Bulldogs Fighting under the Rug 61

tification for blocking reform, the consolidation of ‘‘managed democracy,’’

or later, ‘‘sovereign democracy’’ in Russia does have important implications
for how the state pursues its foreign policy goals.33
Putin, for one, seemed to have a good understanding that while the pub-
lic does not oppose an assertive foreign policy, its priorities are elsewhere.
His heavy emphasis on domestic concerns during his annual messages to
the Federal Assembly as well as in his scripted interactions with the public
(e.g., his periodic appearances on televised call-in shows) reflected a belief
the public cares more about butter than guns. In this regard it hardly seems
accidental that Medvedev initially sought to acquaint the public with his
talents by taking on a number of highly visible domestic initiatives as
Putin’s first deputy prime minister in charge of National Projects, or that
his own initial remarks about Russia’s priorities for the future focused on
improving national competitiveness.

IDEAS AND IDEOLOGIES OF THE ELITE

If public opinion at most sets the bounds of what is acceptable, elite opin-
ions matter more in shaping the state’s foreign policy agenda. The overall
direction of elite opinion about the scope and content of Russia’s national
interest has changed substantially since the early 1990s. Calls for full-scale
integration with the West, which were a staple of public discourse in the
late 1980s and early 1990s, are now confined to a small liberal fringe.
Cooperation with the West (especially on security issues) remains impor-
tant to many Russian leaders, but few elites still believe in using integration
with Western institutions as a means of anchoring Russia’s domestic politi-
cal transformation, or in Russia pooling its sovereignty with the democra-
cies of the West. In other words, many Russian leaders—including, it
should be noted, both Putin and Medvedev—largely advocate cooperation
with the United States and Europe against common threats (such as Islamic
terrorism) but do not support moving beyond such a realpolitik-infused
relationship to a partnership based on shared values and institutions or to
actually ‘‘joining the West.’’34
In part, this development is the result of the disappointments Russia
experienced in the 1990s as a consequence of its overtures to the West not
being reciprocated. At the same time, the pervasiveness of Great Power ide-
ology—derzhavnost’—in the thinking of Russia’s political elites has to do
with long-standing traditions of conceptualizing the world and Russia’s
place in it dating back to the tsarist era. The Russia of 1991, of course, was
not a tabula rasa, and the influence of ideologies left over from the Soviet
period remains strong today, even if only an extreme fringe would actively
seek to restore the Soviet Empire as such.
62 Chapter 2

While the notion of Russia as an independent Great Power in an anarchic

world has long existed within the elite, the ascension of Primakov to the
post of foreign minister in 1996 marked a real post-Soviet turning point. In
constructivist terms, the transition from Kozyrev to Primakov reflected the
emergence of a new consensus about Russia’s identity as a state and its role
in the global system. This identity is characterized by etatism (or gosudarst-
vennost’)—namely the idea that the state should play a leading role in the
economic and political life of the country, and that the national interest in
foreign policy should be defined in reference to the well-being of the state
itself (rather than the protection of its citizens or the upholding of interna-
tional law, for example). This identity also entails an emphasis on power
as the principal criterion by which to judge the state’s health. Gosudarstven-
nost’ and derzhavnost’ are the two major components of the geopolitical
worldview that has predominated among the Russian elite since the 1990s,
and in many ways grow out of a much older, even pre-Soviet intellectual
tradition. Within that worldview, however, are many shades of emphasis,
and it is the interplay among these shades that forms the substance of the
Russian foreign policy debate.
The contours of that debate have changed to some extent since the mid-
1990s. Nonetheless, a spectrum of views continues to exist, despite the
Kremlin’s success in consolidating the process of decision making.35 Schol-
ars often identify a number of camps or schools of foreign policy thinking
among the Russian elite.36 While it is no doubt true that a few well-defined
ideologies exist (particularly on the extremes), what is striking about the
Russian elite is the size of the political spectrum’s center and the range of
opinions within the general consensus about Russia as a Great Power. Dur-
ing the Putin years, this derzhavnost’-gosudarstvennost’ consensus was all but
ubiquitous, which is one reason Putin’s foreign policy generated so little
controversy. A range of opinions continues to exist within this geopolitical
framework, but the differences are, for the most part, about emphasis or
particular policy choices rather than about overall strategy. For this reason,
while the notion of distinct camps or schools remains a useful heuristic
device, and given the size and breadth of the mainstream, thinking about
the center as a continuum rather than as a series of discontinuous units
offers greater insight into the interplay of forces. Many of the most influen-
tial foreign policy thinkers and practitioners in Russia do not fit neatly in
any of these boxes anyway. Certainly Putin, who at the same time tried to
re-establish Russian dominance within the area of the CIS and sought a
cooperative, at times even close relationship with the United States, defies
easy categorization.
Some of the more salient and visible approaches include extreme Russian
ethnonationalism, imperialistic Eurasianism, a kind of centrist derzhavnost’,
and liberal Atlanticism. Actual policy, especially since the fall of Kozyrev,
 Bulldogs Fighting under the Rug 63

