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: 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. Termed by his successor Gorbachev "the era of stagnation," the Brezhnev period in Soviet history was characterized by the collective rule of relatively colorless politicians who represented strong interests and institutions; it was also a time of doctrinal rigidity and established routine. Policy outcomes during this period could usually be expected without regard to the particular personalities at the Party's helm. This pattern was not broken during the two brief gerontocratic administrations that followed Brezhnev's. Not until Gorbachev began to consolidate his power as General Secretary in the late 1980s did the Soviet political environment again admit of "restructuring"--indeed, perestroika, its Russian translation, was Gorbachev's preferred slogan.