lawyer, as a judge I'm naturally convinced that each crime must be investigated and every criminal must be punished. Surely I don't exclude amnesty and pardon but all that should be done in the strict accordance with the law and the Constitution. Therefore I regard the last amnesty of the plotters and mutineers as uncostitutional and immoral measure.
However there is a different point of view at the problem. In accordance with in the specific conditions of Russia, when there were about 20 millions members in the ruling Communist Party and nobody knows how many millions secret informers for KGB, any mass persecutions of these organisations could cause the civil war or other forms of resistence. For instance if Gorbachev's government has brought to the court the secret police officials who were responcible for the violations of law and justice during Stalin and Brezhnev times, the KGB storming troops possibly would be more determined and could suppress the defenders of Moscow White House in August of 1991. In its turn it would have meant the comlete defeat of democracy and freedom in Russia. And if the last February amnesty indeed has splitted and weakened the red-brown opposition and - as a result - contributed to the reconciliation in Russia, probably it can be justified from political and historical point of view?
In any case the Russian democracy faces this dilemma - the dilemma between justice and tolerance, civil war and civil peace - during all last years. Twice during this period - in August 1991 and October 1993 - the democratic government of Russia had all opportunities to settle accounts with its enemies, to suppress the opposition completely and establish some kind of a strong authoritarian regime like one existed in South Corea or Taiwan in sixties and seventies. Probably such decision would permit to conduct the economic and social reforms more easy, effectively and rapidly. But what would happen with democracy and freedom in Russia in the case of such course of development? And could these freedom and democracy be reestablished aftewards in specific Russian conditions and traditions? This is the question...
I think just therefore the present Russian Government has chosen another way - the way of political tolerance and democracy. Each time after the suppression of open antidemocratic plots and riots it restired all democratic institutions in their full volume. Each time it proposed a compromise and called its worst enemies to peaceful co-operation for the sake of Russian people and its future. Only history will show what it was - an unforgivable political stupidity or the example of sincere devotion to the democracy and wise political calculation. I hope for the last...
Now I'm coming back to the point where I started my intervention, to the situation of the Russian-speaking population in the independent Baltic states.
Indeed after 50 years of the Soviet occupation the demographic situation in these states, especially in Estonia and Latvia, is very uneasy. For example in Latvia the citizens of Latvian origin compose only 52,3 percent of the whole population. Other its part are people of Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and other origin or so colled Russian-speaking minority. And most of them - about 34 percent - are deprived of Latvian citizenship what means the open discrimination not only in political but in many economic and social rights.
Some of these people who now are rather aged (mostly of them are pensioners) have came as inviders and suppressors in the ranks of KGB units and Communist party bodies before and after the Second World War. They took the repressive actions against the local population, they hated and despised local people, their languages and customs, and the peoples of Baltian states have enough grounds to regard them as the enemies and colonizers.
But the great majority of non-local population was settled there not quite voluntarily but under direct or indirect compulsion - as a result of labour force allocation state policy during post war time. In this sense they also were the victims of the totalitarian regime.
Anyhow these people regard Baltian states as their homeland, many of them were born there and have no other place to live.
During the years of perestroika there was a deep political differetiation inside of Russian-speaking population of Baltic states as it was in other parts of the former Soviet Union. Many of those people - from 20 to 40 percent in different Baltian republics - supported their independence. On reaching of the independence the new governments could easily integrate those people into national communities and make them good loyal citizens of their new states. Instead of it some political forces in Estonia and especially in Latvia started the policy of alientation, discrimination and pushing out of non-local population. As a result many of former Russian-speaking supporters of democracy and independence of these states shifted towards right-wing Russian nationalist and shauvinist cicles of Zhirinovsky type. Thus unwise policy has transformed the friends into the enemies.
In this connection it's very important to take in account the relaction in Russia. The Russian right- and left-wing opposition plays the Baltian card during all last years and does it very efficiently. It would be very interesting to count how many votes the short-sighted policy of Estonian and Latvian authorities already gave to Zhirinovsky party and other antidemocratic forces during the last general elections in Deember of last year. If such policy will continue it makes a great contribution into the future election campaign of Russian nationalists and shauvinists. And in the case of their victory the independence of Baltic states will be subject of big doubt.
Therefore the time has came to realise at last the common interests and mutual dependence between Russian and Baltian freedom. Therefore it's necessary to look for a compromise.
It's possible, for example, to understand the apprehension of the Latvian parliament when it adopts the final draft of the Law on the citizenship which postpones the naturalization of the most of Russian-speaking population to the third millenium. Indeed now there is a real danger that the most of this population, if to give it the citizenship immidiatly, would vote against the Latvian independence in the case of a possible referendum. But at first such orientation of this population, as I told earlier, is the direct result of the stupid discrimination policy. At the second, it's not yet late to finish with this discrimination. It could be done by the adoption of a good Law on foreigners and persons without citizenship. Such Law should give them full equality in all rights and freedoms except the right to participate in general (but not in local) election. Especially important to stop any discrimination in the economic, labour and other social rights which is now very painful for Russian-speaking people. This approach for sure could satisfy all sides and appease the common situation in the country and around it.
In the conclusion I should like to develop President Clinton's thought from which I started to say that if there is no freedom without tolerance, there is no tolerance without compromise. The compromise between states, nations, people, between freedom, politics and justice. And almost always such compromise is the choice between two evils - more and less - do we like it or not.
MRA, 1996.
