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Problems of Post-Communism
vol. 51, no. 1 (January­February 2004): 55­62.
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The Petersburg Experience:
Putin’s Political Career and Russian Foreign Policy
By Samuel Charap (samuel.charap@magdalen.oxford.ac.uk)
SAMUEL CHARAP is a Marshall Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford University. Research for this article was conducted while the author was a Moscow-based U.S. Fulbright Scholar. He thanks Viktor Kuvaldin, William Taubman, Celeste Wallander, Archie Brown, Masha Lipman, Gideon Lichfield, and James Sherr for help with the manuscript.

Putin’s years in St. Petersburg’s city hall shaped his worldview and thus his approach to foreign policy.

FROM THE MOMENT Vladimir Putin was appointed president of the Russian Federation on December 31, 1999, the international community has been infatuated with him. Observers are at once mystified by his impressive rise to power, captivated by his cool demeanor, and somewhat apprehensive about the implications of his career in the KGB. He is variously described as “enigmatic,” “elusive,” and “inscrutable.” Four years later—especially in light of the late 2003 YUKOS scandal—many still ask, “Who is Mr. Putin?” Often, Western scholarly books on Putin’s presidency either completely ignore his past or lament the lack of information available about it.1 Their focus is thus exclusively on his policies—an approach that leaves one with the impression that Putin suddenly and unexpectedly appeared in Russian political life. Yet Putin did have a political career before he arrived in Moscow. In fact, his political career was successful and relatively high-profile, and it undoubtedly influenced him and his politics. Of course, there is no way to prove a direct correlation between Putin’s personal experience and his policies. Many other important factors besides Putin himself contribute to Russian political outcomes. Nonetheless, to understand Putin better, and the country that he leads, a deeper investigation of his past is indispensable.2

This article focuses on the biographical roots of Putin’s foreign policy. Despite the structural constraints on his actions,3 Putin has had a freer hand in determining Russia’s foreign policy than in shaping domestic policy. Many of his domestic projects, such as reforming the natural monopolies or the administrative system, have been deemed too politically risky to pursue or thwarted by regional governments, the parliament, or the federal bureaucracies. In contrast, foreign policy is rarely affected by public opinion,4 and under the Russian constitution, practically all responsibility for foreign policy is given to the executive, thus severely limiting the influence of other institutional actors. Moreover, due to a distinct lack of leadership, the two bureaucracies that have constitutionally prescribed functions in foreign policy formation—the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) and the Security Council—have little power in Putin’s Russia. Under Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, the ministry has lost the status as a generator of policy that it had during the tenures of such influential figures as Evgenii Primakov, Eduard Shevardnadze, and Andrei Gromyko. The chair of the Security Council, Vladimir Rushailo, was a career officer at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He has no experience in diplomacy, and demonstrates little interest in foreign affairs. Additionally, the institutional infighting among the MID, the Security Council, and the various other government agencies that have foreign policy duties (including the economic ministries, the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Defense, and the intelligence services), which previously served as a check on executive power, albeit an awkward one, has decreased significantly in the Putin era.5

This institutional setting is a reflection of a larger concentration of foreign policy decision-making power in the executive that has occurred during Putin’s presidency. Bobo Lo notes, “To a very large extent, Putin is Russian foreign policy”—that is, Putin is directly involved in the details of making foreign policy.6 Whereas Yeltsin was always more comfortable in domestic political situations, Putin demonstrated his interest in the conduct of foreign policy early in his presidency, flying around the globe in what seemed to be weekly visits to fellow heads of state. Although members of his government sometimes dissent publicly, Putin has made it clear that he is the final arbiter of matters of international significance. Grigorii Yavlinskii has related a poignant example: Immediately after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Putin consulted top political leaders on what Russia’s response should be. The vast majority in the room argued for maintaining neutrality. Putin disagreed, and proceeded to forge what are arguably the closest U.S.-Russian ties in the post­cold war era.7

