The spectacular nature of Russia's post–September 11 policies has provoked a great deal of comment and speculation. Unfortunately, most explanations have been facile and stress the opportunistic and tactical nature of Russia's steps.

Such reasoning obscures the real causes of Russia's remarkable behavior, which is rooted in the gradual strategic shift in the country's domestic and foreign policy priorities. The 9/11 crisis has provided a dramatic opportunity for manifesting this revolutionary transformation.

The Record after September 11 

Sympathy and Solidarity. President Vladimir Putin was the first foreign leader to reach President George W. Bush September 11 on Air Force One. Putin called Bush again the next day to discuss cooperation against terrorism. That same day, in a nationally televised statement to the American people, President Putin said: "The event that occurred in the United States today goes beyond national borders. It is a brazen challenge to the whole of humanity, at least to civilized humanity. . . . Addressing the people of the United States on behalf of Russia, I would like to say that we are with you, we entirely and fully share and experience your pain. We support you."[1]

Within hours of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Russians began to bring flowers, icons, burning candles, hand-written notes, and stuffed animals to the U.S. Embassy on Novinskiy Boulevard in Moscow and to the U.S. consulates in St. Petersburg and Ekaterinburg. A week later bouquets continued to be placed in sympathy, and "mounds of flowers" lined the embassy's walls.[2]

In a telegram to President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, Alexiy II, the patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, wrote: "In this tragic hour we are with you— with America and her people. . . . What happened in America has become a tragedy for not only for your country but for all humankind. . . . There are no borders or barriers for such an evil."[3]

On September 12 the central blood transfusion station in Moscow announced a campaign for blood donations for the victims of terrorist acts in the United States. The Russian Red Cross, the Ministry for Emergency Situations, and the transfusion station were flooded with calls from people wishing to donate blood for the injured in New York and Washington.

By presidential decree a national minute of silence commemorated "the victims of the tragedy in the United States" at noon on September 13. Flags were flown at half-mast, and television programs were interrupted with images from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The September 13 statement by the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council condemned the terrorist attacks in the strongest terms and pledged an "intensification" of cooperation "to fight the scourge of terrorism."[4] Russia initiated the statement.

At the October 17–21 summit meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Shanghai, Putin publicly endorsed the U.S. bombing of Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

Military Cooperation. On September 11 Russia responded to the heightened state of U.S. readiness by standing down its troops and canceling strategic bomber and missile exercises scheduled for that day. On September 22 two C-130 U.S. military cargo planes and 100 personnel arrived at an airbase near the Uzbekistan capital, Tashkent.

The next day President Bush spoke by phone with President Putin for an hour. Russia shared intelligence information about the "infrastructure, locations, and training facilities of international terrorists." Moscow agreed to overflights by foreign planes and to their use of former Soviet air bases in the Central Asian nations. Putin announced the measures in a televised address to the nation on September 24.[5] Following that speech, Russian aid to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance increased "fourfold." Military planes were reported to be flying daily from "Moscow to Tajikistan and then from Tajikistan to Afghanistan."[6]

On September 25 Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced that U.S. troops could use military facilities in Tajikistan to launch strikes into Afghanistan. On October 3 more than 1,000 troops of the U.S. Army's Tenth Mountain Division landed in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan—the first time a regular U.S. Army infantry unit had been deployed in a combat mission in the territory of the former Soviet Union.

Three Clichés in Search of Explanation

Most interpretations of Russia's post–September 11 behavior have combined variations on three themes: a tactical quid pro quo, an inability to "afford" military expenditures, and a leader's whim.

Quid pro Quo. The quid-pro-quo theory ascribed Moscow's policies to the pursuit of five short-term objectives: preventing the United States from withdrawing from the antiballistic missile treaty; facilitating Russian entry into the World Trade Organization; preventing (or at least prolonging) the second round of NATO expansion to the east and the likely inclusion of the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; rescheduling and partially forgiving Soviet-era debt to the lenders of the Paris Club; and muting criticism of alleged Russian human rights abuses in the war against separatists and militant Muslim fundamentalists in Chechnya.

Almost five months later, not one item on that alleged agenda has apparently been attained. The United States has served a six-month withdrawal notice from the ABM treaty; no exceptions have been made to WTO membership requirements for Russia; NATO is expected to announce new members at the end of the year; the Paris Club has not softened its position about repayment on schedule; and after a brief lull U.S. officials resumed criticism of Moscow's Chechnya policy. If quid pro quo had been Russia's strategy, it was an obvious miscalculation and, as such, should have been abandoned quickly.

