Hide Park NC (Night Club)
November 14, 1995
"Any power is evil why, why not choose the lesser",
suggests the Justice of the Constitutional Court
Dr.Ernest Ametistov
- Ernest Mikhaylovich, we have been assured by the authorities that they are building what amounts to a rule-of-law state - a stance common people cannot but meet with a skeptical jeer. There is an overwhelming feeling of legal nihilism and lawlessness.
- Hold it! We will not get anywhere if we start with that. That sort of bon ton currently ruling in our mass media dictates that I agree with you outright and proceed in the same vain: "Well yes, our life is awful, legal system collapsed, the Law is dead" - in short, make use of the current propaganda toolbox. I will not do that, excuse me, I will disagree. Our life projects a very motley picture. It has everything in it. Poverty and opulence. Crisis in some industries and prosperity in others. Good laws and cowardly bureaucrats. Bad laws and honest judges. Selfless human rights activists and brazen politicians. And there is much more to our life except one thing - it is not monochromic, i.e. cannot be painted with just one color, black or white. Sure, if you sit indoors reading papers, listening to the radio or watching television and would not go out you may get drowned in the torrents of dirt they are regularly pouring on to the new Russia. Today it would be utterly ill-mannered to say something good about the way we are living here. A well-off man with a villa down Rublevskoye Highway and a brand-new Mercedes when asked by a journalist how he is doing would curse it uphill and down dale. He does that because it is customary and he knows all too well that this is the answer he is expected to make. So, the black propaganda of the post-communist years appears to be as far from real life as was the communist propaganda, which for so many years had been lying about the "happy" life of Soviet people. With all its drawbacks, sins and distortions the current political system has so far been the only guarantor of freedom in Russia. Should it collapse now, tomorrow all shoots of the new - market economy and free enterprise, human rights, multi-party system, independent judicial system and freedom of speech - would be crushed and eradicated.
- But the Russian intelligentsia has always been in opposition to the authorities...
- First of all, not always. Remember Soviet intelligentsia. Secondly, intelligentsia has been in opposition to totalitarian regimes, which is quite a different kettle of fish, so to say. But why bite a feeding hand? A rather prominent and relatively young journalist with legal education and a reputation of progressively minded said to me recently: "Election victory of communists is inevitable but there is nothing to worry about as they will not be able to change anything". I asked him whether he was not afraid that when they came to power he would have to say good-bye to what he held most dear in his trade - freedom of speech? "Hey, it is impossible - my counterpart exclaimed naively - We have the Law of Press and, well, we have you - the Constitutional Court!" I had to remind him of a well-known fact from our history: on October 25, 1917 Bolsheviks staged a coup d'etat and already on October 27th the armed Red Guards came to the offices of "bourgeois" newspapers and closed them. As for the Constitutional Court, we have already been notified by a deputy from a communist faction in the State Duma that "after the change of power we were to set scores". Another deputy, a communist-turned Zhirinovets (member of Zhirinovsky liberal democratic faction - a doctor of law, by the way) owed me a special honor by warning that in less than a year after they took power I would be personally done with. I know that many people seeing the current disastrous state of society are longing for a strong hand while forgetting just a little thing: when whoever representing the notorious "strong hand" comes to power never will he part with it voluntarily. Now you can yell bad things about the authorities at every corner and have a chance of changing them once in every four years while then you could only be content with voicing your discontent in the kitchen with nobody to give you a guarantee against eavesdropping.
- Is it really so valuable - freedom - in a situation when people have no money while the prices are so high?
- It is amazing how short-lived is the people's memory. In just four years they have completely forgotten about humiliating lines we had spent half of our lives in. I am still keeping a so-called "customer's visiting card" and the unused ration cards for tobacco as an ultimate sign of socialist achievements in late 80s and early 90s. And if now goods are in abundance it only means that there are folks who are constantly making use of them and these are not only "new Russians". One tenth of what our stores are currently bulging with would have been enough for them (as formerly was the case with a chain of closed currency shops servicing Soviet elite). But the trade and business are further expanding. This cannot be overlooked. Let us take another area, construction. I am not a specialist in economy, but do you call it a crisis when housing construction is booming? Look at Moscow. New houses grow like mushrooms, old mansions get renovated, churches rise from ashes. While our quasi-patriots, proponents of a stronger state, are screaming about the end of Motherland true patriots are simply doing their daily routine. Every day I go past the construction site of Christ the Savior Cathedral and watch it grow before my very eyes. And what do you say about three million square meters of apartments commissioned every year in Moscow, of which almost half are for those on a free waiting list in municipalities? Is it not worth noting? Or is it all in store for the rich only?
