In an interview with Natylie Baldwin, E. Wayne Merry reflects on his 1994 State Department telegram concerning Western relations with post-Soviet Russia.
Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, on Aug. 22, 1991, in Moscow, holding the tricolor flag which that day acquired the status of a Russian state symbol. (Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
By Natylie Baldwin
Special to Consortium News
The National Security Archive recently published a 1994 memo by E. Wayne Merry, a U.S. diplomat in Moscow who provided an on-the-ground assessment of U.S. policies toward a Russia that was in chaos.
In his memo — sent by telegram — Merry criticized the U.S. tendency to prioritize experimental shock therapy rather than laying the foundation for the rule of law.
He also said that Russia’s historical and cultural experience was not conducive to the same lionization of unfettered free markets that Americans had.
The memo represented a different view of how the U.S.-led West could have managed its relationship with and guided reforms in post-Soviet Russia — a view that unfortunately was not followed.
Natylie Baldwin: You wrote an assessment of what was going on in Russia for the State Department in March of 1994. It was entitled “Whose Russia Is It Anyway? Toward a Policy of Benign Respect.” The National Security Archive published it in December 2024 and described it as “The Long Telegram of the 90’s.” What was your formal role for the U.S. government at that time and what prompted you to write this assessment?
Wayne Merry: From August 1991, I was chief of the Political/Internal section of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, in charge of reporting and analysis on political developments in the late Soviet Union and then Russia. I had worked in this section a decade earlier and was very familiar with the role.
Given the historic events underway from 1991 through 1994, it was a central part of my job to attempt to explain these events to a Washington readership and especially to challenge misperceptions in Washington about Russia through the advantage of being on the ground.
Baldwin: One of several themes in the assessment was the U.S./West’s insistence on implementing exploitative neoliberal economic policies on Russia in that era that were leading to a lot of destabilization and major social problems. These policies were understandably unpopular among most Russians.
You made the point that, as far as U.S. interests relating to Russia were concerned, Washington should have prioritized diplomacy and the successful building up of democracy and the rule of law and let the Russians decide their own domestic economic policies. Explain how you arrived at that conclusion about U.S. interests and how our policies at the time were problematic.
Merry: It was not difficult in-country to see that the macro-economic stabilization policies which had been fairly successful in Poland were not so in Russia and that more maturity of post-Soviet Russia’s political institutions was essential to permit a non-criminalized development of a market economy.
There was considerable debate on the American side, in Washington and in Moscow, as to which should have priority — market economics or rule of law. As someone with years of in-country experience of Russia, I felt strongly that political and legal reforms should take priority.
In 1998, demonstrators in Pereslavl, Russia, with banner saying “Jail the redhead!” in reference to Anatoly Chubais, the Russian politician and economist responsible for the privatization program under President Boris Yeltsin. (Pereslavl Week, Yu. N. Chastov, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Baldwin: In making your case on that point, you predicted that U.S. policies were eroding much of the good will that Russians had toward the West in general and the U.S. in particular, right after the Cold War ended. Indeed, Russians did become very disillusioned by the U.S./West and ended up having a less than positive view of democracy because it became associated with the poverty, crime and chaos that accompanied Western involvement in their country in the ‘90s. To what extent were you already seeing this resentment from Russians at the time that you wrote this in 1994?
Merry: These developments began under [the last Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev and were well advanced by 1994.
Baldwin: In your assessment you stated:
“Thus, ‘reform’ of the Russian economy will, of necessity, be the work of many years. The Russian approach to this process will be different from our own, reflecting a better appreciation of their needs and societal preferences. In facing the colossal mistakes of the Soviet period, Russia can and will fall back on traditions long pre-dating the Leninist state: traditions amenable and sometimes even rational in a Russian context, even if they differ sharply from American experience and inclination.”
