CIS without Yeltsin?

One question of the last decade has already begun to get on our nerves: How much longer will the CIS exist, and does it exist at all? After the resignation of independent Russia’s first president this question was supplemented by another: Is the Commonwealth possible at all without Yeltsin, and who needs it without Yeltsin? Face it: Boris Nikolayevich was a kind of patriarch for this club of people acquainted with one another, as a rule, since Soviet times. They would fly to him personally when unofficial issues had to be settled. The last word at each summit would be reserved for him, especially after Leonid Kravchuk’s defeat in the 1994 Ukrainian presidential election. Thus, when Yeltsin faced real obstruction in Chisinau, arranged for him and his Belarusian surrogate ally, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, he was simply at a loss.

However, despite all Yeltsin’s prestige, Transcaucasian presidents Eduard Shevardnadze and Geidar Aliyev treated him with some disrespect. For they were Politburo members, while Yeltsin was only a candidate member. And what kind of politburo could Vladimir Putin dream of? In the time of this well-known institution he was not even a resident, let alone president.

In fact, Mr. Putin has thus far appeared to be a person not too inclined to settle problems by means of personal contacts and promises. He is pragmatic, and what can you do about it? Simultaneously the CIS is an organization not entirely pragmatic, even romantic, so that they not forget the Union was indissoluble and that Yeltsin could feel comfortable as the eternal President of the Commonwealth.

Vladimir Putin will hardly have such prestige with his counterparts — at least not in the near future: not that the CIS has dissolved. Without Yeltsin it could simply be forgotten.