The Putin Doctrine

Although Russia’s foreign policy decisions are regularly made on an ad hoc basis (as is also true of many countries, because often they are simply reacting to U.S. policies), Putin’s presidency has coincided with some distinct changes in Russia’s approach to the outside world.8 The two catchphrases used to describe these changes—”pragmatism” and “active diplomacy”—and the notion that Putin’s post­September 11 policies represented a decisive “turn to the West” serve to overshadow the systemic transformation that has taken place. This is not to say that Putin’s foreign policy is revolutionary, that the phrases cited tell us nothing, or that September 11 did not affect Russian-Western relations. Rather, upon closer inspection, the salient feature of Putin’s diplomacy is a change in emphasis, not in content. Although there “have been few radical shifts in terms of substance,”9 Putin’s approach to Russia’s relations with the outside world clearly differentiates his policies from those of the Yeltsin era.10

In a document released before he became president, and in one of his early speeches on foreign policy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Putin described the priorities that have characterized his diplomacy. The first document, entitled “Russia at the Turn of the Millennium,” gives a sober assessment of the limits of Russian power and the weakness of the Russian economy: “First of all, our country is not among the most economically and socially developed states in the modern world. Second, our country faces very serious economic and social problems.”11 Putin went on to describe the economic collapse that occurred during the 1990s and the weakness of Russian industry, and concluded that even at the highest growth rates, it would take Russia fifteen years to reach the per capita GDP level of Portugal. Of course, these facts were widely known long before Putin described them. Yet he was one of the first to point to economic decline as the key determinant of Russia’s behavior on the international stage.12

Putin’s understanding of Russia’s economic weakness led to an emphasis on the importance of economics, as opposed to ideology, in his foreign policy: “The share of economic diplomacy in the work of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must grow. . . . The Ministry of Foreign Affairs central apparatus does not completely understand the state of affairs in the commercial-economic sphere. . . . We must build a system of advancement and defense of our economic interest abroad, which would guarantee maximum returns to the Russian economy.”13 This utilitarian approach was something new for Russia. During their terms as foreign minister, Evgenii Primakov and Andrei Kozyrev always tied their policies to grand ideas, if not ideologies.14 Primakov developed the concept of multipolarity, and Kozyrev’s notion of partnership (partnorstvo) with Western Europe and the United States amounted to a form of “Westernism.” Putin, on the other hand, eschews ideology in favor of an emphasis on practical results. He believes that foreign policy should serve the end of modernizing the country: The “task” of foreign policy is to create “conditions, which would allow us to concentrate our efforts and resources as much as possible on solving the socio-economic tasks of the state.” 15 Here is the distinctly gosudarstvennik (statist) side of Putin’s politics—an effective foreign policy is one that creates a strong state, which will in turn restore Russia’s greatness.16

To advance Russia’s economic interests, Putin has stressed the need for Moscow to integrate itself into Western institutions and to attract Western investment.17 He wrote, “Without [integration into international economic structures], we simply can’t raise ourselves to the level of economic and social progress, which developed countries have achieved. . . . Only this path, as experience the world over shows, opens a real perspective for dynamic economic growth and improvement in quality of life. There is no alternative to it.”18 As evidenced by his efforts since his inauguration, creating a positive investment climate has been a high priority, but only when doing so does not conflict with the primary task of strengthening the state. Putin understands that the Russian economy desperately needs foreign investment: “To be honest, without foreign capital, the country will recover slowly and difficultly. We don’t have time for a slow rebirth. That means that we must do everything so that foreign capital flows into our country.”19

