NEWS ANALYSIS : Once-Skeptical Russia Warms Up to Clinton

It’s an open secret here that had the Kremlin been empowered to cast ballots, it would have voted for President Bush. So the genuine enthusiasm these days among makers of Russian foreign policy toward the coming Clinton Administration may at first seem surprising.

But many of this country’s top “Americanologists” sense the glimmering of a new age in Russia’s ties with Washington--a potential “turning point,” as the U.S.A.-Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences puts it.

Broader disarmament, a global ban on nuclear explosions, increased trade, protection of Russians’ rights abroad--all this and more is suddenly conceivable as the Arkansas Democrat prepares to take the oath of office in less than two months, according to an analytical report by a bevy of experts from the institute.

In President Boris N. Yeltsin’s administration, where Bush, Moscow’s No. 1 U.S. interlocutor for the past four years, was the clear Election Day favorite, there is even inspiring, if fuzzy, talk of becoming “allies” with the United States.

There is an urgent political subtext to this rosy vision, attributable to some dismal, worrisome events here.

Eleven months into Russia’s shaky efforts to force society into a free-market mold, democrats in this country are facing unprecedentedly fierce domestic opposition and are disillusioned by the low level of U.S. support. Many have come to see natural allies in American Democrats--and in Clinton.

“The much-touted ‘Western aid’ up to now mostly consists of good words, not deeds,” Yevgeny A. Ambartsyumov, chairman of the Supreme Soviet’s Foreign Relations Committee, said with a scowl of displeasure after a visit to the United States.

The U.S.A.-Canada Institute predicts that under Clinton, “the violation of democratic norms and movements toward authoritarianism (in Russia) will arouse a sharper reaction.” In the Moscow context, this is a warning to extremists of all sorts--conceivably even for Yeltsin’s entourage--that Clinton will put less emphasis on geopolitics than did his Republican predecessors and more weight on respect for citizens’ liberty, helping to ensure the survival of Russia’s fragile democracy.

“The political process in Russia is assuming a volatile, occasionally dangerous nature,” Andrei V. Kortunov, head of the foreign policy department at the U.S.A.-Canada Institute, said in an interview. “Attacks (on Yeltsin) from both extremes of the political range are intensifying. . . . If I were Mr. Clinton’s adviser on Russian affairs, I would tell him to make an unambiguous statement right in his acceptance speech warning certain forces here that any attempt to roll back the reforms in Russia would have its price, and not a small one, in terms of U.S.-Russian relations and Russia’s place in the world.”

In the view of specialists like Kortunov, Clinton as President will act as a check on the rising reactionary tide that should be much in evidence at the Russian Congress when it convenes Dec. 1. But curiously, Clinton’s election could also lead to a shift in Russia’s reforms.

Here’s how: In the biting words of Georgy A. Arbatov, the U.S.A.-Canada Institute’s director, Russia under Yeltsin and his acting prime minister, Yegor T. Gaidar, is still living by the now largely discredited policies of former President Reagan’s “voodoo economics.”

Clinton’s mind-set, in contrast, seems to the institute’s analysts “a refusal of those aspects of ‘Reaganomics’ enthusiastically adopted by the Russian authors of ‘shock therapy.’ ”

The Russians are now keenly hoping for a rapid turnaround by the United States at world organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, where Washington has been one of the strictest foes of Russia’s continued use of Soviet socialist economic practices like government subsidies to industry.

Increased U.S. flexibility toward the Russian reform process--along with a stimulus to private enterprises to invest here, which Clinton has said will become his government’s policy--may in the long run be more crucial than another round of aid handouts.

“For the reforms to work, they must have a suitable atmosphere and conditions, and that’s where Clinton could really help,” Stanislav N. Kondrashov, a senior political observer with the Izvestia newspaper and a longtime observer of the U.S. scene, said.

“As for the direct aid, in the form of grants or food parcels--well, there is a limit to what even America can spare; and second, it breeds dependence, which is humiliating for both sides,” Kondrashov said.

Despite optimistic forecasts, Russians in the know expect that it will likely be months before Clinton comes up with a coherent policy toward their country, including the nominations of key officials such as the next U.S. ambassador to Moscow, to replace the departed Robert S. Strauss.

Such delay, while viewed here as an inevitable part of any changing of the guard at the White House, could be dangerous given the Russian government’s beleaguered position. “The sooner the new ambassador is appointed, the better,” Kortunov said.

In the interim, two influential senators, Democrat Sam Nunn of Georgia and Republican Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, were scheduled to meet with Yeltsin today in Moscow.

In the specifics of Russian-American relations, specialists at the U.S.A.-Canada Institute and other Moscow observers see encouraging differences between Clinton and the 12 years of GOP rule in the White House now ending:

Disarmament Issues--The incoming Administration, the Russians believe, will be far more receptive to Moscow’s longtime foreign policy goal of a global nuclear test ban. They also expect at the very least that the Strategic Defense Initiative, the anti-ballistic missile program spawned by the Reagan Administration, will be restricted to the laboratory if not killed outright. Clinton is also seen as unwilling to brook any rollback in the U.S.-Russian framework agreement reached last June for reduction of both sides’ nuclear arsenals to a level of between 3,000 and 3,500 warheads. Russian progressives see that firmness as a check on this country’s grumbling generals, who have publicly objected to having to scrap their 10-warhead SS-18s rather than convert them to a single warhead.

Commonwealth Ties--Clinton is viewed in Moscow as a staunch proponent of the Lisbon accords that require the other former Soviet “nuclear” republics--Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan--to transfer ICBMs now on their territory to Russia to meet the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Strategic Arms Reduction treaties. The end result--making Russia the only nuclear power in the Commonwealth of Independent States--is fully the policy of Yeltsin’s government. Some lawmakers, including Ambartsyumov of the Supreme Soviet, also hope Russia and the United States can agree to station U.N. peacekeeping troops in former Soviet republics rocked by ethnic unrest.

Human Rights--The Russians are irked that the U.S. government has insisted that they pull their troops out of the Baltic states--even tying some foreign aid to the withdrawal--but turned a deaf ear to their complaints of discrimination against Russian residents of the Baltics. They expect Clinton to be more concerned.

Aid--At the onset of the campaign, Clinton accused Bush of not acting quickly or massively enough to assist Russia. Lawmakers in Moscow hailed his statements that the United States could do much more, and some hope he will “de-link” all U.S. assistance (while others believe that such linkage encourages Russia to stay on the reform track). Clinton also favors allowing cash-strapped Russia to temporarily suspend repayment of the $70-billion debt it inherited from the Soviet Union.

His actions as president, however, are uncertain, because in his first post-election news conference, he omitted mention of stepped-up economic assistance to Russia as one of his foreign policy priorities.