Putin's Russia

“By the end of the year, Russia will have a new president. And it won’t be Putin.”

— Financial oligarch Boris Berezovsky in the summer of 2001.

The political roadside is littered with failed predictions and ill-advised prognoses. As it turns out, Berezovsky became the outsider and Vladimir Putin holds the Kremlin reigns firmly in his hands. On the occasion of the Russian president’s 50th birthday, Russian Life decided to look back at the events and decisions that have shaped the first three years of Putin’s rule.

in 1999, russian president Boris Yeltsin, who was managing the country largely from his private suite in the Central Clinic Hospital or from his dacha, began to search for a political heir. Only a very narrow, inner circle knew that the power-hungry “Tsar Boris” (as his entourage called him behind his back) felt that, because of his frail health, he was ready to retire. The circle included his beloved daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, Valentin Yumashev and the head of Kremlin administration, Alexander Voloshin. Yeltsin charged this troika with headhunting for the most suitable candidates.

At that time, Russia was only beginning to emerge from the painful economic crisis that followed the August 1998 crash. The oligarchs were gorging themselves on the state budget, imposing their will on the Kremlin. Regional barons were lobbying for their parochial interests in the Federation Council, and the communist majority at the State Duma was stymieing every reform-oriented law, while condemning the “pernicious” political and economic course of the country’s leadership. Chechnya had devolved into a sanctuary for bandits and a launching pad for rebels to make armed incursions into Russia’s southern regions. In short, it was not a happy time.

Russia clearly longed for a strong ruler and was hungry for order. Yet it was also important for Yeltsin’s troika to make sure the would-be successor would stay the course of liberal reform and, perhaps more importantly, provide guarantees for Yeltsin’s “cloudless pension.”

Then, as happened so often in the eight years of card games in the Yeltsin Kremlin, in August 1999 the deck was shuffled. Prime Minister Stepashin was out and Vladimir Putin, the low-profile director of the Federal Security Service (FSB, successor to the KGB’s foreign arm), was promoted to his position. It was a not insignificant move, for under the Russian constitution, the Prime Minister is de facto Vice President, stepping in as Acting President when the elected president leaves office because of incapacitation, impeachment or resignation. And step in is exactly what Putin did when, on December 31, 1999, Boris Yeltsin tendered his resignation as president.

Unlikely Heir

While today it is difficult to imagine anyone else sitting in the Kremlin, in 1999, no western think tank could fathom that someone like Putin—a political outsider, a KGB officer, a technocrat—could ascend to the presidency. Even Russian politicians were at a loss when, in 1999, a foreign journalist at the annual Davos (Switzerland) economic forum posed the now-famous question about the then prime minister: “Who is Mr. Putin?”

What little the West knew about Putin only urged caution. His lack of openness (understandable, given his background as an intelligence officer) could signal unpredictability. An absence of political expertise could draw the country into the vortex of an even greater chaos. Or, looking back on the case of Yuri Andropov, the only other intelligence officer to step into the Kremlin’s top role, Putin’s advent to power could signal an end to the Great Thaw of the 1990s and the inauguration of a New Cold War. Equally worrisome was the fact that it was the much-vaunted “Family” (Yeltsin’s inner circle) that was pushing Putin up Russia’s political Olympus: what if he proved to be a docile puppet in the hands of Kremlin puppeteers?

Yet the 47-year-old Putin began disappointing conventional wisdom from his first days in office. In contrast to the puffy, ailing Yeltsin, Putin was energetic, athletic and intensely pragmatic. He was also not a typical Russian politician. Whereas Yeltsin had been bombastic and long-winded in the tradition of so many Russian and Soviet politicians, Putin quickly gained notoriety for the unvarnished brevity of his speech.

“Are you going to run for president?” a TV commentator asked Putin shortly after he was appointed prime minister.

“Obyazatelno,” (“Definitely.”) Putin said without flinching or elaborating.

Soon after Putin assumed the premiership, Russia was rocked with a series of terrorist attacks on residential buildings (since tied to the Chechen warlords). Putin said the predictable: that he would come to grips with the bandits hiding in Chechnya. But then he also did the politically unthinkable: he assumed personal responsibility for the future course of a military campaign in Chechnya that, if the past was any guide, could not be won.

But even that pledge was overshadowed by his crude promise “to wet [kill] the terrorists, even in the toilet.” Intellectual politician Grigory Yavlinsky, Russia’s eternal presidential runner-up, condescended that a man with such a vocabulary would never become president.

How little he knew.