On the surface, Putin’s emphasis on economic integration with the West seems to resemble the policies that Kozyrev pursued early in his tenure. However, the early Kozyrev saw a partnership with the West as inherently logical, regardless of economic interests: “For democratic Russia, the USA and other Western democracies are as natural friends (and in time allies) as they were enemies for the USSR.”20 Putin does not romanticize Russian-Western cooperation, and he often points to the West’s failures to engage Russia: “Foreign investors are not rushing into our country,” he wrote, noting that investment in Russia ($11.5 billion) was only a fraction of that in China ($43 billion).21 Moreover, Putin does not believe that Russia’s only natural partners are in the West, and thus he has not pursued good relations with Western countries to the detriment of Russia’s interests elsewhere: “It cannot be possible for us to have a Western-leaning foreign policy or an Eastern-leaning foreign policy. The reality is that a country with Russia’s geopolitical position has national interests everywhere.”22 Putin’s approach is neither Primakovian—he is not interested in the East to spite the West—nor reminiscent of the policies that Kozyrev pursued late in his tenure, when he turned away from the West. Although Kozyrev’s reversal reflected disillusionment with the West, he consciously chose to turn away from the West, still using it as a reference point for his policies. Thus, Kozyrev was Western-oriented even in his rejection of the West. Putin, conversely, recognizes that both East and West can be helpful to his project of rebuilding Russia. Wherever he talks about foreign policy, the exhortation is always to vzaimovygodno (mutually beneficial) cooperation.23

Furthermore, Putin does not share the conviction of the early reformers that Russia desperately needs full partnership with the West to modernize. In 1994, Kozyrev wrote, “Only a determined policy of realizing our national-state interests of the country through cooperation and partnership with the West can help the course of reforms. Let us not forget that it takes two to tango.”24 Five years later, Putin made the following judgment: “The experience of the 1990s has eloquently attested to the fact that the real, successful renewal of our Motherland, without entailing extreme harm, cannot be achieved simply by carrying over abstract models and schemes from foreign textbooks onto Russian soil.”25 Unlike Kozyrev, whose early grand proclamations of Russia’s socio-cultural partnership with the West appealed primarily to the country’s intelligentsia, Putin is (at least publicly) cautious about a socio-philosophical alignment with the West. Russia can advance its economic interests by cooperating with the West, but this does not necessarily entail alliance on all levels at any cost. Moreover, Russia can and should disagree with the West when it is in its best interests to do so. This appearance of autonomy in Russia’s conduct on the international stage makes Putin’s foreign policy more palatable to the Russian polity as a whole, by avoiding the appearance of subjugation to the West for which Kozyrev’s early policies are now harshly remembered in the popular imagination.

Putin’s Foreign Education

These examples show that Putin’s approach to foreign policy does indeed represent a break from earlier post-Soviet Russian diplomacy. The question of how he developed this approach arises. What experiences in Putin’s personal history help to explain how he developed these ideas? Examinations of Putin’s past often focus on the time he spent as a KGB officer in East Germany. Without question, these years were important to Putin both personally, as demonstrated by his lasting affinity for German culture, and professionally, in terms of his experience as a foreign intelligence agent. Nevertheless, for obvious reasons, Putin-watchers will probably learn little beyond what Putin himself has said regarding his time in the KGB. Putin dismisses the political significance of his tenure in foreign intelligence: “The research department of the intelligence service, where I worked, operated under the political system. That was where decisions were made . . . and I myself did not make decisions in this sphere.”26 In addition, the German Democratic Republic offered little in the way of exposure to different socio-political mores, as Putin remembers: “[The GDR] was a harshly totalitarian country, similar to the Soviet Union, only thirty years earlier.”27 With the exception of the wider availability of consumer goods and a higher quality of life, the GDR did not provide Putin with a quotidian existence significantly different from the one he knew in Soviet Russia. (It is reasonable to infer that he learned more about the West there, given his intelligence duties, than he would have as a desk officer in Moscow.) Other analyses point to the “Westernness” of St. Petersburg, Putin’s hometown and the city in which he spent the first six years of his career in politics, as an explanation for his desire to steer his country toward Europe. St. Petersburg, then named Leningrad, did maintain a distinct identity throughout the Soviet period, but it was in no way a bastion of liberal values or openness, and it produced politicians of many different allegiances.28 The focus of this article will thus not be on the historical image of St. Petersburg as a factor in Vladimir Putin’s politics. Instead, his political career there will be examined, in the hope that a better understanding of his experiences can help explain the origins of his foreign policy.

