Under pressure from his own political opponents, who argued for a reunion of the two states, and from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who sought to tie his excessively weak economy to Russia's stronger one, then Russian President Boris Yeltsin initiated the creation of the Union in order to harmonize the political and economic differences between the two nations.

(meta data) TITLE: Boris Yeltsin's Legacy

Trustees Professor of Political Science, University of Tulsa

Presented to the 41st Annual Meeting of the International

Studies Association, Los Angeles, California, March 18, 2000

A discussion of the policy legacy that an individual political

leader leaves to his country should begin by considering the

extent to which a leader and his personal characteristics can

personality, and politics has been a preoccupation of social

from observations of a variety of political environments, from

present study is that of Fred Greenstein in his classic, Personality

Of particular relevance is Greenstein's summary

discussion of the circumstances in which individual actions

affect events: "The likelihood of personal impact varies

with 1) the degree to which the actions take place in an

evironment which admits of restructuring; 2) the location of the

actor in the environment; 3) the actor's peculiar strengths or

The latter two conditions are self-explanatory,

but the first requires some further elaboration.

environments that "admit of restructuring," Greenstein

explains, are "unstable" or in a state of

"precarious equilibrium," whereas a situation that does

not admit of restructuring would be one in which the outcome

"can be expected to occur even if some of the contributing

In the context of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation

(or of the USSR before it), it is not difficult to determine

which leaders are strategically placed so that their peculiar

strengths or weaknesses can be brought to bear on the content of

In the Soviet period, since the time of Stalin the

General Secretary of the Communist Party occupied the strategic

leadership position, whereas in the post-Soviet period--and

especially after the passage of the 1993 Constitution--the

President of the Russian Federation is positioned to dominate the

. Under what circumstances, then--i.e., at which

times or in which issue areas--might we expect the occupants of

these positions to have impact on policy? Guided by Greenstein's

first proposition, we might hypothesize that a leader's impact

would be greater in times of political transition or internal

It would also be greater in times when an

unrestrained individual dictatorship (a "cult of

personality," in Soviet parlance) overrode the norms of

collective leadership in the top councils of the party or state.

Conversely, it would be unlikely that a leader would have much

impact at relatively settled times, when the distribution of

influence among interest groups and institutions is fairly static

and shared governance (or "collective leadership")

Similarly, opportunities for an individual leader to

restructure the political environment are limited at times (or in

particular issue areas) when doctrine or ideology is rigidly

adhered to and leaves little room for maneuver

Looking at Moscow's foreign policy since World War II, we can

easily discern occasions when Stalin's power was unrestrained and

his personality traits had significant impact on policy.

hardly unbiased, Khrushchev gave powerful testimony to the

Twentieth Congress of the CPSU on the impact of Stalin's paranoia

Stalin was a very distrustful man, sickly

suspicious....Everywhere and in everything he saw 'enemies,'

'two-facers,' and 'spies,'...He had completely lost consciousness

of reality; he demonstrated his suspiciousness and haughtiness

not only in relation to individuals in the USSR, but in relation

The opposite case--relatively little impact of the leader's

personality on foreign policy--is well illustrated in the study

era of stagnation," the Brezhnev period in Soviet history

was characterized by the collective rule of relatively colorless

politicians who represented strong interests and institutions; it

was also a time of doctrinal rigidity and established routine.

Policy outcomes during this period could usually be expected

without regard to the particular personalities at the Party's

This pattern was not broken during the two brief

gerontocratic administrations that followed Brezhnev's.

Gorbachev began to consolidate his power as General Secretary in

the late 1980s did the Soviet political environment again admit

of "restructuring"--indeed, perestroika, its

Russian translation, was Gorbachev's preferred slogan.

foreign policy record of his administration fairly clearly

demonstrated the impact of his personal leadership, as he guided

the choice of key personnel, reduced the role of the party

bureaucracy, discarded outdated Marxist-Leninist tenets, and

conducted an innovative personal diplomacy.4

Gorbachev's experiment in perestroika was an immense

failure, resulting in the collapse of the political institutions

of the USSR and the breakup of the country itself

this precarious environment, which decidedly "admitted of

restructuring," Boris Yeltsin clearly occupied the strategic

location from which he could exert far-reaching impact on the

foreign policy of his newly established realm

framework, it was the third variable that would prove decisive.

On Yeltsin's political skills--the strengths and weaknesses of

his personality--would ultimately depend the determination of his

greatness; but in Sidney Hook's terms, his personal skills would

determine whether he would go down in history as a Great Man or a

Although Gorbachev had set a new direction and forged new

relationships, the foreign policy challenges facing Yeltsin

opportunity of defining a new national identity for Russia and

establishing the basic concept for its national security.

Moreover, with the collapse of the long-dominant Communist Party,

he would need to build the new institutions that would shape

Like Gorbachev's, his foreign policy could help

set the direction for economic and social changes in the country

and could gain the foreign assistance that might spark its

in establishing relationships of trust and mutual assistance with

the fourteen other "newly independent states" that

relationships with the West were not yet solidified, and

immediate attention to the "non-West" would be required

to reduce threats to the security of the borders of Russia and

Finally, Yeltsin would have to pursue policies

that ensured that Russia found a prominent "place at the

table," to ensure safeguarding not only of its traditional

interests, but of its concerns relating to the new dangers of

proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, ethno-religious

Yeltsin's foreign policy legacy and to assess the impact of his

personality on Russian foreign policy of the past decade, we now

proceed to summarize Yeltsin's record in responding to each of

Basic Concepts of Foreign Policy under Yeltsin

Boris Yeltsin's primary aim in foreign policy, like Mikhail

Gorbachev's before him, was to create a non-threatening external

environment that would be most conducive to his country's

internal economic and political development

decades of Soviet rule, this concentration on domestic

development, together with relative shortcomings in military

strength, produced a foreign policy of accommodation,

retrenchment, and risk-avoidance--at least, in Russia's relations

with states beyond the borders of the former USSR.

The fall of the CPSU and its Marxist-Leninist ideology,

together with the disintegration of the USSR itself, left a

conceptual void in the foreign policy of the newly-independent

Russian Federation that raised to the forefront the question of

nation-state; rather, during both the Tsarist and Soviet periods

it had been a multinational empire with messianic ambitions.

Unlike other European imperial states, the modern Russian nation

was not formed prior to the period of colonial expansion.

Moreover, the tsars, unlike the rulers of Britain or France,

colonized lands that bordered their home territories, thus

producing an unusual intermixing of Russian and non-Russian

peoples.7 Further complicating the definition of Russia's

national identity is the fact that twenty-five million ethnic

Russians live outside the Russian Federation, in the other newly

independent states of the former Soviet Union.

Not only are the people of the Russian Federation experiencing

new geopolitical confines, but they are also acutely aware of the

relative weakness of their state, in comparison to the superpower

status enjoyed by the USSR at the height of its power.

dizzying economic decline of the early 1990s produced a profound

sense of national humiliation, as Russia's leaders--first

Gorbachev, then Yeltsin--were perceived as meeting with Western

leaders in the role of supplicants for foreign aid.

combination of a loss of national mission, a wounded national

pride, and a confused national identity rendered more acute the

need for Yeltsin to articulate a sense of national purpose in the

Stankevich wrote in March 1992, "foreign policy with us does

not proceed from the directions and priorities of a developed

On the contrary, the practice of our foreign policy. .

Yeltsin assigned the task of spelling out the basic principles

of Russian foreign policy in the early months of 1992 to Foreign

Minister Andrei Kozyrev, a young professional diplomat who had

spent sixteen years in the Department of International

Organizations of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs.9 On the

foundations of the liberal internationalism of Gorbachev's

"new thinking," Kozyrev--not surprisingly--constructed

a heavy reliance on Russian participation in international

Determined to liberate Russia from the burdens of

empire, the messianism, and the over-reliance on military

instruments that had characterized both the Tsarist and the

Soviet periods, Kozyrev developed foreign policy ideas centered

on the promotion of human rights and the universal values of

global economic, environmental, and nuclear security, realized

through a community of democratic states.

not attack other democracies, a democratic Russia would have

If the purpose of Russian foreign policy was the creation of

the conditions in which the new nation could prosper, Kozyrev

reasoned, it would be necessary for Russia to gain membership in

the club of developed democratic states and their economic

institutions, thus assuming the "fitting place that has been

predetermined for us by history and geography.

these early months of 1992, not only Kozyrev but also President

Yeltsin and Deputy Prime Minister Egor Gaidar, who was

responsible for economic reform, consistently voiced these

"liberal westernizing" views of Russia's national

The tradition of expressing the basic principles of policy in

a programmatic and officially-endorsed statement still runs

develop a "foreign policy concept" that would be

discussed in the government and adopted by the Supreme Soviet and

the President, to serve as the expression of national consensus

as well as guidance for diplomats, parliamentarians, and others.

For Kozyrev, Gaidar and other liberals, the Western

democracies were the ideal model and partner for Russia.

must shed its tradition of distinctiveness and its illusions of

assuming a leading role in the Commonwealth of Independent

States, not only because reintegration of Russia's economy with

those of the other former Soviet republics would slow

market-oriented reforms and integration with Atlantic and

European economic institutions, but also because Russia's

assumption of a peacekeeping role in the troubled bordering

states would restore the privileged status of the military and

thereby threaten the tender shoots of democracy in Russia.

"Atlanticist" orientation of the Foreign Ministry was a

"pragmatic nationalist" or "Eurasianist"

viewpoint that was expressed by officials in a variety of

articulated forcefully by presidential advisor Sergei Stankevich,

Russia was indeed separate and distinct from the West--even more

so with its new boundaries--and did have a special mission to

serve as a bridge between Western and Eastern civilizations.

