Editorial: Remembering one fall and watching the other

It was twenty years ago this week that the Kadinsky family was visiting distant relatives in Leningrad. Midnight sun illuminated the eerily silent streets. News shows were censored in favor of endless repeats of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The writing on the wall was clear. A coup was underway in Moscow.

The Kadinskys were not refuseniks, they were unassuming secular Soviet citizens. A couple with stable jobs and two sons, residing in a modern apartment complex on the western edge of Riga, Latvia. The conservative coup failed, and what remained of the Soviet perestroika government gave way to separatism and nationalism. The predictability of Soviet life transformed into the freedom and instability of capitalism. With support of relatives in New York, the Kadinsky family immigrated to the New World. But to this day, they share the view of many Russian émigrés declaring, “United States did not win the Cold War. Russia lost it. Russia defeated itself.”

This week, the same occurred in Libya, where high-ranking members of the Gadhafi regime defected to join protesters, asking for western air cover, while careful to warn against the use of ground forces. The image of soldiers expressing brotherhood with civilians is akin to the image of babushkas in Moscow baking bread for the tankists, urging them not to follow through on the coup. The leadership of Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who served as Gadhafi’s Minister of Justice, is akin to Boris Yeltsin, a card-carrying communist for 29 years before he took up the tricolor banner of post-Soviet Russia.

Now comes the difficult part. Americans cheered on post-Soviet Latvia as a beacon of democracy. But this Baltic republic took on a nationalist tone that denied citizenship to 15 percent of its residents, ethnic minorities branded as postwar Soviet settlers. SS veteran parades marched through the medieval old city of Riga. By the same token of freedom, a Chabad school also opened up in the city, as did a McDonald’s franchise. Eventually, citizenship and pensions were eventually restored to many “Soviet settlers,” SS veteran parades were vigorously condemned, and Latvia became more worthy of its image as a democracy. Not so much for neighboring Russia.

Which leaves questions on Libya. How are the relations between its Arabs, Tuaregs and Berbers? How much will Islam influence the legal frame work? Will Libya become a nation-state like Turkey, or a fragmented state of autonomies as Iraq and Lebanon? Is Abdel-Jalil the next Vaclav Havel, or a Libyan variant of Vladimir Putin? Will the victorious rebels remain pro-American, or turn into a postwar enemy, as in the Taliban example? Who will be running in the country’s first free election?

All of this remains to be seen, but for now, the Libyans should take pride. They pulled it off. With experienced leaders, trained fighters, and limited international support. Libya had defeated itself. But it won a victory in self-respect, finally toppling the laughingstock buffoon who kept the country in isolation. Look over your shoulders, Kim Jong Il and Bashar al-Assad. No dynasty reigns forever.