Yeltsin Years Research Articles

Russia and Belarus: Economic Linkage in a Patron-Client Relationship

Abstract President Putin has embarked on a program of restoring Russia to world-power status. A key facet of his effort has been to establish a sphere of influence in the ‘Near Abroad,’ the countries of the former Soviet Union. While the world has focused on the dramatic events in Ukraine since 2013, much less attention has been paid to the vital role of Belarus in Putin’s plans. Belarus has long had closer relations with Russia than any other former Soviet state, dating back to the Yeltsin years. This paper will show that Russia has devoted considerable resources to Belarus, showering the country with a variety of economic inducements, including access to the Russian market, subsidized oil and gas, and outright grants and loans. In return, Belarus has tightened its political, economic, and military ties to Moscow. Yet, surprisingly, Belarus also has some bargaining power in this relationship. Its quixotic leader, Alexander Lukashenko, is well aware of his importance to the Kremlin, and uses it to gain even greater economic rewards – thus cementing his own power. This case thus can make an valuable contribution to extending the literature on patron-client relations in International Relations, showing that a client can stand up to its patron in certain circumstances.

Socialization, Rationality, and Age: Generational Gaps and the Attitudes toward the Chechen War in Russia

In this article, I focus on the factor of age as a determinant of individual support for the use of force by the government. I argue that socialization theory, as a key conceptual frame, should be supplemented by rational choice explanations for understanding individual preferences more fully. Employing survey data on the Chechen conflict, I investigate generational gaps in Russia regarding the government's use of force, and the form those gaps take. Empirically, I substantiate a theoretical claim that several generations exist in Russia, each with its own attitudes and beliefs, including the so‐called “second edition of the Decembrists,” “the people of the ‘60s,” “the people of the ‘70s,” “the generation of perestroika,” “the disappointed generation,” and a “lost generation/mega‐consumers.” I find strong, albeit surprising, evidence of a generational gap in Russia, with respondents born in different time periods, especially “the ‘60s people” and “mega‐consumers” expressing variable attitudes toward the Chechnya conflict.Related ArticlesBrader, Ted A., and Joshua A. Tucker. 2009. “What's Left Behind When the Party's Over: Survey Experiments on the Effects of Partisan Cues in Putin's Russia.” Politics & Policy 37 (4): 843‐868. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2009.00201.xSmyth, Regina. 2014. “The Putin Factor: Personalism, Protest, and Regime Stability in Russia.” Politics & Policy 42 (4): 567‐592. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12080Stegmaier, Mary A., and Gwyn Erb. 2008. “Gender and Generation Gaps in Russian Economic Values during the Yeltsin Years.” Politics & Policy 33 (3): 416‐443. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2005.tb00802.x

Nato and turkey: where is the partnership headed

The parting of ways had to take place at some time or the other. The differences had started emerging almost since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the disastrous Yeltsin years, even Russia bereft of the Soviet possessions in Central Asia appeared to be falling apart. This state of affairs continued till almost the turn of the century when Boris Yeltsin nominated Vladimir Putin as his successor. It has to be noted, however, that to this day Mr. Putin having pulled Russia up by the bootstraps has never spoken ill of his erstwhile benefactor.

Constructivism Revisited: A Case-Study on Russia and Moscow-Washington Relations

This article presents an evaluation on Moscow-Washington relations in the context of a renewed antagonism between the two governments, and the foreign policy visions currently employed by the Russian Federation and the United States (in relation to each other) through their compatibility with the Constructivist Theory of IR. We aim to demonstrate that, although the Realist perspective seems (at first glance) the most appropriate one to approach the current foreign policy of both countries (especially on their bilateral relations), ideational factors belonging to the Constructivist Theory still hold sufficient explanatory force in regard to Moscow´s and Washington´s views about each other. In terms of structure, we initially set out to discuss some of the main contributions of Constructivism to IR Theory and its reinterpretation of key-concepts previously crystallized by Neoliberalism/Neorealism. Secondly, we demonstrate how the Constructivist Theory was applied during the Cold War era to explain important events related to the increasing / cooling of tensions between Moscow and the West until the Yeltsin years. Finally, we elaborate on how some of its premises could still be applied today, helping us to fully grasp the current Moscow´s view about the international system and, more importantly, about its complicated relationship with the United States. In methodological terms, the article draws on an analytical (and meta-theoretical) discussion relating the Theory to important events involving both countries politically, deepening the debate on the constructivist vision in IR, while adopting Alexandr Wendt's perspective to substantiate the current argument. Keywords: Constructivism, (Neo)Realism, Russian Foreign Policy, American Foreign Policy, International Relations