Foreign policy must be more than pragmatic opportunism; without

displaying messianism, Russia needed a mission--in Stankevich's

words, "to initiate and maintain a multilateral dialogue of

Russia the unifier, Russia the harmonizer. . . . A country that

takes in West and East, North and South, and thus is uniquely

capable. . . of harmoniously unifying many different elements, of

was not a rejection of the West, but a balanced policy, although

the immediate requirements of balance were to heighten emphasis

With the West, Russia at best could aspire to a role

as junior partner, "not worth accepting." The very

first priority for Soviet diplomacy, however, was "to talk

in tougher tones"--to defend the Russian population and

Russian heritage in the other states of the former Soviet Union

from any form of discrimination or attack.12 Although the

"pragmatic nationalists" did not go so far as to

advocate forcible revision of the boundaries of the Russian

Federation, they clearly disagreed with Kozyrev and Gaidar in

arguing that Russia should be prepared to make economic,

political, and diplomatic sacrifices in order to promote tighter

integration of the Commonwealth of Independent States

By the end of 1992, this internal criticism was combining with

external events--including the disappointing Western response to

Russia's requests for economic assistance--to bring to an end the

"romantic" phase of Russian foreign policy, and the

movement of Russian liberals closer toward the centrist foreign

policy views of the "pragmatic nationalists."

factor contributing to this coalescence was the growing political

strength of the "Red-Brown coalition" of communists and

extreme nationalists, whose members voiced an even more sharply

critical "fundamentalist nationalist" point of view.

Most of the attention given to this orientation was generated by

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the misleadingly-named Liberal

Democratic Party, a neo-fascist party which showed surprising

strength in the parliamentary elections of December 1993.

proponents included Gennadii Zyuganov, leader of the Communist

policy idea expressed by this group sought to recreate the

Russian empire--up to and even surpassing the borders of the

former USSR--by the use of force, if necessary

"fundamentalists" were openly anti-Western, professing

to see Western aid as a conspiracy to weaken the Russian economy,

and opposing any further moves to integrate Russia into the world

They defined the Russian nation in ethnic rather than

civic terms, with some chauvinists openly voicing anti-Jewish and

in the military and security establishments, politicians of this

orientation advocated the restoration of a strong, authoritarian

"pragmatic" counterparts, these extreme nationalists

were the late twentieth-century heirs of the Slavophiles,

contemptuously denouncing "Westernizers" for thinking

that Western culture or political institutions were worthy of

imitation, and depicting Russian civilization as distinctive and

The official foreign policy concept approved by President

Yeltsin in April 1993 reflected the complete abandonment of the

"liberal Westernizing" idea and the convergence of

"establishment" thinking around the "pragmatic

authoritative statement of Yeltsin's foreign policy

priorities--emphasized Russia's rights and responsibilities in

the states of the former USSR (generally referred to as blizhnee

Of the nine "vitally important interests" listed in

the document, only the third pertained to the world outside the

authorized summary of the document mentioned the countries of

Eastern Europe ("which are in our historical sphere of

and of Western Europe (whose "integration

without Russia could do serious damage to the Russian

Federation's vital interests") before it referred to

Russia's relations with the United States.

correct the perceived earlier imbalance in this relationship, the

summary spoke of common interests that create the preconditions

for developing partnership, but it stressed that U.S.-Russian

interests did not always coincide, while complaining about

"discriminatory restrictions in the commercial, economic,

In the Asian-Pacific region, priority was given to

"urgent consolidation of the breakthrough" in relations

with China ("from our standpoint, the region's most

important state") over "normalizing" relations

with Japan, where "the expediency of continuing to search

for a solution to the territorial problem" was qualified by

the caveat, "but not to the detriment of Russia's

The document expressed concern over the threat

of nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula and on the

Indian subcontinent, and it deplored the tensions in South and

West Asia from the context of their harmful influence on the

former Soviet states of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus.

the Middle East, it called for settlement of the Arab-Israeli

while also envisioning a greater Russian role "in

resolving the problems in and around Iraq" and a

"stronger Russian presence in the regional arms and raw

involvement on Moscow's part, the concept document mentioned

Central and South America, Africa, and Australia only in the

context of "the world community's common efforts to settle

importance" in Russian foreign policy was reserved to the

remained a great power, the concept document stressed its special

". . . the Russian Federation, despite the crisis it is

experiencing, remains a great power in terms of its potential,

its influence on the course of world events and the

responsibility it bears as a result of this

not only for the new world order that has arisen since the

collapse of the socialist camp, but especially for the creation

of a new system of positive relations among the states that used

Yeltsin's concept document emphasized that, in its relations

with the former Soviet republics, Russia followed a policy

seeking "the greatest possible degree of integration"

based on the principle of "strictly voluntary participation

If certain states chose not to cooperate

in some spheres, then it was essential to move ahead in

developing arrangements "with the interested countries

Specific tasks in this realm included the creation

of an effective collective security system, ensuring Russia's

status as the only nuclear state in the CIS, securing the

external borders of the Commonwealth, and developing and

improving the peacekeeping mechanism "on the basis of a

mandate from the UN or the Conference on Security and Cooperation

"problems of ensuring military security that have arisen as

a result of the Soviet Union's disintegration."

Judging from the published summary, the tone of Yeltsin's

concept statement fell short of the open hostility toward the

external world that was typical of Marxist-Leninist

and that is still evident in the expressions of

official statement of guiding policy ideas was less oriented

toward participation in multilateral institutions and more

forcefully assertive in its enunciation of Russia's objectives

than Moscow's foreign policy had been during the previous year.

Andrei Kozyrev remained the target of hostile criticism from

parliament and the press--and even, on occasion, from President

Yeltsin himself--until after the December 1995 elections, when he

resigned as foreign minister to take a seat in the new Duma.

former ally, Egor Gaidar, has noted of Kozyrev that his main

weakness was "that he wanted so badly to be foreign

As soon as Yeltsin notices such a trait in a

member of his team, Gaidar wrote, that individual loses Yeltsin's

respect and the chance to speak his own mind

Yeltsin's choice as Kozyrev's replacement

was a study in contrast--Evgenii Primakov, an academician whose

political career had benefited from the patronage of Aleksandr

Trained as an Arabist, he spent five years as a Pravda

became a close aide to Gorbachev, serving on his Presidential

appointed as chief of the reorganized Foreign Intelligence

government--virtually the only holdover from the Gorbachev team.

Expressing his foreign policy ideas in his first press

conference as foreign minister in January 1996, Primakov

unmistakably allied himself with the "pragmatic

nationalist" and "Eurasianist" viewpoints

declared that "Russia has been and remains a great power,

and its policy toward the outside world should correspond to that

status," while echoing his predecessor in saying that

Russia's policy should create "an environment that would, to

the greatest extent possible, be favorable to the development of

the economy and the continuation of democratic processes in

The relations with Russia's former Cold-War adversaries, he

emphasized, must be "an equitable and mutually advantageous

partnership that takes each other's interests into account."

Expressing the need to "diversify" Russia's foreign

ties, he made special mention of the Middle East and the key

states of Asia (not coincidentally, the subjects of his academic

Primakov enumerated four foreign policy tasks

1. The creation of the best external conditions conducive to

strengthening the territorial integrity of our state.

2. The strengthening of centripetal tendencies in the

mean the rebirth of the Soviet Union in the form in which it used

The sovereignty obtained by the republics is

irreversible, but this does not negate the need for reintegration

processes, first of all in the economic field.

3. The stabilization of the international situation at the

stabilization of the international situation at the global level,

having jointly won--I want to put special emphasis on the point

that there were no victors or vanquished here--jointly won the

Now things depend on the settlement of regional,

nationality-based, interethnic and interstate conflicts.

foreign policy will do everything possible to settle such

conflicts, first of all in the CIS and in the Yugoslav crisis.

4. The development of fruitful international relations that

will prevent the creation of new hotbeds of tension, and

especially the proliferation of means or weapons of mass

In a later interview, Primakov, repeating the formula that

"Russia doesn't have permanent enemies, but it does have

permanent interests," described these four tenets as

future state of international relations, he foresaw a world fifty

years hence in which the concept of "balance of power"

"Then there won't be any question of who

will balance whom or who will outweigh whom."

process of internationalization, he concluded: "There won't

be any 'world government,' and states will maintain their

sovereignty, but everyone will be so closely connected by

production and the economy that it will be hard to speak of a

division or balance of power or the other things we've grown

experienced manager of the foreign ministry and a more adept

The liberal press characterized him as a

"moderate reformer," with a steady style and immense

organizational talent, who "appears to personify a relative

declaration that Primakov, though "not a conservative,"

would pursue a policy that "will constantly remind the

immunity from the sharp criticism that had plagued Kozyrev was

due in no small part to the fact that the foreign policy ideas he

expressed found support among broad segments of the Russian

political elite, while his assertiveness in promoting Russia's

national interests seemed to restore a measure of pride in

Foreign Policy-Making under Yeltsin: The Institutional

When Yeltsin issued a decree in the week following the

attempted coup banning the communist party, there was no longer

an effective mechanism at the center for directing and

augment the powers of his own office to assume this central role

the Russian republic (written in 1978 and--though much amended in

its last year--continuing in force until 1993) gave the Russian

parliament the formal right to determine the main lines of

by the legislative body in 1992 and 1993 to turn this formal

power into reality were stubbornly resisted by Yeltsin.

Presidential dominance of foreign policy became even more

pronounced in Yeltsin's Russian Federation than it had been in

Gorbachev's USSR, especially since the adoption of the new

Articles 80 and 86 of this document give

the president the power to exercise "leadership of the

foreign policy of the Russian Federation," within the

framework of the constitution and laws of the country.18

formal or official powers of the Russian president under the new

constitution are greater than those of any previous Russian

Of course, unlike the tsar's powers, those

have been granted by a vote of the Russian

Unlike its predecessor, the 1993 constitution clearly gives

the president control of the government.

constitution and federal laws, the president determines the basic

guidelines of domestic and foreign policy, serves as

appoints and dismisses top commanders of

the armed forces, approves military doctrine, may declare martial

law and states of emergency (with the approval of the

parliament's upper house, the Federation Council), and may issue

binding decrees and directives (providing they do not contradict

the constitution or federal law). Given these considerable

powers, it is not surprising that the president has a large

staff, directed by the Head of Administration, and several

advisory bodies comprised of experts from inside and outside the

Yeltsin's direct role in foreign policy-making was further

enhanced by the fact that the foreign minister and the

"power ministers" of Russia--the ministers of defense

and interior, and the heads of the intelligence and security

services--report directly to the president, rather than through

With so many responsible officials having

direct access to the president--and given that Yeltsin's style,

like the former provincial party secretary that he is, was to

keep his hands directly in so many matters--it is not surprising

that there has been an endemic messiness in Russian foreign

Yeltsin's creation of the Security Council in April 1992 was

an attempt to bring the top foreign policy and national security

officials together to deliberate and prepare decisions for the

variability in the Council's effectiveness and priorities,

depending in large part on the political ambitiousness of its

Secretary--of whom there were nine in the seven remaining years

was launched, the Council, under the conservative Oleg Lobov, was

feared by liberals as the shadowy and powerful refuge of the

"party of war" that was exercising its sway over an

mid-1996, Aleksandr Lebed sought to transform the Security

Council into his personal vehicle for dominating not only

security and defense policy, but internal economic questions as

On the whole, however, Yeltsin resisted efforts to inflate

the Council's authority and endow it with operational

responsibility, evidently sensing that such a body--reminiscent

of the post-Stalinist Politburo--would dilute his own power.

