#11
Itogi
November 8, 2001
From Davos to Texas
The September 11th attacks in the United States have changed Russia's political relations with the West.
The same breakthrough is essential in the economic sphere.
By Leonid Radzikhovsky
(www.therussianissues.com)

Russia's rapprochement with the West is aggressively on the rise. The main problem that has now become obvious is whether Russia and the West will be able to forge an economic union. In the last few years, no one has given any serious attention to this question. The Davos Forum stopped being annoyed by Russia long ago. Irritation gave way to tired sorrow. Russia was regarded as a doomed patient who could neither recover nor die, becoming a burden to doctors and nurses.

It is absolutely clear that the Western tone towards Russia has radically changed. The very fact that the Davos Forum held an external session in Moscow is significant. It is also clear that Presidents Vladimir Putin and George Bush will actively discuss economic issues during their summit next week. Agreements may also be signed in such areas as power engineering and oil trade.

However important these specific agreements could be, they are not everything that matters. Russia and the West need a turn in their economic relations, a psychological breakthrough similar to that in the political sphere after September 11th. It is not the prizes, but the rules of the game that have to be changed.

Russia has had a lot of happy and unhappy love affairs with the West. The most recent examples include the Western adoration for Gorbachev that later transformed into a back-slapping relationship between Boris Yeltsin and his "friend Bill." All that ended without any flair when former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov ordered his plane to turn around to return to Russia when he was halfway en route to the United States.

However, the history of Russian-Western relations cannot be described as one big failure. After all, Russia has become an open country, although it cannot be denied that a lot of opportunities were lost at summit discussions and ruined by the bombs dropped on Yugoslavia. As usual, both sides are to on the one hand, and a Russia that was too preoccupied with the preliminary accumulation of credits, on the other.

The chief reason for replacing love with mutual irritation was simple: Russia and the West did not have a common cause. Each got down to solving their own problems after the demise of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Russia found an even more original solution to its problems. Its leaders proclaimed that the country, in general, did not have any problems, except for private ones. "Western partners" helped to resolve all "private problems" while our leaders shed tears for the country's fate on television screens during election campaigns.

Now, the situation has totally changed. The West has one cause in which it urgently needs Russian help. In fact, this is a question of whether Western civilization will survive or will be dumped to the "dustbin of history." To solve this problem, the West has turned to Russia.

Russia is also facing some new problems: the country's new political "elite" has suddenly looked beyond the mansions' fences to see the country as a whole. Under closer examination, Russia has turned out to be a Western country with bourgeois values and capitalist economic and social systems.

The time of "wild capitalism" is already in the past. Russia has laws that are working. There are economic structures that work. Tens of millions of people live according to new rules. At the same time, this is not yet the "aging" Western capitalism burdened with social reflections. Russia does not have strikes, real trade unions or any serious leftist movement; the Communist Party's nostalgic socialism no longer reveals the intellectual and moral aspirations of Russian society.

So, Russia is ready for a capitalist leap - politically, economically, socially and morally. Russia needs Western aid, but not the kind given ten years ago. Russia has fundamentally changed and needs a new kind of assistance. The era of relief aid and credits for a "developing country" is over. What Russia really needs is aid to its young and burgeoning economy.

The West should open its markets to Russian exports. Russia needs normal commercial investments rather than "humanitarian" handouts. Russia does not need an arrogant or superior attitude. It just wants and needs to be treated as an equal.

On the other hand, the West badly needs a pro-Western Russia. The question is whether Western leaders are ready for an equal economic dialogue? Are they prepared for such a breakthrough? Are they ready to give up on their Russophobic complexes? Are they capable of thinking strategically or will they resort to their old political intrigues? However hard it may be, life is forcing Western leaders to answer these questions.

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