To most people, I think this point you make about Russia progressing on the road of economic reform in a manner that reflects their unique history — and you also go on to mention geography and climate — seems like common sense. Why do you think U.S. decision-makers couldn’t understand this and act accordingly?
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Merry: Most advocates of “shock therapy” in Russia had little or no experience of the country, let alone of its social and political cultures. They simply believed in their macro-economic ideology as applicable anywhere on earth. I had encountered this perspective among academic economists in the United States during my student years but had learned from other economists with a broader range of thought.
Baldwin: To continue with that line of thought, when reading your 1994 assessment, it is notable that you provide an analysis based on an acknowledgment of objective reality. Today that really seems to be missing from so much that is written by supposed experts in the U.S. about Russia and policies toward it.
Analysis today seems to be very ideologically/narrative driven and facts seem to be easily dismissed if one simply doesn’t like the facts or they don’t fit a preferred narrative.
What do you think may explain this? Is there a difference in the education and training of academics and government officials these days? It’s safe to say that arrogance breeds foolishness — is it just arrogance due to the fact that we’ve been the lone superpower for several decades?
A young boy and U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Red Square, Moscow, 1988. (Reagan White House, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
Merry: I am not familiar with recent education in this country about Russia, but certainly the policy arrogance we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan had its parallels in our policy in Russia in the ‘90s.
Baldwin: At one point in your assessment, you refer to the legislative elections that had taken place in December of 1993. You said the following:
“What the election showed, yet again, is that Russia is a very different society than America. In contemporary American rhetoric, ‘democracy’ and ‘the market’ are treated as synonymous terms and certainly as mutually dependent.
Few, if any, Russians perceive them so. American dogma portrays ‘democracy’ and ‘the market’ as freedom of choice for the individual in the political and economic realms, with highly positive ethical connotations. Russians (and most non-Americans) are simply baffled by this vision of a societal double helix of political and economic decisions leading to a higher moral and material state of being. Very, very few Russians impart positive ethical content to market forces, and unfortunately more of these are mafia than economists.”
Can you discuss this difference in outlook by Russians about the relationship between democracy and the market? What are those differences rooted in for Russians? To what extent do you think this is still true in Russia today?
Merry: I think Russia remains closer to its pre-Soviet roots than to any kind of contemporary Western market economy. I would recommend reading the works of Nikolai Leskov, a late 19th Century Russian author, to get a grip on the realities of 21st Century Russia.
Baldwin: You also noted that, given Russians’ seven decades of experience with Soviet socialism, one thing they were weary of was economic theory. The last thing they wanted after communism fell was to be the subjects of a socioeconomic laboratory experiment which is how many Western officials and academics viewed Russia in the 90’s. Can you expound on that?
Merry: Certainly, many of the Western economists who came to post-Soviet Russia did so with an enthusiasm for large-scale market experimentation. I recall that one of the most common slogans in public demonstrations under Gorbachev and [the Russian President Boris] Yeltsin was “no more experiments.”
Yeltsin ahead of the 1996 presidential election. (Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
The Soviet system fairly exulted in its mass social and economic experiments, which most people came to loath.
Most Russians pretty much assumed that Americans and Europeans must know the correct way to run a modern economy, so did not need to experiment. They were not amused when many of the Westerners who came to “educate” Russia in market economics saw their roles as one of mass experimentation.
Russians said they wanted to live “normal” lives. That word, “normal,” in Russian carries with it a very deep well of frustration and dissatisfaction both with their own leaders and with the outsiders with their view of the Russian people as little better than laboratory animals for experimentation.
Baldwin: You also discussed the fact that Yeltsin was losing his popularity at the time. Yeltsin went from being very popular in 1991 to now being seen by many Russians as one of the worst leaders the country has ever had. As someone who had a front row seat during that period, what factors would you say led to his popularity taking such a nosedive and virtually destroying his legacy?