The Petersburg Years

Upon returning from his KGB service in Dresden in 1989, Putin took a job as adviser on external relations to the rector of Leningrad State University (LGU). Soon thereafter, a friend recommended that Putin call on a professor from his days as a law student at LGU, Anatolii Sobchak. At that time, Sobchak was the chair of the city council and an outspoken radical democrat who embodied the reformist spirit of the perestroika era. Sobchak offered Putin a job as a foreign policy aide, and Putin immediately accepted.29 He apparently was a “natural,” or at least Sobchak thought so. After Sobchak was elected mayor in summer 1991, he appointed this young newcomer as one of his three deputies, and chair of the newly created Committee on Foreign Relations. In 1994, Putin was promoted yet again, becoming first deputy mayor, while retaining chair of the committee. Thus, for more than two years, until Sobchak’s electoral loss in 1996, Vladimir Putin was the second-most-powerful politician in Russia’s second-largest city.30

Sobchak and Putin must have been a strange political duo. Putin’s low-profile political approach differed sharply from the manner of his superior. Sobchak basked in the publicity of his post, and he often preferred ceremonies, trips abroad, and receptions to the mundane work of managing a city of 5 million inhabitants. Often, this meant that Putin was really managing St. Petersburg’s day-to-day affairs. He himself recalls an instance when, before a trip abroad, Sobchak, unable to complete the day’s work before his departure, signed four blank sheets of paper and handed them to Putin, saying, “Write what you think necessary.”31 In addition to his disdain for the banal work of city governance, Sobchak, infamous for being ideological, stubborn, and outspoken, had little patience for tough negotiations with politicians and business executives. Putin was known as Sobchak’s negotiator, the deputy who could reach a compromise when his boss could not.32 One of his old friends remembers how the burden of such responsibilities changed Putin: “Volodya changed a lot when he went to work at the mayor’s office. . . . He became wholeheartedly involved in St. Petersburg’s affairs and then his emotions were drained. He had become a pragmatist.”33

It is difficult to pinpoint what Putin’s friend had in mind. Although (according to anecdotal evidence) Putin was never a romantic or an ideologue, those who knew him recall that his years in St. Petersburg’s city hall transformed him. Putin himself recalls that his job there provided him with “immense knowledge” of governance.34 If he had pragmatic instincts before Sobchak hired him, he no doubt became even more goal-oriented after working under such a charismatic—yet utterly impractical—politician. His work often resembled that of a corporate manager: making practical decisions, resolving conflicts, and navigating the bureaucracy. Any good CEO concentrates on results, and this ethic is one of the principles of Putin’s diplomacy. As he said to a gathering of the Russian diplomatic corps: “Russia must search for partners and allies everywhere. . . . However, these should be partners who both take into account and recognize our national interests.”35 He demands practical results from foreign policy.

Despite their radically different personal demeanors, Putin and Sobchak had a very close relationship. As Putin remembers, “Anatolii Aleksandrovich and I had very close, friendly, confidential conversations. We used to talk a lot, especially on our trips abroad, when we were left virtually alone for several days. He was a friend and a mentor to me.”36 According to Vantaniar Yagia, a city council member who knew both Sobchak and Putin well, “Sobchak greatly influenced Putin’s understanding of international relations.”37 Like many of his fellow late 1980s radical democrats, Sobchak espoused a reformist politics that was tied to a pro-Western understanding of Russia’s place in the world. Konstantin Khudolei, currently dean of St. Petersburg’s School of International Relations, and then a city council deputy, characterized Sobchak as a classical Russian “integrationist”—that is, a firm adherent of the belief that Russia’s interests would be best served by fully integrating into international (and particularly Western) political, economic, and cultural institutions.38 Aleksandr Yuriev, a professor of political psychology who worked with Putin in the early 1990s, contends that Putin internalized Sobchak’s worldview: “Putin understood Russia’s interests as socially, economically, and politically integrated with the world. He doesn’t think of Russia as isolated and distanced from what happens outside its borders.”39