has been a sometimes uncomfortable balance among these trends.37 Given

the general stability of this consensus, there is reason to think that the for-
eign policy of early-twenty-first century Russia will look fairly similar under
Medvedev and beyond.
Particularly influential is the centrist tendency, which is characterized by
an eclectic borrowing of ideas and initiatives from the other, more ideologi-
cally coherent camps. Less an ideological movement than an attempt to
synthesize the competing priorities of the other three camps and an attempt
to promote the private interests of certain well-connected officials, Russian
centrism has remained the dominant approach since around 1993–1994,
precisely because of its success in appealing to a broad constituency among
the elite.38 Within this broad middle, different individuals and groups have
different shades of emphasis (Primakov tilted more toward the Eurasianists,
for instance) but are united by a shared belief that Russia should play a
pivotal role in world affairs, that it should maintain a sphere of influence
around its borders, and that a relationship of equals with the other large
powers (especially the United States) provides the basic foundation for the
country’s international behavior. Individuals such as Primakov, and indeed
Putin and Medvedev themselves, have in practice largely appealed to a cen-
trist constituency, if only by default.39

Russian Nationalism
On one extreme is a loose collection of activists and groups espousing
racially tinged Russian nationalism, the most prominent of which is the
Movement Against Illegal Immigration (Dvizhenie protiv nelegal’noi immi-
gratsii, DPNI), which, despite its name, has also played an important role
in Russia’s policy toward its southern neighbors in the CIS.40 The DPNI and
others in the nationalist camp are essentially in favor of a smaller, more
homogeneous Russia—in contrast to the ‘‘Red-Brown’’ alliance of the
1990s, when the far right (then embodied by Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal
Democrats) advocated an expansionist foreign policy. Rather than promot-
ing integration within the post-Soviet space, the DPNI and its acolytes sup-
port a kind of ‘‘fortress Russia’’ mentality, particularly against the Muslim
republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia, but also against China, which
is rapidly becoming a major source of new immigrants to the Russian Far
East and the source of much xenophobic angst along the Russo-Chinese
border.
Since their enmity is directed primarily at the former Soviet republics to
the south, the nationalists are, in comparison with the Eurasianists, rela-
tively sanguine about the West. After participating in a march together with
the Kremlin-supported Eurasian Union of Youth (Evraziskii Soyuz Molodezhi,
ESM) in St. Petersburg in November 2005, DPNI leader Aleksandr Belov (a
64 Chapter 2

nom de guerre from the Russian belyi, meaning ‘‘white’’) told journalists
that his group had essentially hijacked the march from the Eurasianist
group. ‘‘We marched against migrants, not against the expansion of Western
influence, as ESM had planned,’’ he said.41
The DPNI rapidly became one of Russia’s largest mass political organiza-
tions, in large part by tapping into a well of discontent and anxiety about
the future among the Russian Federation’s ethnically Russian population.
The group’s emphasis has been on combating what it portrays as ethnic
gangs (mostly comprising Caucasians and Central Asians) who had alleg-
edly taken over the commercial trade in Russian markets in the late 1990s
and early 2000s. It was also prominent in Moscow’s confrontation with
Georgia in the autumn of 2006, which resulted from one of Tbilisi’s
attempts to bring Abkhazia and South Ossetia back under the control of
the Georgian government. As the confrontation between Moscow and Tbil-
isi took on overtly xenophobic overtones (with Georgian-run businesses in
Russia being targeted by the police and ethnic Georgians, even those with
Russian citizenship, rounded up for deportation), the DPNI became one of
the loudest proponents of the Kremlin’s aggressive tactics targeting not only
the Georgian state but members of Russia’s Georgian diaspora as well. The
symbiosis between the DPNI’s calls to target ethnic Georgians in Russia and
the Kremlin’s increasingly heavy-handed campaign of intimidation led to
much speculation that the DPNI was in fact a Kremlin creation designed to
channel discontent away from the regime and toward a vulnerable ethnic
minority.42 Similar allegations were made regarding the Motherland
(Rodina) Party, which took a surprising 9 percent of the vote in the 2003
parliamentary elections while campaigning on a platform of promoting
Russian national values and removing ethnic minorities (especially Cauca-
sians) from positions of power and influence inside Russia.
While the nationalist camp is not primarily interested in foreign policy,
its preferences do have an impact, particularly with regard to countries with
substantial numbers of immigrants in Russia (like Georgia) or with signifi-
cant populations of ethnic Russians. Rampant racism and xenophobia dis-
courage many would-be migrants from moving to Russia, despite the
country’s demographic problems and labor shortages. Russia’s fraught rela-
tionship with the Baltic states is also in part the result of attempts to
appease nationalist opinion outraged by Latvia and Estonia’s treatment of
their Russian minorities. Since the Baltic states are now also members of
the EU and NATO, Moscow’s vigorous campaign on behalf of Russian
speakers has broader implications for its relationship with Europe.

