WikiLeaks Declassifies America's Interest in Russia

American Diplomats Are Carefully Studying All Aspects of Russian Society

In the period of August 25 to 29, after a lengthy hiatus, the infamous WikiLeaks site has published close to 100,000 classified cables belonging to the U.S. State Department. This time, a great portion of the telegrams came from the American embassy in Moscow. As it turns out, American diplomats are intently studying virtually all aspects of Russian society. They are interested in the demographic situation as well as the popularity of social networks in the country. This attention to Russia is accounted for by the fact that, over the course of many years, according to American officials, Russia will be of “enormous significance for U.S. interests.”

The majority of leaked materials date from 2004 to 2010. In 2006, William Burns, the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow at the time, dedicated a separate telegram to the rise of a middle class in Russia. “In the last five years, the population’s real income has increased by 66 percent, and Russia’s middle class began to come out of the shadows — after all, someone other than the super-rich just has to buy all these television sets, cars and mobile phones,” the newspaper Kommersant quotes him as writing at the beginning of the document.

At the same time, William Burns’ greatest interest seems to lie in the political orientation of the Russia’s middle social ranks. “An interest in politics, which is usually associated with the middle class in the West, is also beginning to take root in Russia. However, given the local political realities we should not immediately expect it to grow into activism,” warns Burns. “Nonetheless there is a clear trend. I do not think that successful people of this country will behave differently than the middle class in other developing societies. They want to have a voice and influence on how their country is managed and how to spend their money.”

Yet another sign of the presence of the a middle class in Russia, American diplomats argue, is widespread Internet use in the country and the growth of popular social networks. U.S. officials ascertain, however, that most Russian bloggers are apolitical. Another cable sent to Washington concerned the development of fitness studios in Russia. Citizens’ attention to fitness is considered just as telling a sign of a burgeoning middle class in the country. Judging by questionnaires in several sports clubs, diplomats decided that the fitness mania arose primarily because of citizens’ desire to emulate Vladimir Putin, who, as American politicians write, follows a healthy lifestyle.

According to the published WikiLeaks materials, staff of the American embassy in Moscow sent reports on the demographic situation in Russia several times a year. As noted in a large part of the cables dating from the middle of the 2000-2010 decade, fertility rates are coming to naught due to devastating vodka and cigarette consumption. With that, U.S. diplomats sympathetically write about Russian women in these cables.

In a 2009 cable, for example, Ambassador John Byerly observed that a large part of women would like to enjoy the same rights as their Western counterparts. “Indeed Russian women are often forced to simultaneously perform both the traditional woman’s, and the man’s, functions. They either have difficultly finding a man, or their man is helpless and/or despotic.” By his words, women in Russia are busy simply surviving and have no time to found organizations that would fight for and defend their rights.

Besides this, staff at the American embassy in Moscow send home the results of public opinion surveys touching an issue of even the slightest interest as well as reviews conducted by the Russian press. Among the leaked documents appear telegrams solely concerning the lives of Russian doctors, diplomats and mathematicians.

Such an elaborate study of Russian society results from the need to build a relationship with the Kremlin, writes Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in Russia Daniel Russell. According to him, “the Russia of the ‘90s, on the brink of economic collapse with its myriad internal problems, is gone. Armed with natural gases, currency reserves, strong support for the government in the population, nuclear weapons and veto power in the UN Security Council, Russia again shows itself in the world arena. However hard dealing with Moscow has been at times, we cannot simply ignore or sidestep it because its position on too many critical issues means too much for us.”

*Editor’s Note: The quotations in this article, accurately translated, could not be verified.