In the glorious autumn of 1991 the Soviet kingdom of ideological
imperatives fell, and the foreign and security policies of Russia
began to be shaped by what might be called the "normal" factors:
domestic politics and the economy, history and geography. Suddenly,
Russia's course became open to variations--and meaningful
speculations.

Those in this country who speculated out loud almost instantly split
into two camps. Each ranged across party affiliations and spanned the
conservative-liberal divide, and each quickly acquired allies in the
mass media and among policymakers. One school of thought (let us call
it the "Historical") contended, in oversimplified essence, that a
nation's history is its destiny. Historic genes would see to it that,
sooner or later and mutatis mutandis, Russia would revert to its
age-long authoritarian and imperialist ways. The best known exponents
of this view have been Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

The opposing camp (call it the "Romantic") had its main advocates in
Jeane Kirkpatrick and, until last spring, Richard Nixon. The
Romantics argued that nations do change, and that democracy--even one
as tentative, fledgling, incompetent, and chaotic as Russia's--cures
historic ills, as in our time it has done already in the cases of
Germany and Japan.

It is clear today that both the Historicals and the Romantics were
partially right--and also that both have erred, although the
Romantics, so far, have been closer to the mark. The internal
condition of Russia has changed immensely for the better, and is
continuing to change, though progress has not occurred as fast or as
decisively as the Romantics had hoped. As far as foreign policy and
security are concerned, the process of change has turned out to
resemble not a highway, but a muddy and pitted country road that
zigzags, undulates and detours a great deal.

The justifiable concern caused in the West by the twists and turns of
the Russian course has been endowed with additional weight and darker
hues by a powerful mindset which requires a serious effort to resist.
That mindset arises and gains credibility from an undeniable fact:
for the last four centuries and until a few years ago Russia has been
at the heart of two relentlessly expansionist empires: first that of
the tsars and then that of the communists. Seen in this light, the
dips and loops in the road--from the alleged Russian involvement in
the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict (whether authorized by the Kremlin or
not), to the continuing presence of the Fourteenth Army in Moldova,
to the defense of the brutal communist dictatorship in
Tajikistan--easily acquire significance and portent well beyond their
actual scope.

Russia Great versus Russia Free

Yet alongside these disturbing developments there has unfolded a
dazzling spectacle of what might be called the Yeltsin revolution in
Russian foreign policy. From Ivan the Terrible through Peter the
Great and Catherine to Stalin, Russian state-building invariably
included three elements: first, a potent messianic streak (from
Russia as a "Third Rome," to Russia as the leader of the Slavs, to
the "heart of world socialism"); second, the relentless expansion and
strengthening of the empire; and third, dependence on massive
military strength. Yeltsin has radically revised (indeed, in many
instances, reversed) all three components.

The ideological dream has been interrupted--one hopes,
terminated--and Russia is learning to speak prose both to its own
people and to the world. The empire has been broken up. And the
military is being starved for funds and men, with a brutal
determination unprecedented in Russian history. The annual diminution
of the defense budget for three years in a row; the steadfast
adherence of the Yeltsin administration to the target reduction of
the armed forces to under 1.5 million (from 4.5 million just three
years ago); and the withdrawal from the Baltic countries controlled
by Russia for two centuries--these are only the most dramatic
manifestations of the military revolution.

But the most momentous development has been a break with another
national theme, one which, like a thread of steel, bound rulers and
ruled for centuries. This theme was the unquestioned and
unquestionable priority of national security and foreign policy
objectives over domestic concerns. The readiness with which the
latter were sacrificed to advance the former was the central
characteristic of the Russian state for at least four centuries. As
the great Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin succinctly put it in a
memorandum to Alexander I in 1818, "The first duty of the sovereign
is to preserve the internal and external unity of the state.
Solicitude for the welfare of social classes and individuals must
come second." Throughout Russian history, an overwhelming
preoccupation with the integrity of the empire was a critical brake
on domestic liberalization. As Adam Ulam has said:

"At decisive moments it was not only the government but also Russian
society which found itself unable to opt clearly for freedom if its
price seemed to involve the threat to the country's unity and
greatness. [In 1990, it was precisely such a threat that moved
Gorbachev, belatedly and unsuccessfully, to attempt to slow down the
reforms.]"

