Remembering Yeltsin

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From our many meetings, I know that no problem he has faced has been as frustrating, year in and year out, for Yeltsin as turning the economy around and giving Russians better lives. He has always seen himself as their champion. Despite Russian citizens' difficulties, there are some signs of economic growth, and there was no sign in last month's elections that they have given up on reform. Indeed, many of those who did best in Duma elections told the people there has been too little reform, not too much.

The economy is not the only piece of unfinished business that Yeltsin leaves behind. There are three others that he and I have often talked about. First is crime and corruption. Unless that battle is joined and, over time, won, the democratic norms and the market economy that have been Yeltsin's prime focus can be undone. Russian citizens, like those of other democracies, need confidence that theirs really is a government of laws. Otherwise, they will turn to other leaders, and perhaps even to other forms of government.

Then there is the immediate issue of the war in Chechnya. We have a profound and open disagreement with the Russian government, not on its right to oppose violent Chechen rebels but on the treatment of refugees. The question for President Yeltsin's successors is not only how to liberate Grozny without killing thousands of civilians; it's also whether this war becomes a model for how to deal with other problems involving terrorists and separatists. Russia has to find the right balance between the use of effective force and decent respect for individual rights and international norms. In Chechnya that balance has not yet been found.

Finally, there is the overarching question of Russia's relationship to the outside world. President Yeltsin and I believed our countries should, whenever and wherever possible, work together on our many common interests and work hard to keep our disagreements from preventing us from cooperating in other areas.

Though the chemistry between us was good, the partnership we established has been subject to plenty of strains. Most have been on specific issues--NATO enlargement and its actions in Kosovo, Chechnya, and antimissile defenses. But there has been a growing tendency lately in both countries to question the premise of partnership--to cast doubt on whether Russia and the U.S. do indeed have common interests outweighing our differences. Whether the issue at hand is arms control or nonproliferation, peace in the Balkans or in the Middle East, opening up the international economy or shutting down terrorism, I believe Russia and America have far more to gain by approaching these problems cooperatively than by falling into the trap of zero-sum politics.

For those with doubts, look at the years since 1991: 5,000 strategic nuclear weapons have been dismantled; U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons are no longer targeted at each other; nuclear weapons have been removed from the other former Soviet states. Russia has withdrawn its troops from the Baltics, and it has played a positive role in the Balkans; now Russian troops serve alongside Americans in Bosnia, and Russian diplomacy was instrumental in achieving peace in Kosovo. The machinery of communism has been dismantled, and the vast majority of Russians work for private employers--not the state.