ABM and NATO. In fact, Russia chose to expand and deepen cooperation with the United States and its allies along a broad front. Thus, while calling the unilateral U.S. decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty a "mistake," Putin stated that it did not present a threat to the national security of the Russian Federation. He went on to say that the "current level of relations" between the two nations "should not only be retained, but also used to work out the new framework of strategic relationship."[7] As late as July 2001 Russia had threatened to retaliate in case the United States unilaterally abandoned the treaty— possibly by installing multiple warheads on the thirty new SS-25 (Topol-M) intercontinental ballistic missiles. (Such warheads have been banned by the START II arms control agreement, signed in January 1993 by Presidents George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin.)

Despite the end of the ABM regime, Russia continued its support for "radical, irreversible, and verifiable" reduction in the nuclear arsenals.[8] Putin reiterated Russia's intent to formalize a tentative agreement reached at the November 14–15 Crawford, Texas, summit to reduce U.S. and Russian arsenals from around 6,000 weapons to 1,500-2,000.[9]

Similarly, on October 3–4 Putin visited NATO headquarters in Brussels— the first such visit by a Russian or Soviet leader— to negotiate with NATO's secretary general, Lord Robinson. Following the negotiations, he announced "our great readiness to cooperate and interact" with NATO.[10] He signaled a softening in Russia's opposition to further NATO enlargement, which may include the three former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

A month later Putin stated that Russia was "prepared to expand cooperation with NATO and we are prepared to go as far as the Atlantic alliance is prepared to go."[11] On December 7 NATO and Russia agreed to set up a new decision-making council in which Russia would have greater say in certain NATO activities. The council replaced the Permanent Joint Council established in 1997.

Legacies of Soviet Superpower. On October 16 Putin announced the closing of the Lurdes, Cuba, military complex, Russia's largest military base and electronic listening post in the Western Hemisphere. Established in 1964, the 28 square-mile installation housed 1,500–1,600 full-time personnel and was operated jointly by the Sixth Directorate of Military Intelligence and the Federal Agency for Government Communication and Information.

In addition to gathering and analyzing U.S. communications, Lurdes reportedly guided Russian intelligence agents in North America, provided links to the Russian spy satellite network, sent instructions to Russian ships and submarines, and tracked U.S. naval activities in the Caribbean.

Cuba stated its "complete" opposition to Moscow's decision, which it called "a grave threat to Cuba's security"[12] and a "special gift" to President Bush.[13] Communist and nationalist deputies in the Duma were reported to "express an equal outrage."[14]

On the same day Putin stated that Russia would shut down its eavesdropping post and naval base in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. The Soviet Union and then Russia had maintained the base the since 1979.

Oil Revenues. Yet throughout the fall of 2001 Russia, which is the largest independent oil exporter, with a 7 percent world market share, resisted demands by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to reduce exports by 100,000–150,000 barrels a day and thus shielded the U.S. and Western European economies from the adverse effects of higher energy costs. Russia's example prompted the other two leading independent exporters, Mexico and Norway, to follow suit.

On November 15, after several weeks of intense pressure by OPEC, Russia promised a symbolic cut of 30,000 barrels per day (or 1 percent of Russia's daily exports of 3 million barrels and 0.4 percent of the total output of 7 million barrels). Following the Russian announcement, the price of crude oil in New York fell almost 12 percent to $17.45 a barrel—the lowest in more than two years.

Moscow eventually agreed to cut exports by 150,000 barrels in the first quarter of 2002.[15] Even that cut, should it materialize, would represent only 2 percent of total production and was due largely to the increased domestic consumption during the coldest winter months.

Explaining their resistance to the cuts, the spokesman for Russia's second largest oil company, Yukos, said: "We should make a gesture not to drive prices up at [a] time when Western economies are suffering. Prices will stabilize when the economies stabilize."[16]

Budgetary Pressures. Savings have been said to explain Moscow's insistence on radical cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and on a smaller scale the abandonment of Lurdes and Cam Ranh Bay. As for the base closings, the annual $200 million rent was paid to Havana in the form of crude oil and spare parts for obsolete Soviet military equipment—hardly a heavy burden for a country with a nearly $300 billion GDP. Cam Ranh was leased rent free.

Whatever the savings, the economic justification for eroding the mainstay of the Russian nuclear superpower status by parting with 4,000 nuclear weapons is tenuous at best. Such reasoning would have us believe that military expenditures are determined by accountants and are driven by precise calculation of an appropriate share of national income for defense rather than—since time immemorial—by national priorities shaped by people's or dictators' fears, pride, or hatred.

