ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

well through the Karabakh negotiations, why this was so. He answered “Well, you know,
Putin can decide something but then by the time it works its way through the
bureaucracy, it can come out looking very different.” It occurred to me then that part of
the problem was that all of us who were trained as Sovietologists were in part still
looking at Russia from that perspective. We assumed decision-making was centralized,
coordinated and controlled, as in the days when all power was concentrated in the
Kremlin. In fact, many things in Russia had turned 180 degrees. Russia was more chaotic,
uncoordinated, and decentralized than we imagined. There were new factors such as
bureaucratic resistance, political and economic rivalries, and corruption that were playing
out in very different ways from how things had worked in the Soviet period. I think that
was a big part of the challenge in understanding Russia at this time. Now I would say that
since this period, the pendulum has again started to swing, and we do see more of a
Soviet pattern emerging in Russia. Certainly, Putin has gotten much stronger than he was
five years ago and stronger than many people expected. But Russia remains very different
from the Soviet Union, and that has made its policies much more difficult to understand
and predict.
But let me make on last point here about Russian policy. Even though I believe the
Russians are responsible for perpetuating three out of four of these conflicts that I worked
on, I think it is still remarkable how relatively few conflicts emerged from the break-up
of an enormous empire like the Soviet Union. Imagine if the Soviet Union had split apart
in the same manner that Yugoslavia did—what a bloody scene that would have been. It
could have happened but it did not. Overall, the Soviet break-up was remarkably peaceful
and civilized, certainly when compared to the Yugoslav experience. I think the leaders of
the time, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and also the Russian people, deserve credit for this.
There are not many empires in history that allow themselves peacefully to disintegrate.
We are all lucky that by and large the Soviet Union did.
Q: So what did you do in 2004?
PERINA: In 2004 I went to my last assignment as Deputy Director of the Policy Planning
Staff.
Q: You were in Policy Planning from when to when?
PERINA: I was there from May 2004 until February 2006.
Q: What was your impression of the Policy Planning Staff when you joined in 2004?
PERINA: When I joined I was not certain what to expect. The office had a reputation as a
prestigious place to work. This came in good part from its history. It was established in
the spring of 1947 by Secretary Marshall, and the first Director was George Kennan.
Kennan describes in his memoirs how he was called to set up this small team of foreign
policy experts but really had no idea what their job should be. He requested a meeting
with Marshall and asked him what the staff should do. Marshall replied with two words:
“Avoid trivia.” We had coffee cups in the office with those words on them. Kennan
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