Dr. Billington, you have just written a new book, Russia in Search of Itself. The Open World Program that you helped to create and now lead celebrated its fifth anniversary on May 21, 2004. Can you tell us about your new book and whether Open World played any part in your research?

I have written a book about the cultural-psychological search for a post-Soviet identity in today’s Russia. I wrote the book to try to help readers understand what is shaping the future of post-Soviet Russia. Open World has brought nearly 8,000 young political and cultural leaders from all 89 regions of Russia to the United States. My conversations with many of them during orientation sessions at the Library of Congress provided me with important insights into where I think Russia is heading.

Could you describe where you see Russia now?

For the first time in their history, the Russian people see themselves as a nation, rather than an empire, and without an official religion or an ideology with universal pretensions. For nearly 20 years, Russians have been enduring a crisis of legitimacy; the old has gone but no new legitimacy has been firmly established. Russians are searching for a common identity in ways that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago: on television and the Internet, in local debates about public monuments and school curricula, even by the use of polling firms and the sponsorship of essay contests.

What are some of your major conclusions from Russia in Search of Itself that you could share with us?

Poll after poll shows that Russians overwhelmingly want both rights and freedoms on the one hand, and a strong government willing to override liberties on the other. Most commentators in the West focused on President Putin’s recent landslide victory. His political skill at combining democratic procedures with authoritarian methods dramatizes rather than resolves this conflict. Russians are still seeking a cultural identity and moral legitimacy for political leadership.

My research also suggests that Russia is moving in two diametrically opposed directions — one far worse and the other far better than is generally thought possible. These radically divergent but very real alternatives are either an authoritarian nationalism or a federal democracy. Russia is basically faced with the question left unanswered at the end of the famous short story by Frank Stockton, “The Lady or the Tiger?” The hero is in a coliseum and must open one of two doors. Which will come out for post-Communist Russia: some new form of Lady Liberty legitimized by law or some new form of Siberian tiger sanctified by power? Will it be Putin the law student and political protégé of the late Anatoly Sobchak, his reformist professor and mayor of Petersburg? Or will it be Putin the KGB administrator and former liaison with the East German Stasi working with his KGB colleagues in the Kremlin?

How does the United States relate to Russia’s future path?

Realistically, Russia today has neither political parties able to make democracy work, nor paramilitary elements able to make some variant of fascism an imminent threat. Whatever political differences exist among Americans (even amid contentious elections), we accept the identity and legitimacy of our national democratic system. Russians, on the other hand, whatever their political agreement of the moment (in re-electing Putin), have no such confidence in their national system.

Many apolitical, ordinary Russians felt a wave of sympathy for Americans after September 11, but this feeling has since ebbed, and anti-American sentiment has risen. There is a continuing danger of an authoritarian nationalist regime, but some hope to be found in the widespread desire to define Russian identity by the best in their culture rather than by the most autocratic elements of their past history. My overall optimism is grounded in the strikingly different mentality of the new generation of Russian leaders we have seen in the Open World Program.

These young leaders are increasingly interested in practical, local, and nongovernmental solutions to a wide array of problems. They generally hope to create a more participatory and accountable government and open society in Russia, and they have often discovered new approaches and ways of doing things in the 1,200 American communities in which they have stayed. These young Russians are more interested in what they can learn in the homes where American volunteers host them than what they can buy in American stores. Not one of the nearly 8,000 political and cultural leaders we have brought to America has stayed on here. The average age of our Open World participants is 37, and they seem to believe in Russia’s future and the contribution they can make to that future.

Any words you would like to share on the occasion of Open World’s fifth anniversary?

First and foremost — thanks to the U.S. Congress, which has created and sustains Open World as an essential link between our legislature and the people of the Russian Federation. Heartfelt gratitude also to the generous American volunteers who — through their local organizations — host our leaders, plan their community programs, and demonstrate the warmth, the accountability, and the dynamism of our democracy. We look forward to continuing to work in hundreds of communities in all 50 states. There is much good work yet to be done!

Published by The PBN Company for the Open World Leadership Center, whose Open World Program has hosted nearly 9,000 citizens from Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan since its inception in 1999. The Center is an independent legislative branch agency that works cooperatively with the U.S. Department of State and other U.S. executive and judicial branch agencies. For additional information, please visit the Open World Leadership Center's website at www.openworld.gov or contact the office at +1 202-707-8943.