Module 6

The Kosovo Crisis: Insights into the Foreign Policy of the "New" Russia

With the demise of Communism and its foreign doctrines, the Russian Federation - no longer a great power with an ideology it can project abroad - has yet to come to terms with its Soviet legacy and, consequently, is still trying to define its role in the international arena. The Kosovo crisis, which came to a head in the Spring of 1999, removed any lingering doubts that since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia is now a "super power" in the nuclear sense only.

This module offers students an opportunity to examine first-hand Russian policies and actions during the Kosovo crisis. In the process, it is hoped, they will gain some insights into what may be called the "new" politics of the "new" Russia. The suggestion is that a study of Kosovo from the Russian perspective may help us to understand, explain and even predict some aspects of future Russian domestic and foreign policies, for the one thing that can be said about Russia - sometimes it takes decades, sometimes centuries, but Russian history has a way of repeating itself.

The following introduction, which is a bit long, provides a historical perspective for students who have had limited exposure to Russian history and the workings of the Russian mind.

When World War II ended in 1945, two super powers remained standing - the United States and the Soviet Union. For most of the next half century, these powers would face off in the Cold War - from the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis, to the arms and space races. They also fought through surrogates in various global conflicts. Korea and Vietnam, where U.S. and nationalist troops fought Sino-Soviet trained and backed communist forces, cost close to 100,000 American lives. It was not until the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 that the tables turned and the Soviet Union started suffering heavy human casualties.

By the time the Afghan conflict was over in 1989, the Soviet Union was spent - both emotionally and economically. Seventy-odd years of ineffective centralized economic planning, compounded by forty-some years of the arms race and of supporting satellite countries and insurgency movements around the world, had wasted the country's economy and resources. Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to save the USSR with a program of economic restructuring and renewal which went by the name of "perestroika." In the end, however, "divestment" is the word that best describes his accomplishments. Believing that "perestroika" had a better chance of success if the Soviet Union were to go at it alone, he divested the country of its foreign obligations in Eastern Europe, Cuba and elsewhere. But it was too late. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall came crashing down and the Communist Bloc began falling apart. The Soviet Union itself was officially dissolved by Gorbachev on December 26, 1991. By that time, the republics that had constituted the USSR had gone their separate ways, including the Russian Republic, which had already officially renamed itself - the Russian Federation.

The "new" Russian Federation started off by looking a lot like "old" pre-Bolshevik Russia. The make-up of its territories was a bit different. The country was smaller. Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states and several other "old" Russian holdings were now independent. But the "new" Russia was still the largest country in the world. To be sure, Moscow was now the capital - not St. Petersburg. But at least "Leningrad" was gone and "St. Petersburg" was back. "Nizhny Novgorod" was also back, and "Yekaterinburg," and dozens of other cities and towns that had carried communist names. The Soviet red flag and the hammer and sickle symbol that represented the unity of workers and peasants were abolished. As its flag, the "new" Russia flew the old Russian "white, blue and red." And as its official state symbol, the "new" Russia readopted the old Russian imperial two-headed eagle which had symbolized the unity of the Church and State under the Romanovs. Indeed, the Russian Orthodox patriarch was frequently seen on TV and at major state occasions. In addition, the popularly elected legislature was called by its old pre-Revolutionary names - the Congress of People's Deputies and, after 1993, the Duma. Granted, it still had many communist members...

The Russian Federation also rediscovered at least one "old" Russian cause it could champion in the international arena. Sometimes refered to as "Pan-Slavism," this cause has its roots in medieval doctrine of "Moscow as the Third Rome:"

The Church of ancient Rome fell for its heresy. The gates of the second Rome, Constantinople, were hewn down by the axes of the infidel Turk. But the Church of Moscow, the Church of the New Rome, shines brighter than the sun in the entire universe... Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands fast - a fourth there cannot be.

All of Russia's royal rulers took up the religious, political and cultural mission expressed in the Third Rome Doctrine - to preserve, protect and spread the "true faith." The doctrine underlined and justified imperial Russia's expansion over the centuries and explained the country's involvement in many international conflicts, including the Crimean War and World War I, both of which Russia entered as the protectorate of the Orthodox faith. Guised under the new religion of communism, the Soviet Union, too, took up the call and made pan-Slavism a near reality. Ironically, the one Slavic country to stay independent of the Soviet bloc was Yugoslavia.

