Worth reading both his cover note and the original memo, now declassified, in full.
The most interesting aspect of this whole affair was the crucial role played by the Treasury. They were running the American effort in Russia, and would not listen to career foreign service officers’ critique of their policy. When Merry wrote a critical memo, it was squashed by the Treasury: “it would give Larry Summers a heart attack.”
Full text (part 7, final)
XIV
For the United States to be in a position to encourage restraint and responsibility in Russian external policy will require corresponding restraint on our part toward Russian-internal policy, particularly in the economic field. We are forced to choose: is our priority in Russia fledgling democracy or market economics? In the years remaining in this century, we cannot have both. Despite shallow roots in Russia, democracy enjoys a degree of public approbation which the market does not. Skeptical as they are of their politicians, Russians for the most part do want their country to be a democracy of some kind. In that vague and inchoate aspiration lies the basis for a successful long-term partnership between the two countries and for a comparatively benign Russian outlook on the world—if they and we don’t force other reforms faster than objective Russian conditions allow. Late last year, the Russian radical reformers imposed a complex foreign electoral system (the German) onto an unprepared electorate and produced a (predictable) shambles. To impose a complex foreign market economic system onto an unprepared Soviet-era structure will produce (also predictably) an even greater shambles.
The key to a constructive American role in supporting the growth of Russian democracy is mutual respect. The reservoir of goodwill which overwhelmed Americans at the collapse of Soviet power is not yet empty, but has become dangerously shallow. Some of that loss is the result of exaggerated expectations of what the West, and America, would and could do for Russia. Some of the loss, however, is the product of our own intrusive, if well-intentioned, efforts to define success for Russia in terms appropriate for our own country. While very few Russians regret the passing of the Cold War or wish to resume an adversarial stance toward the United States, equally few appreciate the missionary zeal or the superior tone which pervade our monologue toward them.
The Russian standard of success and failure in any undertaking—economic, political, social—is not the same as the American. The American national experience (a singularly favored one) is dominated by the theme and reality of success, to the extent that “success” has become the false deity of our society. The Russian national experience (an especially difficult one) has been dominated by pain, and by the memory and expectation of tragedy. To the Russian mind, our obsession with goals and goal-fulfillment is peculiar at best, at times offensive.
One might ask why we should show respect for a country which has inflicted upon itself so many failures over so many years. We should do so, first, because respect is the appropriate medium of interchange with any emerging democracy possessing thirty thousand thermonuclear weapons. Second, we should because many Russians (especially among the young) recognize their failures and were themselves the victors over the communist regime. Finally, we should show respect because Russia is their country to do with as they see fit, the more so as we are not prepared to match our advice with money.
XV
There is a growing trend in this part of the world away from the democratic reformers who shattered the icons of Soviet power. In Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus we have seen fatigue with the human impact of reforms delay, and potentially reverse, important political achievements. This is now happening in Russia, but with enormous implications for the world at large and for the United States. If Russia’s leaders, including many dedicated to broad systemic reform, turn away from Western pressure and retreat to a myopic and hostile outlook on the world, some of the blame will be ours. In only two years, post-Soviet Russia has moved from a naive and overly expectant faith in the wisdom of the West (and especially of America) to frustration tinged with animosity as Russians look beyond their truncated frontiers. If Andrey Kozyrev in 1994 sounds increasingly like Aleksandr Rutskoy one year earlier, it is not only because Russia’s foreign minister is tacking with the political wind.
Kozyrev reflects the exhaustion and disappointment of many of Russia’s youthful Westernizers with the meager fruits of their efforts to achieve acceptance by the West for Russia as a responsible emerging democracy. Failing this acceptance and the embrace of Western institutions it would entail, Russians (including the Westernizers) will fall back on their country’s inherent power and on its ability to exert influence beyond its borders. Keenly aware of Russia’s manifold deficiencies, even democrats may come to share Pushkin’s bitter judgment of Russia’s status, “if we did not stretch across half the earth, who would notice us?”
1994 is a dangerous year. The recent amnesty of Yeltsin’s opponents by the Duma should remind us that the struggle for democracy in Russia is still far from irrevocably won. If the West, with the United States in the front rank, prefers the role of economic missionary to that of true partner, we will assist Russian extremists to undermine the country’s nascent democracy and will encourage a renewal of Russia’s adversarial stance toward the outside world. Incidentally, we will also fail on the economic front.
PICKERING
CONFIDENTIALDissent Channel Moscow 08427