China, with a per capita GDP half that of Russia's,[17] has managed to "afford" the world's largest army (almost three times larger than Russia's),[18] expand its nuclear arsenal, and increase defense spending 8–10 percent annually over the past decade. India, one of the poorest nations, with per capita GDP about one-fourth of Russia's, has an army 15 percent larger than Russia's.[19] Nor have budgetary pressures deterred impoverished Iraq and starving North Korea from relentlessly pursuing and testing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and missile technology. (The North Korean army equals Russia's in size.)

And the Soviet Union itself was one of history's most spectacular negations of the policy-by-accountants theory of military expenditures. In a country that could "afford" 10,000 nuclear warheads and 4 million— strong armed forces, 35 percent of hospital beds were in facilities without hot water, 30 percent of all hospitals lacked indoor toilets, and every sixth hospital bed was in a facility with no running water at all.20 Half of Soviet schools had no central heating, running water, or indoor toilets.[21] Beyond Moscow, even a pound of vile sausage, if available at all, could be purchased only with a monthly ration coupon.

In 1988–1989—the last two years of relative stability before the 1990-1991 economic collapse—43 million people, or 17 percent of the Soviet population, had incomes less than the "official" poverty level of 75 rubles a month[22] ($7.50 on the still illegal currency exchange). All in all, 80 million Soviet citizens (nearly one-third of the total) earned less than 100 rubles a month and, in the words of a Soviet newspaper, "hardly made ends meet."[23]

Unlikely Revolutionary. The explanation by leader's whim cannot be dismissed out of hand. Undoubtedly Putin has made an enormous personal investment in the post–September 11 policies: from his television address to the American people and the presidential decree on national mourning to his overrule of his own minister of defense on the use of Russian air space and former Soviet bases in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to his confirmation of solidarity and partnership with the United States and its allies in highly publicized speeches, statements, and interviews.

Yet it is hard to imagine a leader less impulsive and prone to epiphanies than Vladimir Putin. A former midranking officer in the rigidly hierarchical bureaucracy of Soviet foreign intelligence, he is no Boris Yeltsin, who had a clear and unflinching vision of what was good for Russia and pulled and pushed the nation toward it as he took on enormous political and at times physical risk. Putin is cautious and takes pride in being conciliator and consensus-builder. Mindful (some say nearly obsessed) with public opinion polls, he is jealously protective of his astronomical public approval. Until he began implementing major liberal economic reforms in his second year in office, he had been careful not to alienate any major political constituency, including the Communists. Abrupt twists and turns, let alone revolutions, are out of place on such a man's agenda.

The Yeltsin Momentum. While the sheer number and magnitude of decisions made within days and weeks following the September 11 attacks as well as the intensity of the president's involvement may have been without precedent in Russian foreign policy, the direction and key elements of Putin's policies were consistent with those of Boris Yeltsin, Putin's predecessor and the man who appointed him as prime minister and heir apparent. That Russia's post–September 11 policies have been interpreted as a startling departure from the policies pursued between 1991 and 1999 is a reminder of the congenitally deficient memory of both the U.S. media and at least some expert sources.

Never in the four and a half centuries of the modern Russian state has there been a Russia less imperialist, less militarized, less threatening to its neighbors and the world than the Russia of 1992–1999, when it abandoned the empire and underwent demilitarization unprecedented for a country not defeated in a war and not occupied by the victors. From 1991 to 1995 Russia repatriated 800,000 troops, 400,000 civilian personnel, and 500,000 dependents from Eastern Europe. The departure of the last Russian soldier from the Paldiski submarine training base in Estonia in September 1995 marked the end of the Russian presence in Central Europe. Having given up the lands acquired during two and a half centuries of Russian and Soviet imperial conquests, Russia returned to its seventeenth-century borders.

In January 1992 Yegor Gaidar, the architect of the Russian transition to a free market and then minister of finance and economy, cut military procurement 85 percent; spending on defense plummeted from at least 30 percent of GDP to less than 5 percent. According to a leading Russian expert, by 1996 the expenditures for organization and maintenance of Russian armed forces were 2.5–4 times lower than in 1990; for procurement and military construction, 9-12 times; and research and development, 10 times to 11 times.[24] Last September Putin proudly noted that for the first time in its history Russia was spending more on education than on defense.[25] (In Russia's 2002 budget social policy outlays, which include education, receive 22 percent, while defense expenditures are 14 percent.)[26]

The army inherited from the Soviet Union was more than halved to 1.7 million by late 1996 and then reduced by almost one-third, to 1.2 million, by Yeltsin's July 1997 decrees. That year, for the first time since 1945, the May 9 Victory Day military parade on Red Square was canceled so as not to disturb the construction of an underground shopping mall in adjacent Manezhnaya Square.

