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Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone

would seek authorization by the United Nations and other International organizations to grant Russia “special powers as guarantor of peace and security” there¹.

Shortly thereafter an article appeared by Sergei Stankevich, one of Yeltsin’s influen-tial advisors, elaborating the thinking behind the “special relationship”. Stankevich talked of the need for Russian foreign policy to have a „mission” and about bridging a gap between Russia’s “Atlanticism” and “Eurasianism”. “Our State grew strong as a unique historical and cultural amalgam of Slav and Turkic, Orthodox and Muslim components” said Stankevich, but the relations between the two components were “on a brink of a fateful conflict” and an “arc of crisis . . . from the Transcaucasus through North Caucasus toward the Volga region [was] progressively taking shape”, with the dominant Near and Middle Eastern powers showing a new interest in Soviet Muslims. Russia’s special relationship with the States of the CIS should be strengthened in pursuit of the country’s long-term strategie interests; but the policy towards CIS partners should differentiate “between those which use the CIS merely as a means of dividing up the Union inheritance prior to a ‘definitive’ parting, and those for whom the Com-monwealth is a fundamental historical choice”. Finally Stankevich pointed out that a given state’s attitude towards the Russian heritage and Russian population was “a most important criterion” in the determination of Russian policy, and rejected any charges of „an imperial syndrome”, sińce “such a policy has nothing in common with imperial-ism. On the contrary, it is for Russia a legitimate and natural aspiration to erase conflict and harmonize relations on the territory of the former USSR. Furthermore, Russia will invariably take the part of the undeservedly insulted and unjustly prosecuted”².

A search for international authorization of Russian peacekeeping has been vigor-ously pursued by Andrei Kozyrev. In March Russia presented a document to the United Nations which pointed out the dangers of regional conflicts for world peace and stabil-ity, outlined Russia’s peacekeeping operations in the area of the former Soviet Union, and pointed out the utility of regional organizations for peacekeeping purposes, sug-gesting that the CIS was just the kind of an organization the UN Charter envisaged for the purpose. Vigorous protests by Ukrainę, Moldova, and the Baltic States were coun-tered by an assertion that Russia’s aims were predominantly humanitarian and that it had no neo-imperialist designs. Parallel to these initiatives, President Yeltsin appealed to

1

   Cited in Susanne Crow, Russia Asserts Its Strategie Agenda, RFE/RL Research Report 2, No. 50, December 17,1993, pp. 1-8.

2

   Sergei Stankevich, Russia in Search ofltself, “The National Interest”, Summer 1992, p. 50 and passim. This is an abbreviated version of an article from “Nezavisimaya Gazeta”, Marcli 28, 1992. Stankevich was dismissed by the president after the December 1993 elections.