Nepal: Perilous Koirala-Kerensky Parallels
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s visceral faith in the Maoists’ full commitment to a nebulous concept of “total
democracy” amid a sustained pattern of rebel defiance has invited comparisons with Alexander Kerensky, Russia’s
short-lived democratic president in 1917.
Maoist supremo Prachanda’s threat to launch an October Revolution if the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) failed to move in
consonance with the rebels’ interpretation of the spirit of the April Uprising prompted American Ambassador James F.
Moriarty to inject some sobering history into Nepal’s befuddled political discourse.
Has Koirala become Nepal’s Kerensky? The contrasts between the two men and their times could not be starker. Kerensky,
at 36, was in the prime of his life when he embodied Russia’s democratic quest. His opposition to the absolute rule of
the Romanovs blossomed during his university days in St. Petersburg. Kerensky, moreover, was an intellectual interested
in all aspects of Russian history, culture and literature in addition to politics.
To be sure, Koirala’s plunge into politics at an early age came at the cost of academic life. But that tradeoff put him
at the forefront of Nepal’s democracy movement. Koirala, moreover, did not have to work his way up the leadership
hierarchy like Kerensky – at least in the context of his undisputed leadership of the SPA. And Koirala has been ready to
ally himself with the palace on his terms.
In a country devastated by a decade-long insurgency with its heavy human and development costs, Kerensky’s Russia
carries much relevance. The First World War, in which Russia had been involved in for three years, diverted massive
amounts of manpower and caused serious food and fiber shortages. The Czarist regime was exposed to increasingly strident
charges of gross mismanagement. Yet the collapse of the monarchy was as unexpected as that of the Soviet Union would be
74 years later.
Kerensky was a moderate socialist whose passionate, lifelong goal was to see a Western-style constitutional democracy in
Russia. In his ardor to fight off his adversaries on the right, Kerensky simply refused to believe that the Bolsheviks
could represent the greater threat.
Koirala, who started out as an implacable anticommunist and thrived on that record, is today bending over backwards to
appease the Maoists. His own Nepali Congress is outraged by the government’s apparent capitulation to the rebels.
Dedicated to his country and to democratic principles, Kerensky was a courageous, energetic man with great oratorical
skills. It was his willingness to assume command in a time of crisis that allowed Russians to enjoy their brief but
unprecedented freedoms. The bitter political infighting that followed Czar Nicholas II’s fall may have allowed Kerensky
to establish his indispensability. His lack of vision to tackle the root causes of popular discontent came in handy for
the Bolsheviks.
Indeed, it would have required a miracle for Russia to become a vibrant democracy amid the mixture of a disastrous war,
massive economic hardships and political factionalism. Yet the Bolsheviks’ triumph was not inevitable. Lenin and Trotsky
plotted their course in the chaos conceived in Kerensky’s misplaced confidence. The reality that the world’s first
experiment with a “worker state” occurred in a country that was 98 percent agrarian more than debunks the myth of
communism’s inevitability.
The most ominous parallel between today’s Nepal and Kerensky’s Russia is that Koirala finds himself straddling between
those who see the triumph of total democracy in the sidelining – and perhaps an eventual abolition -- of the monarchy
and those demanding more radical social and economic restructuring.
Here Prachanda has taken the most insidious page from Lenin’s playbook. Through his fiery and often contradictory
rhetoric, buttressed by an almost insatiable appetite for concessions from the state, Prachanda hopes to exert complete
authority. By portraying the government’s failure to meet his impossible demands as a sign of utter ineptitude, the
Maoist supremo seeks to evade responsibility. Clearly, the Maoists are banking on the same anarchy the Bolsheviks
capitalized on.
In exile, Kerensky believed the Bolshevik regime would crumble imminently and contemplated his triumphant return to
power. Koirala and his cohorts, at least, can rely on history to shed any such illusions.
ENDS