Today's Russian army of 1 million on active duty is to be cut by 350,000 by 2003, including 240,000 officers and more than 380 generals.[27] The outline for military reform, drafted by the liberal Union of Rightist Forces and Yabloko parties and approved in the main by the president and the Security Council, further envisions the abolition of the 300-year-old conscription and draft by 2010 and the transition to an all-volunteer, professional armed forces.[28]

For a Peaceful Europe

To avoid the Yugoslavia-style bloodshed following the dissolution of the USSR, Moscow consistently pursued accommodation with Ukraine and recognized its independence earlier than any other state. In 1997 Russia ceded to Ukraine the Crimean peninsula, where ethnic Russians outnumbered Ukrainians two to one, and with it the naval base of Sevastopol, a symbol of Russian military valor, and the entire Black Sea Fleet. When on May 31, 1997, Yeltsin signed the Treaty of Mutual Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Russian and Ukraine, Ukraine owed Russia an estimated $3–3.5 billion for gas and oil deliveries—at the time probably the world's most generous and least publicized bilateral assistance program.

As, over Russia's strenuous objections, NATO was about to expand eastward by admitting the former Warsaw Pact members—the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary—Yeltsin chose to sign the Russia-NATO Founding Act in Paris on May 27, 1997. The act committed both sides to "building together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy." Russia and NATO affirmed that they did "not consider each other as adversaries" and "shared the goal of overcoming the vestiges of earlier confrontation and competition."

Russia supported the efforts of the United States and its allies to end the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia, voted for the UN sanctions against Yugoslavia, and provided peacekeepers. In 1998 Moscow joined the economic sanctions against Yugoslavia and voted for the UN Security Council resolution that demanded the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo.

Though shocked and angered by the March 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, Russia provided no military or material assistance to Slavic and Orthodox Yugoslavia (as urged by the nationalist Left). After Yeltsin appointed former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin as his personal envoy and fired the staunchly anti-American, pro-Yugoslavia prime minister, Evgeniy Primakov, Moscow became actively involved in ending the Kosovo war and the NATO bombing. By June the United States and Russia agreed on the common negotiating position. When Chernomyrdin, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari presented a joint ultimatum to Milosevic on June 3, Yugoslavia agreed to a settlement.

In August 1999 Moscow proposed to the United States a mutual reduction of their nuclear arsenals to 1,500 weapons for each country. A year later the Security Council under Putin's chairmanship adopted a plan for a radical downsizing of the strategic rocket forces command. Putin fired Defense Minster Igor Sergeev and then the head of the strategic rocket forces for opposing the planned reductions in nuclear missiles. 

A Changed Country

The nineteenth-century German strategist Karl von Clausewitz famously declared war a continuation of politics by other means. A similar broad correlation exists between a country's foreign policy and its domestic political and economic priorities: the former is always an extension of the latter. In the Soviet Union détente with the West invariably coincided with domestic relaxation, while truculence and aggression in foreign policy always accompanied increased repression at home.

Of course, the nexus is not always automatic or direct. Foreign and security strategies of great nations are resistant to abrupt change. Yet in the end, changed countries modify their external policies. In the past decade Russia has become a changed country.

The economic and political revolutions have become irreversible. The fierce battles over privatization and economic liberalization that pitted Yeltsin's Kremlin against the Communist-led opposition between 1992 and 1998 have gradually given way to consensus among the political elite, including the moderate Left, that prosperity and stability can be achieved only within a market economy and participation in the world economic system. 

Starting with virtually complete state ownership ten years ago, the private sector produces today at least 70 percent of the Russian GDP. After all-out but ultimately futile opposition by the Communists in the Duma last summer, urban land can now be privately owned, bought, and sold. The cut in taxes on corporate profits from 35 percent to 24 percent became effective January 1, 2002. A new labor code has made it much easier for employers to hire and fire workers.

Other reforms that are now politically possible and are on Putin's agenda were first outlined by Yeltsin in 1997: radical restructure and partial privatization of the pension system; the gradual abolition of enormous state subsidies for rents and utilities; and the introduction of market competition in the supply of gas, water, and electricity. In the pipeline are banking reforms and the breakup of state-owned monopolies in railway transportation, gas, and electricity.

