William Zimmerman
Slavophiles and Westernizers Redux: Contemporary Russian Elite Perspectives
August 10, 2005
Abstract
This paper assesses the extent to which developmental-path preference and orientation to the domestic political economy continue to be major predictors of Russian elite orientations at mid point in the Presidency of Vladimir Putin. The paper begins by exploring elite preferences concerning Russia's developmental path and whether the distribution of attitudes to Western-type market or liberal democracy among Russian foreign policy elites remains unchanged. The paper then considers whether these attitudes continue to play the major predictive role vis-a-vis foreign policy they did at the end of the 1990s.