During the early years of his presidency, Yeltsin attempted to

lessen the confusion arising from multiple centers of foreign

policy-making by issuing repeated decrees endowing the Foreign

and the improvement Primakov brought to the ministry in top-level

organizational and political skill, was the foreign ministry able

dominant role appeared in 1997, when Yeltsin decreed the

elimination of ten consultative bodies in his office, including

the potentially-troublesome Foreign Policy Council.

Yeltsin's preference for formal conceptual statements of

guiding principle, which resulted in the issuance of the foreign

policy concept in April 1993, also brought about the production

of a new defense doctrine in November 1993

emphasis on mobile units and peacekeeping responsibilities,

especially in the CIS, the new Russian military doctrine clearly

envisaged the armed forces as an instrument of the country's

. And by giving the professional military leaders a

major role in developing the political element of the

doctrine--as he did in a well-publicized meeting of the Security

Council in February 1993--Yeltsin was underscoring the military's

significant influence on the formulation of national security

policy.19 But performance of the Defense Ministry under General

naming as his successor Lebed's former associate General

But the internal crisis in the military continued,

exacerbated by the memory of its inept and demoralizing

performance in Chechnia, until an angry Yeltsin publicly fired

both Rodionov and the Chief of General Staff Viktor Samsonov in

The new minister, General Igor Sergeev, was evidently

more to the president's liking; he played a highly visible role

in the intensifying national debate on the critical questions of

further refining the military doctrine, funding the armed forces

budget, and taking steps toward military reform

Only two months after Sergeev's appointment, Yeltsin issued

the first decrees describing the proposed military reform

total size of the armed forces was to be cut by half a million,

to 1.2 million; conscription was eventually to be abolished, but

not by Yeltsin's original target date of 2000.

military spending was to be limited to 3.5 percent of GNP, down

reductions, 300,000 civilian jobs were to be cut, and various

activities not directly related to defense (such as road

construction) were to be transferred to civilian agencies.

Expenses of the administrative apparatus of the defense ministry

were to be limited to one percent of the total defense budget.

There was no announced plan, however, to reduce the ratio of

officers to enlisted men from its current level of 1:1

severely reduced defense budget is one element of the Yeltsin

legacy that his presumed successor, Vladimir Putin, has already

Together with the military, the intelligence service is

another "power-wielding" institutional actor that

regularly found a place at the table when foreign policy

decisions were made in the Soviet Union.

without having undergone significant reform, in Yeltsin's Russia.

The best available evidence on the role of the intelligence and

security services in post-Soviet Russia demonstrates that Yeltsin

did not truly curb the powers of these agencies, but rather chose

to coopt their support, not only to perform foreign intelligence

functions, but also to assist him in his struggle against his

that the successors to the KGB continue to play a significant

The dispersal of KGB functions into five

agencies and the dizzying succession of different names did not

really diminish the power of the security apparatus or disguise

the fact that most of its personnel were inherited from the KGB.

That Yeltsin's last three prime ministers (as well as his last

three Security Council secretaries) were drawn from the ranks of

the security services is itself striking evidence of their

continuing influence on the making of foreign policy.

Putin, one of the three on each list, personifies this continuing

prominence of the state security forces.

On the whole, parliamentary influence on Russian foreign

policy under Yeltsin has been quite limited.

impact is more indirect than direct, for by serving as a forum

for the articulation of dissenting opinions that are widely

shared among politicians and elements of the public, parliament

helps shape the political climate in which executive decisions

must be made and may thereby influence the tone and tactics, as

opposed to the basic directions, of foreign policy.21

this respect, it is possible to conclude that a major change in

the conduct of foreign policy that began in the latter period of

Gorbachev's rule and continued in the Yeltsin years is the

opening of the policy process to wider participation and greater

Gorbachev, extreme secrecy was the norm in the decision-making

processes of the USSR, and sensitive foreign policy issues were

discussed and decided by a relatively few high-ranking officials

parliamentary forums, took the form of after-the-fact

justification and ratification of decisions, the basis for which

was rarely if ever discussed with completeness and candor.

limited extent during Gorbachev's last year or two in office, and

to a much greater degree in Yeltsin's democratizing Russia, the

foreign policy debate became more public and more open to the

participation of a variety of groups representing more diverse

The greater openness of the political process in Russia, and

the requirement that political elites engage in genuine electoral

competition, has made policy-makers pay more attention than ever

before to public opinion on international issues.

still far from being a mature, functioning democracy, and the

channels through which public attitudes are transmitted into the

particular remain insufficiently developed as organizations to

have any major impact on foreign policy.

parties that dominated the Dumas elected in 1993 and

1995--Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist

Party of the Russian Federation--attempted to capitalize on the

public's confusion about Russia's national identity and its sense

of national humiliation, surveys showed the public to be less

nationalistic and less favorable to the use of force than are the

Moreover, election polls showed that there is a

wide variety of foreign policy viewpoints among each party's

making it extremely difficult to predict a voter's party

choice on the basis of his attitudes about Russia's external

Similarly, interest groups in Russia are poorly organized and

While it is possible to identify certain economic

interests with particular policy preferences--for example,

defense industrialists with protectionism and higher defense

spending--studies of the lobbying activities of interest groups

have concluded that there has been limited effectiveness.23

However, the growing importance of campaign funding by large

banks and corporations, as demonstrated by the 1996 presidential

elections, and the subsequent increased acquisition of print and

broadcast media outlets by major banking and energy interests,

were evidence of a heightening influence of business interests on

Berezovsky, the most infamous of the Russian oligarchs--and the

aspirations--symbolized the continuing hold that Russian

financial-industrial "clans" had on the highest levels

of political influence during the Yeltsin years

Russia's history of strong executive leadership--perpetuated

in the 1993 constitution, with the extensive powers it gives to

the president--together with the rudimentary development of

parties and interest groups, make the personal attitudes and

political skill of the top leader and his closest associates of

This factor should have produced a strong

and coherent vision for Russian foreign policy, smoothly and

part, the result of several important internal features of

In a sense, foreign policy has become hostage

to the two types of bitter political struggles that Russia has

endured in its first years of independence.

The most visible realm of political struggle--that between

Yeltsin and his parliamentary and political opponents--was able

to affect foreign policy primarily because of the openings

created by the second realm: the messy struggles within the

And clearly, the greatest impact of these

influences from outside the executive branch was on those issues

of foreign policy relating to the "near abroad," the

former republics of the USSR that so suddenly became objects of

major study has concluded that "the fitful incursions of

other political forces into foreign policy have accentuated its

meanderings more than they have altered its overall

Ironically, it was in the realm of internecine political

conflict--the unceasing struggles for power and allegiance within

Yeltsin's own top entourage--that the greatest impact on foreign

Clearly, the president's personality and

political style encouraged this political infighting.

constant cabinet realignments and bureaucratic reorganizations,

the creation of one after another coordinating councils, the

endless procession of ministers and advisers contributed greatly

to the lack of clarity and coherence in Russian foreign policy.

While Yeltsin's fragile health and his personal habits

accentuated these tendencies, at root was his failure to

articulate his own clear and consistent vision of Russia's

and to enforce sufficient discipline on his

own government team to translate this vision into effective

Russia and the "Near Abroad": The Yeltsin Legacy

The one realm of foreign policy in which Yeltsin did not

himself inherit a legacy from Gorbachev was in Russia's relations

matter of domestic policy for Moscow overnight became a foreign

policy challenge of the greatest immediacy.

presidents of Ukraine and Belarus, Yeltsin had created the

Commonwealth of Independent States, to which the new states of

Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Moldova eventually acceded.

this strange organization--neither a conferederation nor an

economic union nor a security pact--was clearly intended, at

least by some of the leaders, as a mere figleaf behind which the

reassure Soviet military leaders that security needs would not be

overlooked, Ukraine in particular wanted no central institutions

(much less a centralized military) for the CIS, lest they become

levers for Moscow's use in reclaiming its imperial hegemony.

Initially, Yeltsin treated the CIS as an instrument of Russian

mechanism for asserting Russian hegemony over the other eleven

states. Yeltsin pursued both goals simultaneously, initially

latter became an important feature of Yeltsin's policy.

to the text of the original agreement, the members agreed to

to creating a "common military-strategic

space" under a joint commander, including a unified control

That commitment along with an agreement to

create a "common economic space" was abandoned within

In the absence of a joint nuclear command, Yeltsin set about

several years to implement, was made possible in part with the

strong support--financial and political--of the United States.

