Words to Deeds in Riga

The recent turn in the already two-month-long Russian-Latvian crisis signals a general shift in Moscow's relations with former Soviet states. Russia has finally decided to go from words to deeds. Until now, it has preferred to talk about the possibility of sanctions rather than apply them. It does not matter that the sharp reduction in oil exports through Ventspils port is tied above all to the world oil market and the conditions of privatizing the Ventspils terminal. The sanctions point to a significant change in the way foreign policy is conducted.


The main moving force behind Russian foreign policy in this case was not the president or the government but the country's most active political class: big business and the news media under its controls as well as the governors who are gaining more political weight. The media's repeated display of demonstrating pensioners in Riga and marching veterans of the Latvian SS turned these largely not unprecedented incidents into events of national significance and forced the authorities, in the person of the prime minister, to issue an unusually sharp rebuke to "Latvian nationalists." It was the wave of statements by governors, from Moscow to Yaroslavl and Saratov to Kemerovo, that forced President Boris Yeltsin to order sanctions against Latvia to be prepared.


These new leaders of the political class sharply differ from the former star actors of the Russian foreign-policy scene. They are not demoralized like the military, do not find themselves on the verge of bankruptcy like the captains of military industry and are not nostalgic over the deceased Soviet superpower like certain diplomats. On the contrary, they have managed to get fantastically rich and gain real power. They have survived stiff internal competition and are prepared to play hardball in the international arena.


Among those in favor of sanctions are at least two potential candidates for the highest posts in government. That they are speaking from what in Russia is called a patriotic position and in the West a nationalist one is very characteristic. No less telling is that none of the leading liberal or moderate politicians has expressed disagreement or even serious doubts over the justification or expediency of applying sanctions.


Such a turn of events concerns not only Latvia and the Baltics. Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has taken care of Russian interests in Ukraine, and Saratov Governor Dmitry Ayatskov, who has rejected traditional double standards in relation to the former Soviet republics, has included on the list of "oppressors of Russians" Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which the Russian establishment continues to indulge.


Last but hardly least, the elite's position is supported by 90 percent or more of the Russian public.


Thus, for the first time after the unsuccessful attempt to prevent the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia has found an external cause for consolidation -- not of the top but of the entire nation. The ruling class in Russia is growing more confident in its ability to influence its immediate neighbors. Moreover, it is ready to apply nontraditional methods. Russia has had to reduce its military presence in the Commonwealth of Independent States, and has abandoned military threats. Economic levers have become Russia's principal means of exerting influence and pressure on its neighbors. The ruble, rather than the rifle, will be the message from now on.


The goal of the new elite is not, as one Latvian put it, to place a Russian governor-general in Riga. There can be no question of an imperial renaissance if only because the price is prohibitively high. Genuine economic integration is possible in the best case only with Belarus and Ukraine. Rather, it is a question of defending and actively promoting Russian interests -- above all private economic interests in the post-Soviet states. But not only economic interests.


Latvia has symbolic significance for Russia. The Russian oligarchs and regional leaders are demanding from it not so much economic concessions (they are even prepared to suffer small losses) as respect for their country, expressed by respect for the rights of the Russian-speaking minority.


It is clear that foreign-policy problems are becoming more significant for voters. The potential here for populism practically guarantees that, unlike elections in 1995 and 1996, the next parliamentary and especially presidential elections will have a clearly expressed foreign-policy dimension. The United States, NATO, Iraq and the Balkans are far away; the majority of Russians are rather indifferent to them. But the former Soviet republics and their Russian-speaking populations are another matter.


Nevertheless, those in favor of sanctions should bear in mind several circumstances. First, the sanctions are a double-edged sword. It is not clear who will compensate Russian citizens for their losses, not to mention Russian inhabitants of Latvia. Second, the sanctions could have the reverse effect of raising the stakes over what to do next. Third, disappointment with economic sanctions could lead to the use of more traditional instruments of pressure. Fourth, the distance between human rights and the problem of borders is not very great. Given a certain outcome at the next presidential elections, there could be a question in a few years not of human rights in the Crimea, but of the status of Sevastopol and the entire peninsula. No less dangerous could be the Kazakhstan question.


Finally, too severe pressure on neighbors could provoke an adverse reaction to Moscow from the West -- not only from the United States, but Europe -- in support of Riga, Kiev and other "underdogs." As one Moscow commentator said about the events in Riga, the United States was silent when the Russians were beat unmercifully, and woke up only from an explosion in a synagogue. This bodes ill for the future.


Dmitry Trenin is deputy director of the Moscow Carnegie Center. He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.