[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 1]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 443-444]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE STROBE TALBOTT DISCUSSES THE FUTURE OF RUSSIA

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                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 1, 2000

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call the attention of my 
colleagues to an excellent speech given by our outstanding Deputy 
Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott. The speech was given at All Souls 
College at Oxford University on January 21 of this year. The speech was 
published in The Washington Times on January 28. I ask that the text of 
Deputy Secretary Talbott's speech be placed in the Record. The future 
of Russia is a matter of great interest and great concern to the 
American people. In this speech Strobe Talbott gives us the benefit of 
his long experience with Russia and his critical insight, and I urge my 
colleagues to give his comments thoughtful attention.

               [From the Washington Times, Jan. 28, 2000]

                 Which Way Russia? Chechnya Is the Test

                          (By Strobe Talbott)

       In many ways, Russia is a self-liberated country, but it's 
     also in many ways an unhappy, confused and angry one. That's 
     partly because almost every good thing that has happened 
     there over the past decade--and there are many--has had its 
     dark underside.
       For example, the implosion of the monolithic police state 
     has left a vacuum of the kind that nature--especially human 
     nature-- abhors. In place of the old, bureaucratized 
     criminality there is a new kind of lawlessness. It's what my 
     friend and colleague Bronislaw Geremek has called ``the 
     privatization of power.'' And it has, quite literally, given 
     a bad name to democracy, reform, the free market, even 
     liberty itself. Many Russians have come to associate those 
     words with corruption and with the Russian state's inadequacy 
     in looking after the welfare of its citizens. For all these 
     reasons, Russia's first decade as an electoral democracy has 
     been a smutnoye vremya, or ``time of troubles.''
       That brings me to Chechnya, which is the most visible and 
     violent of Russia's troubles. That republic is one of 89 
     regions of Russia--it constitutes less than one-tenth of 1 
     percent of landmass that stretches across 11 time zones. But 
     with every passing week, the horror unfolding there becomes 
     increasingly the focus of Russia's attention--and the world's 
     condemnation. In just the past few days, Russian forces have 
     renewed their onslaught against Grozny, where thousands of 
     civilians remain trapped, unable to flee to safety. There are 
     reports of Chechen rebels using civilians as human shields, 
     of Russian military units using incendiary devices and fuel-
     air explosives.
       What we are seeing is a gruesome reminder of how hard it is 
     for Russia to break free of its own past. Indeed, Chechnya is 
     an emblematic part of that past. The region has been a thorn 
     in Russia's side for about 300 years. Leo Tolstoy served in 
     the czarist army there and wrote about the often-losing 
     struggle to make those mountain warriors loyal subjects of 
     the Russian Empire. In 1944, Josef Stalin had the perfect 
     totalitarian solution to the problem: wholesale deportation 
     of the Chechen people--or what we would call today ethnic 
     cleansing.
       In this decade, Chechnya has been a recurrent obstacle to 
     Russia's movement in the

[[Page 444]]

