After the Summit: The Soviet Pretense
Gorbachev is presenting a new picture of his country to both his own people and the West, and has "abandoned the rhetorical style on which he himself and all his countrymen were reared". But his prospects for re-vitalizing the Soviet economy are poor. American policy-makers and public alike remain trapped by a Cold War image of the USSR.
Robert G. Kaiser is assistant managing editor of The Washington Post and author of Russia, The People and the Power. Copyright © 1986 by Robert G. Kaiser.
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Russia's interests demand good relations with everyone, but older, darker forces tempt it to avenge its fall from superpowerdom. Westernizing democrats govern for now, but ex-communist elites and embittered generals scheme to re invigorate the military and reassert control over the borderlands. Their machinations are creating a fault line across the oil-rich Caucasus and Central Asia. For Russia to neglect its reconstruction to pursue the illusion of power would be a monumental mistake. While the expansion of NATO is misconceived, the West must not encourage Russian hard-liners with unmerited concessions.
Moscow with a Soviet hangover tests the patience even of those who most wish to engage it. As Chechnya festers, privatization lags, and the world contemplates the possibility of a communist president in the Kremlin dreaming of empire, some ridicule the notion of partnership. Russian chauvinists paint America as the enemy, but the interests of the two countries after the Cold War are compatible. The West should focus its attention--and Russia's--on common interests like nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, regional peace, and full participati0n in the world economy. America should deal rationally with irrationalities in a nation finding its way.
Three books ask what went wrong in Russia but find the wrong scapegoats: the oligarchs and neoliberal reformers. In fact, Russia's woes have much deeper roots.