The influence of regime type on Russian foreign policy toward “the West,” 1992–2015

Russia's foreign policy does not follow directly from the nature of its internal political system but rather from the interaction of that political system with other political systems. Russian policy toward the Western world is best understood in terms of the capacity of Russia's post-Soviet rulers to achieve two goals that are in implicit tension with each other. They are: a) maximizing the benefit to the Russian state of the country's multifaceted relations with the Western world; and b) securing Russia's status as the undisputed hegemon throughout the country's historical borderlands. These broad policy objectives—shared by Russian liberals and nationalists alike–have been common to both the Yeltsin and Putin administrations, albeit expressed in different ways over time and with differing expectations of being able to reconcile the two. Building upon authoritarian and interventionist patterns established early in the Yeltsin years and reacting to the West's refusal to acknowledge Russian regional primacy, Putin has consolidated an arbitrary personalist regime at home and waged war along the Russian periphery, even at the cost of relations with the Western world. In this respect, Putin's regime may usefully be seen as a “state-nation” with a strong imperial imprint, building upon powerful legacies of Russian political development. The removal of Putin from power will not in se change that regime type or key challenges in Russian–Western relations.

Being a Sibiriak in Contemporary Siberia: Imagined Geography and Vocabularies of Identity in Regional Writing Culture

This article examines the articulation of sibiriak identity in the early 21st century. This time is particularly important because the current Russian government has made a point of curtailing the regional autonomy of the Yeltsin years. Drawing on regional news sources, Internet blogs, and writings by prominent Siberian public intellectuals, this article delineates a number of specifically Siberian voices and the concerns they discuss in the public sphere. It argues that contemporary Siberian identity differs significantly from stereotypical European Russian constructions of Siberian identity that equate simple goodness and honesty with the broad Siberian terrain. This material shows a diverse range of opinions and attitudes, a concerted effort to keep the Siberian heritage before the public eye, and a sustained discussion about the usable past. Focusing particularly on Evgenii Grishkovets’s autobiographical novella, Rivers (Reki, 2005), this article examines the emergence of a post-Soviet discourse that reaches beyond Siberian stereotypes and openly expresses social and cultural problems encountered by Siberians.

Political consequences of crony capitalism inside Russia

book examines the coexistence of crony capitalism and traditionally democratic institutions such as political competition and elections in Russia after the collapse of communism. The combination, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova argues, has produced a distinct pattern of political evolution in contemporary Russia. Elections are meant to ensure government accountability and allow voters to elect a government responsive to their needs, but in postcommunist Russia the institutional forms of democracy did not result in the expected outcomes. Instead, democratic institutions in the context of crony capitalism--in which informal elite groups dominate policy making, and preferential treatment from the state, not market forces, is crucial to amassing and holding wealth--were widely devalued and discredited.As Sharafutdinova demonstrates, especially through her close scrutiny of elections in two regions of Russia, Nizhnii Novgorod and the Republic of Tatarstan, crony capitalism made elections especially intense struggles among the elites. Massive amounts of money flowed into campaigns to promote candidates by discrediting their rivals, money purchased candidates and power, and elites thereby solidified their control. As a result, the majority of citizens perceived elections as the means for the elite to access power and wealth rather than as expressions of public will. Through her detailed case studies and her analyses of contemporary Russia in general, Sharafutdinova argues persuasively that the turn toward authoritarianism associated with Vladimir Putin and supported by a majority of Russian citizens was a negative political response to the interaction of electoral processes and crony capitalism. This is one of the most interesting and well-argued books I have read recently on the question of democracy in Russia, and its bold thesis is likely to appeal well beyond students of Russia to the much larger number of readers (and students) interested in general questions of democratization and problems of corruption. --Henry Hale, George Washington UniversityGulnaz Sharafutdinova explores the development of crony capitalism in Russia, based on the contrasting cases of Tatarstan and Nizhnii Novgorod. She argues that the corruption which accompanied the market transition seeped over into electoral politics, and was a major factor in undermining popular support for democratic institutions. finding is a challenge to transition theory, which posits that democracy and capitalism work hand in hand. Few scholars have tackled the question of exactly how and why Russian democracy eroded as quickly as it sprang up. Sharafutdinova's book is an important contribution to that debate. --Peter Rutland, Wesleyan UniversityThis well-argued and convincingly documented book will be of interest to scholars of Russian politics, and corruption more broadly, as well as to policymakers interested in getting an overview of the logic of the Yeltsin years and the Putin response. --Anna Grzymala-Busse, University of Michigan

