from: RFE/RL Research Institute Daily Report [ to help you sleep

[RFE/RL Research Institute Daily Report [ to help you sleep]

LEADERSHIP CONSENSUS ON "GREAT-POWER PATRIOTISM." President
Boris Yeltsin on 17 November chaired a meeting of the leaders
of the two chambers of the Russian parliament down to the
level of committee chairmen. Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin told
Interfax that "virtually all participants agreed that
great-power patriotism and extricating the country from the
present crisis are ideas everybody is ready to work for,
regardless of their political orientation." The appeal to
nationalism seems to bear out senior foreign policy analyst
Georgii Arbatov's assessment of Yeltsin's 14 November
statement to the military command, which appeared to revise
major Russian assumptions about cooperation with the West.
That was "not an isolated statement. There is a growing
anti-American, anti-Western mood among our politicians,"
Arbatov told the Financial Times of 17 November. Vladimir
Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.