Merry: Yeltsin suffered from excessive expectations, especially after Gorbachev. Yeltsin enjoyed very high levels of popular acceptance in 1991, but this proved fragile under the pressure of high levels of inflation; loss of employment and access to consumer goods; loss of great power status and pride, plus the poor human relations exhibited by some of his team.
Yeltsin could be a terrific leader in a crisis, but keep in mind that the patience of the Russian public with its government had eroded badly even under [Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev. Yeltsin had great instincts for tearing down the old Soviet system, but little grasp of what could or should come after. I think his military interventions in Chechnya also were catastrophic errors, both at home and in terms of his image abroad.
Baldwin: What do you think are the biggest lessons from that period that would be helpful for U.S. policymakers to understand now in our relationship with Russia?
Merry: Humility would be a great asset in U.S. policy, but I do not expect to live to see it.
Natylie Baldwin is the author of The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and U.S.-Russia Relations. Her writing has appeared in various publications including The Grayzone, Antiwar.com, Covert Action Magazine, RT, OpEd News, The Globe Post, The New York Journal of Books and Dissident Voice. She blogs at natyliesbaldwin.com. Twitter: @natyliesb.
The views expressed in this interview may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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I think that Jeffrey Sachs’ perspective on the experience of the post -Soviet economy is an important supplement to Merry’s illuminating perception. For Sachs, it was not naive neoliberal dogmatism that caused economic chaos in Russia but vindictive hostility by the US, a frank determination visit economic misery upon Russia. Sachs mentions that when he advised for Russia the debt relief he had advised, successfully, for Bolivia and Poland, he was greeted with adamant opposition by US authorities. He says they wanted to visit distress upon Russia because above all they wanted post-Soviet Russia to be weak.
I don’t fundamentally know, nor can I recall the few details I’ve read in the past, about the US-led economic development programs with post-Soviet Poland and Russia, but I feel certain there is either ignorance or dissembling going on with the interviewee’s perspective.
Couching the US “shock therapy” of Russia as some kind of studied choice between market-led “experimentation” vs. legal reform-first is probably disingenuous. The interviewer should rather ask Jeffrey Sachs. He was one of these economic advisors on scene. And I definitely recall that he called out the American side for knowingly throwing Russia’s economy to the wolves (something like allowing mass privatizations of formerly national assets and industry to go to unregulated oligarchy).
He suggests that rude awakening while recounting how the team knew how to successfully transition macro economy. They did it in Poland. And he was dumbfounded that Russia was not similarly treated, but instead plunged into merciless market oligarchy.
Folks would do well, approach reality, to disabuse themselves of the myth of a “free market”. All markets at all regulated by governments have rules. The question really concerns the nature of these rules, critically, whether so-called representative government regulates markets in the public interest, or if corporate forces have succeeded in buying the rules they want from usurped politicians.
A strange and softball interview where near-meaningless answers are shorter than laboriously polite questions.
Our society is not a good example based on the warfare economics of military aggression and extreme economic disparity. Our western propaganda view in the Cold War was greatly exaggerated versus our historical empires for religious culture war and profiteering.
We are attempting to keep living in a Old World vision of super-power dominance in a world of technological and economic relationship.
“Merry: “Most advocates of “shock therapy” in Russia had little or no experience of the country, let alone of its social and political cultures. They simply believed in their macro-economic ideology as applicable anywhere on earth.”
This brings to mind Richard Barnet’s [Roots of War] depiction of National Security Managers: “lack understanding, compassion, or empathy for people in different circumstances from their own … They saw no need to understand foreign societies they thought they knew how to manage”
With a little bit of Michael Hudson’s wisdom about neoliberal economists thrown in. Hudson: “trained incompetence. You’re trained not to understand the reality when it comes up.” “The theory would have been impeccable if only the facts had been different from what they were.”
My hope here is that someone seen by others much more capable than I can expound on what I believe is the most important message being addressed here.