The results of the past decade's economic revolution have been especially vivid in oil production. From the early 1980s experts confidantly predicted an inexorable decline in the output with Russia eventually becoming a net importer of oil. Instead, buoyed by high world prices and a cheaper ruble in the wake of the 1998 financial crisis, Russia's "big six" oil companies, privatized in the mid-1990s, spent an estimated $5 billion[29] on replacing obsolete equipment, building new refineries, exploring new oil fields, and reviving the ones exhausted by the primitive and rapacious Soviet extraction. In the past two years Russia's oil output has increased 15 percent.

Bent on especially aggressive growth, the country's second largest oil producer, Yukos, announced recently that it would spend $1 billion in 2002 to raise output 24 percent over the 2001 level.[30]By 2005 Yukos plans to increase production by about one-third, to 1.6 million barrels a day, a volume exceeding that of Alaska.[31]

The companies have paid off debt, instituted international accounting standards, and begun receiving positive credit ratings from top international rating agencies. The shortage of retail gasoline and the perennial lines at the pumps are things of the past, as the oil companies invest heavily in retail sales. In 2001 three of the top six companies—the largest, Lukoil; Yukos; and the number six, Sibneft—were projected to pay out a ruble equivalent of $964 million in share dividends.[32]

The emerging cosmopolitan economic elites are vitally interested in expanding and investing outside Russia as well as attracting foreign investors. The time has perhaps not quite arrived when what is good for Lukoil—trade, peace, investment, profit—is good for Russia, but we are getting close. When, in mid-November, the Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov met with the leadership of the "big six" to consider OPEC's urgent requests for large export cuts, five reportedly responded with a "resounding no."[33]

Better Living. Interrupted by the 1998 financial crisis, the benefits from free-market reforms and post-Soviet modernization resumed their contribution to improvements to the overall standard of living. The robust economic growth of the past three years and Putin's resulting popularity have given him far more domestic political capital to expend in foreign policy than Yeltsin had. In dealing both with the vociferous anti-Western Left and with the cold war bureaucracies of the Defense and Foreign Ministries, Putin's hand was much strengthened by the economic growth of 4 percent in 1999, 8 percent in 2000, and 5–6 percent in 2001. Introduced on January 1, 2001, the 13 percent flat tax on personal income (which Putin called "simply revolutionary" and claimed to be the "lowest in Europe")[34] boosted collection of personal income taxes by 30 percent in the first half of 2001.[35]

Russia has almost recovered from the 1998 crisis. Last year, real (inflation-adjusted) average income was 34 percent above the 1998 level.[36] Compared with 2000, the average income went up 6 percent, real wages 20 percent, and pensions 23 percent.[37] In a national poll in October 2001, 18 percent of Russians reported improvement of their material status since the previous year—the highest jump ever.[38] Although the main beneficiaries have been the younger, the college-educated, and the urban, millions of Russians have been given hope for a better life and strengthened in their support for the new economic system. There were eighteen cars per 100 households in 1990; in 2001 the number was forty-two.[39] In 2002 the number is likely to grow to fifty-three cars per 100 households: according to a national survey 11 percent of 52.3 million Russian households were planning to buy a car in 2002.[40]

In the past two years the number of Internet users has grown 40 percent (more than 3.5 million people) to 8.75 million—almost one in six Russian households.[41] In 2001 2.4–2.8 million Muscovites were cellular phone subscribers—in a city of 9 million.[42] Because of the profusion of private institutions of higher education, there were 75 percent more colleges in Russia and 50 percent more students in 2000 than in 1992.[43]

In 1991, of 290 million Soviet citizens, 500,000 traveled abroad,[44] with an overwhelming majority going to the Warsaw Pact nations. Last year, of Russia's 145 million population, an estimated 5.25 million did.[45] (The number does not include trips to the former Soviet republics, where an estimated 13.8 million Russians traveled in 2000.)

Produce shortages and ubiquitous lines have been forgotten. Fresh and delicious food is available everywhere. For the first time since the late 1920s, Russia not only has managed to feed its people and livestock but has become a net exporter of grain.

Overwhelmingly private-sector, the post-Soviet middle class—solemnly declared dead by many experts and journalists after the 1998 financial crash—has proved successful and resilient. It has grown from nearly zero in 1991 to between one-fourth and one-third of the Russian population.[46]

A New Political Landscape. Russian voters made a decisive choice in the 1996 presidential election between the proreform, pro-Western regime of Boris Yeltsin and anti-Western, nationalist Communism and affirmed it in the historic December 1999 parliamentary election, which deprived the hard-line "popular-patriotic" Left of a plurality in the Duma. Three months later voters reconfirmed the choice by giving Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin's hand-picked successor, a 53 percent-29 percent victory over the runner-up, Communist Gennady Zyuganov.