When the CIS was created, nuclear weapons were deployed in four

states: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.

three states committed themselves in principle to ridding their

territory of all nuclear weapons, but when Ukraine soon found

itself enmeshed in a series of contentious issues with Russia,

President Leonid Kravchuk balked at the idea of turning strategic

, not until Kravchuk was replaced by Leonid

Kuchma in Ukraine's 1994 elections was the agreement for

For his part, Yeltsin faced pressure from nationalist forces

in the Duma and elsewhere demanding territorial concessions from

Ukraine in the Crimea and an assertive stand on the division of

the Black Sea Fleet and its base at Sevastopol'.

reelection in 1996 and the improvement of his health in 1997,

Yeltsin was able to reassert his executive authority.

many foreign policy issues the hard-line nationalists of the

State Duma mirrored their predecessors in the Supreme Soviet,

Yeltsin's increased political clout in 1997, together with the

strong powers over foreign policy under his tailor-made

constitution, permitted the Russian president to override

domestic opposition and come to terms with Ukraine

motive for him to do so was the movement within NATO to expand

forces of NATO was meager, but one instrument to bolster its

defense was to strengthen this weak bonds between the two Slavic

was finally reached on the Black Sea Fleet.

compensation Russia was permitted to station its portion of the

Black Sea Fleet at the port of Sevastopol' for twenty years.

accord set the stage for President Yeltsin to make his first

visit to Kiev, where he and Leonid Kuchma signed a treaty of

Moscow agreed to write off most of Ukraine's huge oil

At the ceremony Yeltsin publicly observed,

"We respect and honor the territorial integrity of

Formally, good relations were affirmed, but in

both countries suspicions remained regarding the ultimate

While Yeltsin's moderate leadership was important in producing

compromise agreements with Ukraine that displeased Russia's

hardliners, it was also important in restraining a joint movement

of empire-rebuilders in both Russia and Belarus, who pressed for

reunification of the two states as a first step in reconstituting

Yeltsin's objectives were much more limited; he

wanted legal authorization to station Russian troops on

monetary union on April 12, 1994, and a treaty on cooperation and

friendship which the Belarusian parliament ratified in April of

Lukashenko wanted much closer economic relations, to bolster his

own weak economy, and on this issue Moscow was hesitant.

Belarusian economy was in such bad shape that integration could

only end up as a burden on Russia; moreover, Belarus remained a

command economy resistant to economic reform.

Yeltsin resisted the lifting of trade barriers and rejected plans

for a monetary or customs union between the two countries.

Lukashenko's suppression of the media at home and the

increasingly authoritarian nature of his administration, not to

mention a mercurial pattern of behavior, put off many in Russia

who were trying to nurture a fledgling democracy.

pressure from Ziuganov in his re-election campaign, Yeltsin

agreed in April 1996 to sign a vague treaty creating a

"Community of Sovereign Republics" with Belarus.

continued to resist meaningful steps toward reunion throughout

his second term, despite the tempting prospect that a merged

entity could give Yeltsin an opportunity to gain an additional

Russian nationalists produced a second treaty, on the

"Creation of a Union State of Russia and Belarus,"

signed by the two presidents and ratified by Russia's parliament

widely conceded to be so vague as to be without concrete

A strong core of Russian opinion, both elite and mass,

supports the idea of greater integration among the former Soviet

That opinion is matched by similar views among a

portion of the populations of some of the CIS states,

particularly in Central Asia, But among all of the newly

independent states (with the exception of Belarus) there is a

strong determination to preserve the independence and sovereignty

Although Boris Yeltsin shared this goal of greater

integration and the extension of Russia's hegemony over the

former empire, he showed a preference for diplomacy over coercion

in the quest for satisfying Russia's needs in the "near

What tactics his successor will choose remains an

Russia's Relations with the West: The Yeltsin Legacy

One can only speculate how far rapprochement between Moscow

and the West would have gone had Gorbachev remained in office.

negotiating far-reaching strategic and conventional arms control

agreements, terminating costly Soviet involvement in Third World

conflicts, and allowing the peaceful liquidation of communist

regimes in Eastern Europe and of the Warsaw Pact, Gorbachev had

successor, Boris Yeltsin, aimed to go beyond rapprochement with

He began his administration with a genuine

attempt to build a partnership with the United States.

first months of 1992, Yeltsin, and especially Kozyrev, actively

president stated his views at a special summit meeting of the

United Nations Security Council on January 31, 1992:

Russia sees the U.S., the West, and the countries of the East

prerequisite for, and, I would say, a revolution in, peaceful

cooperation among the states of the civilized world

We rule out any subordination of foreign policy to ideological

and understandable: the supremacy of democracy, human rights and

Before a joint session of the U.S. Congress in June 1992,

Yeltsin reaffirmed his wish to join "the world

But clearly more than ideology or perceptions was involved.

Russia was impelled by its domestic condition to seek outside

and no country was better positioned to aid the new

transformation of Russia's economy his number one domestic

In an extraordinary speech in October 1991, Yeltsin

discussed at length and in detail the need for Western assistance

and he even promised to give the West whatever

information it would want to facilitate aid.31

Western support for Yeltsin had an importance beyond

It was also important for him politically.

understood that he could count on the support of Washington when

clearly evident during the failed coup of August 1991.32 And

later during the parliamentary crisis in October 1993, Yeltsin

sought and received support from the United States.9

shift in Russian foreign policy toward a pro-Western orientation

reflected conviction, necessity, and self-interest.

In the initial period after the collapse of the USSR,

President Yeltsin and Foreign Minister Kozyrev pursued the effort

to "join the West" as the highest priority of Russian

foreign policy, making no particular differentiation among the

democratic market societies and associated international

institutions whose partnership they sought.

them, they knocked on many doors, concluding treaties of

friendship and cooperation with individual Western states,

obtaining membership for Russia in that most exclusive of Western

"clubs," the G7, and pursuing opportunities to

cooperate with (and ultimately join) selective organizations such

as the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Paris Club, and

the London Club, as well as broader financial associations such

as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (soon to be

succeeded by the World Trade Organization), the European Bank for

Reconstruction and Development, and the International Monetary

Yeltsin also altered Russia's strategic posture.

time since the beginning of the nuclear arms race, Russia

abandoned its goal of parity with the United States.

departing from the ominous parity," Yeltsin explained,

"where each country was exerting every effort to stay in

line, which has led to Russia . . . having half of its population

concessions were made to give tangible "expression of the

fundamental change in the political and economic relations

between the United States of America and Russia.

was agreed upon at the June 1992 summit and signed on January 3,

In the first phase of Yeltsin's rule, Russia's Western

orientation extended to cooperation on issues where its interests

had historically diverged, such as in the growing conflict in the

Though sympathetic to the Serbian cause, the

Russian government condemned Serbian atrocities as well as

Yugoslav support for Bosnian Serb aggression.

notwithstanding its dislike of coercion against the Serbs,

supported resolutions in the United Nations authorizing the use

Council made no effort to use the power of the veto to prevent

Yeltsin administration was careful to avoid drifting too far from

the mainstream of international opinion on Yugoslavia and Bosnia.

For about two years the Yeltsin administration maintained a

pro-Western orientation in the conduct of foreign policy.

Russian-American summits in 1992 and 1993 demonstrated an

unprecedented rapport between the leaderships of the two

At the Washington summit of June 1992, Yeltsin and

Bush signed a Charter of Russian-American Partnership and

Friendship affirming "the indivisibility of the security of

North America and Europe" and a common commitment to

"democracy, the supremacy of law . . . and support for human

In Vancouver, Canada, Yeltsin and President

Clinton agreed to create a Russian-American Commission on

Questions of Technology (popularly known as the Gore-Chernomyrdin

pledge of an immediate assistance package of $1.6 billion, and

the Paris Club granted Russia a ten-year deferral of its debt

However, both in the parliament and in non-government circles,

Yeltsin was attacked by nationalists for his support of U.S.

policy in Yugoslavia, and for such actions as the 1993 U.S. air

"The role of Washington yes-man is unbecoming of any

country, especially Russia, and it inevitably conflicts with

"37 Andrei Kozyrev served as a lightning

rod for much of the criticism of the administration

For Boris Yeltsin these pressures imposed a careful balancing

His record as a whole justifies the conclusion that his

commitment to partnership with the West reflected a genuine

And indeed, though there were significant swings in

Russian foreign policy over the course of Yeltsin's two terms,

swings it is necessary to consider both Yeltsin's political

calculations and the evolving political and economic conditions

Certainly a factor in the evolution of Russia's policy was

popular disillusionment with the fruits of economic reform.

"Shock therapy," begun in January 1992, led to severe

economic hardship for millions of ordinary people.

every economic index, production declined during the early

Economic assistance from the United States

proved to be disappointingly smaller than most Russians expected.

Those critical of Yeltsin to begin with belittled American aid.

"For a year and a half," noted Pravda after the

Vancouver summit, "we have been fed cock-and-bull stories

about the inevitable 'rain of gold' from the West to back up

aid limited to hardened anti-Yeltsinites.

showed that by a two-to-one margin Russians were convinced that

the West's economic advice represented a deliberate effort to

This margin increased in 1995 and 1996.39

Yeltsin's own views changed with those of the electorate.

say this is not to suggest that Yeltsin shifted with the

fluctuating winds of public opinion as measured by polls.

president, he felt an obligation to be "comprehensible,

controllable, and dependent upon public opinion."40 Although

he frequently demonstrated a pronounced tendency toward

authoritarianism, on other notable occasions he found reason to

compromise with his critics and opponents

of public opinion shifted, so did Yeltsin.

either as political expediency or as the democratic response of a

Russia's shift toward a more nationalistic foreign policy

produced in Moscow a stronger defense of the Serbs in their war

against the Muslims and Croats in Bosnia.

pressure to assist the Muslim-controlled government of Bosnia,

Russia successfully blocked efforts in the United Nations to have

Yeltsin's inclination to support the Serbs, however, was

curbed by his determination to avoid drifting too far from the

political initiatives to negotiate a settlement of the war, such

Yeltsin found it increasingly difficult to hold off Western

action in the face of the 1994-95 escalation of Bosnian Serb

atrocities and attacks on various UN "safe havens."

Under continuous pressure from Duma nationalists, Yeltsin

pressured Serbia's president Milosevic to restrain his Bosnian

Serb allies, while proposing a series of diplomatic initiatives

In August-September 1995, a combination of a successful Croatian

offensive against Serb-held Krajina and devastating NATO air

strikes produced a ceasefire and an agreement by all parties to

meet for peace talks in the U.S. In direct talks with President

Clinton, Yeltsin achieved a face-saving Russian role in the

enforcement of the resulting Dayton Accords

In Russia's relations with the West, the biggest issue of

contention in the post-Dayton period became the proposal to

expand NATO to include former members of the Warsaw Pact.

many issues related to NATO expansion, the most general and

fundamental concerned what type of system of European security

would replace the alliance structure of the Cold War period.