     direction that we, and many Russians, hope will mark its 
     course. While elsewhere across the vastness of Russia, 
     reformers have been experimenting with what they call new 
     thinking, the seemingly intractable conflict in the North 
     Caucasus has brought out the worst of old thinking: namely, 
     the excessive reliance on force and the treatment of entire 
     categories of people as enemies.
       And by the way: It's not just the old-thinkers who are to 
     blame for this relapse. From 1992 through 1993, a reform-ist 
     government in Moscow left Chechnya largely to its own 
     devices. The combination of Moscow's neglect and miserable 
     local conditions whetted the Chechens' appetite for total 
     independence. Had Chechnya attained that status, it would 
     immediately have qualified as a failed state. Kidnapping, 
     drug trafficking and every other form of criminality were 
     rampant. It was an anarchist's utopia and any government's 
     nightmare.
       When Russia tried to reimpose control, the result was a 
     bloody debacle. The first Chechen war, from '94 to '96, 
     ended, in significant measure, because it was so unpopular. 
     Boris Yeltsin wanted the fighting over before he faced re-
     election, so he ended it on terms that granted the Chechen 
     authorities even more autonomy.
       But once again, Moscow, having extricated itself, averted 
     its gaze. The central government made virtually no effort to 
     help establish Chechnya as a secular, peaceful, prosperous 
     polity within the Russian Federation. The deteriorating 
     conditions and free-for-all atmosphere became an even 
     stronger magnet for secessionists, Islamic radicals and other 
     extremists, many indigenous but some foreign as well. Last 
     summer, some of these elements used Chechen territory as a 
     base of offensive operations against other parts of Russia.
       Now, here's where the irony is most acute: Unlike the one 
     four years ago, the current war has had broad popular 
     support. That's primarily because most Russians have no doubt 
     that this time, rather than their army being bogged down in 
     some remote and basically alien hinterland, this time it's 
     defending a heartland that is under attack from marauding 
     outsiders--including outsiders within--that is, non-Russians 
     living in Russia.
       Thus, Chechnya has fanned the resurgence of another ism--
     nationalism. That phenomenon was the target of particular 
     passion and eloquence on the part of Sir Isaiah Berlin, the 
     late British historian of ideas. He saw nationalism as 
     inherently conducive to intolerance and friction, both inside 
     states and between them. He recognized that national 
     consciousness exists, by definition, in all nations; but he 
     warned that when the nation in question feels afflicted by 
     the ``wounds'' of ``collective humiliation'' nationalism 
     becomes what he called ``an inflamed condition.''
       Russia today suffers from just such a condition. Chechnya 
     has generated fears, resentments and frustrations in its own 
     right. But it has also come to symbolize for many Russians a 
     more general sense of grievance and vulnerability after a 
     decade of other difficulties and setbacks, real and 
     imagined--most conspicuously the enlargement of NATO and the 
     Kosovo war.
       But while there are these ominous trends, they haven't by 
     any means won. The political environment of their ebb and 
     flow is still pluralistic. Atavistic voices and forces are 
     contending with modern ones that advocate an open, inclusive 
     society and an open, cooperative approach to the outside 
     world.
       When I was in Moscow last month, I heard the word 
     zapadnichestvo. It might loosely be translated as Russia's 
     pursuit of its Western vocation. Zapadnichestvo is not an 
     ism: It's in some ways the opposite--an endorsement of a 
     liberal antipathy to isms. Moreover, I heard this word used 
     in a favorable and even optimistic context by at least one of 
     Vladimir Putin's erstwhile political allies on what Russians 
     call ``the right'' of the--that is, what we would call the 
     liberal-democratic end of the political spectrum. 
     Zapadnichestvo derives from the 19th-century debate between 
     the Westernizers and the Slavophiles.
       There was at least an echo of the concept of zapadnichestvo 
     in what Mr. Putin himself told me when I saw him on that same 
     trip: He said he wants to see Russia as ``part of the West.'' 
     Granted, he has sent other, quite different signals to other, 
     quite different audiences.
       He's been doing so rather dramatically in recent days. We 
     can speculate together--and that's all we can do at this 
     point--on exactly what he's up to in his recent parliamentary 
     maneuvers. But one theme that he strikes consistently, 
     whomever he's addressing, is a desire to see Russia regain 
     its strength, its sense of national pride and purpose. In and 
     of itself, that goal is not only understandable--its 
     achievement is indispensable. No country can succeed without 
     those ingredients.
       It all depends on how Russia defines strength, how it 
     defines security. Will it do so in today's terms, or 
     yesterday's--in terms that are proving successful elsewhere, 
     or in terms that have already proved disastrous for Russia 
     under Soviet rule? Will Russia recognize that in an age of 
     global--and regional--interdependence, the porousness of 
     borders is a necessity out of which a viable state must make 
     a virtue? Or will it fall back into the habit of treating 
     this and other facts of life as a vulnerability to be 
     neutralized, or--that most Soviet of all verbs--to be 
     liquidated? Will Russia understand that indiscriminate aerial 
     attacks, forced movement of populations and civilian round-
     ups--no matter what the original provocation and ongoing 
     threat--are the acts of a weak and desperate state, not a 
     strong and clear-headed one?
       This is the vexing question, not just about Mr. Putin but 
     about his country as a whole. It's a genuinely open question. 
     Moreover, the answer will probably be evolutionary, not 
     revolutionary. Russia has had its revolution, and its 
     counterrevolution. The last thing its people want or need is 
     another upheaval.
       Evolutions, by definition, take a long time--surely a 
     generation or more. In the final analysis, it's the Russians 
     themselves and no one else who will decide on the character 
     of their state.

     

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