№ 4 - 2005
Feldman D.M.
Political Interaction of the CIS Countries’ Elites

It is political existence of the CIS countries’ elites on the international arena that is analyzed in the article. In the author’s opinion, particular features of this existence have up to the most recent time been determined by the nomenclatural-Soviet make of the political leadership of the countries forming the Commonwealth. This leadership’s inclination to counting on help on the part of the socially and genetically close post-Soviet elites, he maintains, has been none other than search to compensate for the lack or even sheer absence of internal support necessary for retaining power, by substituting for it cooperation of corporate partners. This model of foreign-political interaction, as the author holds, has already exhausted its potential, though. The “coloured” revolutions in a number of post-Soviet states clearly demonstrated futility of hopes for efficiency of “fraternal help”. The counter-elite marching into politics will inevitably advance (and is already advancing) also competing projects of international interaction, including integration in European and North-Atlantic unions, that is to say, will make its strategy what used to be among the means of foreign-policy manoeuvre for its predecessors.