The Center-Right, Centrists, and moderate Left deputies have created a stable proreform majority in the Duma for the first time since the first semidemocratic elections to the Russian parliament in 1990. One of the signal results of a new "correlation of forces" was the passage of reform legislation that had been blocked by the Duma for years, including such landmark measures as the slashing of personal income and corporate profit taxes and privatization of urban land. The 268-to-101 Duma vote for a resolution in support of the U.S.-led international antiterrorist campaign epitomized the new political configuration.

Interviewed extensively in 1999 and 2000 by leading U.S. experts on Russian political attitudes, two in three respondents in a representative national sample said that they supported the idea of democracy in general; 60 percent thought that democracy was a fairly or very good political arrangement for Russia— three times as many as those who thought that democracy was fairly or very bad for their country. Electing the country's leaders was important to 87 percent of the respondents; the freedoms of conscience, expression, and press were important to 85 percent.[47]

Last October 71 percent of Russians surveyed approved of a close union between Russia and the United States in the fight against international terrorism.[48] A month later only 13 percent of the national sample thought of the United States as their country's enemy—down from 48 percent in 1999.[49]

Meeting with American journalists on the eve of his departure for the United States last November, Putin pointed to the domestic sources of Russia's post–September 11 policies:

If anyone thinks that Russia can again become an enemy of the United States, those people do not understand what has happened in Russia, what country it has become. What the Russian leadership is doing today is dictated not only by the political philosophy of Russian leaders. Russia's actions are dictated by its domestic situation and public opinion. And the most important is that an overwhelming majority of the Russian population wants to live [in a country with] effectively functioning democratic institutions. An overwhelming majority of the Russian population wants to live [in a country with] social market economy, wants to feel themselves and their country to be an integral part of modern civilization. . . . People want freely to move around the world, to use to the fullest all the advantages offered by normal democratic society.[50]

"Making History Change Its Tune"

In the months, perhaps years, ahead, U.S.-Russian relations will certainly fluctuate (though never return to cold war because the Russian public, especially the middle class and the newly empowered economic elites, will not allow it). The many serious tests ahead include the transformation of NATO-Russia relations, which must accommodate the continuing expansion east with greater Russian participation in pan-European security maintenance and decision making; human rights violations in Chechnya; the threats to the freedom of Russian electronic mass media; and the selective prosecution of environmental activists and scholars for contacts with foreign mass media.

The most urgent and proximate problems, however, are the ones connected with the nuclear arms reductions on the one hand and with President's Bush declaration of war on the "axis of evil" on the other. In the post-ABM world the United States must reconcile the Russian desire for minutely negotiated deep cuts in the nuclear arsenals with the Bush administration's goal of retiring, rather than destroying, the dismantled warheads and with the White House's reluctance to enter formal agreements on reduction.

U.S. actions against the "axis of evil" countries—Iran, Iraq, and North Korea—affect both Russia's position as a great regional power and her important economic interests. All three countries are within Russia's centuries-old sphere of influence, and Moscow wants to play an important role in any development in its geopolitical backyard, including the pending review and restructuring of UN-imposed sanctions against Iraq and the pressure on Baghdad to readmit weapons inspectors.

As Iraq's major trading partner, Russia supplies Baghdad with $700 million in goods under the UN-mandated oil-for-food program. Iraq owes an estimated $8 billion to the Soviet Union and Russia, and Moscow wants to ensure that any post-Saddam government honors that debt. And Russia's top oil companies are pressing the Kremlin to protect their extensive and lucrative contracts with Baghdad.

Similarly, Iran is Russia's third largest arms customer (after China and India). The arms sales agreement signed in 2001 could bring Moscow $300 million in annual sales and could reach $1.5 billion over the next few years—a hefty sum for the military-industrial complex starved by Yeltsin's demilitarization. In addition to conventional weapons, Russia exports missile and nuclear technology. Long among the major irritants in U.S.-Russian relations, those transfers are viewed with still graver concern by the White House now that Iran is part of the axis of evil.

Yet the significance of Russia's post–September 11 behavior goes far beyond short-term relations with the United States. Russia's steps have indicated a profound and continuous shift in national priorities brought about by the revolutionary changes of the past decade: demilitarization and the end of the Soviet empire; the emergence of competitive politics and of public opinion as key factors in policymaking; the slow but inexorable erosion of the nationalist anti-Western Left; acceptance of a private economy and a free market by a majority of the political class; the diffusion of the first significant benefits from the new economic system; and the growing perception of the necessity of integration into the world economic system by the elite and general public alike.