Yeltsin's perspective, the basic question was how Russia would

great power, or simply as another European state?

viewed as a partner or as a potential adversary?

institutional mechanism would govern decision-making for security

For nearly all Russians, NATO was stigmatized by the history

was viewed as an adversarial organization.

Russian political elites much preferred as a mechanism for

European security the more politically neutral OSCE.

was more involved in the expansion of NATO than just vital

Russia has yet to come to terms with its loss of

their country can even be ranked as a "great power."

expansion of the military alliance which played a vital role in

the defeat of the Soviet Union was viewed by many as rubbing the

Soviet defeat in the Russian nose--a national humiliation.

Although Boris Yeltsin had spoken favorably of Poland's

interest in NATO during a visit to Warsaw in the summer of 1993,

he quickly reversed himself under pressure from members of his

administration, particularly the military.

parliamentary elections in December 1993, Evgenii Primakov, then

director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, issued a

NATO and the former Soviet Union had viewed each other as enemies

and that "this psychological mind-set cannot be broken

An expansion of NATO to Russia would create a

"new geopolitical situation that is extremely

disadvantageous to Russia . . . " This would lead Russia to

rethink its defense concepts and restructure its armed forces.41

Nevertheless, intensive negotiations in the spring of 1997

were conducted to obtain Russian acceptance of the inevitable.

Moscow dropped its demand that a NATO-Russian Charter take the

form of a legally binding treaty, accepting in its place

On May 27, 1977, Boris Yeltsin and Javier

Solana signed the "Founding Act on Mutual Relations,

Cooperation, and Security between NATO and the Russian

This act created a NATO-Russian Council which

would meet periodically to consider security problems as they

The Council would operate by consensus, but NATO

remained free to act without Council approval.

the Russians, NATO stated that it had "no intention, no

plan, and no reason" to deploy nuclear weapons on the

territories of its new members or to significantly increase troop

the best face possible on the pact, calling it a "big

victory for Russia," but in a television interview on the

night of the signing Yeltsin acknowledged that Russia "was

Republic, Poland, and Hungary to apply to become members.

These invitations did not end the issue as a bone of

stage in the Russian struggle to contain NATO.

spokesmen made clear their intention to go beyond the first three

Madeleine Albright specifically promised Lithuania,

Latvia, and Estonia that they would be future candidates for

In reply, a spokesman at Russia's Ministry of Foreign

Affairs replied, "we are put on guard by the Madrid

declaration's mention of the states in the Baltic region, a

reference that, although indirect, nevertheless was in the

context of prospects for further NATO expansion.

emphasize once again that such a decision has been and remains

No event since the end of the Cold War symbolized the new

world order more than the expansion of NATO.

Quarrels were erupting with the United States over policy in

Bosnia, continuing American trade restrictions, and Russia's

planned weapons exports to anti-American regimes, which led to

complaints about America's "hegemonic" behavior.

Particularly after the outbreak of war in Chechnia, Russia's

relations with the EU soured and its progress toward membership

in the Council of Europe slowed, accentuating Moscow's growing

isolation and stimulating tendencies to play Western states off

openly in European capitals about the need to reduce American

Yeltsin's last foreign trip of 1997 was a highly publicized

visit to Sweden, notable less for its diplomatic achievements

than for several embarrassing mistakes made by the Russian

president that underscored his declining ability to serve as a

credibile spokesman for Russia's interests.

evidently believed he was in Finland; on another occasion, he

referred to an oil deal that had actually been concluded with

Norway. Blurting out a confusing offer for a unilateral reduction

in nuclear arms--later disavowed by his staff--he mistakenly

identified Germany and Japan as nuclear powers.

observers were uncertain of the status of a declaration he made

in a speech to the Swedish parliament--later confirmed by his

defense minister and evidently intended to reassure the Baltic

states that their membership in NATO would be

unnecessary--promising a forty percent cut in Russian forces

along the country's northwestern border by 1999

Yeltsin's strange behavior was later blamed by his staff on

fatigue and a developing cold, and he was hospitalized upon his

More diplomatically significant, and symbolic of the growing

differentiation that had occurred in Russian policy toward the

West, was a trip Yeltsin made a little earlier in the fall of

1997, to a summit meeting of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg

The Russian president seemed at pains to underscore the extent to

which Russia regarded itself as part of a Europe that was

increasingly resistant to U.S. domination.

an uncle from somewhere," he declared in an interview before

"We in Europe are capable of uniting ourselves

In addition to its fears that the United

States was seeking to redivide Europe to its disadvantage through

, Moscow resented continuing U.S. refusal to

grant most favored nation trade status, Congress' threats to cut

off aid (regarded as niggardly in any event)

parliamentary act regulating religious practice in Russia, and

Washington's announced intention to retaliate against Russia and

France for their cooperative project to develop gas fields in

Iran.44 (Within a few weeks, Russia would again display this

determined independence, joining with France in resisting the

tough American stance on UN sanctions on Iraq.) In a move clearly

aimed at emphasizing that his main Western partners were in

Europe, Yeltsin announced at Strasbourg that he would hold annual

summits with the French and German leaders to review the state of

What energies a declining Yeltsin had left in his final two

years in office were primarily engaged with internal political

Many of these were of his own making; he

kept the political scene destabilized by firing four prime

ministers in the space of eighteen months!

turmoil, in August 1998, Russia's economy collapsed.

devaluation and moratorium on payment of external debts virtually

destroyed opportunities for further credits or investments from

Through spring 1999, Russian foreign policy was personally

guided by Primakov, first as foreign minister and then as prime

Even after his ouster, his influence was felt through

his former deputy, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

pronounced theme of Russian policy during this period was

resistance to perceived American unilateralism and insistence on

cooperated with France and China in resisting American and

British military operations in Iraq, it issued a joint statement

with China opposing U.S.-requested modifications in the ABM

treaty to permit Washington to develop a missile defense system,

and it continued to resist American pressures to halt its nuclear

Although Yeltsin and Primakov had agreed

to obtain parliamentary ratification of the START II treaty,

votes were thrice postponed in the face of such demonstrations of

American "hegemonic" actions in defiance of Russia's

The greatest crisis in East-West relations in the Yeltsin era

took place in 1999 and resulted from a mixture of two volatile

issues: the continuing crisis in the Balkans and the posture

assurances that the role of the expanded alliance was strictly

defensive, the Russians were enraged when NATO undertook a 78-day

bombing campaign against Yugoslavia to force its regime to grant

autonomy to the Albanian majority in its Kosovo province.

Kosovo war occasioned lusty anti-American protests across the

political spectrum in Russia; extremist nationalists stoked the

flames by organizing volunteer brigades and other forms of

When the bombing campaign not only failed to change

Milosevic's policies but resulted in a massive refugee crisis

that threatened to destabilize the entire region, NATO leaders

sought to enlist Russian diplomacy (in the personna of former

premier Viktor Chernomyrdin) in bringing about a settlement.

deal he offered to Milosevic was a compromise rather than a

Western military alliance had no legal or moral foundation for an

act of military aggression against a sovereign state, Russia had

agreed to play the role of mediator only if the agreement called

for an international civil and security presence in Kosovo under

agreement, the security forces would have "substantial NATO

participation," but the civil administration in Kosovo would

be under the direction of the UN Security Council

had obtained Russia's and China's UN votes, it proceeded to act

as though "substantial" participation in the

peacekeeping force meant an exclusive NATO operation.

Even as NATO's armies entered Kosovo, their triumph was

clouded by the unexpected prior arrival of a contingent of

Russian peacekeeping forces at the airport in Pristina. Initial

claims that the move was a mistake were negated when President

Yeltsin promoted the commanding general.

troop movements appeared to be an initiative taken by the

They had been deeply angered by the NATO

bombing campaign and even more profoundly humiliated by Moscow's

key role in brokering Milosevic's agreement

in order to force NATO's adherence to its own

As Moscow (and other observers) saw it, Milosevic's consent

had been obtained not simply by the force of NATO's bombs but

also by Russia's promise that Serb residents and shrines would be

safeguarded by Moscow's own participation in peacekeeping.

NATO moved to freeze them out, the Russian generals sought to

preserve this objective with their military preemption.

the end the more moderate Yeltsin prevailed on his generals to

The ultimate terms for Russian participation,

negotiated with the US in Helsinki, kept its forces under

Moscow's command but denied Russia a peacekeeping zone of its

Needing economic concessions from the West and seeking to

retain surface harmony, the Russian president had again swallowed

backed away from outright confrontation.

Yeltsin era was nearing an end, with critical parliamentary and

presidential elections scheduled in Moscow in the coming year.

Polls showed that only 2 percent of Russian voters had confidence

in Yeltsin, and that anti-Americanism has exploded in the

population since NATO's bombing campaign.