Network Mobilization and the Origins of the Putin Coalition

How the Putin coalition rose to dominance remains a contested question. Theories of mobilization argue that organizational networks are important to the founding and success of political coalitions. Comparison of the organizational networks of rival coalitions in the city of Tambov provides insights into their origins and how they mobilize supporters. The Putin coalition drew on previously existing political structures that had been gaining strength during the Yeltsin years. This fledgling coalition enjoyed support from rank-and-file members of civic organizations, while its rivals founded top-heavy civic organizations that lacked substantial support from below.

Russia's Duma Elections and the Practice of Russian Democracy

Former President Vladimir Putin and official spokespersons for the Russian political leadership have repeatedly proclaimed their commitment democratic values, but western observers and domestic critics are skeptical.1 The most recent election for the Russian parliament on 2 December 2007-the state duma-exemplified the many ambiguities about the state of democracy in Russia. While the elections were ostensibly competitive-11 parties on the ballot and four winning seats in the legislature-international observers, the extent they were present, made contradictory judgements on the democratic credentials of the vote. Not surprisingly, those from the Commonwealth of Independent States approved the election, while the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) refused send observers because the conditions offered by the Russian government were said prevent them from doing a proper j ob. The Council of Europe, on the other hand, carried out its observer mission, concluding that while the elections were to a great extent free in terms of a variety of voting options, they were definitely not fair.3Problems with the election had less do with overt fraud (although opposition forces made some allegations of that as well) but with restrictions on conditions preceding and surrounding the vote. These restrictions included selective enforcement of electoral laws in order exclude some parties from participating, general crackdowns on critics of the regime, restrictions on public gatherings by groups opposing the government, and media bias. The Council of Europe made specific mention of abuse of administrative resources, as well as unequal media access, use of force against and harassment of opposition leaders, restrictive effects of electoral legislation, and voting improprieties on election day.3 In addition, pressure on voters support United Russia was widely reported in the press, with allegations that school teachers, other state employees, and students were threatened with sanctions if they didn't vote correctly.4 In the larger context, many observers considered these actions unfavourable in democratic governance.Given the consistently high level of popularity of Vladimir Putin both preceding and following the election, and the availability of methods of informal influence over regional elites (who in turn have informal tools influence the regional vote), the extraordinary methods applied in order assure a high vote for United Russia seem puzzling. Some of these measures simply opened the door further allegations about a slide toward authoritarianism, while being unlikely affect the outcome in any significant way.This article explores possible reasons underlying the efforts of the Russian leadership assure the election outcome and suggests some criteria for assessing their compatibility with democratic practice. The underlying argument is that the colour revolutions that took place in other postcommunist countries since November 2003, notably Ukraine's orange revolution, offered a powerful impetus for Russian elites manage the 2007 Russian parliamentary election even more firmly than they had in 2003. No doubt other underlying factors reinforced this tendency, including Putin's own career background and personal inclinations, worries about terrorist attacks, cultural predispositions, the weakness of civil society, and legacies of totalitarianism. This analysis resists the temptation of falling back on these standard explanations, and assumes a rational calculation of interest on the part of the Russian leadership.BACKSLIDE FROM DEMOCRACY PRECEDING THE 2007 ELECTION?The 2007 duma elections should be viewed in the larger context of Russia's backslide from the democratization impetus that took hold in the Yeltsin years. Western scholarly literature has identified the establishment of postcommunist institutional structures involving super-presidential systems as a common feature that makes initial commitments democratic processes but then sees regression more authoritarian structures. …

Was Liberty Really Bad for Russia? (Part II)