Weighty reasons prompt the belief that Russia's pro-Western reorientation, which has gradually accrued during the revolutionary decade, may have reached a critical mass in the autumn of 2001. At the least, at that time Russia came close to what Lord Byron in Don Juan called "a sort of post-house, where the Fates / Change horses, making history change its tune."

Notes

1. "Statement by President Putin of Russian on the Terrorist Acts in the U.S., " Federal News Service, September 12, 2001.

2. BBC World Service, Europe Today, www.bbc.co.uk, accessed November 11, 2001.

3. "Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov' reshitel'no osuzhdaet sovershyonnye terrorsticheskie akty" (The Russian Orthodox Church deplores the terrorist acts), Strana.ru, September 12, 2001.

4. Susanne Daley, "After the Attacks: The Alliance," New York Times, September 14, 2001, p. A17.

5. "Zayavlenie Prezidenta Rossiyskoy Federatsii V. V. Putina," www.nnp://president.kremlin.ru/events/311.htm.

6. Susan Glasser, "Anti-Taliban Forces Await Arrival of U.S. Aid Package," Washington Post, October 3, 2001, p. A23.

7. "Zayavlenie Presidenta Rossii V. V. Putina 13 dekabrya 2001 goda v svyazi s resheniem Administratsii Soedinyonnykh Shtatov Ameriki o vykhide is Dogovora po protivoraketnoy oborone 1972 goda" (The statement by the President of Russia V. V. Putin on December 13, 2001, in connection with the decision of the administration of the United States of America regarding the withdrawal from the antiballistic missile treaty of 1972), Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, www.in.mid.ru.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. "Speech by NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson, and Russian President Putin," October 3, 2001, www.nato.int/docu/speech/2001/s011003a.htm.

11. Peter Finn and Peter Baker, "NATO and Russia Reinventing Relationship," Washington Post, November 15, 2001, p. A42.

12. RFE/RL Newsline, October 19, 2001, p. 5.

13. Kevin Sullivan, "Cuba Upset by Closure of Russian Spy Base," New York Times, October 19, 2001, p. A26.

14. RFE/RL Newsline, October 19, 2001, p. 5.

15. Ekaterina Vlasova and Elena Lakshina, "OPEK reshila zarabotat' shantazhom" (OPEC decided to profit by blackmail), Nezavisimaya Gazeta, December 8, 2001, www.ng.ru/printed/ economics/2001-12-08/3opek.html.

16. Daniel Williams, "Russian Oil Firms Block Production Cut," Washington Post, November 18, 2001, p. A35.

17. Russia's per capita GDP was $1,725; China's, $856. World Bank, 2001 World Development Indicators Database, www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/GDP.pdf. The data are for 2000. Russian Studies intern Michael Richter obtained the GDPs and recalculated them on a per capita basis. 

18. In 1999 China's armed forces numbered 2,820,000; Russia's, 1,004,100. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2000/2001 (London: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 298–99. 

19. World Bank, 2001 indicators database; IISS, The Military Balance, p. 299. India had 1,173,000 men under arms in 1999.

20. Zoriy Balayan, "Kogda bolezn' obgonyaet lekarstva" (When illness outpaces medicine), Literaturnaya Gazeta, February 3, 1988.

21. G. A. Yagodin, speech at Nineteenth Party Conference, Pravda, June 30, 1988.

22. A. Chernyak, "Edoki po statistike i v zhizni" (Food consumers according to statistics and in real life), Pravda, September 1, 1988.

23. "Vadim Krichenkov's Debut: Goskomstat Provides Food for Thought," Moscow News, August 20, 1989.

24. Sergei Rogov, "Military Reform and the Defense Budget of the Russian Federation," Center for Naval Analysis, August 1997.

25. RFE/RL Newsline, September 4, 2001, p. 1.

26. RFE/RL Newsline, December 17, 2001, p. 3. Of the 1.95 trillion ruble ($65.5 billion) budget, the social policy expenditures were 430.3 billion rubles, and defense spending, 284.1 billion rubles.