Eurasianism
The worldview generally termed Eurasianism (Evraziistvo) has a long ped-
igree in Russian academic and political circles, dating back in its original
 Bulldogs Fighting under the Rug 65

incarnation to the years immediately after the Russian Revolution. The

meaning and significance of Eurasianism is much debated by scholars of
Russian politics and international relations. At the most literal and basic
level, Eurasianism simply means the belief that Russia’s fundamental iden-
tity, and hence foreign policy priorities, are linked to its geographical posi-
tion at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. Eurasianism ranges from
the imperial and aggressive to various attempts at synthesizing the tradi-
tional antipodes of Westernizers and Slavophiles into a kind of Third Way.43
Eurasianist thinkers of all stripes are fond of employing the language of
traditional geopolitics, particularly the theories of Sir Halford Mackinder,
who spoke of Eurasia as the world’s ‘‘Heartland’’ and the ‘‘pivot of history,’’
the control of which would give a country the resources and transportation
routes to exercise global dominance.44 The anti-American strain in much
Eurasianist writing also receives a boost from the attention given to tradi-
tional geopolitical principles in much American foreign policy writing. Rus-
sian strategists of a Eurasianist bent frequently cite former U.S. national
security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has referred to the post–Cold
War world as a ‘‘grand chessboard,’’ in order to justify their own aggressive
impulses.45
Extreme Eurasianism (sometimes termed Neo-Eurasianism), often asso-
ciated with the ideologist Aleksandr Dugin, is a bizarre, occasionally para-
noid philosophy that bears more than a whiff of Nazism.46 This outlook
also has roots in a variety of Western European antiliberal movements,
especially the Franco-Belgian Nouvelle Droite (or New Right, a group that
encompasses the French National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Flem-
ish nationalist Vlaams Belang) and postwar West German conservatism, as
well as a variety of rightist philosophies that emerged among the White
Russian émigrés of the 1920s and 1930s.47 Eurasianism in contemporary
Russia is in many ways a recipe for the reconstruction of a state looking
very much like the USSR, both in terms of frontiers and in terms of its
authoritarian political system, which is allegedly the only appropriate one
for Eurasia’s unique civilization.
At the same time, by virtue of its expansive geographic vision, Eurasian-
ism for the most part rejects the narrow racial focus of groups like the
DPNI. Its proponents advocate a statist version of Russian patriotism in
which adherence to their ideas of a great Russian Empire transcend ethnic
boundaries. In this essentially Hegelian worldview, the state is the embodi-
ment of the people’s characteristics and the focal point of the people’s loy-
alties. Because the Russian state encompasses a wide array of racial, ethnic,
and religious groups, most Eurasianists hold that all groups sharing a com-
mon Eurasian history and identity are part of the larger Eurasian ‘‘super-
ethnos,’’ which is more expansive than the DPNI’s Russian nation (russkii
narod). Consequently, Eurasianists see the ethnically based Russian nation-
66 Chapter 2

