ABSTRACT

Unlike the earlier periods of rapprochement that had always followed relatively lengthy periods of cool relations, the rapprochement that began in the late 1990s came on the heels of the improved relationship of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Although some observers might be tempted to draw a direct relationship between these two periods of amicability, they were in fact quite distinct. The early Yeltsin years did draw on the momentum of the Gorbachev years, but the attempts at normalization during the later 1990s were the products of subtle shifts in the domestic politics of both countries and in the international situation in East Asia and elsewhere around the Eurasian periphery in the mid-1990s.