When Russian foreign policy was reborn, Yeltsin, too, faced the same
cursed dilemma of Russian history: Russia great (that is, Russia
imperial) versus Russia free. He became the first Russian leader ever
to choose Russia free. Consider the magnitude of what Yeltsin did. In
December 1991, when he hammered the last nail in the coffin of the
Soviet Union in Belovezhskaya Pusha, he not only gave up all of the
imperial conquests of Peter, Catherine, and both Alexanders but
reversed the four hundred year old tradition in which the very
national idea of Russia was derived from that of the imperial state.
He "uncoupled" Russian identity and Russian statehood from the
Russian empire. Until then, the two had never been separate: the
emergence of the modern Russian state under Ivan the Terrible
coincided--after the conquest of the Kazan and Astrakhan
Khanates--with the birth of the Russian empire. The result of this
revolution may be summarized quite simply: not since the middle of
the sixteenth century when the Russian expansion began, has there
been a Russia less aggressive, less belligerent, less threatening to
neighbors and the world than the Russia we see today.

Liberal Disenchantment with America

It is quite clear today, however, that despite the justified euphoria
that attended the early stages of this revolution, it has not, in the
end, produced a Russian foreign policy that is uniformly and
unremittingly solicitous of the United States, or even automatically
accommodating of its interests.

Nor, in retrospect, could it have. Just as in Russian domestic
politics anti-communism is no longer viewed in Russia as synonymous
with democracy, but only as a necessary and in itself insufficient
condition for progress, so, while the radical break with foreign
policy objectives of the past creates a vital precondition for
Russia's re-integration in what Moscow used to call "the civilized
world," it does not in itself ensure a cloudless relationship with
the United States and its allies.

Between the August Revolution of 1991 and today, there has occurred a
major change in the ways in which the Russian political class views
Russia's proper role in its neighborhood and the world. In
particular, there has been a change in perceptions of Russia's
relations with the United States, whose motives and objectives have
been intensely--and less than objectively--re-examined in Moscow. The
most remarkable feature of this metamorphosis is the political
provenance of those affected by it. Until it occurred, there had been
a very stable correlation between domestic ideological positions and
perceptions of the outside world: the rejection of the West almost
perfectly coincided with reactionary--that is, in the Russian
context, leftist, statist and nationalist--domestic positions. But
starting in the second half of 1992, suspicion of the United States
and calls for a tougher foreign policy line in pursuit of Russian
national interests began to emanate from different and most unusual
ideological quarters.

Several months ago in Moscow, for example, a top official on the
National Security Council, having just enthusiastically described to
me a criminal justice reform that would provide additional and
weighty guarantees for the individual against the state, proceeded to
portray the U.S. policy toward Russia as based on raw force, narrow
egotistical interests, and condescension--all, in his opinion,
designed to deny Russia its great power status. One of the earliest
converts to this line among prominent, card-holding democrats was
Vladimir Lukin, ex-ambassador to the United States and now the
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Duma. Today, he
is in very large and distinguished company.

Consider, as another striking example, a statement made last spring
by a leading Russian anti-communist and engineer of the Soviet
Union's demise, Gennady Burbulis. As Yeltsin's top aide and state
secretary, Burbulis was the second most powerful man in Russia during
the critical first year of the revolution, between September 1991 and
October 1992. Speaking in the House of the Cinema, the home of the
most radical democratic opposition to Gorbachev during perestroika,
in April, 1994 he responded to a question about the former Yugoslavia
and Russia's dispute with Ukraine over the Black Sea Fleet in these
terms:

Essay Types: Essay