alism of the DPNI as a danger to Russia’s coherence as a civilization and to

its role as a force for integrating the Eurasian landmass. Dugin and others
have been sharply critical of the nationalists’ role in precipitating violence
against other Eurasian peoples, especially the Caucasians, who have
become the focal point for the DPNI’s campaign against illegal immi-
grants.48
This focus on the Russian state as a force for integrating various ethnici-
ties into a common civilization front does not mean that the Eurasianists
are committed to the idea of ethnic or racial tolerance per se. While accept-
ing that the indigenous peoples of Eurasia (Slavs as well as the various Tur-
kic and Finnic inhabitants of central Russia, Siberia, and Central Asia) are
constituent parts of a Eurasian ‘‘super-ethnos,’’ Dugin and his ilk see a large
gap between native Eurasians and the peoples of the West, particularly the
Jews, who supposedly are compelled by biological and cultural factors to
oppose the Eurasians’ communalistic values. Extreme Eurasianism thus
combines aspects of Nazi-style biological racism and anti-Semitism with a
kind of geographic and cultural determinism.
In terms of foreign policy, the more extreme version of Eurasianism
essentially sees the West as a direct geopolitical competitor to Russia, much
as it was during the days of the Cold War. Adherents of Eurasianism urge
Russia to act as the nucleus for a new bloc of states able to stand up to what
Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, one of its most outspoken publicists, termed the
global ‘‘military dictatorship of the United States.’’49 The competition
between Russia and the West is at times cast in crude racist terms, as in the
writings of the philosopher and historian Lev Gumilev, who, along with
Pyotr Savitsky and others, was responsible for adapting Eurasianist ideals
that originated with the 1920s White émigrés to the circumstances of the
disintegrating USSR of the 1980s. Gumilev (son of the famous Acmeist
poets Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilev, who was executed by the
Cheka in 1921) charged that the Soviet Union failed because it was a bas-
tardized version of Russian statehood that incorporated the foreign ideol-
ogy of Marxism and fell under the sway of Jewish leaders who were alien to
the Russian national psyche.50
The most important Eurasianist thinker is Aleksandr Dugin, author of
Foundations of Geopolitics (Osnovy geopolitiki), which may be the most widely
read theoretical work on strategy and foreign policy in post-Communist
Russia. Dugin is also a frequent commentator in the Russian media on poli-
tics and foreign policy.51 His underlying message is the need for Russia to
re-emerge as a great empire, dominating the Eurasian space and challenging
the United States and the West more generally for world supremacy. Dugin
rejects the historic and cultural legitimacy of all the post-Soviet states except
Russia itself and Armenia (a Christian state with a history stretching back
thousands of years).
 Bulldogs Fighting under the Rug 67

As the pivot between East and West, a restored Russian Empire must,
according to Dugin, act as the central component of a broad alliance
stretching from Western Europe to Japan. In Dugin’s view, constructing a
Eurasian empire of this sort requires the reabsorption of states like Ukraine
and Kazakhstan into a new Russia that has recommitted itself to the
supremacy of the collective over the individual and to the leading role of
the Orthodox Church. The emphasis on winning over Europe for an anti-
U.S. coalition (a policy Moscow briefly attempted during the period leading
to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003) rather than seeing the West as a cohe-
sive bloc is another distinguishing feature of the Eurasianist approach. Such
an alliance of European and Asian states is necessary in order to isolate the
U.S. Stripped of its connections to Europe and to its major ally in the Far
East, the United States’ geopolitical position would thus be fatally under-
mined. As the nerve center for an all-out assault on U.S. global dominance,
Dugin even mentions pulling Latin America from under U.S. influence and
fomenting unrest within the United States on the basis of racial and eco-
nomic discontent.52
These geopolitical reveries would be little more than armchair philoso-
phizing if not for the close connections Dugin, and the Eurasian movement
more generally, has developed with key figures in the Russian national
security bureaucracy. As John B. Dunlop has shown, leading military fig-
ures, including Lt.-General Nikolai Klokotov of the General Staff Academy
as well as Ivashov, formerly of the Defense Ministry’s International Depart-
ment, participated in the drafting of Foundations of Geopolitics, which thus
reflects at least in part the thinking of the Russian high command about the
nature of the post–Cold War world. Dugin himself served as a consultant
to former federation council speaker Gennady Seleznev and, more impor-
tantly, managed to forge links between his Eurasianist movement and the
FSB. Through contacts with the official ideologist Gleb Pavlovsky and for-
mer defense minister Col.-Gen. Igor Rodionov, Dugin also gained access to
the inner circle of Putin’s Kremlin. As a result of these connections, Dugin
played a central role in drafting the 2000 National Security Concept. Dug-
in’s International Eurasian Movement (Mezhdunarodnoe evraziiskoe dviz-
henie, or MED), meanwhile, is funded in part by the Russian Presidential
Administration as well as the Moscow Patriarchate and the Central Spiritual
Administration for Russian Muslims.53 Adherents of the Eurasianist philos-
ophy continue to hold influential positions in the bureaucracy as well as
inside the Kremlin itself (examples include Pavlovsky and Putin’s security
adviser Igor Sechin, who became first deputy prime minister under
Medvedev).54
Among the onetime members of the MED’s supreme council are former
culture minister Aleksandr Sokolov, Federation Council First Deputy
Speaker Aleksandr Torshin, and the chairman of the Federation Council’s
International Affairs Committee Mikhail Margelov.55 Eurasianist commen-
68 Chapter 2