It was not so much their traditional solidarity with Serbs,

but outrage over empty American assurances about expanded-NATO's

purely defensive role that united all of Russia's political

perceived unilateralism and its repeated refrain that America is

"the indispensable nation" threatened to revive Cold

War attitudes in much of the Russian population.

year, when the U.S. and other Western nations urged a halt to

Moscow's renewed offensive against "banditry" in

Chechnia, the Russians were outraged at the perceived double

standard: their own protests over a brutal bombing campaign

against their traditional allies in Serbia could be ignored by

NATO nations, while Moscow's efforts to defend itself against

terrorism emanating from its southernmost province were

In Beijing on December 9, 1999, on his last foreign

trip as president, an angry Yeltsin added to his legacy this

Yesterday Clinton permitted himself to put pressure on Russia.

evidently forgot for a second, a minute, or half a minute just

Russia is, and that Russia possesses a full arsenal of nuclear

He forgot that....It never has been and never will be the case

alone dictates to the world how to live, how to work, what

Russia and the "Non-West": The Yeltsin Legacy

At least since the adoption of Russia's official foreign

policy concept by President Yeltsin in April 1993, top priority

objective of Russia's policy in the "non-West" has been

to ensure the security of the territories of the former Soviet

lands, insulating them from the harmful effects of such regional

conflicts as the struggle for control of Afghanistan, or from

threatening movements such as Islamic extremism

strategic nature of energy resources in the Caucasian and Central

Asian republics, Russia has tended to define its security

interests in these areas to include preventing outside powers

from gaining leverage over these resources.

priorities in this way has pointed Russia toward East and South

Asia and the Middle East as the zones of greatest concern.

are also the regions where there is the greatest danger of a

broader but no less potent threat to Russia's security

With the recent emphasis on the role of foreign policy as a

contributor to economic development, it is not surprising that

another major objective of Russia's policy toward the countries

an enormous and growing market, where Russian goods--be they raw

or semi-processed materials, lower-quality consumer goods, or the

more sophisticated products of Russian science and

engineering--have a somewhat better chance of obtaining a

competitive advantage than they do in Western marketplaces.

imported products from Asia, Africa and Latin America have

potential benefit for Russian manufacturers and consumers,

especially if they are obtained in partial payment of the

enormous debts that some countries in these regions have

accumulated as a result of their transactions with the former

The combined total of debt owed to Russia by developing

countries was estimated in September 1997 at a staggering $112.7

billion (all but $1 billion of which dated from the Soviet

Of fifty-one debtor nations, only India was currently

Paris Club of creditor nations put international pressure on the

And while the Russians agreed to discount the

debt, in amounts ranging from thirty-five to eighty percent, the

repayments were to be made in hard currency.

according to then-First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais,

would be to triple the volume of annual debt payments to the

Russian government from developing countries.

Whereas prior to the end of the Cold War, aid and trade

transactions between the Soviets and the Third World had been

heavily subsidized by Moscow for political reasons, cash-strapped

Russia, forced to abandon "soft" credit terms, found

its goods far less attractive than they had been

consequence, trade with most of the "non-West" in the

immediate post-Soviet period fell sharply.

realities, Russia cut back its costly overseas trade-promotion

efforts, which were often a front for espionage activities during

organizationally-distinct trade missions abroad in 1991, the

number had been cut to forty-seven by 1996, with trade counselors

in Russian embassies taking over the responsibilities in the

Soviet period, Russia's main export to the "non-West"

in the Yeltsin years was weaponry, and a major beneficiary of

renewed activity in these regions was the underemployed

As the country with which the Soviet Union shared its longest

border, China, not surprisingly, occupied a higher foreign-policy

priority for Russia than any other non-Western country--all the

more so, given the state of high tension on that border in recent

In this area, as in relations with the West, the

foundations for Yeltsin's policies were laid by his predecessor.

Gorbachev took steps in the late 1980s to address the most

serious issues in the Sino-Soviet conflict, and his efforts

culminated in his May 1989 trip to Beijing, which symbolized the

end of the Cold War between the two communist giants.

Chinese were severely displeased with the domestic political

changes that Gorbachev was overseeing in the USSR, especially as

Soviet democratization became a beacon for Chinese students,

whose dissent was crushed on Tiananmen Square just days after

And although they had reached an accord with

Gorbachev's government on ninety-eight percent of their border

with the USSR in May 1991, the Chinese rulers barely disguised

their support for the coup that sought to topple the Soviet

In December 1992 Boris Yeltsin made a state visit to Beijing,

and the Russian delegation signed over twenty documents, among

them, a mutual promise not to enter into any military-political

alliance directed against the other state.

characterized the atmosphere of talks during Yeltsin's visit as

"friendly, open and constructive. . . and in a spirit of

mutual respect, understanding and trust."

escalation of such rhetorical descriptions of presidential visits

over the next several years serves as a barometer of the changed

atmospherics in the Sino-Russian relationship--or, at any rate,

of the way in which Moscow and Beijing wanted the world to view

Thus, Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to Moscow in

September 1994 was said to signify a "qualitatively new

level of relations" of "constructive partnership,"

although not an alliance and not aimed against any other country.

Yeltsin, during his visit to China in April 1996, described a

"partnership directed toward the twenty-first century"

between nations of which there was "no other such pair in

And during Jiang's April 1997 visit to Russia,

the Russian president reached new rhetorical heights, describing

the visit as one of "enormous, and perhaps even historic,

significance, inasmuch as we are determining the fate of the

the two presidents, Yeltsin declared: "never before has

Russia signed such a document with any other country."

Guests at the formal luncheon held during Yeltsin's November

1997 visit to Beijing witnessed not only a warm embrace but

cordial atmosphere at prior Sino-Russian summits.46

Consistent with the Marxist-Leninist tradition, of which both

presidents were well aware, such phrase-mongering is not a casual

exercise, but is calibrated to carry a distinct message

case, the message is not solely or even primarily to be

understood as a description of the actual state of relations

between the two states, but rather as an indicator of the extent

of their mutual concern over the status and behavior of

another--the United States--and of their desire to send a warning

opposition to "hegemonism"--the effort to build a

"Someone is always dragging us toward a unipolar world and

wanting to dictate unilaterally, but we want multipolarity."

Such statements on the part of Russia were especially frequent

after United States announced its plans for expansion of NATO,

and the implied countermeasure--a "pairing" of

"great Russia" and "great China," as Yeltsin

termed it in 1996--was intended to persuade NATO not to undertake

expansion or, at the very least, to place limits on it

China also denounces NATO expansion as "a policy of

Beijing is less directly affected by it, and is more

concerned about its differences with the United States on Taiwan,

During the Yeltsin years, bilateral relations between the two

neighbors were normalized on several fronts.

made in 1994 in demarcating the border, leaving stretches

totaling less than ten square miles (two islands near Khabarovsk

and another in Chita province) still under dispute.

presidents confidently predicted during Jiang's June 1997 visit

to Moscow that these issues would be resolved in 1997, but

Yeltsin faced very strong opposition to further concessions from

Thus, when it was announced during Yeltsin's

November 1997 visit to China--his fifth summit with Jiang

Zemin--that the 4200-kilometer border had been demarcated for the

first time in the two nations' histories, the fine print on the

agreement revealed continued difficulties.

The Sino-Russian trade relationship is a prime example of one

in which armaments constitute the single most important Russian

export, accounting for at least $5 billion in the last five

years, and reportedly comprising at least one-third of the $7

billion forward-order sales claimed by Rosvooruzhenie, the

Russian arms export agency, at the beginning of 1997.47

aircraft have been the chief component of Russian deliveries;

China has purchased at least six dozen transcontinental SU-27

fighters, which are capable of making the Beijing-to-Moscow trip

in two and one-half hours with one mid-air refueling

categories of purchases which have been concluded or which are

being discussed include naval vessels (Sovremennyi-class

destroyers equipped with supersonic missiles, two Kilo-636

diesel-powered submarines, and less advanced Varsha-vianka

submarines), S-300 surface-to-air missile complexes, T-72 tanks,

Smerch multiple rocket launchers, and the technology for advanced

gas centrifuges used in uranium enrichment and for MIRV'd

Left unresolved by Yeltsin was the significant question

of whether Russia was endangering its own long-term security by

selling to its giant neighbor its most advanced weapons and the

envy that Beijing is receiving more modern equipment than their

However, most Russian analyusts appeared to

believe that China's near-term foreign policy ambitions are

directed toward Taiwan and the South China Sea, and that her

interests in stability in Central Asia paralleled those of

Yeltsin and Primakov seemed to have calculated that they

could keep the relationship with China in check, utilizing it as

a way of balancing U.S. influence in Asia

and economic power continue to grow and her territorial ambitions

eventually turn back toward the north and west, Yeltsin's

successors may find greater safety in again tilting the

triangular balance by strengthening Russia's ties with the United

Despite the major effort Yeltsin made to normalize and

strengthen Russia's ties with China, he by no means put all his

Gorbachev's initiatives, Yeltsin also sought to improve Russia's

relations with two strong allies of the United States--Japan and

He hoped that they would be eager investors in the

development of Russia's vast Far Eastern mineral reserves

also sought to play a role in regional security arrangements that

would foster stability and promote expanded trade.

Tokyo nor Seoul responded to Yeltsin's overtures with the degree

One reason that Japan's investment in the Russian Far East has

been less than anticipated (beyond its own recent economic

difficulties) is undoubtedly Russia's continuing political

instability, of which Japanese investors are notoriously shy.

Japan would rather concentrate Moscow's attention on another

factor explaining its reticence: the continuing absence, more

than a half century after World War II, of a peace treaty between

The obstacle to the conclusion of a treaty is

the persisting dispute over the ownership of the southern Kurile

Yeltsin initially gave indications that he would be

amenable to negotiations for a settlement, but despite alleged

Japanese financial promises, his cash-starved government backed

off after the prospect of territorial concessions became the

object of angry debate among nationalists in the Russian

No further progress was made until Yeltsin hosted Japan's

Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto for an informal "weekend

without neckties" in November 1997 in the Siberian city of

efforts" to conclude a peace treaty by 2000, based on the

1993 Tokyo Declaration in which Yeltsin had acknowledged the

existence of a territorial dispute over the southern Kuriles

However, members of his government downplayed the possibility

that the islands might eventually be surrendered, noting that the

Russian constitution upholds the territorial integrity of the

, and the President is the guarantor of the

constitution.48 Despite the lingering ambiguities, the

"sauna summit" was said by Yeltsin to have helped break

resignation, he left to his successor the difficult task of

actually resolving the issue in the year 2000.

The southward expansion of the Russian Empire in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought it into frequent

conflict with the Ottoman Empire and with Persia, as well as with

the competing empires of Britain and France

period, Lenin, Stalin, and their successors engaged in active

(and occasionally expansionist) diplomacy in the region, as

Moscow competed for territory and influence with the countries of

the Middle East and with Western "imperialism."

