Title: Boris Yeltsin's Legacy
Headings: BORIS YELTSIN'S FOREIGN POLICY LEGACY
BORIS YELTSIN'S FOREIGN POLICY LEGACY
Robert H. Donaldson
Basic Concepts of Foreign Policy under Yeltsin
Foreign Policy-Making under Yeltsin: The Institutional Legacy
Russia and the "Near Abroad": The Yeltsin Legacy
Russia's Relations with the West: The Yeltsin Legacy
Russia and the "Non-West": The Yeltsin Legacy
Yeltsin's Foreign Policy Legacy & the Impact of Personality
Footnotes

Content: Under what circumstances, then--i.e., at which times or in which issue areas--might we expect the occupants of these positions to have impact on policy? Guided by Greenstein's first proposition, we might hypothesize that a leader's impact would be greater in times of political transition or internal instability. It would also be greater in times when an unrestrained individual dictatorship (a "cult of personality," in Soviet parlance) overrode the norms of collective leadership in the top councils of the party or state. Conversely, it would be unlikely that a leader would have much impact at relatively settled times, when the distribution of influence among interest groups and institutions is fairly static and shared governance (or "collective leadership") prevails. Similarly, opportunities for an individual leader to restructure the political environment are limited at times (or in particular issue areas) when doctrine or ideology is rigidly adhered to and leaves little room for maneuver. Looking at Moscow's foreign policy since World War II, we can easily discern occasions when Stalin's power was unrestrained and his personality traits had significant impact on policy. Though hardly unbiased, Khrushchev gave powerful testimony to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU on the impact of Stalin's paranoia on Soviet foreign policy: Stalin was a very distrustful man, sickly suspicious....Everywhere and in everything he saw 'enemies,' 'two-facers,' and 'spies,'...He had completely lost consciousness of reality; he demonstrated his suspiciousness and haughtiness not only in relation to individuals in the USSR, but in relation to whole parties and nations.3
The opposite case--relatively little impact of the leader's personality on foreign policy--is well illustrated in the study of the Brezhnev era.