Reactions in the West were more than positive. In an article with the title “From
Empire to Nation State,” Chrystia Freeland wrote in the Financial Times: “After devoting five centuries to imperial expansion, Russia seems abruptly to have
reconciled itself to a diminished global role.”[7] She quoted Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the Moscow-based Center for Strategic
Studies, who said: “This spring was a turning point in Russia’s choice between being
an imperial power and a nation state. It marked a strong decision to reject empire.”[8] And he added: “The really surprising thing is that the negative reaction to the
loss has not been stronger.”[9] However, the Russian advance toward a democratic, post-imperial state during Boris
Yeltsin’s second presidential term was not as straightforward as these enthusiastic
comments seemed to suggest. Russia’s progress resembled rather the dancing procession
of Echternach, in which three steps forward are preceded and followed by two steps
backward. This is because, in the same year—on April 2, 1997—Yeltsin signed with the
Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko a Union Treaty leading to a Union State of
Russia and Belarus. The signing of the treaty, wrote the Financial Times, “drew rare praise for Mr. Yeltsin from his Communist and nationalist opponents.”[10] This praise was no surprise, because the initiative put Russia on a quite different
track: that of a neoimperial state. The French paper Le Monde referred to a debate in the Russian government between “occidentalists,” wanting
to join the European democratic mainstream, and “Slavophiles,” wanting to build a
Slavic Union under the aegis of Russia. The first group included two deputy prime
ministers: Boris Nemtsov and Anatoly Chubais, and the leader of the liberal Yabloko
fraction, Grigory Yavlinsky.[11] The second group included not only ultranationalists, such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky
and the communist Gennady Zyuganov, but also Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and
Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov.[12] Primakov, who would shortly afterward become prime minister, was the former head
of the SVR, the external intelligence service, a follow-up organization to the First
Chief Directorate of the KGB. Primakov was described by Ronald Asmus as someone, who
“had made his career by standing up to the West—‘the man who could say Nyet.’”[13] He “saw his job as masking Russian weakness while rebuilding Moscow’s strength.
By his desk, he kept a small bust of Prince Alexandr Gorchakov, a 19th-century Russian
Foreign Minister under Czar Alexander II who had presided over Russia’s recovery from
its total defeat in the Crimean war. Partnership with the U.S. was not part of his
lexicon.”[14]