And although, after the collapse of the USSR, the Russian

Federation now finds itslef geographically separated from the

Middle East by the buffer states of the Caucasus and Central

Asia, Moscow's vital interests in these former Soviet republics

and the vast energy reserves they contain--second only to those

Accordingly, of highest concern in the region are Turkey and

Iran--the two states that share a border with the states of the

former Soviet Union and that are thus seen as Russia's potential

Yeltsin's policies toward them varied, in part

as a result of the shifting political winds in Moscow, with

Westernizers and Eurasianists competing over the direction of

But there was also variability in Moscow's

perception of threat that Ankara or Teheran is seeking to extend

pan-Turkic or Islamic-fundamentalist influence in the Caucasus

policy swung back and forth from nervous rivalry to a

relationship so cooperative that it included the sale of arms.

the case of Iran, this cooperative attitude on Moscow's part

occasioned frequent protests from Washington, but as long as Iran

behaved responsibly in Russia's backyard, Moscow saw no reason to

accede to U.S. pressure to cut off arms sales or nuclear

In 1997 Yeltsin sought to calm Washington with a

pledge that, while limited arms sales would continue, there would

be no deliveries to Iran of missiles or missile technology.

No less a threat to stability in the Persian Gulf region, and

no less undesirable in Washington's eyes as a possible partner

Council, both Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's representatives

repeatedly voted to support international sanctions on Iraq,

although Moscow ranked second only to Baghdad itself in the

amount of economic harm it has suffered as a result.

Given Russia's own economic crisis, Yeltsin's persistence in

supporting costly U.N. sanctions was prominently used by his

domestic opponents as a prime example of Russia's sacrificing its

Yeltsin periodically lobbied in the West for an easing of

sanctions as recognition of Iraq's "good behavior.

Saddam Hussein forced the sanctions issue to the forefront in the

fall of 1997, when he ordered the expulsion of American members

of the U.N. weapons inspections team, resulting in the withdrawal

Primakov wrested an agreement from the Iraqis to readmit the

team, in return for a promise that Russia would

"energetically" work for early lifting of sanctions.

The Iraqis, however, refused to allow inspections of certain

Moscow clearly wanted to push such details to the background,

preferring to capitalize on what Primakov termed "a great

success for Russian diplomacy . . . achieved without the use of

Russian reporter, the Americans were essentially isolated, and

Russia strengthened its reputation "as an influential power

not only throughout the Middle East . . . but in the world as a

Deputy Foreign Minister Viktor Posuvaliuk also saw

in the role Russia was playing in the crisis a special

significance for broader Russian foreign policy: "The world

is increasingly coming to realize that Russia is emerging or has

emerged from its period of confusion and major problems, and that

it is now oriented toward conducting an energetic and

diplomats were not acting as "undiscriminating defense

attorneys" for Iraq, since they were calling for strict

we are saying that Iraq must be shown that there is light at the

When the Iraqi conflict flared up again in January 1998,

Yeltsin again sought to gain both international and domestic

prestige by sending Posuvaliuk to Baghdad in search of a

solution. Embarrassed when a "deal" announced in Moscow

was immediately denied by the Iraqis, an angry Yeltsin warned

that continued U.S. military activities in the Persian Gulf could

Secretary General Annan's mediation defused the crisis.

a share of the credit, the Russians again saw in the Persian Gulf

crisis some hopeful signs that the ability of the United States

to dictate its will was waning, and that "the unipolar world

Despite its relative activism in the Far East and the Middle

East, however, Moscow's interests in the "non-West" in

the Yeltsin period were distinctly more limited than in the prior

The termination of the global ideological and

geopolitical struggle with the United States, together with the

significant limitations on Russia's ability to project economic

influence, has caused a reorientation of Moscow's priorities to

those areas that border the post-Soviet states. However, the end

has not brought peace to the countries of Asia,

billions of dollars of advanced weaponry have been Moscow's

dominant export to these regions--and a significant one for the

U.S. as well--is a legacy shared by Yeltsin and Clinton, and a

sobering portent that future conflicts could pose even greater

Yeltsin's Foreign Policy Legacy & the Impact of

Now that he has resigned from the presidency of Russia,

historians have already begun to debate whether Boris Yeltsin

deserves the appellation of Great Man or Great Failure.

no doubt about Yeltsin's skills as a destroyer, for he clearly

played a major role in bringing down the Soviet communist system

and in breaking up the USSR, as well as in clearing away the

remnants of Soviet-style political institutions in post-Soviet

It is about his qualities as a builder that the debate

His defenders cite his record in advancing the cause of

democracy in Russia through his respect for the electoral

process, the freedom of speech and press, his efforts to achieve

compromise at critical junctures, and his tendency to support the

law-governed electoral transfer of power in the thousand-year

ego-driven and authoritarian style of rule, the absence of a

vision or program for his country, his apparent insecurity and

lack of personal discipline, his inconsistency, his willingness

to resort to violence against internal enemies, and his penchant

Our survey of Yeltsin's foreign policy can only support a

judgment that his record in responding to the challenges facing

Russia is decidedly a mixture of successes and failures.

the challenges he faced in 1991-92 is being passed on to his

With respect to the task of defining a new

Russia and a basic concept for its national security, the

detractors are undoubtedly right in bemoaning Yeltsin's inability

to articulate a vision or a larger sense of purpose behind which

geopolitical confines and the question of the reconstitution of

the Russian Empire in some form is still alive in some political

idea" came up empty, and popular confusion about Russia's

autobiography to this lack of strategic vision:

I think the answer will intrigue many people.

presenting people with a global strategic goal.

my sights on some shining peak that must be scaled.

trying to wipe out the entire path traversed until now.

No. The chief goal of this restless president is Russia's

In seeking to construct a new set of policy-making

institutions, Yeltsin managed to impose a constitution that

endows the electorate with a measure of responsiblity for the

choice of leaders, but that lacks the critical linkages of

accountability between legislative and administrative organs.

"superpresidential" system has functioned better than

the paralyzed confusion that existed before the new constitution

But it is widely acknowledged that Russia would not

fare so well in the hands of a president with less respect for

democratic niceties or civil liberties, and there is broad

agreement on the need for amendments to the constitution (though

In the realm of foreign policy-making, the

Yeltsin era was plagued by a proliferation of councils and staffs

respected senior personage was brought to the helm of the foreign

ministry that a modicum of policy coordination was achieved.

With only two years of positive growth recorded in the 1990s,

and with the standard of living of the vast majority of the

population much more depressed than in the previous decade, it is

difficult to argue that Yeltsin's record in the realm of economic

observers argue that the foundations for a viable market economy

If Yeltsin's successor is willing to fight for

passage of legislation ensuring more stable financial

institutions and enforceability of contracts, and if he is

willing to stem massive corruption and capital flight, further

progress is in sight--bearing in mind Prime Minister Putin's

caution that even ten years of 8% annual growth will bring

Russians to the per capita income level of today's Portuguese.

Although Yeltsin clearly preferred the use of diplomacy over

coercion in dealing with the new states of the "near

abroad," and although he managed to overcome extremist

opposition to settle major issues Ukraine--the most important of

these states--it would be impossible to contend that his legacy

includes establishment of mutual trust and a perception of the

need for tighter economic and security integration in the former

Ethnic and religious conflict continues in the

Caucasus and Central Asia, but the once-feared cultural and

political assaults from Turkey and Iran have not reached the

control of the vast energy resources of this region has

intensified, and Russia has not been able to cast itself in the

role of a benevolent partner in this contest.

In the former Soviet states, as in Eastern Europe, the shadow

cast by NATO enlargement calls attention to one of the most

disturbing legacies of 1990s relations between Russia and the

Though he managed to elbow his way to the table of the G-7

and other institutions, Yeltsin's Russia--its reputation

blackened by continuing brutal warfare in Chechnia--has not been

accepted as a full partner in Europe's economic, political, and

appears to be built mainly on common opposition to American

unilateralism; its only other meaningful dimension is an arms

trade that promises to further destabilize the East Asian region

Japan and Korea are as distant from Russia as they were at the

beginning of the decade, and dangers of nuclear proliferation on

the Korean Peninsula and in South Asia have magnified despite

Russia's professed interest in cooperative efforts to stem them

True, there is no foreseeable external threat to Russia's

borders--though the prospects for internal disarray have been

revived by the war in Chechnia--and Yeltsin left Russia facing no

sector claim the lion's share of Russia's resources, and this

reversal has been achieved without overt rebellion from the armed

But Yeltsin's angry outbursts over perceived American

unilateralism in Iraq in 1998 and in Kosovo in 1999 escalated at

the end of his term, in his tirade over Western protests about

his Chechnia policy, to a veiled nuclear threat

it says about Yeltsin's undiplomatic style, this pattern of

protest reveals the immense frustration that Russia's

policymakers and people still feel at having been cast down from

the heights of super-power and relegated to a role of seeming

Although this can be attributed in part to

occasional Western arrogance and insensitivity, in part it also

testifies to Yeltsin's failures as a policy-maker and diplomat.

Clearly, some of the blame for these failures rests with

commented on his unstable personality, and tales of his bouts of

excessive drinking and depression, especially at times of seeming

triumph and opportunity, have passed well beyond the rumor stage.

On numerous occasions, such as during foreign visits to Sweden

and Germany, his well-publicized erratic behavior left his staff

struggling to bail him out of embarrassing situations.

autocratic style of rule occasionally seemed to border on

megalomania; few shared Yeltsin's pleasure in his references to

of subordinates, eager to decide all major questions, but

reluctant to shoulder responsibility, Yeltsin seemed to delight

in setting opposing forces in his administration against each

other, apparently blind to the inconsistencies and instability

His desire to be embraced by world leaders who

played up to his ego contributed to the contradictions in policy.

As Lilia Shevtsova has written, "when he was in Moscow he

would heatedly and sincerely make a scapegoat of the West, but

when he was back in the West under the influence of the friendly

attention of his host, Yeltsin would make concessions that were

unanticipated even by his closest foreign policy

At the root of Yeltsin's failures in foreign policy, however,

was his lack of an overaching vision of where he was taking his

country. Despite the production of documents solemnly listing

"concepts" and "doctrines," policy objectives

were not clearly defined, and Yeltsin kept shuffling personnel at

such a rate that implementation became impossible

of a guiding philosophy--in Dimitri Simes' words, "this

preoccupation with political tactics at the expense of

substantive policy"-- has produced a foreign policy that

Returning to Greenstein's framework, we can conclude by

speculating whether the outcomes of Russian foreign policy in the

last decade would have been expected to occur even if the

critical variable--the personality of Yeltsin--had been absent.