27. RFE/RL Newsline, November 1, 2002, p. 4.

28. Mikhail Globachev, "Kuba-nyet, yanki-da!" (Cuba-no, Yanks-yes), Novoe Vremya, October 28, 2001, www.newtimes.ru, October 24, 2001; Alexander Goltz, "Last Stand for Russia's Outmoded Generals," Russia Journal, December 3, 2001, p. 19; and Pavel Fel'gengauer, "Rossiyu revnuyut k NATO" (Someone is jealous of Russia's relationship with NATO), Moskovskie Novosti 48 (2001), www.mn.ru/issue.php?2001-48-2.

29. Paul Starobin, Catherine Belton, and Stan Crock, "Putin's Russia," Business Week, November 12, 2001.

30. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Business Watch, December 27, 2001, p. 1.

31. Sabrina Tavernese, "A New Western Focus on Russia, 'Where the Oil Is,'" New York Times, December 5, 2001, p. B1.

32. Interfax News Agency, Investment Report, August 20, 2001; Eurasian Business Report, October 29, 2001; and Eurasian Business Report, November 19, 2001.

33. Ibid.

34. "Polnyi tekst press-konferentsii Presidenta RF V. V. Putina v Kremle" (The complete transcript of President V. V. Putin's press conference in the Kremlin), strana.ru, July 19, 2001, p. 1.

35. "German Gref: inflyatsiya v Rossii stremitsya k nulyu" (German Gref: Inflation in Russia is moving to zero), strana.ru, August 2, 2001, p. 1.

36. Sergey Rybak, "A u nas prazdnik" (Yet we have something to celebrate), Vedomosti, October 15, 2001, www.vedomosti.ru.

37. RFE/RL Newsline, December 18, 2001, p. 2. See also Russian Economic Report, World Bank, October 2001, www.worldbank.org.ru.

38. Rybak, "A u nas."

39. The number of cars per 100 households in 1990 is from Steve Leisman, "Surprise: The Economy of Russia Is Clawing Out of Deep Recession," Wall Street Journal, January 28, 1988, p. A11. The 2001 number was calculated by dividing the total number of cars (21.75 million) by the number of households (52.3 million). The total number of cars, in turn, was calculated on the basis of 150 cars per 1,000 people in the country of 145 million. For the number of cars per 1,000, see Yelena Volkova, "Driving To Become More Pleasant," Moscow News, July 4, 2001, accessed at www.nexis.com on January 7, 2002; Sergei Blagov, "Development-Russia: Ambitious Plan to Overhaul Road Network," Inter Press Service, July 4, 2001, accessed at www.nexis.com on January 7, 2002; and "Transportation Minister: Length of Russian Roads to Grow by 80,000 Km in Next 10 Years," RBC Network Corp/RosBusiness Consulting Database, June 28, 2001, accessed at www.nexis.com on January 7, 2002.

40. Rybak, "A u nas."

41. Brian Arengi, "Study Reveals RuNet Demographics," Moscow Times, July 31, 2001, www.nexis.com.

42. Interfax News Agency, Business Report, January 15, 2002, and Communications and Electronics Report, October 8, 2001.

43. Center for Strategy Planning, Strategiya razvitiya Rossiyskoy Federatsii do 2010 goda (A strategy of development for the Russian Federation to the year 2010). (Moscow: CSP, June 2000), p. 57.

44. "Soyuz pravykh-zavtrashnyaya vlast'" (The union of the Right is tomorrow's power), interview with the former first deputy prime minister Anatoly Chubais, Novoe Vremya, December 1999, p. 13.

45. Lyuba Pronina, "Nation's Tourism Is Up to Pre-Crisis Levels," Moscow Times, April 12, 2001, www.nexis.com; and Russian National News Service, www.nns.ru, July 31, 2001, p. 2.

46. "Sociologist: Growth of Middle Class Is Stalled," Vremya Novostei, August 8, 2000, p. 3; and John Daniszewski and Maura Reynolds, "After Fitful Start, Revolution Finally Underway in Russia," Los Angeles Times, January 1, 2002, www.latimes.com.

47. Timothy J. Colton and Michael McFaul administered three waves of panel surveys of nearly 2,000 people across Russia between November 1999 and May 2000. The authors summarized the results in "America's Real Russian Allies," Foreign Affairs, November-December 2001. See p. 52.

48. RFE/RL Newsline, October 19, 2001, p. 2.

49. REF/RL Newsline, November 13, 2001, p. 2.

50. Vladimir Putin, "My khoteli by videt' v Soedinyonnykh Shtatakh nadezhnogo, prognoziruemogo partnera" (We would like to see a reliable, predictable partner in the United States), transcript of meeting with bureau chiefs of leading U.S. newspapers in Moscow, November 12, 2001, www.strana.ru, November 12, 2001.