Putin’s job at St. Petersburg’s city hall was his first high-level political post, and he held it longer than any other career position so far. According to Aleksandr Prokhorenko, the man who now has Putin’s old job in the municipal government, “Before this time, [Putin] didn’t have any serious leadership positions. It was his first serious, important job.”40 As mentioned above, Putin never made decisions on his own as a KGB agent and, he recalls, “for that reason, it was hard for me to understand at first that now my job was not to gather, summarize and write recommendations, now I myself had to make the decisions. . . . It was huge professional growth for me.”41 He continued: “Those five years gave me more than my jobs in the [presidential] administration in Moscow.”42

Putin’s daily work as chair of the St. Petersburg Committee on Foreign Relations and vice-mayor encompassed a wide array of responsibilities, including attracting investment, fostering economic development, arranging visits by foreign dignitaries, and coordinating the federal bureaucracies in St. Petersburg. As Prokhorenko says, “St. Petersburg is practically a mini-model of Russia. . . . His work here was a good school of management. Here, the quantity and variety of contacts, the need to take different kinds of decisions, and take them fast, are extreme.”43 As the man charged with foreign relations, Putin met with the likes of Margaret Thatcher, James Baker, Helmut Kohl, and Henry Kissinger, both in St. Petersburg and during Sobchak’s trips abroad. Although these meetings are not nearly so important as those he conducts as president, Putin believes that his experience in St. Petersburg gave him the necessary confidence for high-level diplomacy. He remembers being somewhat taken aback when his friends and colleagues seemed surprised by the diplomatic talents he has displayed as president: “They seem to forget that I was doing this for seven years in St. Petersburg,” he said.44

Putin took control of St. Petersburg’s development at a particularly rough time in Russia’s economic transition, when market institutions needed to be built from scratch. “Customs, banking, investment, the stock market, and other such structures simply didn’t exist,” one of his deputies recalled.45 Like many other cities, St. Petersburg found itself in a tough spot, because of the decrepit Soviet military-industrial complex that had long dominated the city’s economy. Prokhorenko remembers, “With the change in government, a huge number of firms, with a huge number of employees, just went up in smoke.”46 At times in the early 1990s, St. Petersburg’s stores were often empty, and food shortages were not uncommon. Whereas the highly centralized Soviet system left Moscow in a better position to recover, St. Petersburg had few financial assets to keep it solvent. As Khudolei said, “In St. Petersburg, since there was so little money, Putin probably understood better than most that Russia is in deep economic trouble.” In terms of its economic hardships, St. Petersburg resembled other Russian cities much more than the capital did. In the early 1990s, as Khudolei put it, “Moscow was another planet.”47

Along with an anemic economy, Putin, like many of his colleagues throughout Russia, had an administrative disaster on his hands. His job, and the committee he headed, did not exist before his arrival, so there was no institutional history for him to reference. Moreover, there was no infrastructure to accommodate the foreign investment that Putin was supposed to be attracting. Prokhorenko says: “Before Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], this department didn’t exist. He was forced to create everything from scratch. It was a difficult time. There was no legal basis for this work, there were no traditions. For such a young man, this was a serious task.”48 By most accounts, he was a quick learner and a diligent worker, famous for keeping late hours and for seeing projects through to their conclusion. Graham Humes, the director of an international humanitarian organization in St. Petersburg, recalls that Putin went to great lengths to ensure that his project, which provided the city’s hospitals with new dental equipment, succeeded.49 In addition to his business-like demeanor, Western investors and local businesspersons remember him as one of the few St. Petersburg officials whose first priority was the interests of the city, not his own personal enrichment.50

Like many of his fellow democratic reformers, Sobchak had little sense of the impediments to Russia’s economic recovery. A telling example was his desire to transform St. Petersburg into Russia’s financial capital during his first term and to free it from the influence of Moscow-based banks. Putin’s job was to translate these aspirations into concrete deals with foreign investors. He is credited by his successors with having brought Coca-Cola, Dresdner Bank, and Crédit Lyonnais to St. Petersburg. He was also responsible for creating two economic-development zones on the outskirts of the city that ended up attracting firms such as Gillette and Wrigley. These deals brought much-needed capital to the city. To provide a well-educated workforce for these companies, he helped found the School of International Relations at LGU.

