Russia

H

State Security

In Soviet times the KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti; Russian for “State Security Committee”) and its predecessors were large and powerful organizations. The KGB’s role included intelligence work abroad, counterespionage, and the repression of domestic dissent. The KGB also provided the top Soviet leadership with information about public moods and international developments that could not be gained from the USSR’s censored press. KGB officers were members of the Soviet elite and were often very intelligent and well educated. In 1991 public outcry erupted after the agency participated in a failed coup, and President Yeltsin subsequently split the agency into five bodies. The main heirs to the KGB are the FSB (Federal Security Services), which concentrates on domestic affairs, and the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service), which inherited the KGB’s foreign agents and activities. Although the major successor agencies are still large bodies with pervasive influence, Russians are now far freer to express their opinions and engage in independent political activity than they were under the KGB in the Soviet Union.

I

International Organizations

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia assumed the USSR’s place in the United Nations (UN). Consequently, Russia also gained a permanent position on the United Nations Security Council, the UN organ responsible for maintaining international peace and security. Also in 1991 Russia became a founding member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which includes most of the former Soviet republics. The Russians initially hoped that the CIS would coordinate shared military, foreign policy, and economic goals of member states, but by the mid-1990s the republics had abandoned the common currency and the CIS had abolished its joint military command. Russia is also a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE); Partnership for Peace, a program intended to strengthen relations between member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and central and Eastern European countries; and the Council of Europe (CE). Russia became a limited partner in NATO in May 2002 under a landmark accord allowing the country to help set joint policy on a limited range of issues, such as nonproliferation and counterterrorism. Although it widened Russia’s role in NATO affairs, the accord stopped short of giving Russia a veto over NATO decisions or a vote in the expansion of the military alliance’s membership; nor did it include Russia in NATO’s collective defense pact.

J

Foreign Policy

After World War II (1939-1945) the Cold War dominated Soviet foreign policy. All issues were seen from the perspective of a global ideological and political struggle with the United States and its allies. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, who led the country from 1985 to 1991, the USSR sought to end the Cold War. Relations with the West improved dramatically.

After independence in 1991 Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev and President Boris Yeltsin at first maintained a strongly pro-American foreign policy. Yeltsin and Kozyrev initially had a relaxed attitude toward the eastward expansion of NATO, which had been the main military alliance of Western nations during the Cold War.

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Domestic pressure prompted a foreign policy shift. In particular, strong support for the ultranationalist candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky in the December 1993 parliamentary elections convinced the government that the public demanded a more nationalistic, less pro-Western approach to foreign policy. As a result, Russia resumed sales of arms and civil nuclear technology to developing countries, including Iran, which elicited disapproval from the United States. More importantly, Russia began expressing loud support for Russians in the “near abroad” (as Russians call the outlying areas of the former USSR) and strong opposition to NATO expansion, and was at odds with NATO countries over how to resolve the ethnic turmoil in the former Yugoslavia. NATO’s support for Muslims and Croats drew disapproval from Russia, which had historical ties to the competing ethnic Serbs.

Much of this shift in policy was more a question of rhetoric than one of practice, however. By 1997 Russia’s support for Russian-speaking secessionists in the Trans-Dniester region of Moldova had become more moderate. The Russian government never encouraged Russian secessionists in Crimea; their strength in 1993 and 1994 threatened both political stability in Ukraine and Ukraine’s territorial integrity. In 1997 Russia signed a friendship treaty with Ukraine, settling the long-standing dispute over the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and confirming its recognition of Ukraine’s postindependence borders.

There were multiple reasons for Russia’s restraint. The country was conscious of its economic and military weakness, and it was also aware of the potential for conflict within the former USSR if national borders were challenged or ethnic conflicts encouraged. Furthermore, Yeltsin recognized that Russia needed to integrate itself into the world economy and Western-dominated institutions, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), if it was to regain economic prosperity and effective global influence. Russia’s long-running dispute with Japan over the Kuril Islands also reduced the country’s room to maneuver in international affairs.

