Russia

By DAVID AIKMAN

Yes -- we are Scythians! Yes -- we are Asiatics/ With slanting and rapacious eyes!

-- Poet Alexander Blok, January 1918

"Russia has made its final choice in favor of a civilized way of life, common sense and universal human heritage."

-- President Boris Yeltsin, June 1992

Is Russia now part of the West, or still something clearly, if inexplicably, different? Earlier this month, the answer to that question might have seemed self-evident. After all, there was Boris Yeltsin, the first freely elected leader of Russia, addressing a joint session of Congress and seeming to wed his country rhetorically to the great Western traditions of democratic freedom. Just two months earlier, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was laying to rest the cold war at Fulton, Mo., the place where Winston Churchill declared it back in 1946. That vision must have disturbed many older- generation Soviets nurtured on the ideological red meat of East versus West, of a Soviet Russia saving the world from its capitalist original sin.

Worries about the reliability of Russia's historic course change are valid. Huge Russian garrison armies continue to intimidate the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union seven months after the collapse of the old system. "The Russians are acting to keep these former republics in their orbit," a frustrated Azerbaijani diplomat complained in Washington two weeks ago. To the Moldovans, Latvians (and other Balts) and Georgians rattled by these "foreign" troops, it is little comfort that the unwelcome visitors are now Russian rather than Soviet.

The fears of Russia's neighbors across the spectrum of Eurasia have deep historical roots. "Scratch a Russian, and you will wound a Tartar," wrote the dry-eyed French 19th century observer of Russia, Joseph de Maistre. The ) Mongol invasion (1237-1480) and its aftermath of cruel autocracy had isolated Russians totally from Western developments, particularly the Renaissance and the Reformation. That long isolation embraced every aspect of Russian life. Russia's first modern technology, in the 17th century, was all imported from Holland and Germany. Russia didn't have even a single university until 1755.

This sense of being both backward and culturally different from the West has haunted Russian intellectuals ever since Peter the Great (1672-1725) first tried to hector his unwilling country into the arms of European culture. During the 19th century, Slavophiles argued that the spiritual and communal culture based on Orthodoxy was superior to the materialism and rationalism of the West. Their opponents, the Westernizers, bemoaned Russia's "Asiatic" backwardness. They wanted their country to absorb as much of Western economics, politics and culture as quickly as possible.

Just before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, it looked as though the Westernizers had decisively won. Russia was by then a Western-oriented constitutional monarchy with the fastest-growing capitalist economy in Europe. Yet two years later, the Bolsheviks were declaring ideological war on Europe.

Whether Russia finally joins the West concerns others besides academic historians. A Russia that thinks it is Western is more likely to be peaceful, outward looking and moderate on the international scene. This is the kind of Russia espoused by Boris Yeltsin, who has even wondered aloud if Russia might someday join NATO.

Such sentiments may seem "naive." But it was just such a pro-Western "naivete" that sent thousands of Muscovites into the streets to defend fragile Russian democracy last August after Yeltsin climbed atop a tank to face down a coup.

The basis for doubts about Russia's long-term commitment to "Westernness" lies not in Yeltsin or his democratic supporters but in the ambivalence about the West that still seems endemic to many Russians. Admiration has historically been tinged with resentment of Western arrogance and conquest in the past (Napoleon and Hitler) and with misgivings about the West's spiritual values. Freedom, democracy and rampant market economics seem palpably Western; but so do political anarchy, street crime and the Mafia. Underlying doubts about the supposed social advantages of a Western-style way of life are shared by a wide audience. In June 1991 virulent Russian nationalist candidate ! Vladimir Zhirinovsky, campaigning for cheaper vodka and the restoration of Russia's empire to three continents (yes, Alaska too), persuaded 6 million people to vote for him.

There are things the U.S. and the West could do to undercut anti-Western resentment. The best thing right away would be for Congress to pass the Freedom Support act, which will help ease Russia's transition to a market economy. Next, Americans should keep encouraging Russians, as they emerge from Sovietism, that a system of political accountability is better than any dictatorship; that private property is always a better hedge against poverty than collectivist social engineering; and that Russia's struggle to cleanse itself of communism is as commendable as Germany's exorcism of Nazism after World War II.

One other thing. Until recently, some Yeltsinophobes at the National Security Council continued to gaze upon portraits of Gorbachev at work. Maybe it's time to take them down.