Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Clemens, Walter C., Jr. (1990). Can Russia Change? The USSR Confronts Global Interdependence. New York: Routledge. FitzGerald, Frances. (2000). Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War. New York: Simon amp; Schuster. Herf, Jeffrey. (1991). War by Other Means: Soviet Power, West German Resistance, and the Battle of Euromissiles. New York: Free Press. Talbott, Strobe. (1985). Deadly Gambits. New York: Vintage/Random House. Wieczynski, Joseph L., ed. (1994). The Gorbachev Encyclopedia: Gorbachev, the Man and His Times. Los Angeles: Center for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies. Wieczynski, Joseph L., ed. (1994). The Gorbachev Reader. Los Angeles: Center for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies.

  WALTER C. CLEMENS JR.

  INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

  The United States in 1984 initiated a program to build a space station-a place to live and work in space-and invited its allies in Europe, Japan, and Canada to participate in the project, which came to be called “Freedom.” In 1993 the new presidential administration of Bill Clinton seriously considered canceling the station program, which had fallen behind schedule and was over budget. Space officials in Russia suggested as an alternative that the United States merge its space station program with the planned Russian Mir-2 program.

  The United States accepted this suggestion and made it a key element of the redesign of what came to be called the International Space Station (ISS). The existing partners in the Freedom program issued a formal invitation to Russia to join the station partnership, which Russia accepted in December 1993.

  There were both political and technical reasons for welcoming Russia into the station program. The Clinton administration saw station cooperation as a way of providing continuing employment for Russian space engineers who otherwise might have been willing to work on improving the military capabilities of countries hostile to the United States. Cooperation provided a means to transfer funds into the struggling Soviet economy. It was also intended as a signal of support by the White House for the administration of President Boris Yeltsin.

  In addition, Russia brought extensive experience in long-duration space flight to the ISS program and agreed to contribute key hardware elements to the redesigned space station. The U.S. hope was that the Russian hardware contributions would accelerate the schedule for the ISS, while also lowering total program costs.

  Planned Russian contributions to the ISS program include a U.S.-funded propulsion and storage module, known as the Functional Cargo Block, built by the Russian firm Energia under contract to the U.S. company Boeing. Russia agreed to pay for a core control and habitation unit, known as the service module; Soyuz crew transfer capsules to serve as emergency escape vehicles docked to the ISS; unmanned Progress vehicles to carry supplies to the ISS; two Russian research laboratories; and a power platform to supply power to these laboratories.

  The Functional Cargo Block (called Zarya) was launched in November 1998, and Russia continued to provide a number of Soyuz and Progress vehicles to the ISS program. However, Russia’s economic problems delayed work on the service module (called Zvezda), and it was not launched until July 2000, two years behind schedule. As of

  INTOURIST

  January 2002, it was unclear whether Russia would actually be able to fund the construction of its two promised science laboratories and the associated power platform.

  With the launch of Zvezda, the ISS was ready for permanent occupancy, and a three-person crew with a U.S. astronaut as commander and two Russian cosmonauts began a 4.5 month stay aboard in November 2000. Subsequent three-person crews are rotating between a Russian and a U.S. commander, with the other two crew members being from the other country. The crew size aboard ISS is planned to grow to six or seven after the European and Japanese laboratory contributions are attached to ISS sometime after 2005.

  The sixteen-nation partnership in the ISS is the largest ever experiment in technological cooperation and provided a way for Russia to maintain its involvement in human space flight, which dates back to 1961, the year of the first person in space, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. See also: MIR SPACE STATION, SPACE PROGRAM

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (2002). “International Space Station.” http://spaceflight .nasa.gov/station. Progressive Management. (2001). “2001-The International Space Station Odyssey Begins: The Complete Guide to the ISS with NASA and Russian Space Agency Documents.” CD-ROM. Mount Laurel, New Jersey: Progressive Management.

  JOHN M. LOGSDON

  INTOURIST See TOURIST.

  INTER-REGIONAL DEPUTIES’ GROUP

  The Inter-Regional Deputies’ Group (IRDG) took shape in June 1989 as a loose democratic grouping in the first USSR Congress of People’s Deputies. But its main historical achievements were the propagation of democratic ideas to the Soviet public, and its catalytic role as a focus and example for democratic groups. Its period of intense activity lasted less than a year. Its functions were soon superseded, primarily by the rise of the Democratic Russia movement. At the time of IRDG’s spontaneous emergence, its spokespersons took pains to deny that it was a faction that might divide the congress. However, by the time it held its founding conference on July 29-30, 1989, Soviet miners had launched a strike that put forward political as well as economic demands and radicalized political thinking among Soviet democrats. The IRDG realized that its original goal of merely pressuring the Communist Party into conducting reforms no longer fit the mood of those elements in a society that favored change. Now it needed to campaign for what the former dissident Andrei Sakharov had demanded at the congress: the repeal of Article Six of the Soviet Constitution, which legitimized the political monopoly of the Communists. Only such repeal would allow the emergence of a variety of constitutionally legitimate parties, and thus open the door to radical change.