Not all was "old" with the Russian Federation. The country also had elements of a "new" Russia. It had its first popularly elected head of state, President Boris Yeltsin, who took up residence in the Kremlin. President Yeltsin wanted his "new" Russia to rid itself of its inefficient and outdated Soviet-style economy and become a modern state. In order to facilitate this transformation, he instituted a series of radical economic reforms. He eliminated state subsidies for goods and services and began the privatization of thousands of state-owned enterprises. The Russian ruble was allowed to float on the world's monetary market and find its place. Foreign investors were encouraged to come and help build the "new" Russia. Yeltsin also agreed to massive arms reductions. All of this made the rest of the world breathe easier.

Indeed, in the beginning most of the world's nations embraced the "new" Russia and tried to encourage its reforms. Russia was on the road to freedom, democracy and capitalism. To help her along, Western nations granted major IMF loans and credits. There was still the problem of Russia's nukes. But that was okay because the U.S. had more nukes and it had the world's most modern, best trained and best equipped military. To hedge its bets, however, NATO admitted several former Warsaw Pact countries. This didn't make Russia happy, but overall things were looking good.

It soon became clear, however, that the "old" and "new" were not mixing well in Russia. The "new" economic reforms didn't work. Corruption and crime were running rampant and, thanks to the government's privatization policies, some Russians quickly amassed fortunes, including, as we now know, some members of the Yeltsin family. Within a few years organized criminal elements came to control a large portion of the economy. Moreover, unlike America's robber barons at the turn of the 20th century, who invested most of their wealth back into the U.S. economy, Russia's criminals and its rich "oligarchs" were putting their money everywhere but into Russia. Then there was the strange case of the billions of dollars of foreign funds and IMF loans that were sent to help prop up Russia's fledgling free market economy - there was no question but that this money was sent and received, it was just that no one could account for it. The money somehow disappeared into thin air! With such bookkeeping and all the other problems, it wasn't long before the Russian economy as a whole took a nose dive. Many enterprises came to a standstill, there was high unemployment, and people who had jobs weren't being paid. Wild inflation rates rendered the life savings of most ordinary citizens worthless as prices for basic products soared well beyond their means. Pensioners went begging. Economic panic and despair set it.

To make matters worse, relations between the "Executive" and "Legislature" of the "new" Russia were deteriorating. The People's Deputies, who had opposed most of Yeltsin's "shock therapy" reforms, spent 1992 bickering with the President, and in 1993 attempted to strip him of some of his powers. He countered by "dissolving" the parliament. Some deputies refused to disband and barricaded themselves in the parliament building. In early October 1993, the President ordered the army to shell the building which caught fire. Close to 140 people were killed before it was all over. Another 150 were arrested, including the Vice President of the Russian Federation.

To make a long story short - we won't even mention Chechnya - it didn't take long for the rest of the world to see that the image of the "new" country that was emerging from the rubble of the old Soviet Union was beginning to look vaguely familiar. It called itself a "democracy," and it claimed to be building a "free market economy," but it looked just like Russia, thought just like Russia, and acted just like Russia!

What "Russia" are we talking about?

Eternal, suffering, bickering and chaotic Mother Russia. The same Russia that invited the Varangian prince Rurik in 862 AD, with the words: "Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come and rule over us." The same Russia that was overrun by successive waves of Asian nomadic tribes in the Middle Ages, because, to quote The Lay of Igor's Campaign:

The princes began to argue about trifles,
Calling them important matters,
And began to create discord among themselves.
The infidels from all lands began to invade
The Russian land and win victory.

The Lay concerns an early band of Asian invaders, the Polovetsians, circa 1185. The domestic situation hadn't changed much by 1243, when the Tatars arrived from the East and laid seige to the country. It was not until 1480, when Ivan III was able to unite the feuding princes, that the Tatar Yoke was finally broken.

The "same" Russia surfaced again about 100 years later when the Rurik dynasty ended and Boris Godunov took power. The period 1598-1613 was called the "Time of Troubles." While the ruling class boyars fought among themselves for power, Poland and other countries laid seige to Russia. (Incidentally, it didn't take long for people in the "new" Russia to call Yeltsin "Tsar Boris" and refer to their own epoch as the "Time of Troubles.)