Like Providence in reverse, the Russian government seeks to arrange for the better not the future, but the past.-Aleksandr HerzenIt is very much in the Russian and, even more so, Soviet political tradition for rulers to deprecate their predecessors. As they ascend the power ladder, the would-be Kremlin occupants must profess complete loyalty to the current leader to succeed. Once in the country's new masters bolster their authority by dissociating themselves from previous leaders. Along with Russia's weak political institutions, which undermine the transitions' legitimacy, such repudiations almost inevitably result in the personalization of as the new occupants mold the political, social, and economic systems to their liking. Hence, Russian and-and especially-Soviet history have often resembled succession of distinct political regimes-indeed, sometimes different states under the same name.Thus, at first blush, this Kremlin's castigation of the 1992-99 period, which is portrayed as an unmitigated disaster, is not unusual. It is described as time of gratuitously and maliciously inflicted humiliation, of a failed state, and, most of all, of chaos.2 Advanced relentlessly, many Russian commentators (who quickly recovered their Soviet skill of line-toeing), and some leading Western media, editorialists, and pundits, have adopted this line of argument.3 The fact that booming economy has sprung from the alleged calamities of the preceding years, like Athena who appeared fully armed from Zeus's head, does not trouble the latter.4For all its conformity to national tradition, the propaganda campaign has several features that do not fit the usual pattern. First, President Vladimir Putin was-and continues to be-very popular, and does not need to gain additional legitimacy at his predecessor's expense. In the 1990s, moreover, the breadth and intensity of public criticism of the government (in newspapers, on television, and in the parliament) were unprecedented in Russian, let alone Soviet, history. All the many warts and boils, real and imagined, of the Boris Yeltsin regime were exposed and lanced at the time. Indeed, many Russian pollsters believe that much of Putin's popularity is due to his not being the late Yeltsin: very sick, often inebriated, and increasingly unsteady and erratic in public. Thus, harping on the very real failures and hardships of the Yeltsin years can hardly be expected to lower the public's opinion of them more than it already is.A plausible explanation is that the chaos mantra's aim is much higher. As often happens in Russia, the past is invoked to shape the present and the future. In this case, the denunciations of the 1990s may, the Kremlin hopes, help manage the tense transition ahead (or the risks of Putin's decision to rewrite the constitution and run again) and, more importantly, establish the direction that should take in the long run. No one disputes that in the 1990s, was the freest it had ever been, save for the nine months between February and November 1917. Just as undeniable is the ideology of the first postcommunist regime. As leading Russian political analyst stated, it was based on two simple ideas: that personal liberty is the foundation of progress of modern state and that Russia has no other way but to follow the Western model of development.5It is this ideology and this model that the current regime is determined to stamp with the cliche. If the freest in history produced nothing but misery and disorder, then liberty is, in principle, bad for it. Ergo, Putin's protoauthoritarian sovereign democracy and the vertical of power, in which the executive controls (or owns outright) other branches of government and key sectors of industry.Such fateful implications make the veracity of the chaos claim worth exploring. Specifically, one needs to ascertain, first, whether economic liberalization and democratization bear the primary responsibility for the chaos, and, second, whether there was anything but chaos in the 1990s. …

Russians and Their Party System

bourgeois, democracy, observed Barrington Moore. He might just as well have said no parties, democracy. No other mechanism has yet been found for aggregating preferences of citizens, expressing them in form of a government program, and providing a team to carry them out. More generally, parties help to engage citizens in political process on a continuing basis. They provide a form of political education, often including daily press, and sometimes they provide a wider network of social activities, including youth movements, sporting societies, and holiday arrangements. In largest sense of all, they provide for accountability of government by allowing voters to pass judgement on performance of an outgoing team and, when they think it appropriate, to throw rascals out.1There has been little consensus about extent to which Russian parties fulfill these various requirements. American scholars usually have been minimalists, reflecting nature of politics in their own country-parties have identifiers rather than members, they are active during elections but not between them, and they raise money to buy advertising rather than rely on activists to appeal over front doorstep. Europeans more often take a view that reflects their own experience of mass party, a world of which Russian Social Democrats (later Bolsheviks and later still Communist Party of Soviet Union) were themselves a part before World War I. Both would agree, however, that parties are a central element in forms of linkage that connect citizens and government, and that extent to which a system of this kind has been formed in Russia is central to an evaluation of its postcommunist politics. Have Russians, a decade or more after demise of Soviet Union, overcome their antipathy to the party and become citizens rather than subjects? Or do they have what has been described as a floating system, characterized by high levels of turnover, or a client system, dominated by Kremlin itself?2In this article, I first consider some of aggregate evidence that relates to these questions, drawing on a national representative survey conducted in first half of 2005. Second, I draw on a series of focus group discussions that took place immediately after December 2003 Duma and March 2004 presidential elections, which were intended to move beyond tick-box responses to complexity of attitudes that relate voters and nonvoters to parties and candidates that appeal for their support (further details are provided in appendix). I look first at nature of support that Russians give-or fail to give-to their political parties, using survey evidence. Then, I turn to electors themselves. Survey evidence can tell us if individual perceptions are representative of a wider universe, but only qualitative evidence can provide us with experience of ordinary members of society in their own words rather than those of an outsider's questionnaire. Exploring ambiguities of Russian attitudes toward political parties, both are required.Dimensions of Party SupportOne direct measure of place of parties in Russian system is extent to which citizens are willing to trust them as compared with other institutions. The national opinion research center has asked questions of this kind since early 1990s (see table 1). Consistently, church and armed forces have enjoyed highest levels of public confidence. The presidency went through a bad patch in later Yeltsin years, but then recovered strongly. Local government was typically more widely respected than central government, and media was more widely respected than agencies of law enforcement, which were more often associated with corruption and mistreatment than with administration of justice. Political parties, however, have consistently come at bottom of list, below even parliament in which they are represented. …

