THE WORLD / RUSSIA : Reality Sets In After Post-Cold War Affair

The Long Thaw between Washington and Moscow was visibly ending last week. Washington charged that Russia was reneging on arms-control agreements. Yevgeny M. Primakov, the ex-KGB head who replaced pro-Western Andrei V. Kozyrev as foreign minister, threatened to renege even harder and denounced Western hypocrisy and greed in the good old-fashioned way. Boris N. Yeltsin fired Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly B. Chubais, one of the last committed reformers in his Cabinet, and replaced him with Valdimir V. Kadannikov, widely considered an old-line Soviet hack.

At week’s end, with Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin headed to Washington for a round of talks, both sides were saying the relationship was on track, but they weren’t fooling anyone. The champagne is flat.

At the end of the Cold War, Americans and Russians fell in love with one another. For a few years, Russians uncritically accepted every new fad from the West. Western economists would solve their fiscal problems; Western political methods would create a stable and just social order on the ruins of communism. A new, friendly foreign-policy relationship with the United States would allow Russia to keep its honor and dignity even as both countries escaped the costs and risks of Cold War confrontation.

The new Russia was good for U.S. self-esteem. The more they told us they admired us, the better we felt. Russia was going to be our adoring little brother. Like Germany and Japan after World War II, post-Cold War Russia was going to settle down as Uncle Sam’s trusty sidekick--and Washington would help Russia like it helped the defeated Axis.

Wrong. The Russians may have claimed, may even have believed, that Yeltsin and his colleagues were implementing “Western” economic and political reforms, but the reality was far different. Russian privatization was a feeding frenzy for various corrupt interests; behind a democratic facade, Russian politics was a struggle among large economic interests.

At the same time, we weren’t willing to help Russia. Western economic aid has been minimal: a Dixie cup in the Sahara. Politically, we have frozen Russia out. The Middle East peace process moves ahead as if Russia didn’t exist. Russia won’t be allowed to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, institutions that will shape Europe’s future. The G-7 has room for Italy’s latest premier-of-the-week but can’t find a seat for the president of Russia.

The wonder is that the love affair lasted as long as it did. But now the scales have fallen off both sets of eyes. The Russians see clearly that we don’t plan to treat them as a superpower or give them any substantial economic help. We see plainly that neither Yeltsin nor anyone else will introduce genuine democracy and the rule of law in Russia, and that any resemblance between the Russian economy and Western democratic capitalism is purely coincidental. The Russian suppression of the Chechens is as brutal--if not as efficient--as anything the communists would have done, and the new Duma, dominated by Communists and followers of Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, will be an echo chamber of fulminations against the West.

But the news out of Russia isn’t as bad as it looks. While the overinflated hopes of a grand U.S.-Russian partnership have collapsed, we are not headed into Cold War II. The changes in Russia are not as important as they look, and Russia is in no condition to start a new Cold War--even if it wanted to.

Russian politics today aren’t driven by abstract ideas but by money and power. As Russia privatizes its state factories, mines, farms and enterprises, Russian political parties are more like wolf packs hunting together for prey than like organizations seeking converts to their political views.

This is true of both the Communists and the reformers. There are many people in Russia’s revived Communist Party who want to resurrect Vladimir I. Lenin’s and Josef Stalin’s dream. But the people who run the party--and the people who find its campaign funds--are, as Madonna would put it, material girls. They want Gucci shoes and Rolex watches just like the ones Russia’s liberals grabbed in the last five years. They are using popular discontent and resentment of Yeltsin and the reformers to grab a bigger slice of pie--just as the reformers used resentment of the communists to get their own piece. Both communism and democracy in today’s Russia are slogans to fool voters--and Western bankers--more than real programs for social change.

There’s something else to remember. Even if Russia’s Communists, or Zhirinovsky’s scarier neo-Nazis, came to power and tried to revive the Cold War, there isn’t much they can do. They don’t have the money to start up the arms race, and the Russian economy is extremely vulnerable to sanctions from the West.

Russia can make a certain amount of diplomatic trouble. We could get less cooperation at the U.N. Security Council, and Russia’s cash-starved arms industry will be pushing its products throughout the Third World. The Russians will try to revive their influence in the Middle East, intimidate neighbors in Eastern Europe and encourage China to make life more difficult for the United States in Asia.

This will all be unpleasant, but it doesn’t amount to Cold War II. Russia can sulk as much as it likes, but it isn’t a superpower anymore, and it doesn’t have as much weight to throw around. There are things Russia could do that would truly cause us problems--such as selling nuclear material to countries like Iran--but this isn’t likely. Russia is Iran’s neighbor, and Moscow worries more about Islamic fundamentalism than we do.

There’s another good sign. Despite his KGB ties, Primakov is no dinosaur. In Soviet times, the new foreign minister headed what foreigners regarded as the most progressive and intelligent think tank in Moscow.

For the United States, the lesson is clear: Don’t work yourselves into a frenzy over every twist and turn in Russian politics. Russia’s “democrats” aren’t about to turn Russia into a Western country, and its “communists” aren’t about to bring Stalin--or even Leonid I. Brezhnev--back from the dead. On balance, the crooks in office are somewhat better than the crooks who hope to get in at the next election--but we are talking shades of grey, not black and white.

The best thing the United States can do in Russia is to stay out. We don’t have answers to Russia’s problems and we don’t have the money to pay its bills; the Russians will have to find their own way, and if they want our advice, they can ask.

At the same time, we should treat Russia with all due respect, and then some. Sooner or later, Russia will almost certainly be a great power again; in the meantime, Russia’s bruised ego will welcome all the pampering it can get.

We can’t make things much better in Russia, but we can help keep things from getting worse. The Long Thaw may be over, but we are still far from the Deep Freeze. Patient, thoughtful, low-key U.S. diplomacy is the best tool we have to keep it that way.*