Leon Aron, director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise
Institute, is the author of "Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life."
WASHINGTON -- Much of the coverage of the demise of the Mir space station
was misty-eyed and nostalgic. Commentators used Mir's fiery descent as
a metaphor for Russia's fall.
This lamentation is misguided. Instead, we should say "Good riddance!"
The station's decommissioning is a sign not of Russia's decline, but of
her liberation.
An offshoot -- like the entire Soviet space program -- of the Soviet
ballistic missile project, Mir was designed exclusively to serve the military-industrial
complex that for decades had looted and beggared Russia. In 1998, Yevgeny
Primakov, then the foreign minister, revealed that the Soviet Union was
spending 70 percent of its gross domestic product on "defense and defense-
related projects."
When Mir was launched in 1986, 35 percent of Soviet hospitals did not
have hot water and 30 percent lacked indoor toilets. The country's infant
mortality rate was higher than that of Barbados. Half of Soviet schools
had no central heating or running water. People spent between 40 and 60
hours a month in lines, and ration coupons were needed to buy 400 grams
of sausage a month.
In Russian villages, World War II widows, many receiving a pension of
four rubles a month, worth about 40 cents, dug up potatoes with wooden
shovels. It has been famously said of Peter the Great that he had forged
a rich state of the impoverished people. Mir was a symbol of such a state.
In the last week, we have heard again and again that Russia could not
"afford" Mir. Nonsense! National priorities are not set by accountants.
Can Iraq afford its relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction?
Can North Korea afford its missiles when its people starve? Can China afford
to increase its defense budget by 8 percent annually? Can Vietnam afford
the fourth-largest army in the world, or could Cuba afford an expeditionary
force in Angola in the 1980's?
It was not the absence of money that killed Mir but the transition to
a political system in which the rulers must account for their spending
to a democratically elected parliament, a free press, an opposition and,
ultimately, the voting public. The national goals changed accordingly.
"A great power is not mountains of weapons and subjects with no rights,"
Boris Yeltsin declared in 1997. "A great power is a self-reliant and talented
people with initiative. The sole measure of the greatness of our motherland
is the extent to which each citizen of Russia is free, healthy, educated
and happy."
As president, Mr. Yeltsin cut defense spending to under 5 percent of
the country's gross domestic product -- and Mir was doomed.
One hopes, fervently, that in a not- so-distant future a democratic
Russia will be rich enough to restart its space program -- as an embodiment
of prosperity and free will, not of militarized tyranny preying on a terrorized
nation. Meanwhile, shed no tears for Mir.