Gender and Generation Gaps in Russian Economic Values during the Yeltsin Years

Russians today enjoy freedoms and opportunities unknown to previous generations. However, when economic shock therapy commenced in 1992 certain societal groups faced distinct disadvantages. Because women encountered discrimination in hiring, were more likely to be laid off, and government propaganda encouraged them to return to their traditional roles, the numbers of women employed declined at twice the rate of the decline in men's employment during the Yeltsin years. Older generations also experienced great hardships at this time, particularly those who received state pensions. How did these different experiences based on gender and generation affect support for free‐market values in early post‐communist Russia? We explore this question with World Values data from 1991 and 1995, drawing from questions appearing across both surveys. While important differences emerged in cross‐temporal analysis of attitudes, the relative orientations of these groups remained surprisingly stable over this time span. For example, while overall orientations toward government versus private ownership of businesses turned decidedly toward increased government involvement, women continued to be less positively oriented toward the free‐market than men, which is consistent with the pre‐democratization period. However, men's views fell more precipitously than those of women, which was a result not anticipated by the existing literature exploring this era.

Mythmaking in the new Russia: politics and memory in the Yeltsin era

After the collapse of Communist rule in 1991, those loyal to the old regime tried to salvage their political dreams by rejecting some aspects of their history and embracing others. Yeltsin and the democrats, although initially hesitant to rely on the patriotic mythmaking they associated with Communist propaganda, also turned to the national past in times of crisis, realizing they needed not only to create new institutions, but also to encourage popular support for them.Kathleen E. Smith examines the use of collective memories in Russian politics during the Yeltsin years, surveying the various issues that became battlegrounds for contending notions of what it means to be Russian. Both the new establishment and its opponents have struggled to shape versions of past events into symbolic political capital. What parts of the Communist past, Smith asks, have proved useful for interpreting political options? Which versions of their history have Russians chosen to cling to, and which Soviet memories have they deliberately tried to forget? What symbols do they hold up as truly Russian? Which will help define the attitudes shaping Russian policy for decades to come?Smith illustrates the potency of memory debates across a broad range of fields-law, politics, art, and architecture. Her case studies include the changing interpretations of the attempted coups of 1991 and 1993, the recasting of the holiday calendar, the controversy over the national anthem, the status of trophy art brought to Russia at the end of World War II, and the partisan use of historical symbols in elections.

Le stalinisme entre histoire et mémoire : le malaise de la mémoire russe

Maria Ferretti, Stalinism between history and memory : the malaise of Russian memory. The article studies the memory of Stalinism in Russia, from the age of perestroika to our own time. It distinguishes between dif ferent stages of Russia's conflict with her past, the obstacles that have hampered it, the temptation to repress it and the refusal to assume traumatic past. The article shows how, during the Yeltsin years, there was an attempt purely and simply to efface the Soviet past - as if it were a bad parenthesis - and to construct an idealized image of Tsarist Russia. But the disillusionment provoked by the brutal introduction of capitalism and the failed promises of neo-liberalism have caused a massively impoverished population to take refuge in nationalism

Putin in Power

During the Yeltsin years, it became fashionable in the West to cite Russia's weak state as the source of Russia's ills. Putin has demonstrated after only a few months in office that the Russian federal state still has tremendous power—perhaps too much power—if the man in control of that state is vigorous, ambitious, and popular.

Sifting through the Rubble of the Yeltsin Years

Russia under Yeltsin has been replete with failure. Until the fundamental elements of the rule of law are introduced, Russia will remain a land of anarchy and unpleasant surpnses.