STILL LOSING RUSSIA

“As a result of the Yeltsin era, all the fundamental sectors of our state, economic, cultural and moral life have been destroyed or looted,” lamented Alexander Solzhenitsyn earlier this year–quoted, with no doubt a great sense of historical irony, by Stephen F. Cohen in his latest book, Failed Crusade. Some of former “Sovieticus” columnist and frequent Nation contributor Cohen’s reportage will be familiar to readers of the magazine, reprising pieces that appeared here and elsewhere, with new chapters bringing the perspectives up to the minute. He traces the history of the impulse to remake Russia in the US image and its resurgence in mainstream thinking by 1992, the first post-Soviet year and last gasp of the Bush Administration. Cohen then proceeds to chronicle how both Russia specialists and the press badly mischaracterized events, to the point of malpractice. In “Transition or Tragedy?” for instance, the most widely reprinted of his articles in the 1990s, Cohen warned that a national tragedy was unfolding about which Westerners would be told little but instead be assured that the transition to a free market “has progressed remarkably.” No wonder, he writes, “few readers of the American press were prepared for Russia’s economic collapse and financial scandals of the late 1990s.” After a catalogue of how the picture has been distorted, the ensuing portions of the book present Cohen’s analysis of developments from 1992 to 2000, arranged chronologically, and then his recommendations in working toward a new Russia policy.

In his bracingly corrective view, Cohen concludes that “the missionary crusade of the 1990s was not only the worst American foreign policy disaster since Vietnam; its consequences have contributed to new and unprecedented dangers.” Among the necessary remedies: much new thinking in US circles, an openness to Russian-derived solutions and extension of substantial financial aid. His warning is dire, but so is the situation: “For the first time in history, a fully nuclearized country has already been perilously destabilized, but still there is no sufficient American understanding.”