Notwithstanding these successes, St. Petersburg’s economy never met Sobchak’s expectations. While Sobchak was entertaining visiting Westerners, Putin was leading the negotiations with investors, which, according to Khudolei, often proved fruitless. To this day, Western investment has not reached the levels hoped for in the early 1990s. Moreover, many of the Western investors and Russian businesspersons operating in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s behaved irresponsibly at best. As Putin recalls, “Front offices appeared all over the place. There were pyramid schemes. . . . We just hadn’t expected things to get so far out of hand.”51 If he had ever had the impression that the West was prepared to underwrite Russia’s recovery or that all things Western are inherently helpful, his work on the committee certainly cured him of it.52

Origins of a Diplomat

Despite the availability of sources on Putin’s years in St. Petersburg, analyses of Putin and his foreign policy often resemble classic Kremlinology. One such analysis, in an attempt to answer the question of “where on earth Putin’s ideas came from,” mockingly suggests the following possibilities: “Maybe he has been reading the Economist all these years. Maybe there is a small, invisible team of long-term strategists who accompanied Putin from the KGB to the Kremlin. Maybe pursuing a pro-Western policy was another one of the secret conditions that Yeltsin laid down when he appointed Putin president.”53 Based on the admittedly brief sketch of Putin’s political career provided here, it is clear that the origins of Putin’s ideas are significantly less fantastical. Putin’s foreign policy can be partially understood as a result of the lessons he learned during his tenure as vice mayor of Russia’s second-largest city. His job gave him a crash course in administration, macroeconomics, investment, and development. Working so closely on the economy in a chaotic political environment, he was sobered of any illusions he may have had about Russia’s greatness. His negotiations with investors and his conversations with Sobchak no doubt underscored the importance of economic integration into the West for Russia’s development. Nevertheless, according to a Western diplomat who worked in St. Petersburg at the time, Putin had no romanticized notions of the West—likely a product of the mixed results of his dealings with investors: “[His] tilt to the West has as its aim not so much the development of genuine Western institutions as the rebuilding of Russia’s economy so that Russia might again emerge as a great power.”54 For Putin, the West is not an ideal—it is a vehicle for Russia’s development.

It becomes clear, then, that a thorough analysis of Putin’s political past helps to solve the riddle that he seems to represent in the minds of many in the West. The question “Who is Mr. Putin?” was asked yet again in the wake of the YUKOS scandal. Although not directly a matter of international concern (or so Putin would have it), the YUKOS affair, given the company’s foreign ties and the importance of oil to Putin’s project of Russian renewal, should be considered in any analysis of Putin-era foreign policy. For many Westerners, the persecution of Mikhail Khodorkovskii’s empire and his well-performing company seems incongruous with Putin’s stated intent to improve Russia’s economic situation. The Financial Times captures this bafflement: “The incidents show the two faces of Mr. Putin. One is a ‘statist’ whose character was shaped by fifteen years as an agent of the KGB. . . . The other face is a pragmatic charmer with liberal inclinations, a man who sees the need to bring in foreign investment to help expand the economy.”55 Although imagery of Putin’s two faces may make good copy, the reality is probably more prosaic. During his years in St. Petersburg’s city hall, Putin witnessed two phenomena that appear to have shaped his policies: the chaos of early Russian capitalism and the weakness of the Russian economy. It is crucial to note that these two phenomena occurred simultaneously and the former actually worsened the latter. Although it is plausible that Putin was influenced by his service in the KGB, it is equally plausible that it was his time in St. Petersburg that formed the gosudarstvennik-cum-modernizer mindset that he consistently demonstrates. The danger of “bandit” capitalism became abundantly clear to him while working in city hall, as was the need for a Russian economic recovery. Although the policies that result from these lessons often seem strange to Westerners, they have a logical origin in Putin’s political past.