  This principle, coupled with the IRDG’s insistence on the right of the union republics to exercise the sovereignty to which they were already entitled on paper, became the two main planks of the IRDG’s initial program. Later, principles such as support for a market economy and private property were added.

  The founding conference, attended by 316 of the congress’s 2,250 deputies, saw much debate on whether the IRDG should constitute itself as a faction, and whether it should define itself as an opposition. The majority, convinced by historian Yuri Afanasiev’s proposition that Marxism-Leninism was unreformable, was inclined to answer these questions in the affirmative. Organizationally, 269 of those present joined the new group and elected as their leaders five co-chairmen and a coordinating council of twenty. The co-chairmen comprised Afanasiev; Sakharov; the politically reascendant Boris Yeltsin; the economist and future mayor of Moscow, Gavriil Popov; and-to symbolize the IRDG’s commitment to the sovereignty of the union republics-the Estonian Viktor Palm.

  Over the next months the IRDG held meetings at which numerous speeches were made and many draft laws proposed. However, partly because its most ambitious politician, Yeltsin, usually chose to act independently of the IRDG, the group proved unable to channel all this activity into practical action. Soon it realized that factional activity in the congress was not feasible for a small group that never numbered more than four hundred. Some of its members, notably Yeltsin, saw that the upcoming elections to the fifteen new republican conIRAN, RELATIONS WITH gresses, scheduled for early 1990, held out more promise of real political change than did the USSR congress. Others, such as Sakharov and Afanasiev, rejected this approach, which was inevitably tinged with ethnic nationalism, in favor of uniting democrats and promoting democratization throughout the whole of the USSR.

  In sum, the IRDG’s brief but bold example of self-organization in the often hostile environment of the USSR congress, and the enormous publicity generated by the televised speeches of IRDG members at the first two congresses and other public meetings, had major repercussions for the democratic groups and candidates who organized themselves for the 1990 elections, and thus, also,
for the development of Russian democracy. See also: ARTICLE 6 OF 1977 CONSTITUTION; CONGRESS OF PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES; POPOV, GAVRIIL KHARITONOVICH; SAKHAROV, ANDREI DMITRIEVICH; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Reddaway, Peter, and Glinski, Dmitri. (2001). The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press. Urban, Michael; Igrunov, Vyacheslav; and Mitrokhin, Sergei. (1997). The Rebirth of Politics in Russia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

  PETER REDDAWAY

  IRAN, RELATIONS WITH

  During the period of the Shah, Soviet-Iranian relations were cool, if not hostile. Memories of the 1946 Soviet occupation of Northern Iran, the activities of the Iranian Communist Party, and the increasingly close U.S.-Iranian alliance kept Moscow and Tehran diplomatically far apart, although there was a considerable amount of trade between the two countries. Following the overthrow of the Shah, Moscow initially hoped the Khomeini regime would gravitate toward the Soviet Union. However, the renewed activities of the Iranian communist party, together with Tehran’s anger at Moscow for its support of Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war, kept the two countries apart until 1987, when Moscow increased its support for Iran. By 1989 Moscow had signed a major arms agreement with Tehran, and the military cooperation between the two countries continued into the post-Soviet period.

  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Iran emerged as Russia’s primary ally in the Middle East. Moscow became Iran’s most important supplier of sophisticated military equipment, including combat aircraft, tanks, and submarines, and began building a nuclear reactor for Tehran. For its part, Iran provided Moscow with important diplomatic assistance in combating the Taliban in Afghanistan and in achieving and maintaining the ceasefire in Tajikistan, and both countries sought to limit U.S. influence in Transcaucasia and Central Asia.

  The close relations between Russia and Iran, which had begun in the last years of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, developed steadily under both Yeltsin and Putin, with Putin even willing to abrogate the Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement, negotiated between the United States and Russia in 1995, which would have ended Russian arms sales to Iran by 2000.

  Moscow was also willing, despite U.S. objections, to aid Iran in the development of the Shihab III intermediate-range ballistic missile and to supply Iran with nuclear reactors. However, there were areas of conflict in the Russian-Iranian relationship. First, the two countries were in competition over the transportation routes for the oil and natural gas of Central Asia and Transcaucasia. Iran claimed it provided the shortest and safest route for these energy resources to the outside world, while Russia wished to control the energy export routes of the states of the former Soviet Union, believing that these routes lay in the Russian sphere of influence. Second, by early 2001 Russia and Iran had come into conflict over the development of the energy resources of the Caspian Sea. Russia sided with Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in their call for the development of their national sectors of the Caspian Sea, while Iran demanded either joint development of the Caspian Sea or a full 20 percent of the Caspian for itself. A third problem lay on the Russian side. Throughout the 1990s the conservative clerical regime in Iran became increasingly unpopular, and while it held the levers of power (army, police, and judiciary), the election of the Reformist Mohammed Khatami as Iran’s President in 1997 (and his overwhelming reelection in 2001), along with the election in 2000 of a reformist Parliament (albeit one with limited power), led some in the Russian leadership to fear a possible Iranian-American rapprochement, which would have limited Russian

  IRAQ, RELATIONS WITH

  influence in Iran. The possibilities of economic cooperation between the United States and Iran dwarfed those of Russia and Iran, particularly because both Russia and Iran throughout the 1990s encountered severe economic problems. Fortunately for Moscow, the conservative counterattack against both Khatami and the reformist Parliament at least temporarily prevented the rapprochement, as did President George W. Bush’s labeling of Iran as part of the “axis of evil” in January 2002. On the other hand, Russian-Iranian relations were challenged by the new focus of cooperation between Russia and the United States after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and by Russia’s acquiescence in the establishment of U.S. bases in central Asia.