Would it have made a difference to Russia's place in the world if

the August 1991 coup-plotters had succeeded in removing Yeltsin

from the political scene, or if Rutskoi and Khasbulatov had

succeeded in ousting Yeltsin in October 1993, or if Zyuganov had

won the June 1996 presidential elections, or if Yeltsin had died

on the operating table the following autumn?

for better or for worse, Russia's course would not have been the

Or to frame our speculation in another way: where would

Russia be today had its first president been a committed democrat

with a clear vision of where he wanted the country to go and the

indeed a mix of success and failure, but there is little doubt

that the foreign policy of Russia has felt enormous impact from

the powerful personality of the man who ruled in the Kremlin in

1. For more extensive theoretical discussion of the impact of

a leader's personality on political situations, see the

following: Harold D. Lasswell, Power and Personality, (New

York: W.W. Norton, 1948); Sidney Hook, The Hero in History,

(New York: John Day, 1943); James David Barber, The

Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House,

4th edition, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992);

Greenstein, Fred I., Personality and Politics, (Chicago:

Markham, 1969); Gordon J. DiRenzo, ed., Personality and

Politics,(Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1974); Margaret G.

Hermann, with Thomas W. Milburn, eds., A Psychological

Examination of Political Leaders, (New York: Free Press,

1977); Barbara Kellerman, Political Leadership: A Source Book,

(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), 1986; Alexander L.

George, "The 'Operational Code': A Neglected Approach to the

Study of Political Leaders and Decision-Making," International

Studies Quarterly, vol. 13, 1969, pp. 190-222.

2. Greenstein, Personality and Politics, chapter 2,

reprinted in Kellerman, Political Leadership, p. 43.

3. Quoted in Robert H. Donaldson and Joseph L. Nogee, The

Foreign Policy of Russia: Changing Systems, Enduring Interests,

(Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), p. 58. Following the Khrushchev

quotation, Nogee and I drew the following conclusion: "No

account of Soviet foreign policy in the postwar years, and no

explanation of the origins of the Cold War, can be complete

without an awareness of the extent to which Stalin's policies and

personality required isolationism, an atmosphere of hostility,

4. A persuasive account of Gorbachev's personal impact on

Soviet foreign policy can be found in Archie Brown, The

Gorbachev Factor, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996),

5. "Hook's interest, of course, is in lending precision

the individual who, because of especially great talents, is able

Failure is equally significant: an actor's capabilities may be

relevant to an outcome in a negative as well as positive

Greenstein, Politics and Personality, in

Kellerman, Political Leadership, pp. 45-46.

6. A fuller account of this record can be found in Donaldson

and Nogee, The Foreign Policy of Russia, chapters 4-8,

from which much of the following is drawn.

7. For an elaboration of this point, see Margot Light,

"Foreign Policy Thinking," in Neil Malcolm, Alex

Pravda, Roy Allison, and Margot Light, Internal Factors in

Russian Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1996), pp. 35-38, and Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, Russia

and the New States of Eurasia: The Politics of Upheaval (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 26-29.

8. Sergei Stankevich, "Derzhava v poisakh sebia," Nezavisimaia

gazeta, March 28, 1992, quoted in James Richter,

"Russian Foreign Policy and the Politics of National

Identity," in The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy after

the Cold War, ed. Celeste A. Wallender (New York: Westview,

9. See the description of Kozyrev's views in Jeffrey T.

Checkel, Ideas and International Political Change:

Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 107-15.

10. Vladimir Abarinov and Vitaly Tretiakov, "The Union

Left Russia with a Poor Foreign-Policy Legacy," Nezavisimaia

gazeta, April 1, 1992, in The Current Digest of the

Post-Soviet Press (CDPSP)44, no. 13 (1992), pp. 4-6.

"Pragmatic Nationalists," and "Fundamentalist

Nationalists," are from Malcolm et al.,Internal

See especially the chapter by Margot Light, pp.

12. Stankevich, "Derzhava," translated in CDPSP

resemblance to Stalin's famous article, "Don't Forget the

East," published almost three-quarters of a century before.

Although it notably lacked the Marxist-Leninist terminology, it

was similar to the earlier article in seeking to restore balance

toward India: Ideology and Strategy (Cambridge: Harvard

13. Vladislav Chernov, "Russia's National Interests and

Threats to its Security," Nezavisimaia gazeta, April

quotations that follow are from this account.

of the "foreign policy concept" was classified and

never published, but this summary, written by a member of the

Security Council staff, is widely believed to be authoritative.

See Malcolm et. al., Internal Factors, pp. 69-70,

and Leon Aron, "The Emergent Priorities of Russian Foreign

Policy," in The Emergence of Russian Foreign Policy,

eds. Leon Aron and Kenneth M. Jensen (Washington: United States

Institute of Peace Press, 1994), pp. 17-34.

14.Egor Gaidar, Days of Defeat and Victory (Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 1999), pp. 284-285.

15. "Primakov Starts with the CIS," Moskovskiie

novosti, 2, January 14-21, 1996, in CDPSP 48, no. 2

16. "A Minister the Opposition Doesn't Curse," Obshchaia

gazeta, 37, September 19-25, 1996, in CDPSP 48, no. 39

17. Leonid Mlechin, "The Dark Glasses Keep One from

Seeing the Man's True Face," Izvestiia, May 15, 1996,

in CDPSP 48, no. 20 (1996), pp. 11-12; Aleksei Pushkov,

"Evgenii Primakov Goes Solo," Moskovskiie novosti,

18. The text of the Constitution may be found in Richard

Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society, Second Edition (New

19 Roy Allison, "Military Factors in Foreign

Policy," in Malcolm et al., Internal Factors,

20. Amy Knight, Spies without Cloaks: The KGB's Successors

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

paragraphs draw from Knight's excellent study.

21. On this point see Alex Pravda, "The Public Politics

of Foreign Policy," in Malcolm et al., Internal

22. Ibid., pp. 188-203, and Jack Snyder,

"Democratization, War, and Nationalism in the Post-Communist

States," in Wallender, The Sources of Russian Foreign

23. See Wallender, ed., The Sources of Russian Foreign

Policy, especially the chapters by Kimberly Marten Zisk,

"The Foreign Policy Preferences of Russian Defense

Industrialists: Integration or Isolation?" pp. 95-120, and

Matthew Evangelista, "From Each According to its Abilities:

Competing Theoretical Approaches to the Post-Soviet Energy

24. Malcolm et al., Internal Factors, p. 288.

25 The text of the CIS agreement is inCDPSP 43, no. 49

26. RFE/RL Research Report 1, no. 4, January 4, 1992,

On the military issues see Stephen Foye, "The

CIS Armed Forces," ibid., 2, no. 1, January 1, 1993, and

"End of the CIS Command Heralds New Russian Defense

27. See Ustina Markus, "Business as Usual with

Lukashenka," Transition 1, no. 8, May 26, 1995, pp.

57-61, and "Missed Opportunities in Foreign Policy,"

28. See Iury Chubchako, "Treaty on a Treaty," Kommersant,

29. Rossiiskaia gazeta, February 3, 1992, in CDPSP 45,

31. "B.N. Yeltsin's Speech," Sovetskaia Rossiia,

32. Andrei Kozyrev claimed that during the crisis "the

Western embassies in effect began to work for us.

Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 216.

33. In his autobiography Yeltsin states that as the coup

unfolded, "George Bush not only called but immediately

organized international support for Russia . . . his support was

34. Thomas L. Friedman, "Reducing the Russian Arms

Threat," The New York Times, June 17, 1992.

36. Rossiiskaia gazeta, June 19, 1992, pp. 1-2.

39. Jerry F. Hough, Democratization and Revolution in the

USSR, 1985-1991 (Washington: The Brookings Institution,

40. Boris Yeltsin, The Struggle for Russia, p. 288.

41. "Russia Issues a Warning on NATO Expansion,"CDPSP,

42. The New York Times, May 15, 1997, p. A8.

44. "Kremlin Adopting a New Anti-American Line?" Jamestown

Foundation Monitor, October 20, 1997, in Johnson's Russia

45. "Boris Yeltsin's Chinese Warning," Kommersant,

46. Reports of Sino-Russian presidential visits may be found

in Vasily Kononenko and Vladimir Skosyrev, "Russian-Chinese

Declaration is Essentially Tantamount to a Nonaggression

Pact," Izvestiia, December 21, 1992, in CDPSP

44, no. 51 (1992), pp. 13-14; Aleksandr Chudodeiev,

"Partners, but not Allies," Segodnia, September

Malkina, "Boris Yeltsin Sees No One Who Could Stand Against

such a Pair as 'Great Russia' and 'Great China,'" Segodnia,

"A Breakthrough for Russian Policy on the Asian Front,"

Rossiiskiie vesti, April 24, 1997, in CDPSP 49, no.

17 (1997), pp. 1-2; Aleksandr Chudodeiev, "Boris Yeltsin and

Jiang Zemin Find Harmony," Segodnia, November 12,

47. "Russia and China: Can a Bear Love a Dragon?" The

48. "Argued for 52 Years, Settled in Two Days," Rossiiskiie

vesti, November 4, 1997, in CDPSP 49, no. 44 (1997),

49. Moskovskiie novosti, no. 47, November 23-30, 1997,

50. Leonid Gankin, "We Have Become Mature Partners,"

Moskovskiie novosti, no. 23, June 9-16, 1996, in CDPSP 48,

51. Boris Yeltsin, The Struggle for Russia (New York:

52. Lilia Shevtsova, Yeltsin's Russia (Washington:

53. Dimitri Simes, After the Collapse; Russia Seeks its

Place as a Great Power (New York: Simon & Schuster,

The Commonwealth of Belarus and Russia was founded on 2 April 1996. The basis of the union was strengthened on 2 April 1997, with the signing of the "Treaty on the Union between Belarus and Russia" at which time its name was changed to the "Union of Belarus and Russia". Several further agreements were signed on 25 December 1998, with the intention of providing greater political, economic, and social integration. Nevertheless, the nature of the political entity remained vague.