`I am optimistic,'' beamed the big-shot American in Moscow a year ago. ''I believe Russia is going to thrive.''
That gusher was not from President Clinton. Nor was it his veep, contrary to politicians who are suggesting that Al Gore is to blame for all that is wrong in Russia because of his secret leadership of the Mafia.
It was from George Bush, the father and former president. The good friend of Russian democracy (and Boris Yeltsin) had been rented for a reported 100 grand by Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs to help open the investment bank's Moscow office, out of which it was feeding Russia's dangerously desperate appetite for debt. Heck, for that kind of dough, I'd be optimistic.
At the time Bush glowed for Goldman, the Russian stock market had tanked, interest rates were pushing three digits, and the ruble devaluation, official debt default, and financial crisis were 60 days away.
But Bush was hardly unique. You wouldn't have to look far to find wishes outrunning common sense in the words of all kinds of American big shots in the 1990s, Clinton and Gore included. And their wishful thinking led to a denial that corruption and mismanagement were nearly wrecking the inevitably painful change from communism to democracy, occasional quotes to the contrary notwithstanding.
Now that Russia has been made a political football in the wake of a possibly unrelated scandal involving the movement of more than $4 billion of probably hot money through the Bank of New York, those nonexperts might consider a few facts.
The most interesting involves the response of Congress so far this session to the issue of US aid to Russia, which has been outrageous. From the headlines and the politicians' talk, you'd think it was either going right into Yeltsin family pockets, the Mafia's, or shady Russian financiers'.
Wrong. Most of the dollars go for a successful effort to help the Russians dismantle much of their nuclear weapons stash and keep the rest of it adequately secure. In the last seven years, 5,000 warheads have been defused, three former Soviet republics are out of the business altogether, security has been maintained at more than 100 storage sites, 60 tons of enriched uranium have been purchased, and thousands of redundant nuclear workers have gone civilian.
Most of the rest of the dollars have gone to nongovernment and local organizations to assist the country's fledgling democracy - everything from helping finance the infrastructure of elections to bringing 40,000 Russians here on short-term study projects, to helping 250,000 small businessmen, to aiding new trade unions and regional TV stations.
You might also think tens of billions of dollars have been flushed down the toilet. In fact, $847 million will be spent this year. President Clinton has proposed raising the amount to an even billion, but the House is considering $725 million and the Senate is moving toward $780 million. In other words, after a blizzard of politics about Russia, the Republican leadership is responding by cutting the efforts that actually work and have huge security consequences.
Still another politically nourished misconception is that there are suspicions, or worse, that loans furnished by the International Monetary Fund with US support have been diverted or stolen and are somehow linked to the suspected money laundering. For the record, none of these ''suspicions'' has been accompanied by an iota of evidence, and there is more than a shred to the contrary, especially a Pricewaterhouse-Coopers audit of a key loan of nearly $5 billion last year.
For the life of me, I can't figure out how the people losing their heads over the issue on Capitol Hill (from Jesse Helms on down, or is it up?) could think corruption. Under the IMF's Russian program ($20 billion thus far), the only purpose of a loan is to help Russia repay earlier IMF loans. (The country's debt burden is crushing enough as is.) To do that, loan proceeds are shifted from one IMF account to another at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York without ever passing into the Russian banking network.
Nonetheless, release of the next installment of the IMF's commitment is likely to be delayed pending further investigations - and properly so. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright last week read the Yeltsin regime the riot act on corruption. It was an overdue message in terms of its stark clarity and especially powerful coming from the Clinton administration official with the least romantic view of Russia.
But Albright was just as properly adamant about pushing forward and scorning those who would waste resources playing games over who ''lost'' a country whose transition will still be occurring 50 years hence.
As she put it, ''Russia is not a wallet or a set of keys that can be misplaced. It is a nation of almost 150 million people that has for more than three centuries been among the world's major powers. The suggestion made by some that Russia is ours to lose is arrogant; the suggestion that Russia is lost is simply wrong.''
Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.