  In sum, throughout the 1990s and into the early twenty-first century, Russia and Iran were close economic, military, and diplomatic allies. However, it was unclear how long that alliance would remain strong. See also: IRAQ, RELATIONS WITH; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Freedman, Robert O. (2001). Russian Policy Toward the Middle East Since the Collapse of the Soviet Union: The Yeltsin Legacy and the Challenge for Putin (The Donald W. Treadgold Papers in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, no. 33). Seattle: Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. Nizamedden, Talal. (1999). Russia and the Middle East. New York: St. Martin’s. Rumer, Eugene. (2000). Dangerous Drift: Russia’s Middle East Policy. Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Shaffer, Brenda. (2001). Partners in Need: The Strategic Relationship of Russia and Iran. Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Vassiliev, Alexei. (1993). Russian Policy in the Middle East: From Messiasism to Pragmatism. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press.

  ROBERT O. FREEDMAN

  IRAQ, RELATIONS WITH

  Following the signing of its Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in 1972, Iraq became Moscow’s primary ally in the Arab world. The warm Soviet-Iraqi relationship came to an end, however, in 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran, thereby splitting the Arab world and creating serious problems for Moscow’s efforts to create anti-imperialist Arab unity. During the Iran-Iraq war Moscow switched back and forth between Iran and Iraq, but by the end of the war, in 1988, Gorbachev’s new thinking in world affairs had come into effect, and the United States and USSR had begun to cooperate in the Middle East. That cooperation reached its peak when the United States and USSR cooperated against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

  When the Soviet Union collapsed, Yeltsin’s Russia inherited a very mixed relationship with the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Although Iraq had been a major purchaser of Soviet arms, Saddam’s invasion of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 had greatly complicated Soviet foreign policy in the Middle East and led to the erosion of Moscow’s influence in the region. At the beginning of his period of rule as Russia’s President, Boris Yeltsin adopted an anti-Iraqi position and even contributed several ships to aid the United States in enforcing the anti-Iraqi naval blockade to prevent contraband from reaching Iraq.

  However, beginning in 1993 when Yeltsin came under attack from the increasingly powerful parliamentary opposition, he began to improve relations with Iraq, both to gain popularity in parliament and to demonstrate he was not a lackey of the United States. Thus Yeltsin began to criticize the periodic U.S. bombings of Iraq, even when it was in retaliation for the assassination attempt against former President George Bush.

  By 1996, when Yevgeny Primakov became Russia’s Foreign Minister, Russia had three major objectives in Iraq. The first was to regain the more than seven billion dollars in debts that Iraq owed the former Soviet Union. The second was to acquire business for Russian companies, especially its oil companies. The third objective by 1996 was to enhance Russia’s international prestige by opposing what Moscow claimed was Washington’s efforts to create an American-dominated unipolar world.

  Moscow, however, ran into problems with its Iraqi policy in 1997 and 1998 when U.S.-Iraqi tension escalated over Saddam Hussein’s efforts to interfere with U.N. weapons inspections. While Russian diplomacy helped avert U.S. attacks in November 1997, February 1998, and November 1998, Moscow, despite a great deal of bluster, was unIRON CURTAIN able to prevent a joint U.S.-British attack against suspected weapons sites in December 1998.

  Following the attack, Moscow sought a new U.N. weapons inspection syst
em, and when Putin became Prime Minister in 1999, Russia succeeded in pushing through the U.N. Security Council the UNMOVIC inspection system to replace the UNSCOP inspection system. Unfortunately for Moscow, which, under Iraqi pressure, abstained on the vote, Iraq refused to accept the new system, which linked Iraqi compliance with the inspectors with the temporary (120-day) lifting of U.N. sanctions on civilian goods. This meant that most of the Russian oil production agreements that had been signed with the Iraqi government remained in limbo, although Moscow did profit from the agreements made under the U.N.-approved “oil-for-food” program.

  When the George W. Bush administration came to office, it initially sought to toughen sanctions against Iraq, especially on “dual-use” items with military capability, such as heavy trucks (which could carry missiles). Russia opposed the U.S. policy, seeking instead to weaken the sanctions. The situation changed, however, after September 11, 2001, when there was a marked increase in U.S.-Russian cooperation, and the two countries worked together to work out a mutually acceptable list of goods to be sanctioned. Russia, however, ran into problems when the U.S. attacked Iraq in March 2003. Russia condemned the attack, and U.S.-Russian relations deteriorated as a result, although there was a rapprochement at the end of the war when Russia supported the U.S.-sponsored UN Security Council resolution 1483 that confirmed U.S. control of Iraq. See also: IRAN, RELATIONS WITH; PERSIAN GULF WAR; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH