Cohen explains that the planeloads of heavily credentialed Americans referred to as “advisers”—economists, financiers, academics including political scientists, and so on—who descended on Russia with the Clinton Administration’s blessing, were in truth “political missionaries and evangelists.” These people embodied the “Washington Consensus” on Russia, which was unfailingly hopeful about the rule of Boris Yeltsin, who succeeded Gorbachev. “Optimism prevails universally among those who are familiar with what is going on in Russia,” declared Vice President Al Gore in 1998.