It was the "same" Russia that hated all of its reformers from Peter the Great through Alexander II - the latter's just reward for liberating the serfs was an assassin's bomb. It was the "same" disorganized and discordant Russia that argued through most of the 19th century and beyond, until it finally argued itself and the Romanov monarchy out of existence in February 1917. It was the "same" Russia that was still arguing when a small band of Bolsheviks staged their coup in October 1917. Two royal dynasties, the Ruriks and the Romanovs, the Tatar Yoke, the Bolsheviks, the Soviet epoch had all come and gone, more than a thousand years had passed, and through it all - Russia had remained true to itself: "Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it."

Of course, Russia did experience periods of relative order and unity. The Russian people got along (the masses, that is) whenever there was a powerful or tyrannical ruler whom everyone feared: Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Stalin et al. To be sure, fear under Stalin and the other Soviet leaders was exacerbated by the secret police. Russians also got along whenever their country was invaded or threatened from without. The Tatar Yoke taught Russia an important basic lesson in survival - united they stand, divided they fall. The invasions of Napoleon and Hitler reinforced this lesson. Indeed, the Cold War and the threat of a nuclear holocaust, aided and abetted by the state's propaganda machine, probably did more to keep Russians united in the post-Stalinist epoch than anything else - including fear of the KGB.

And so we come to the Kosovo crisis. In light of what has been said above, it should come as no surprise that the events in Kosovo became something of a rallying point for a bankrupt Russia, its feuding politicians and demoralized populace. From the Russian perspective, NATO and the United States, the hated enemies of the old Soviet Union, were attempting to impose their will on the "new" Yugoslavia - Serbia, to be precise - a Slavic, Orthodox sister-state. At the center of the issue was Kosovo, an integral part of Serbia with a predominantly Muslim population. Add to this a failed domestic economy that many blamed on the West and Russian "Westernizers," and you have the makings for a classic situation which spoke directly to the Russian experience, if not the Russian "soul."

For the first time in its brief history the "new" Russia came together on one issue. Forget the economic and political mess at home! Forget all the political arguing and infighting! When it came to Kosovo, Russians from all walks of life spoke with one voice. Granted, President Yeltsin was already in declining physical and mental health, but his government, led by then-Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, presented a united anti-NATO, anti-American, pro-Milosevic front. They were joined and supported by almost all of the feuding factions of the Russian Duma, by the Russian Orthodox Church, and by a majority of the Russian people. According to one poll, 90% of the population came out against the NATO bombing campaign. The Duma even voted to form a new Slavic nation comprised of Russia, Belarus and Yugoslavia.

It's not that "cosmos" suddenly came from Russia's chaos. It's just that now all the chaos was directed at one issue. Some examples of public opinion, both before NATO began its air missions over Serbia and after the bombing started on March 24:

• Gennady Zyuganov, Russian Communist Party leader: "An attack on Yugoslavia would be equivalent to a declaration of war against Russia."
  
  
• Gennady Seleznev, Duma Speaker: "A military strike by NATO would provide an impetus for the start of a new Cold War."
  
  
• Vladimir Ryzhkov, then-Duma Deputy Speaker: "Any NATO strike on Yugoslavia would be an unmitigated threat to the Russian Federation."
  
  
• Igor Ivanov, Minister of Foreign Affairs: "Today, March 24th, is a dark day for the world's community. The intervention of NATO is an open aggression and a military threat to world peace... The North Atlantic alliance is attempting to impose an order for the 21st century where the U.S. will decide everything. This cannot be called anything other than NATO-colonialism."
  
  
• Gennady Zyuganov: "America has embarked on a course of Hitlerism. Its actions in Yugoslavia are examples of technotronic fascism."
  
  
• Alexey II, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church: "Yugoslavia is a member of the UN, whose Security Council did not give permission to bomb this country which did not commit aggression against anyone. On the contrary, Serbia is fighting for its territory, and when massive quantities of arms are smuggled into it by the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army and are used to kill Serbian police and civilians, it must defend them. Kosovo is an internal Yugoslav matter."
  
  
• Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky, head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, appearing in the Duma wearing a military uniform: "Military uniform? Why don't you know, the Third World War has started. And there's no end to the volunteers. Enlistments are going on all over the country. More than 5,000 men have already been assembled."

Let us now take a look at the Kosovo crisis from the Russian perspective. Keep some of the points of this introduction in mind as you delve into the texts - they'll serve you well!

Dr. B.B.S. and R.S.L.