A Document, Not an Investigation
The National Security Archive at George Washington University posted a briefing book on June 5, 2023, titled “The First Six Months of Clinton-Russian Relations: Summits with Yeltsin at Vancouver and Tokyo, 1993.” The material was declassified through mandatory declassification review, a process in which a requester asks the government to reconsider a specific record for release, rather than waiting for a scheduled, systemwide review. The underlying memcons, the internal notes summarizing what was said inside a meeting, are held at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. One Tokyo memcon carries a State Department declassification reference, M-2006-01499. The release as a whole does not name a single originating agency, and the Archive describes it as an early sample of a much larger forthcoming reference set on U.S.-Russia relations that will be published by ProQuest. Nothing about the release is framed as an inquiry into wrongdoing. It is a documentary publication.
Two Meetings, Six Months Apart
The batch covers the first two in-person meetings between Clinton and Yeltsin as presidents, along with telephone calls between them on February 10, April 26, and June 28, 1993. Clinton and Yeltsin met in Vancouver, Canada, on April 3 and 4, 1993: a walk near the Norman MacKenzie House at the University of British Columbia on the first day, a joint press conference on the second. Their joint statement, issued by the White House on April 4, records Yeltsin’s stated commitment to democratization, the rule of law, and a market economy, and Clinton’s pledge of active American support “as the United States moves to reinvigorate its own economy.” The second meeting took place at the G-7 summit in Tokyo, a gathering of the leaders of seven major industrialized economies, held July 6 through 10, 1993. A memcon of a Clinton-Yeltsin conversation at the Ambassador’s Residence in Tokyo is dated July 10, 1993, 7:45 to 9:15 a.m. A separate library listing gives a Tokyo memcon dated July 14. Nothing in the release says whether these are two different conversations or one meeting recorded twice under different dates.
What Yeltsin Asked For
Between the two summits, the record lays out a plain exchange. Yeltsin is recorded asking for financial aid, housing for military officers being demobilized from Russia’s shrinking armed forces, and financing tied to G-7 mechanisms. American officials, in response, are recorded pressing for budget austerity, stabilization of the ruble, and continued privatization of state industry. These were the standard conditions attached to Western support for Russia at the time. The Archive’s own summary sets these positions side by side. It does not say which of Yeltsin’s requests were granted, reduced, or turned down.
“I Want You Know”
The clearest personal statement in the release comes from the April 26 phone call, made one day after Russians voted in a referendum on whether they trusted Yeltsin and approved of his economic program. American officials had expected him to lose badly. Instead, 58.7 percent of voters said they trusted him, and 53 percent approved his policies. On the call, according to the declassified memorandum, Clinton told him: “I want you know that we’re in this with you for the long haul.” The phrasing is the record’s own; the memorandum renders it that way, and the article leaves it as written rather than smoothing it into standard grammar. Yeltsin replied that the call mattered to his morale, thanking Clinton “not only for me and my wife, but for all the Russian people.” The same stretch of 1993 saw Yeltsin at odds with the Russian parliament over his economic reforms, and the record shows Clinton taking his side. The transcripts do not elaborate on what “the long haul” was meant to cover, or on the parliamentary standoff beyond that one line of support.
An Archive Doing Archive Work
The National Security Archive presents this release as documentary, not investigative. Its stated aim is to show the range of what the two governments discussed in the first half of 1993 and how early Clinton’s personal backing of Yeltsin took shape. It makes no claim of wrongdoing and alleges no cover-up. That is the ordinary explanation for material like this: a research organization filing Freedom of Information Act requests, compiling what comes back, and publishing it as a preview of a much larger collection rather than as a case being made about anything.
What the Transcripts Don’t Say
Three things are missing from what has been released so far. There is no indication of whether Yeltsin’s requests for aid, housing, and G-7 financing were met, partly met, or refused. There is no resolution of the two conflicting Tokyo memcon dates. And there is no account of the parliamentary clash over economic reform beyond Clinton’s stated alignment with Yeltsin. None of this points to something concealed. It is simply what the documents released on June 5, 2023, do not contain.
Filling in the Blanks
A record this detailed and this incomplete invites a reader to finish it: to assume the aid went through, that Tokyo has one tidy date, that the parliamentary fight resolved the way later history suggests. None of that is established by what the Archive has published. What is established is six months of a working relationship, recorded largely in the two presidents’ own words. Three specific questions, about the money, about the second summit’s exact record, and about the reforms, remain open, waiting on whatever else surfaces from the rest of the collection.