Glittering dreams and unfulfilled wishes are the legacy of the late first president of the Russian Federation, writes El-Sayed Amin Shalabi* Boris Yeltsin is vividly associated with events that paved the way for the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, as a state and an empire, and the emergence of its heir, the Russian Federation. Merely to say the name, Yeltsin, is to conjure up the picture of him atop a tank in front of the Russian White House, delivering the speech that would thwart an attempted coup by old-line Russian Communist officials against then president Mikhail Gorbachev. The part he played in the dramatic events in front of the Russian Federation's parliament building would catapult him into the Kremlin. But the day he became president marked the beginning of a whole new wave of doubts and anxieties over the future of the Russian Federation, and its relationship with the West. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was virtually taken for granted that the new Russia would segue into a Western-style democracy and market economy without a hitch. Such certainty quickly dissipated in the face of Russia's domestic circumstances and foreign policy orientation. Floundering economic reform and democratisation seemed to confirm the warnings of a minority of Russia experts that it would run against Russian history and character for that society to assimilate the Western political and economically liberal model. Under Yeltsin, GDP plunged by 53 per cent over 10 years, transportation and healthcare infrastructures deteriorated, the population fell by six million, and corruption and organised crime skyrocketed. These developments were all deeply felt in the Russian military establishment that had formerly been the core source of Soviet power. On the external front, Russia at first responded positively and enthusiastically to Western positions, in keeping with Yeltsin's and Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev's belief that their country's foreign policy had to reflect the internal economic and political transformations, and that it had to promote the influx of desperately needed foreign aid, the most abundant source of which lay in the hands of advanced Western democracies. Kozyrev quoted Aleksandr Pushkin's dictum that to hate the West was to hate human advancement as a whole, and on this basis he formulated a foreign policy designed to eliminate the effects of the Cold War, and to persuade the West that Russia could be depended upon and trusted as a real partner. The policy was translated into Russian agreement on an enormous reduction in its nuclear arms, its signing of SALT II and cooperation in the UN. In spite of its relations with the Serbs, Russia did veto economic sanctions against Yugoslavia over the Bosnian crisis. In short, Russia appeared ready to do anything to prove that it had renounced, once and for all, Cold War jockeying and posturing, and that it was pitching in to build a new global order. In the mid-1990s, this foreign policy faced increasingly severe criticism from within. Various political forces charged that it was too submissive to the West, that it jeopardised national interests, that it was short-sighted and betrayed Russia's other international commitments, and that it was making Russia grovel for foreign aid. The charges were grounded in the fact that, contrary to the West's promises, Russia had only received a fragment of the foreign aid and investment it had expected, while its teetering economy was being further punished as a consequence of economic sanctions on such countries as Iran, Libya and Serbia. In the face of mounting domestic pressures against Yeltsin, Kozyrev began to adopt a more nationalistic tone and dig in his heels on issues on which his government's positions conflicted with those of the West. His message was that partnership between Russia and the West didn't mean that the former wouldn't be tough when it came to defending its national interests. Explaining his new adamant stance to his European counterparts, Kozyrev said that if Russian democrats showed themselves weak in foreign policy they would be swept away by "a wave of hostile force". Much to the surprise of observers, Kozyrev remained foreign minister until he was forced to resign in 1996. His replacement by Yevgeny Primakov put the seal on the shift in Russia's foreign policy orientation. Not only would Russian identity and interests henceforward take priority over cooperation with the West, but also it was not long before Primakov began to speak of the need for a multi-polar world in which Russia, China and India would form one of the axes of power. The growing estrangement between Russia and the West reached its peak with the Kosovo crisis. Throughout the Bosnian and Iraqi crises, Moscow had been feeling increasingly slighted and ignored by the West, and with the steady eastward expansion of NATO it saw itself under siege. Kosovo, therefore, triggered, as The Economist put it, the most destructive form of acrimony between Russia and the West since the Soviet era. In the West, these tensions brought to the fore, again, the dilemma of assimilating Russia into its European environment and raised grave concerns over latent elements in the Russian character, Russia's unpredictability, and the possibility of the rise of anti-Western trends. Against this charged domestic and international backdrop, Yeltsin fell ill, vanished for weeks and then voluntarily stepped down when it became clear that he was no longer capable of undertaking the responsibilities of state. He apologised to his people for "the dreams that have not yet been realised", dreams that were then vested in the person of Vladimir Putin who presented himself as a competent and energetic president, committed to the respect of and rule of law, and determined to channel Russia's resources towards the aspiration of recovering Russia's international standing and prestige. When assessing the Yeltsin era, historians will be torn between two images. The first is the image of the man who led the greatest democratic transition in the second half of the 20th century and who gave Russians the most important gift in their contemporary history: freedom. The second image is that of a president who unleashed a period of seething dissatisfaction and unrest, which, in spite of Putin's efforts, has not quite subsided. * The writer is executive director of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs.