Now about people whose income makes the current wellbeing unaffordable. In my estimation salaries and pensions (which are not paid on a regular basis) of about 35 - 40 per cent of the population are constantly falling behind the price hikes. These people work at the state-run enterprises and collective farms that cannot remain buoyant in market economy. Some people cannot accept the new way of life due to age, or lack of faculties, or lack of resilience. The new world with all its temptations seems cruel, alien and odious to them. The poor are the main social basis for those who want to reverse the country back into the past. That is why a social care of the needy should be a top priority of a democratic state if it wants to survive.
- No wonder, they used to be taken care of in the past...
- Do not exaggerate the state care. How could one live on a pension of Rb 60- 80 that most of the old men got? Adding to the misery were bare counters that precluded buying something even for whatever little money they had. Beggars and homeless did not come from nowhere either. They were of course being constantly driven from central Moscow streets and rail stations but, for example, the word bomzh (a Russian acronym for "without fixed abode") took on back in the 60s and 70s. Life today is indeed hard, it demands taking risk and responsibility. Yet, it has one important feature about it that distinguishes it from the past: our freedom gives us the right of choice, and, first of all, the right to choose occupation and employers to your liking. Formerly, there was only one employer in this country - the state. And if you did not get on well with your manager your professional career could have been ruined forever and for good as with a reference you had there was no chance of ever getting a more or less decent job. Just remember what a humiliating procedure you had to come through to get a second job? For quite a long time it had been prohibited for certain categories of employees. Now you are free to work for, say, five different employers, if you wish. What has become really harder is to get money for doing nothing, if it is not the government you work for, of course.
- Nevertheless, the rise in crime testifies to the effect that we are in big trouble. Some prefer to evade taxes, others will readily stoop to snatching a kilo of nails, the third rob the country of hundreds of millions of dollars, the fourth contract murder while the fifth do the hit... often without punishment. Why are our laws inactive?
- In the new Russia we have not had revolutions, cleansings, or forced changes of the entire state apparatus. And this is good, as during the Soviet era we had more than enough of repression and evildoing. But such an "appeasing" approach has led to the situation when in all echelons of power there remain many of those who strongly oppose reforms and everything associated with them. Law-enforcement bodies are no exception. There are many people there who obstruct the laws out of pure political motivations. This is a typical "the worse - the better" position. But there are also other reasons why the law-enforcement bodies are so inert. Although the so-called "telephone right" (a situation when the law was often prevailed by considerations having little to do with legality) has gone in history and there are legal instruments in place to ensure independence of judges and prosecutors, can it be honestly said that they all are happy with their independence? Independence means responsibility and the guts to do what you have to - the traits not inculcated in a Soviet apparatchik. And here is a dilemma that very often a law guardian has to resolve: O.K., I will put this Mafioso or fascist behind the bars what if tomorrow they come to power, where will I be?
Yet, the current situation in our legal system is not that gloomy and the attitudes are reassuringly changing. Here is some statistics: according to the report of the Human Rights Commission the courts in 1993 only heard almost 25 thousand cases in which citizens sued the government. In the majority of complaints about the actions of government bodies or officials the court ruled in favor of citizens. Though in the opinion of the Committee the above number is insignificant compared to the total number of civil case proceedings - 400 thousand a year - I, personally, think the number is high, as some four to five years ago nobody could even dare to think of challenging the actions of authorities in court. In 1994 one of the Moscow courts satisfied the first claim against the President of the Russian Federation.
The whole structure of civil suits has changed. If formerly these were predominantly labor disputes or real estate litigation, nowadays lawsuits to protect consumers' rights, something unheard of in the past, have become a common practice, as do the lawsuits to protect honor and reputation - a rare breed just a few years ago. The lawyer's profession is likely to top the list of the most prestigious. So, something is really happening.
- Are you, Ernest Mikhailovich, not afraid of being accused as an apologist of authorities?
- No, I am not. I do not owe anything to the authorities. Since my younger days long before I managed to read Master and Margarita I have lived up to Voland' principle: do not ask anybody for anything, they will come and give you. Frankly, I did not stir my finger to become a member of the Constitutional Court. I was not even in Moscow at that time. But I admit, such thing as ideal power is Utopian. Any power is evil, though the necessary one. And you can only choose between the two evils: between the worse and the better power, between the smaller and the greater freedom.
Interviewed by
Lidia LUKIANOVA
