Crime also increased sharply. The homicide rate, for example, rose to thirty times that of a gun-free United Kingdom and even three times that of the gun-rich America. The exponential increase in crimes of person and property overwhelmed the law-enforcement, judicial, and penal systems. In 1997, for example, the 28,677 employees in the procuracy (the office for legal prosecution) issued 427,000 arrest warrants and sought to process 1.2 million court cases; St Petersburg courts in 1996 were scheduling the docket for the year 2000. State prisons and labour camps held over a million citizens (a per capita incarceration rate sixteen times that of Western Europe and comparable only to the United States), but could not afford to house or feed them adequately. Particularly ominous was the intense growth of organized crime; by the late 1990s, Russia reportedly had 8,000 gangs with tens of thousands of mobsters. Apart from sensational contract murders (which claimed the lives of prominent politicians, journalists, bankers, and businessmen), organized crime invaded the new economy. In one city, 80 per cent of the businesses admitted paying the mafia for ‘protection’ (normally half of their profits); the Interior Ministry estimated that organized crime held one-third of the capital and the bulk of stock shares in the country. The deputy prime minister, Boris Nemtsov, did not exaggerate when decrying the pervasive influence of ‘gangster capitalism’.
‘Multi-polarity’ and the ‘Near Abroad’
The post-Soviet honeymoon in relations with the West, especially the United States, did not last beyond the mid-1990s. In addition to minor irritants (for example, recurring accusations of intelligence activities), the principal issues were three: NATO’s decision to incorporate former Eastern bloc countries and even former Soviet republics, Western military intervention in Yugoslavia, and American plans to construct a national missile defence (NMD) system.
The spectre of NATO expansion, under discussion during Yeltsin’s first term, now became a reality. Whereas Yeltsin’s first foreign minister, the complaisant ‘Atlantist’ Andrei Kozyrev, had acquiesced to such plans (in hopes of maintaining good relations), his departure in January 1996 signalled a new era of hardening resistance and truculence on the part of the Kremlin. The latter argued that the end of the Cold War made military alliances like NATO superfluous, and that security and stability in Europe required a new, comprehensive structure which included Russia itself. From Moscow’s perspective, NATO proposals to incorporate the former Eastern bloc countries—especially the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—were tantamount to deploying NATO forces on Russian borders. The West, under American leadership, ignored Russia’s objections: in July 1997 NATO formally resolved to admit three former Eastern bloc countries (Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary) and to consider the inclusion of others in 2002. Powerless to stop the process, Russian rhetoric—official and public—became increasingly vitriolic.
Events in Yugoslavia reinforced anti-NATO sentiments. As Yugoslavia disintegrated and the Serbian government under Slobodan Milošević fought to preserve the country’s integrity, Kosovo—a Yugoslav province with a secessionist Albanian majority—became the focus of attention. Contending that the Serb government was preparing to perpetrate atrocities (with a new wave of ‘ethnic cleansing’), in March 1999 NATO—under American leadership—launched a massive air assault. Significantly, it did so without authorization from the United Nations (where any such request in the Security Council was certain to meet with a Russian veto) or, in the American case, even from the US Congress (which, constitutionally, has the power to declare war). The military intervention outraged the Russian government and public, partly because of the sentimental ties to the Serbs (as fellow Slavs and as Orthodox coreligionists), partly because of the flagrant disregard for Russian interests and the unilateral decision to intervene militarily. Both official and unofficial Russia castigated the NATO operation as counter-productive, precipitating the ethnic conflict it sought to prevent. From Moscow’s perspective, at least, Kosovo became an object lesson in Washington’s arrogant belief in its unilateral right to intercede wherever and whenever it chose.
The final cause of growing tension was Washington’s decision to revive the ‘Star Wars’ project of the 1980s—the construction of a missile defence system. Warning that ‘rogue states’ like North Korea and Iran were developing nuclear weapons and ballistic delivery systems, the United States stepped up its research and development on a national missile defence (NMD) to repulse such limited attacks. Despite the rhetoric about Iran and North Korea, the NMD not only violated the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty (which allowed each side to construct a missile defence system around a single site—a missile complex in the American case, Moscow in the Russian case) but also created the spectre that subsequent development could neutralize Chinese and ultimately Russian deterrence. Despite test failures and questions about technical feasibility, and despite the much-acclaimed personal ties between Yeltsin and President Bill Clinton, Washington continued to work on the project—to the dismay of Russia and even some American allies in Europe, who feared a unilateral dismantling of the nuclear arms structure constructed over the previous three decades. Although the Clinton administration deferred a final decision on development and deployment (because of international criticism and early test failures), the project remained alive and elicited enthusiastic support from conservative quarters, notably the then presidential candidate, George W. Bush.
Marginalized in the West, Russia increasingly turned its attention to the former Soviet republics—the ‘near abroad’ (the very term implying a special relationship). Although Russia played a leading role in creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in 1991 and adopting the collective security treaty of 1992, the Yeltsin government took little notice of the former ‘fraternal republics’ during his first term in office. That changed dramatically in the mid-1990s. Apart from disenchantment with the West, Russia now recognized the importance of economic ties with the CIS: these countries were once integral elements of a single system and offered markets where Russian products were still competitive. Moscow also claimed a strong interest in the fate of ethnic Russians, twenty-five million of whom found themselves outside the Russian Federation and appealed for protection. Ethnicity also raised delicate border issues, as in the Crimea, which Khrushchev had ‘given’ to Ukraine in 1954 but which had a Russian majority that identified with Moscow, not Kiev. Finally, Islamic fundamentalism also posed a growing threat not only to the newly independent states of Central Asia, but also to the Caucasus (above all, Chechnya) and potentially to other Muslim republics in the Russian Federation. Moscow had some incentive to exaggerate the threat of Islamic radicalism in order to refurbish its leadership and influence in the newly independent states of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Russia also chose to play the ‘Chinese card’. The time was opportune: Beijing shared its concern about Islamic radicalism (especially among the Muslim Uigur population of Xinjiang province) and opposed ‘unipolarity’ (a code word for American hegemony). The improvement in Sino-Russian relations commenced under Gorbachev and accelerated sharply in the second half of the decade. The turning point came in April 1996, when Russia, China, and three Central Asian states (Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan) met in Shanghai and agreed to establish the ‘Shanghai Five’, which was to promote economic cooperation, coordinate foreign policy, and make reciprocal military reductions and the like. Above all, Beijing and Moscow were determined to resist American pretensions to global dominance, to repulse Western meddling in their internal affairs (whether human rights or secession-prone regions like Xinjiang and Chechnya), and to combat Islamic radicalism. This collaboration proved all the more attractive as American engagement (and especially a willingness to become embroiled in far-off Central Asia) waned, creating a vacuum and need for joint action by the two regional powers—China and Russia.