What Russians Think About Foreign Policy

Kuchins, Andrew.

SAIS Review, Volume 23, Number 2, Summer-Fall 2003, pp. 209-211 (Review)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/sais.2003.0043

For additional information about this article

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 SAIS Review vol. XXIII, no. 2 (SummerFall 2003)

What Russians Think

About Foreign Policy
Andrew C. Kuchins

The Russian People and Foreign Policy: Russian Elite and Mass Perspectives, 1993
2000, by William Zimmerman. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 2002). 250 pp. $65.

W illiam Zimmermans The Russian People and Foreign Policy pro-

vides bushels of data on the views of Russian elites and the
public toward critical foreign policy issues during the 1990s. Based
on major surveys conducted in 1993, 1995, and 1999, Zimmermans
findings, not surprisingly perhaps, leave the reader with a mixture of
optimism and pessimism about Russias future. More importantly,
he has done the field a tremendous service by establishing an analyti-
cal baseline with which the results of future studies may be compared
in order to gauge the degree of continuity and change in Russian
public opinion. A similar effort by Professor Zimmerman during the
20032004 electoral cycle would be highly valuable.
Zimmermans research shows that age is a major predictor of
attitudes toward liberal democracy in Russia, and this is a reason for
optimism. The younger one is, the more likely he is to support free
markets and democracy. In a survey conducted in 1999, Zimmerman
concluded that fewer than 25 percent of the population born before
1950 would be coded as liberal democrats while 45 percent of those
born between 1950 and 1959, and 55 percent of those born after 1960
are inclined toward market democracy. Conversely, the older a Rus-
sian is, the more likely it is that he would prefer a return to Soviet
order. These and other findings enforce Zimmermans refutation of
the contention that political culture in Russia is non-malleable.

Andrew C. Kuchins is the Director of the Russian & Eurasian Program at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
209

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 210 SAIS Review SUMMERFALL 2003

Despite this positive trend suggesting that as we move further

from the Soviet experience, there is declining support for an authori-
tarian revanche, Zimmerman notes at the outset of his study that the
quality of Russian democracy, as evaluated by Human Rights Watch,
has slid considerablyfrom 3 to 4.5 on a 7-point scalebetween 1992
and 2001. Put differently, the good news is that by 1999, the percent-
age of Russians who viewed democracy as the best form of govern-
ment for Russia had increased to 50 percent; the bad news is that
Russia remained at the very bottom in the World Values Survey dur-
ing the years 19961999. To put a more positive spin on this, how-
ever, simply recall that twenty years ago one could not have even
conducted such survey research in the Soviet Union.
Zimmerman is careful about drawing definitive conclusions
from three surveys conducted over a relatively short time span of six
years. Nevertheless, it is striking that Russian concern about the
growth of U.S. power and the manner in which it is exercised increased
throughout this period, as did support for higher levels of Russian
military spending. Another interesting finding is that the gap between
elite and mass views of foreign policy narrowed during the period
that Zimmerman studied. Elite enthusiasm for the West has tapered
off somewhat from the high levels witnessed during the short-lived
honeymoon period of 19921993. We know from other surveys that
negative Russian views of the United States spiked in 1999 following
the NATO-led military campaign against the former Yugoslavia. The
impact of Kosovo, however, was relatively short-lived on both Rus-
sian public opinion and foreign policy. Foreign policy and national
security doctrines approved in 2000 described the United States and
NATO in more threatening terms than have other official Russian
documents published since the collapse of the Soviet Union; yet, Presi-
dent Vladimir Putin has subsequently moved Russian foreign policy
in a more pro-Western direction than ever.
Zimmermans study confirms that like those of the United
States and other democratic societies, Russias voting preferences are
determined principally by domestic concerns, not foreign policy is-
sues. Indeed, in 19951996, when Russian elites were getting lath-
ered about possible NATO expansion, the majority of Russians were
blissfully unaware of NATOs plans. It was not until the Kosovo in-
tervention that the broader Russian public became more aware of
and, thus, more hostile toward NATO. Still, Zimmerman concludes
that during the 19951996 and 19992000 electoral cycles, most
Russian voters understood the foreign policy stances of various can-
didates and parties and recognized that their inclinations for or

23.2kuchins 210 8/6/03, 3:45 PM

 REVIEW ESSAY WHAT RUSSIANS THINK ABOUT FOREIGN POLICY 211

against market democracy were broadly consistent with their prefer-

ences for greater international integration. The election of Yeltsin in
1996 and Putin in 2000
broadly reflected support
for market democracy and The election of Yeltsin in
Western integration, but 1996 and Putin in 2000
the parliamentary votes in
both those electoral cycles broadly reflected support for
reflected a great deal more market democracy and
ambivalence on these
points. Western integration, but the
As a longtime stu- parliamentary votes in both
dent of Soviet and Russian
politicsthe authors path- those electoral cycles
breaking Soviet Perspectives reflected a great deal more
on International Relations,
published more than thirty ambivalence on these points.
years ago, was a seminal
study in the much-maligned field of SovietologyZimmerman
brings a great deal of wisdom and a refreshingly modest and balanced
perspective to his analysis. While the prose is sometimes clunky, the
fact that Zimmerman has no particular axe to grind is refreshing in a
field where assessment of the 1990s has often been strident and emo-
tional. Throughout the book, the reader gets the sense that
Zimmerman is reveling in the freedom to conduct the kind of re-
search on Russian foreign policy that Gabriel Almond did on U.S.
foreign policy in his classic work The American People and Foreign Policy
published more than fifty years ago. That very freedom in itself marks
a sound beginning on the path to establishing liberal democracy in
Russia.

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