tators are also well represented in the press and on television, a fact that
has given their ideas a certain level of respectability.56 Dugin was also a
source of influence with former foreign minister Primakov, whose
approach to foreign policy rhetoric at times seemed to borrow from the
Eurasianists.

Centrism: Between Eurasia and the West

A combination of the Eurasianists’ emphasis on Russia’s leading role in
the former Soviet space with a desire for productive, nonconfrontational
relations with the West is the foundation for the centrist tendency in Rus-
sian geopolitical thought and practice. While paying significant attention to
the territory of the former USSR, the centrists reject some of the mistier
notions of Russia’s special identity and civilization affinities with the peo-
ples of Eurasia.57 Instead, the centrists have a more traditional conception
of Russia’s national interests, reject confrontation with the West for its own
sake, and merely suggest that Russia pursue a balanced foreign policy that
pays as much attention to its interests and obligations in the East as it does
to those in the West. In the words of a leading sinologist at the Foreign
Ministry’s Moscow State Institute for International Relations:

Russians are Europeans who were carried to and left in Asia by history and
fate. So conclusions should be made[,] but not the conclusions after exotic
Eurasian theories about Asian essence of Russians. It is necessary to under-
stand that Russia’s future depends a lot on the relations with Asian neighbors
and on Russia’s approach to them.58

Other thinkers with good connections to the Putin-Medvedev leadership

are also supporters of this approach—with Russia as the central pillar of a
bloc of states encompassing more or less the frontiers of the Soviet Union,
but not necessarily in direct opposition to the United States and Europe.
Such thinkers tend to hold that, while productive relations with the West
are essential for Russia’s future (particularly her economic future), Moscow
cannot neglect the fact that its hinterland is in Asia. Consequently, Russian
foreign policy must be active in Asia as well as in Europe, Moscow has a
special responsibility for the territory of the CIS, and Russia should never
put itself in a position where it must choose between the West and its
neighbors to the south and east. Moscow’s work on the Iranian nuclear pro-
gram and decision to sell high-tech weapons to China over Western objec-
tions are manifestations of this multivectoral approach to foreign policy.
Other centrists—especially those associated at one time with the Yabloko
Party—tilt more toward the West, arguing that while Russia cannot escape
its responsibility for upholding order in Eurasia, its long-term interest is in
a strategic rapprochement with the liberal Western powers.
 Bulldogs Fighting under the Rug 69

In an analysis of Russia’s foreign policy options following the September

11 attacks and the U.S. decision to invade Iraq, the centrist Council on For-
eign and Defense Policy (Sovet vneshnei i oboronoi politiki, SVOP) warned
against full-scale security integration with the Western powers, a course that
would be rejected by a wide range of Russian politicians and would result
in Russia’s playing a subordinate role to the economically more powerful
states of the United States and the European Union. A more realistic alter-
native, the council argued, was for Russia to press for the formation of a
‘‘security alliance of the leading powers’’ that would continue to respect the
distinct interests of each partner.59 Such a course, which would allow Russia
to play an independent role apart from the West, would be more in keeping
with the country’s unique Eurasian identity. As SVOP head Sergei Karaga-
nov wrote in 1997:

Russia is returning [to] its historic, Janus-like position—looking east and west
simultaneously. Neither Asian, nor European, this middle ground is not mere
compromise, it is the authentic Russia.60