Notes

1. See Dale Herspring, ed., Putin’s Russia: Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), p. xvii.

2. This biographical approach to understanding Russian foreign policy is, in part, a response to the call put forth by Archie Brown, in his discussion of Russia as a “normal” actor in international affairs, for “a closing of the gap between the comparative study of political systems and the study of international politics.” In other words, domestic variables, such as leadership in countries in transition, often play a critical role in determining foreign policy outcomes. See Archie Brown, “Russia as a ‘Normal’ Object of Study in International Politics,” in The Consequences of September 11: A Symposium on the Implications for the Study of International Relations, ed. Bengt Sundelius (Stockholm: Swedish Institute of International Relations, 2002), pp. 163­72.

3. Of course, Putin’s leadership is not the only factor that affects Russian foreign policy. See Rajan Menon, “Structural Constraints on Russian Diplomacy,” Orbis 45, no. 4 (fall 2001): 579­96; Michael McFaul, “A Precarious Peace: Domestic Politics in the Making of Russian Foreign Policy,” International Security 22, no. 3 (winter 1997­98): 5­35; Aleksei Salmin, “Iznanka vneshnei politiki: vnutrennie factory v sisteme svyazei, obyzatelstv i proektov Rossiiskoi Federatsii” (The Other Side of Foreign Policy: Internal Factors in the System of Communications, Obligations, and Projects of the Russian Federation), Politiia 5 (2001): 140­235; Irina Kobrinskaia, “Vnutrennie factory vneshnei politiki v postkommunisticheskoi Rossii” (Internal Factors of Foreign Policy in Post-Communist Russia), in Rossiia Politicheskaia (Political Russia), ed. Lilia Shevtsova (Moscow: Carnegie Moscow Center, 1998), pp. 273­319.

4. William Zimmerman presents a thorough analysis of Russian public opinion on foreign affairs in the post-Soviet era in his The Russian People and Foreign Policy: Russian Elite and Mass Perspectives, 1993­2000 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). He also draws interesting connections between changes in mass and elite attitudes and Russia’s behavior on the international stage. However, the causal link between public opinion and concrete foreign policy outcomes is not quite so strong as he suggests (it would be difficult to prove the existence of such a link in most countries). See Celeste Wallander’s review essay in Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 3 (September 2003): 638­39.

5. Bobo Lo, Russian Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Reality, Illusion, and Mythmaking (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 162­63.

6. Bobo Lo, Vladimir Putin and the Evolution of Russian Foreign Policy (London: Blackwell and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2003), p. 43.

7. Speech given at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, January 31, 2002; transcript reprinted in Johnson’s Russia List, no. 6061 (February 6, 2002).

8. Lo’s assessment that “other than the restoration of order and control” there is “no particular unifying logic” to Putin’s foreign policy is overstated. Putin’s rise has not occasioned a grand strategy, but there are some discernable new trends (Lo, Russian Foreign Policy, p. 165). It would be fallacious to claim that Russia under Putin pursues a consistent policy with respect to all countries. The arguments made here largely refer to Russian policy toward countries outside its peripheries in Central Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Black Sea region. In these regions, there have been few constructive improvements and much continued retrograde behavior over the past few years.

9. See ibid., p. 175.

10. See Lo, Vladimir Putin, pp. 5, 114.

11. Vladimir Putin, “Rossiia na rubezhe tysiacheletii” (Russia at the Turn of the Millennium), Nezavisimaia gazeta (December 30, 1999), reprinted in Vneshniaia politika i bezopasnost sovremennoi Rossii 1991­2002 (Foreign Policy and Security of Contemporary Russia, 1991­2002), ed. Anatolii V. Torkunov et al., vol. 1 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), p. 21.

12. Richard Sakwa, in Putin: Russia’s Choice (New York: Routledge, 2004), refers to this approach as a “new realism,” defined as “a much sharper recognition of the limits of Russian power, grounded above all in economic weakness. This did not mean giving up aspirations to global influence, but it did mean the pursuit of a far more conscious attempt to match ambitions to resources.” See also Celeste Wallander, “U.S.-Russian Relations: Between Realism and Reality,” Current History 102, no. 666 (October 2003): 307­12.

