Instead, surprising changes have come from surprising directions. It was not the Communists but the democrats who launched a shamelessly chauvinistic campaign against Chechens in Russia and then last autumn unleashed the war in Chechnya. The Westernizer Anatoly Chubais and the fascist Aleksandr Prokhanov used the same vocabulary of militant nationalism in an effort to rally the Russian elite. With their patriotic demagogy, they easily eclipsed their pro-Communist opponents. Westerners trying to understand events in Russia are like the Japanese readers who encountered the first translation of Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers in the mid-19th century.
Westerners run similar risks in trying to read contemporary Russian politics.
Politicians adopt their opponents' slogans and even programs, altering their approach to the nation's fundamental problems in an instant. Alliances form and dissolve depending on political circumstances. The most powerful parties and coalitions grow out of corporate-bureaucratic relationships. Viktor Chernomyrdin's Our Home-Russia movement attracted enthusiastic support from Russia's bureaucrats when he was prime minister, but when Chernomyrdin left office in 1998, his political influence evaporated. Yet a party that does have a significant ideological foundation will become no more than a political sect if it lacks such a foothold in the Russian power structure.