Despite his belief in Russia’s Janus-like identity, Karaganov has also sup-
ported improved relations between Russia and the West. In the aftermath
of September 11, he called for full-scale cooperation with the West against
the common threat of Islamic terrorism.61 Today, the SVOP continues to
favor close relations between Russia and the U.S., even more so than with
the EU.62 This relationship, however, must be a partnership of equals,
where the U.S. will have to respect the rights of the other Great Powers,
which, in the Russian case, means allowing Moscow to seek further political
and economic integration with the other states of the CIS and pursuing its
own path of political development.63
Among the centrists are other thinkers who emphasize the overall impor-
tance of the United States and the West generally, even while accepting that
Russia must continue to play the leading role in the former Soviet space. A
good example of this phenomenon is Vladimir Lukin, one of the founders
of the Yabloko Party (whose name, meaning ‘‘apple,’’ was derived from its
three founders’ surnames—Grigory Yavlinsky, Yury Boldyrev, and Lukin—
hence YABL-oko), former ambassador to Washington, deputy speaker of the
Duma, and Russia’s human rights ombudsman. Lukin, a committed demo-
crat for whom good relations with the United States are one of the core
principles of Russian security, is nonetheless wary about the notion that
Russia is essentially a Western country. Shortly after the fall of the Soviet
Union, during the high point of Kozyrev’s strategy of pursuing Russia’s inte-
gration with the West, Lukin warned that it was a mistake to ignore Russia’s
unique identity as a civilization, as he argued many well-meaning Western
politicians and academics had done.64
70 Chapter 2

Any attempts to force Russia solely into either Asia or Europe are ultimately
futile and dangerous. Not only would they cause a serious geopolitical imbal-
ance, but they would also undermine the historically established social and
political equilibrium within Russia itself.65

Following the calamity of September 11, Lukin came to increasingly

emphasize the importance of close ties between Russia and the major West-
ern powers. Yet he also insisted that rapprochement take place in such a
way as to ensure the preservation of Russia’s unique attributes as a society.
Russia should adopt, Lukin argued, those fundamental European values,
such as respect for human rights, that are not inimical to its own unique
identity and should in time seek to join European structures on a fully
equal basis while also seeking close cooperation with the United States. The
key to the success of such a strategy, according to Lukin, was for Russia’s
Western partners to recognize that Russia is in many ways unique. ‘‘I am
pro-Europe and think Russia should be part of Europe,’’ Lukin wrote, ‘‘but
not in the sense that Russia should cease being Russia.’’66
This approach also has advocates among the ‘‘patriotic’’ opposition,
including now the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) and
Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). To be
sure, the KPRF and the LDPR both advocated a much more aggressive, con-
frontational approach to the West in the early 1990s. However, for opposite
reasons—in the Communist case to appeal to a broader range of voters, and
for the LDPR, to take advantage of the Kremlin’s patronage—these groups
moved toward a less confrontational position during the Putin administra-
tion. Adopting a more forward policy in the CIS is portrayed as a defensive
maneuver, a way to protect Russia and its allies against foreign encroach-
ment, rather than as a step toward sparking a confrontation with the West.
KPRF chairman Gennady Zyuganov wrote in 2006:

Russia is the heir to the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The Belovezha
Accords [dissolving the USSR in December 1991] were illegal and criminal.
Russia must strive intently but peaceably to overturn them, in full accordance
with international law and in full agreement with those former republics and
territories of the USSR ready for the restoration of a fraternal union with Russia
in the framework of a unified statehood.67

Understanding the depth and breadth of such sentiment is one key to

grasping why Russia has been unable and unwilling to bring itself fully into
the Western camp as men like Kozyrev advocated, and why Russia after
Putin will likely continue to think of itself as a separate piece of the interna-
tional order.
It is Primakov who, among the Yeltsin-era elite, is most connected with
the transition to a more centrist foreign policy. His appointment was widely
 Bulldogs Fighting under the Rug 71

hailed inside Russia as ending the quixotic experiment with joining the
West that Kozyrev had undertaken. He promised that on his watch Russia
would pay more attention to its neighbors, which he charged Kozyrev with
neglecting in favor of his vain pursuit of integration with the West. For his
conviction that Russia ‘‘has been and remains a Great Power’’ and his
renewed focus on the CIS states, Primakov was lauded at home for restoring
Russian dignity and building consensus around his foreign policy goals.68
In the West, Primakov was seen initially as an inveterate Eurasianist
whose background in the intelligence services and good relations with
leaders like Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro portended a new era of con-
frontation with the United States. In practice, however, Primakov’s interest
in building consensus at home meant that his policy initiatives were largely
in favor of preserving the status quo and preventing any further slippage in
Russia’s weight in international affairs—which at times required standing
up to the United States—especially over Kosovo. Despite the hostility with
which his appointment was greeted in the West, Primakov was always care-
ful to point out that while he (and Russia) would not accept a subservient
role, he did not share the strident anti-Westernism associated with the
Soviet-era security establishment or the extreme Eurasianists.69 Primakov’s
enthusiastic support for Putin’s own foreign policy course was also indica-
tive of the distance between the former foreign minister and the ideologues
of extreme Eurasianism.70

