The giant Eurasian country known as Russia will never be truly integrated into the West. But it’s a lot closer than many Russian nationalists might care to admit–or Bill Clinton might dare to hope. Meeting with Boris Yeltsin for the first time as president last weekend in drizzling Vancouver, Clinton was clearly trying to draw the Russian president into the warm embrace of the West. He offered a $1.6 billion aid package, which Yeltsin happily accepted (following story), and after a lunch with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the two leaders took a private walk in the woods. Economics wasn’t all they discussed: Clinton raised U.S. concerns about Russian interference in the former Soviet republic of Georgia-Yeltsin told him Russia wouldn’t meddle-while Yeltsin chided the Americans for insisting on linking trade privileges to Russian emigration policy and for sending submarines to monitor Russian territorial waters. Clinton “was very pleased,” said spokesman George Stephanopoulos. “He likes Yeltsin. He’s a fighter.” The Russian president echoed the sentiment: “Despite the age difference, we have very good chemistry.”
Given the ferocity of the anti-Western conservatives Yeltsin faces at home, it wasn’t clear whether the American bear hug would help or hurt his standing among the Russian people. Last week the Russian Parliament adopted a slate of questions for an April 25 referendum that could spell Yeltsin’s demise. That raised the worrisome question: if Yeltsin were to exit the scene, would his pro-Western policies go with him? And if he stays, inevitably weakened by conservative attacks, will Russia still be on our side?
Yeltsin clearly wanted to play down his troubles; on the night before he left for Vancouver, he told NEWSWEEK’s Andrew Nagorski: “The main thing I want the Americans to do is stop talking about Communist Russia. There is no communism here-it’s finished.” Clinton certainly hopes so; in order to keep world conflicts at a minimum and pursue his pressing domestic agenda, he needs Moscow’s cooperation. A nationalist resurgence in Russia would endanger Western peace initiatives in the former Yugoslavia, where right-wingers staunchly support Serbia; would threaten the nearly worldwide boycott of Moscow’s former ally, Saddam Hussein, and put an end to the START II treaty, which hardliners in the Parliament will almost certainly fail to ratify anyway. Yeltsin’s most powerful rival, Ruslan Khasbulatov, is cooler toward the West than Washington would like. But he is not the scariest threat. Just beyond him stands a crowd of howling rightwingers, who believe the fall of the Soviet Union was one big CIA plot. Russians refer to them as the “red-browns,” a motley coalition of diehard Communists and anti-democratic fascists who share a belief in Russian supremacy-and a hatred of Yeltsin. Their numbers are still relatively small-most polls give them about 10 percent of the population-but they are louder than ever and their influence is growing.
Russia’s economic woes clearly shape the new mood, and nationalists link those troubles directly to the West. In the April 25 referendum, Yeltsin can hardly hope to win the necessary 50 million “yes” votes–a majority of all registered voters-on the question of whether people have faith in his socioeconomic policies. The possibility of a “no” vote represents “a threat not just to Yeltsin, but to his [foreign] overlords,” wrote legislator Vladimir Isakov in the daily Sovetskaya Rossiya last week, “those who invested their capital in Russia, ripped us off and got rich, growing fat by stealing what belongs to the people.”
In fact, the West is desperate to soothe Russia’s economic pain and prevent that kind of rhetoric from spreading. But polls show that more Russians find foreign aid humiliating than helpful (about 40 percent versus 30 percent). Many are disappointed that most of the $24 billion George Bush promised them last year has not materialized. In offering his own aid package, Clinton is taking a gamble: if he fails to get the money from Congress, he will only provide ammunition to the nationalist charge that Russia has given up everything to the West and gotten nothing in return. “We have the feeling that Europe and America rejected us at a difficult moment,” said Galina Starovoitova, a liberal former aide to Yeltsin. “There is anger at the West.” Russia’s thirst for everything from American movies to Barbie dolls seems as unquenched as ever. But the adulation of all things Western has peaked. “There’s much less of the wide-eyed fascination,” says Bernadine Joselyn, who administers U.S.-Russia exchange programs and has lived in Moscow nearly five years. “There’s more of a feeling of hostility [toward foreigners] and ‘Why are you richer than I am?’”
Clinton appears to understand Russia’s sense of spiritual abandonment. In a speech in Annapolis before the summit, he addressed the Russian people directly, playing skillfully on what shreds of pride they have left in themselves. “You heroically withstood murderous invasions by Napoleon and Hitler,” he reminded them. “Your great literature and your music, which has so enriched our own culture, were composed with the pen of longing and the ink of sorrow.” Clinton’s chief Russia expert and old Oxford buddy, Strobe Talbott, clearly had a hand in pushing Russia’s feel-good buttons. Clinton even quote done of the Russian intelligentsia’s dearest poets, Anna Akhmatova: “The hour for courage strikes upon our clocks, and the courage will not desert us.”
Yet even Bill Clinton cannot assuage an inferiority complex that has bedeviled Russia’s relationship with the West for centuries. Peter the Great began introducing Western ways into his empire 300 years ago, and Russians have been arguing ever since about whether that was a good idea. “Russia is split,” says Adam Michnik, a leading Polish intellectual who visits Moscow frequently, “and every Russian is split on this issue.” At this point, Westernizers unquestionably have the upper hand. According to one poll last year, 60 percent of people older than 65 believe that “the West has a negative influence on us” and “wants us to fail.” But 66 percent of people age 16 to 24 think the opposite. “Don’t take our anti-Westerners too seriously,” says Muscovite Aleksandr Nyankin, 22, who’s already been to five foreign countries. Emblazoned on the back of his jacket, made in China, is the slogan THE AMERICAN FOOTBALL IS MY FAVORITE SPORTS. Maksim, 24, is busy supervising workers at one of his private company’s kiosks on Moscow’s Novy Arbat Prospekt. They’re removing signs for M&M’s and Mars candy bars, obeying a new city directive banning signs in foreign languages. “It’s a meaningless game,” shrugs Maksim. “These guys are in their death throes … [Russia] will stay with the West.”
High boots: The nationalists’ rhetoric still can sound alarming. Last week 34 candidates for mayor of Moscow gathered at city hall to address the voters. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a right-wing demagogue who has proposed taking Alaska back from America, sounded comparatively moderate, as speaker after speaker promised to stop privatizing state property, freeze rising prices and militantly protect Russia’s national pride. The sole woman candidate even claimed “the Zionists are after me.” Another candidate, dressed in the peasant tunic and high boots of old Russia, strode to the stage adn burst into a folk song. He represented neither Communists nor democrats, he said, but simply the “Russian soul.”
The fact that many nationalist are so loony may keep them out of power. But it will also prevent Russia from steering its politics onto a healthier course. The Slavophiles could make a valuable contribution to the debate over Russia’s future, but they are distracted by obsessions with Masonic-Zionist plots and ohter paranoid fantasies–or they use West-bashing simply ot gain the spotlight. “Some of the patriotic slogans are good, but the people who advance them are not people you can trust,” says Dmitry Yakushkin, foreign editor of the weekly Moscow News. “When you start being patriotic, it ends up as a pogrom. In our country, these things go together.”
Even if Yeltsin should fall and a more conservative regime come to power, throwing Russia back into isolation would be impossible. Too many people have been exposed to the West now to believe old-style propaganda that life in Russia is really better. By offering aid with one hand, and boosts to Russian patriotism with the other, Clinton showed that he understands that what needs buttressing is not just Russian reform but Russian self-esteem. In order to move closer to the West, Russia may have to move a little farther away.