In 1999 Russia’s relations with Western nations suddenly worsened as NATO admitted the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, thus expanding into central and eastern Europe, and also attacked Yugoslavia to compel the Yugoslav government to halt military operations against Albanian separatists in that country’s Kosovo province. Russia denounced NATO as aggressive and expansionist and drew closer to China. However, Russian policymakers understood their own country’s weakness and its need to attract Western investment. The government’s rhetoric at times reflected the increasingly nationalist mood in Russian society, but its foreign policy remained cautious.

Russia’s leaders were, in fact, anxious to maintain good relations with the Western powers. President Vladimir Putin pursued a foreign policy of closer cooperation with the West. Following terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001, Russia became a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism (see September 11 Attacks). In May 2002 Russia and the United States reached their first arms-reduction treaty in more than a decade. Also that month, Russia became a limited partner in NATO. In November 2002 Russia did not object when NATO announced a further expansion to include several more nations in Eastern Europe, among them the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.

However, Russia was critical of the United States over its invasion of Iraq in 2003. Russia joined with Germany and France in the United Nations (UN) Security Council in proposing that UN weapons inspectors be given more time to search for alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It refused to join the invasion force that the United States and Britain assembled. See also U.S.-Iraq War.

Dominic Lieven contributed the Government section of this article.

VII

History of Russia

In the 14th and 15th centuries a powerful Russian state began to grow around Moscow. It gradually expanded west and southwest toward the Dnieper River, north to the Arctic Ocean, and east to the Ural Mountains. By the 18th century Russia had gained full control over a number of major rivers, giving it access to the Baltic and Black seas. These conquests had a huge impact on the country’s trade and economic development. The Russian Empire continued to grow. At its greatest extent, in 1914 before World War I (1914-1918), the empire included more than 20 million sq km (8 million sq mi), nearly one-sixth of the land area of the Earth.

The empire’s heartland centered on Moscow and was the original homeland of the Great Russians, the chief ethnic component of the Russian Empire. To the east of the empire lay Siberia, which by 1914 had an overwhelmingly Russian population. The western borderlands were home to Ukrainians and Belarusians; the empire considered these Orthodox Slavs to be merely branches of the Russian people who spoke somewhat strange, regional dialects. In the northwest were Finland and the Baltic provinces (now Latvia and Estonia); their Protestant populations were very different from the Russians, both culturally and linguistically. Most of Poland, along with Lithuania, was acquired in the late 18th century. The South Caucasus, with its partly Muslim population, was absorbed in the early 19th century; most of Central Asia, almost entirely Muslim, was absorbed a generation later.

The Russian Empire fell in 1917. Most of its territory was inherited by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union), a communist state that existed until 1991. When the USSR collapsed, the Russian Federation became its principal successor state.

A

The Territorial Zones

Russian history has been strongly influenced by the country’s natural environment. European Russia’s relatively flat terrain and dense network of navigable rivers facilitated communications, economic development, and political unity across the region.

The frozen swamplands and dense forests of northern European Russia were unsuitable for agriculture, as they are today; however, fur pelts from the region's enormous animal population were important Russian exports that were crucial to the state treasury until the 18th century. All the medieval Russian settlements were located in a central zone of European Russia, an area with thick forests and some agricultural land. Most of the area had relatively poor soils. Therefore, this zone could not sustain a very large population until industrial development began in the 19th and 20th centuries. The region’s forests offered security to the neighboring agricultural settlements, which were periodically raided by the tribes of fierce nomadic horsemen that dominated the vast grasslands to the south.

For more than 1,000 years before 1600 these warring horsemen were more formidable soldiers than the armies of the settled agricultural communities were. It was only with the creation of a modern, disciplined army, equipped with muskets and artillery, that the Russians were able to turn the tables on the nomads. With the new army, Russians colonized the steppe and united the entire vast plain between the Baltic and Black seas. Russia’s modern identity as a powerful military state with a large population did not emerge until this process was completed in the 18th century. Indeed, even as late as the mid-18th century Russia’s population was smaller than that of France.

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