Atlanticism
Even after the fall of Kozyrev and the installation of a new, more state-
centric and more Eurasianist foreign policy under Primakov, the influence
of pro-Western sentiment remained substantial. This sentiment, associated
largely with the now defunct Union of Right Forces (Soyuz Pravykh Sil, or
SPS) Party, some economic officials in Putin’s government, and a variety of
academic specialists, emphasizes above all Russia’s need to cooperate with
the highly developed countries of the U.S. and Europe as part of an overall
strategy of transforming Russia itself into a liberal democratic state and
member of the ‘‘democratic world community.’’71 For the most part, sup-
port for integration with the Western world and its institutions is accompa-
nied by support for liberal—that is, democratic and market-oriented
—domestic priorities. The connection, of course, lies in the fact that sup-
porters of an Atlanticist foreign policy believe that only adherence to inter-
national norms will allow Russia to achieve integration with Western
institutions. In this way, the Atlanticists emphasize the similarities rather
than the differences between the United States and Europe and believe Rus-
sia should cooperate with both more or less equally.
A number of officials with liberal leanings remained in prominent posi-
72 Chapter 2

tions under Putin—especially in positions related to economic policy.72

Such Yeltsin-era heavyweights as Anatoly Chubais (who oversaw the crash
privatization of state industry in the early 1990s before heading the Unified
Energy Systems electricity monopoly) remained important during the Putin
era. Medvedev himself made his name as a prominent economic liberal.
His frequent calls during his transition to the presidency for Russia to
become a rule-of-law state and to overcome its culture of ‘‘legal nihilism’’
grew out of an understanding that the country would be unable to achieve
its full economic, and hence geopolitical, potential as long as investors
remained distrustful of Russian institutions.73
To be sure, the position of economic liberals has never been secure.
Putin’s former economic adviser Andrei Illarionov, one of the most consis-
tent advocates of economic openness and integration, resigned in protest
in late 2005 against what he saw as the curtailing of economic freedoms
and the emergence of what he termed a ‘‘corporate state’’ in Putin’s Russia.74
Former economics minister German Gref, who played the lead role in Rus-
sia’s negotiations to join the WTO, saw his years of handiwork at least put
on hold when Moscow withdrew from the negotiations during the war in
Georgia.
Nonetheless, liberal and Atlanticist ideas remain well represented among
the intellectual elite in Russia. Intellectual liberalism in its Russian context
is above all defined by its focus on the economic component of foreign
policy, its emphasis on good relations with the West (including in some
cases support for Russia truly becoming a Western country with all that
implies), and support for democratization at home. These priorities are
fairly consistent throughout the liberal camp, despite the quite deep divi-
sions that exist among different liberal thinkers and movements.75 Chubais,
for example, advocated an assertive foreign policy on liberal lines, with a
democratic Russia leading a campaign to unite the world’s democracies into
a bloc that would be responsible for upholding order and promoting liberal
values worldwide.76 Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center, mean-
while, favors a Russia that is closely associated with Europe, ultimately join-
ing European institutions on a fully equal basis. What unites them is a
belief that the era of geo-economics has replaced the era of geopolitics, that
Russia is historically and culturally a European power, and that political
democratization at home is necessary both for its own sake and as a means
of tying Russia’s fate to the most advanced states of the West.
In contrast with even the softer Eurasianists who would prefer to move
closer to Europe while keeping a respectful distance from the U.S., Atlantic-
ist thinkers tend to focus on both the United States and the European
Union (or at least Western Europe) as an essentially unified West that Rus-
sia must, eventually, join. In the Atlanticist narrative, Russia has little choice
but to pursue integration with the network of institutions that collectively
 Bulldogs Fighting under the Rug 73