13. Address at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (January 26, 2001), published as “Prezident V. Putin o zadachakh rossiiskoi diplomatii” (President V. Putin on the Tasks of Russian Diplomacy), Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn, no. 2 (2001): 4­5.

14. See Lo, Russian Foreign Policy, p. 7.

15. “Prezident V. Putin o zadachakh rossiiskoi diplomatii,” p. 3.

16. See Thomas E. Graham, Jr., Russia’s Decline and Uncertain Recovery (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002), pp. 45­46; Lo, Vladimir Putin, p. 67.

17. Lo counters that there is a “primacy of political-military over economic priorities” in Putin’s foreign policy. Putin’s record of insistence on the centrality of economic issues belies this claim. See Lo, Russian Foreign Policy, p. 158.

18. Putin, “Rossiia na rubezhe tysiacheletii,” p. 22.

19. Ibid., pp. 28­29.

20. Andrei Kozyrev, “Strategiia partnerstva” (The Strategy of Partnership), Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn, no. 5 (1994), reprinted in Vneshniaia politika i bezopasnost, p. 182.

21. Putin, “Rossiia na rubezhe tysiacheletii,” p. 21.

22. “Prezident V. Putin o zadachakh rossiiskoi diplomatii,” p. 6.

23. See Sakwa, Putin, forthcoming.

24. Kozyrev, “Strategiia partnerstva,” pp. 184­185.

25. Putin, “Rossiia na rubezhe tysiacheletii,” p. 23.

26. Oleg Blotskii, Vladimir Putin: doroga k vlasti (Vladimir Putin: The Path to Power) (Moscow: Osmos Press, 2002), p. 358.

27. Vladimir Putin et al., First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), p. 77.

28. Blair A. Ruble, “The Two Worlds of Vladimir Putin: II. Leningrad,” Wilson Quarterly (spring 2000).

29. Crucially, though Putin was still a KGB officer at the time, he sided with Sobchak and the democrats during the attempted reactionary coup in August 1991. He subsequently resigned his commission.

30. This is not to say that Putin’s career path was rare for post-Soviet Russia. In fact, many officials emerged from political obscurity to hold relatively high office in the early 1990s.

31. Blotskii, Vladimir Putin, p. 299.

32. See ibid., pp. 346­48.

33. Sergei Roldugin, in Putin, First Person, p. 100.

34. Blotskii, Vladimir Putin, p. 361.

35. Address to the Russian diplomatic corps at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (June 11, 2001), published in Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn, no. 8 (2002): 4.

36. Putin, First Person, pp. 118­19.

37. Author interview with Yagia, St. Petersburg, January 9, 2003.

38. Author interview with Khudolei, St. Petersburg, January 8, 2003.

39. Author interview with Yuriev, St. Petersburg, January 10, 2003.

40. Author interview with Prokhorenko, St. Petersburg, February 6, 2003.

41. Blotskii, Vladimir Putin, p. 358.

42. Ibid., p. 361.

43. Prokhorenko interview.

44. Blotskii, Vladimir Putin, p. 362.

45. Putin, First Person, p. 97.

46. Prokhorenko interview.

47. Khudolei interview.

48. Prokhorenko interview.

49. Graham Humes, “Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in 1994: A Personal Recollection,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, E-Notes (January 13, 2000) (www.fpri.org).

50. See Michael Wines, “Path to Power: A Political Profile,” New York Times (February 20, 2000): A1.

51. Putin, First Person, p. 99.

52. Sobchak’s continued romance with the West can largely be explained by his disengagement from the daily drudgery of the mayor’s office. It was Putin, not Sobchak, who had to deal with the practical issues facing the city.

53. Peter Rutland, “Putin’s Levitation Act,” Russia and Eurasia Review 1, no. 1 (June 2002) (www.jamestown.org).

54. Author’s correspondence with Western diplomat.

55. “A Smooth-Talking Hardman,” Financial Times (November 1­2, 2003): 15.