My opinion, my message is American foreign policy has been very destructive to the world in general since the end of WWII. I see no other comparison than the one offered here by the authors using George Frost Keenan’s ‘Long Telegram’ as being more relevant to the issues at hand. Made so by Keenan’s deep involvement in the creation of the CIA.
All one needs to do is become intimately familiar with CIA history and the agencies impact foreign policy.
Sir William Felix Browder, American-born British financier and political activist is the Co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management.
Learning his story, very much the same with G. F. Keenan, is of critical importance when considering the topics addressed here. As we see now Keenan’s fixation on communism and his containment strategy was a miserable failure, IMHO. Learn the history and become enlightened.
The capitalist system thrives on greed. Nothing, not one damned thing proves that statement more than an accurate assessment of the what has occurred on Wall Street since the contrived oil shortage of the Nixon years.
It is my belief the NEOCONs and Zionists saw the Soviet collapse as “THE” opportunity to drive a stake into the heart of communism and take control of the planet. Enter W. F. Browder. They failed to do so.
Something which, so far, seems to me to have been a very elusive goal not to mention a huge mistake in judgement by the billionaires of the world and more specifically Deep State financiers. Far too many of whom have the firm belief touting, “he who dies with the most toys, wins the game” or he who bests the others in the game rises to higher calling in their future(?). I’ll be damned if I can figure that one out.
After examining history from after the end of WWI to present I have come to the conclusion about those who hated JFK as much or more than they hated communism. Something their actions bear out. JFK’s elimination was IMHO an exercise in self-preservation by CIA at the worst or a most grievous failing by the same agency at best!
The secret arm of the American government for the most part has always been staffed at the top by those inserted by the Deep State influencers who most worship the power of money. I see them as mentally ill psychopaths. Those whose stations in life find them at the top society. A position which for many presents them with a totally distorted view of life on the planet.
I will leave this personal judgement of mine to each individual who might be inclined to read this. I will say this. Examine this group of ‘super wealthy elitists ‘ and focus on their personal lives. Lives which often are tormented existences.
None of this should be surprising. What might be more difficult to sell on Wall Street is the idea Wall Street’s business model is a very self-destructive enterprise for all found at the top who indulge.
Happy New Year
“As Janine Wedel and my former eXile partner Matt Taibbi documented, USAID funding and support empowered a single ‘clan’ from St. Petersburg led by Anatoly Chubais, who oversaw the complete destruction of Russia’s social welfare system, and the handing over of lucrative assets to a tiny handful of oligarchs.
Under Chubais’ stewardship, Russia’s economic output declined some 60% in the 1990s, while the average Russian male life expectancy plummeted from 68 years to 56 years. Russia’s population went into a freefall, Russia’s worst death-to-birth ratio at any time in the 20th Century — which is amazing when you think that USAID’s privatization program had to compete with the ravages Hitler, Dzerzhinsky and Stalin wreaked on Russia.”
Source:
Mark Ames, “The Murderous History of USAID, the US Government Agency Behind Cuba’s Fake Twitter Clone,” Pando, April 8, 2014 (archive.is/ASNtt)
I think too many political analysts are blind to the root cause of global chaos being carried out by Washington. It’s the big Wall Street banks that drive foreign and domestic policy. Social uplift, the environment and global peace are not part of the equation. Profit at any cost is the equation.
“Humility would be a great asset in US policy . . ..” It sure would, and I’m afraid there will be a tremendous amount of violence provoked by the US’ utter lack of humility and empathy and intelligence, not to mention discernment (thanks to Patrick Lawrence for that insight). A crack-up is inevitable.
Yes… Tim N…and a stuptifying ignorance of the Russian culture and history and language.
“Humility would be a great asset in U.S. policy” – God, what a novel concept.
Americans imparting positive ethical content to market forces? That absurd idea never, in my wildest dreams, ever entered my mind. The neo-liberal economists have been smoking bad shit for way too long and need to find a new supplier.