© "Russia in Global Affairs". № 2, April - June 2008

The recent Russian presidential campaign was void of intrigue, but that does not belittle the significance of the election. Although Vladimir Putin is not leaving politics and will remain in power as the prime minister, a new stage is beginning in the country’s development. Dmitry Furman points out in this issue that the very fact that the Russian leader was replaced in accordance with the Constitution is an event of historical significance and a step toward the construction of democratic institutions.

The results of Vladimir Putin’s rule are the leitmotif of this issue.

Discussions about whether a new Cold War is possible between Russia and Western countries have become a distinguishing feature of the last few years. Anatoly Adamishin, in his very interesting article, writes about the sources of the present situation in the world and the lack of understanding between Russia and the West. This outstanding Russian diplomat, who took part in major Soviet-U.S. negotiations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, insists that in those years a chance was lost to make the end of the Cold War into a joint project for the future. He places a great deal of the blame for that on the West, which sought to take avail of the changes in the Soviet Union to consolidate its own positions.

There is a growing feeling that the lessons of the Cold War, which have never been learned, are one of the reasons for the unsatisfactory situation that we are seeing today. Adamishin’s article provides a good beginning for discussions about those lessons, which we would like to start in our journal in the next few months.

Putin’s foreign policy cannot be viewed in isolation from objective global tendencies, Timofei Bordachev and the author of this introduction believe. Some of the peculiarities of Russia’s conduct are due to internal subjective factors, but on the whole Moscow’s foreign policy has blended well into the global picture of universal rivalry.

Alexander Rybas analyzes what Russia has achieved in the global arms market amid conditions of growing competition, while Alexei Grivach and Andrei Denisov write about the difficulties faced by the ‘energy superpower’ – a definition that became a trademark of Russia during the Putin presidency.

Two other stable idioms of the last few years – ‘dictatorship of the law’ and ‘the power vertical’ – are the focus of attention of Vladimir Ovchinsky and Ivan Sukhov. Emil Payin analyzes at what stage the formation of a united nation is in Russia and what this process is based on – national traditions or the inertia of the past.

At the initial stage of his presidency, Putin said that a European choice was his priority. The results of the eight-year interaction between Moscow and Brussels are the subject of articles by Vladimir Pankov, Kari Liuhto, Sabine Fischer and Susan Stewart.

Putin’s years were marked by heated debates about the direction Russia was moving in. Some analysts insisted that the country had swerved away from the correct path and had “gotten lost” in the difficulties of the transition period. Others argued that the “time of troubles” and of false reference points was over and that the Russian state had finally embarked on the right track.

Alexander Lomanov in this connection points to a phenomenon that has not been sufficiently analyzed by political researchers – transition without a destination. Until recently, the experience of Central and Eastern European countries was taken as a model for the transformation of totalitarian political regimes and planned economies. All of them adopted the Western model of a state system and viewed integration into European institutions as their main goal. Russia and another great power – China, which is also going through comprehensive reforms – have ruled out subjugated development and limited sovereignty for themselves but, at the same time, have declared their desire for democracy and a market economy. It remains an open question whether Moscow and Beijing will succeed in achieving the same goal that other countries have reached, by following their own, unorthodox paths.

Arkady Moshes analyzes Ukraine’s unique transition to democracy. Despite unfavorable prerequisites, Kyiv has been consistently following the path laid out by Central and Eastern European countries, which increasingly differs from the trajectory of movement in the other post-Soviet states.

Martin Gilman writes about external economic conditions for the present national transformations. He warns that the world is returning to an era of growing inflation, which will have an impact on general global development and on the prospects for individual countries, including Russia.

Our next issue will focus on the problems of xenophobia and on the search for national harmony in Russia, on who can and must become the engine of the country’s modernization, on the prospects for U.S. National Missile Defense, and on other issues.