make up ‘‘Europe’’ (even if never formally joining the EU or NATO), on the

basis of historical affinities as well as the growing economic linkages
between Russia and the EU. Meanwhile, Atlanticists look toward the United
States, a country that still exists very much within history, as a strategic
partner and a model for the role that a restored Russia can play in the
world.
Russia’s Atlanticist foreign policy thinkers are principally associated with
a handful of Moscow-based research institutes and think tanks, including
the Carnegie Moscow Center, the Gorbachev Fund, the Institute of World
Economics and International Relations (Institut Mirovoi Ekonomiki i Mezhdu-
narodnykh Otnoshenii, IMEMO), and the Institute of the United States of
America and Canada (Institut SShA i Kanady), both at the Russian Academy
of Sciences. Political figures, many once associated with SPS (Boris Nem-
tsov, Irina Khakamada), and Yeltsin-era officials such as former acting
prime minister Gaidar and former prime minister Sergei Kirienko are also
prominent members of the Atlanticist camp. Gaidar in particular has
emphasized the need for Russia to moderate its international ambitions on
economic grounds, arguing presciently that the record oil prices that fueled
Putin’s assertive foreign policy would not last.77 A handful of newspapers,
particularly those focusing on business and finance such as Kommersant,
Tochka.ru, and to a lesser degree Nezavisimaya Gazeta, have also promoted
Russia’s deepening involvement in the Euro-Atlantic world.
In terms of foreign policy, probably the most visible and trenchant advo-
cate of the liberal tendency has been Dmitri Trenin. In particular, Trenin—a
former career military intelligence officer—has set out to debunk the
notion of Russia’s Eurasian destiny. He argues that Russia is not only histor-
ically and culturally part of Europe but that, as a medium-sized power with
a weak economy and deep social problems, Russia’s future survival
depends on its ability to make the transition to a posthistorical world where
Mackinder’s precepts about controlling the Heartland have been replaced
by a commitment to economic opportunity, growth, and development.
In the twenty-first century, Trenin, Gaidar, and other liberal thinkers con-
tinue to base their argument for Russia’s integration with the West on the
historical and cultural linkage between Russia and Europe—a formulation
Putin has often repeated with his references to Russia’s ‘‘European choice.’’
Trenin has made the case that Russia’s survival as a pillar of the interna-
tional system depends on its willingness to abandon its superpower fanta-
sies and link its fate with that of the liberal democratic West. Directly
challenging Primakov, Trenin argues that the post-1945 examples of Ger-
many and Japan are the best analogy for the strategy that Russia of the
twenty-first century must pursue, trading foreign policy autonomy for inte-
gration in a Western-led system of collective security.
Trenin was also a sharp critic of the Putin government’s approach to for-
74 Chapter 2

eign policy. He saw Moscow’s intervention in the Ukrainian and Georgian

colored revolutions as signaling an end to Russia’s second, post–September
11 honeymoon with the West. By alienating its potential partners, Moscow
found itself even more isolated from both an increasingly integrated West
and the more dynamic economies and societies of Asia. Trenin charged
that, with its attempts to bring the recalcitrant regimes in Kyiv and Tbilisi
to heel, Russia had abandoned its course toward a West in which it was
condemned to playing a secondary role (being ‘‘Pluto in the Western solar
system’’) in favor of constructing an entirely new geopolitical solar system
within the space of the former Soviet Union—in other words, of following
a policy of rank Eurasianism that it was demonstrably too weak to effect.
Of course, Putin’s Kremlin in many ways proved a disappointment to Eur-
asianists as well, and Trenin more recently decried what he sees as the elite’s
myopic pursuit of its own self-interest, which puts the pursuit of profits
above all else, including considerations of ideology or any real thought
about the nature of the international system.78

KREMLIN, INC.

While the transition period between the Putin and Medvedev presidencies
opened more space for public debate of Russia’s foreign policy priorities,
the ability of any faction to impose its will in the end may be sharply lim-
ited by what may prove to be Putin’s most lasting legacy—the state’s grow-
ing hold on the economy, especially in the energy sector.79 The cross-
fertilization between the Kremlin’s inner circle and the boards of major
companies such as Gazprom, Rosneft, and Transneft has already given a
new class of officials and managers an extraordinary degree of influence.
The success of these bureaucratic clans would ultimately mean further
entrenching a foreign policy that seeks to maximize profits for particular
individuals and state-owned companies at the expense of broader political
and ideological goals, a process already visible in Moscow’s energy diplo-
macy and in the so-called war of the siloviki that broke out among compet-
ing factions in the security services during the last year of Putin’s
presidency.80
Wealth and power were linked under Yeltsin as well, as men like Boris
Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky used their riches to buy political access.
Under Putin, members of the bureaucratic elite like Sechin, presidential
administration economic adviser Arkady Dvorkovich, Minister of Industry
Viktor Khristenko, and Medvedev himself were installed by the Kremlin on
the boards of major state-owned enterprises such as Gazprom (Medvedev
and German Gref), Rosneft (Sechin), and Transneft (Khristenko, Dvorkov-
ich).81 Moreover, many of the individuals placed by Putin’s Kremlin in key