Under the Russian Constitution, a prime minister is appointed acting president for three months, and general elections follow to elect the new president. Putin stood for election in March 2000 and walked away with 75% of the vote. The campaign proved to be as predictable as it was boring—something welcomed by most Russians. Yavlinsky did as poorly as ever, and Putin’s main rival, the lackluster Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, toured the country trying to charm voters with clumsy dances and off-kilter songs accompanied by an accordion, while promising the electorate a return to social equity. But Zyuganov’s loyalists, nostalgic for Soviet-era stability, deserted him in favor of Putin. For them, and indeed the majority of Russians, Putin found the perfect turn of phrase to sum up his opinion of the past and future: “He who has no regrets about the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart; he who wants to recreate the Soviet Union now has no head.”

But a small book of interviews published in the run-up to the campaign also had its effect. In the First Person became a national bestseller, thanks to voters’ desire to answer for themselves the question, “Who is this Putin?” In the book, Putin’s friends, teachers, colleagues and Putin himself revisited, in simple, conversational language, the main episodes of his life. It introduced his grandfather, who served as a chef to Stalin, his father, who became disabled after fighting in the Great Patriotic War, and his mother, who survived the Leningrad blockade.

In First Person, Putin shared a telling episode from his childhood. One day he used a stick to drive a rat into the corner of the stairwell in his building. But the cornered rat lashed out and began to chase little Vova. “So,” Putin concluded, “I know what happens when you drive something into a corner.” The president also recalled how his intelligence school trainers wrote in his CV: “low sense of danger.” Such a character trait was supposedly a negative for a future operative. But it was surely a plus in the eyes of an electorate that was tired of indecisive Russian leadership.

Putin’s Velvet Revolution

In the two-and-a-half years of Putin’s presidency, there has been a change in both the style and substance of leadership from the Kremlin.

Yeltsin once told regional governors: “Take as much sovereignty as you can swallow.” Putin saw a danger in too much autonomy and constructed a “vertical of power,” dividing the country into seven major federal districts. Each district has a plenipotentiary presidential representative who plays the role of “the sovereign’s watchful eye,” watching over the “regional princes,” i.e. the governors. Law enforcement bodies, prosecutors’ offices and courts were all transferred to federal control. The upper chamber of parliament, the Federation Council, was turned into an elective body, instead of one comprised largely of regional leaders. The regional barons thus lost an important political rostrum. True enough, many representatives to this body are buying the votes necessary to land their seats, to win legislative immunity. There are therefore many “shady” characters in the Federation Council, but the majority seems ready to vote through Kremlin-backed laws.

In the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, the majority of seats belong to deputies from pro-Kremlin factions—something not seen since the early 1990s. The largest bloc, Edinaya Rossiya (“Unified Russia”), is managed out of the Kremlin, and has spearheaded a crucial redistribution of all committee chairmanships. As a result, the Communist Party lost nearly all of its chairmanships. Communist deputies who chose to stay in their chairmanships, rather than side with the Party over the redistribution (e.g. Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev and Svetlana Goryacheva), were expelled from the Party by their comrades.

The end result of this “velvet revolution” is that reformist laws which were stopped up for years under Yeltsin are being passed with amazing rapidity. The best case in point is the recently signed Law on Land. Under Yeltsin, the Kremlin did not dare to put forward a draft law on land ownership, for fear of giving the largely communist body yet another pretext to initiate impeachment proceedings.

After nearly three years of fighting in Chechnya, Putin has largely succeeded in his goal to subdue the rubble-strewn republic and cut off the transit of drugs, explosive and counterfeit money through the region. He recently announced that there will be a referendum in Chechnya on the adoption of the republic’s Constitution before the end of 2002. Yet the battle is far from over. The terrorist bombing of the May 9 Victory Day parade attack in neighboring Dagestan is just the most recent example of the ongoing hostilities in the region.

Still, the FSB has apprehended several of the most odious warlords, even those who were for some reason considered un-catchable under Yeltsin, including Salman Raduev, the terrorist who raided Buynaksk, was caught and sentenced to a life term; Shamil Basaev, the warlord who took mothers and their newborn children hostage in Komsomolsk, was caught in a mine field, where he lost his leg; the Jordanian mercenary Khattab, who was the mastermind of the explosions of residential buildings in Moscow in 1999 and the incursions against Dagestan, was assassinated in a secret operation. Achimez Gochiyaev, who carried out the Moscow and Volgodonsk explosions, is now a prisoner of the FSB. The US-led War on Terrorism has also made the West more sympathetic to Russia’s argument that Chechnya is a front-line battle in that war.

The Manager

The president is also changing. The macho image he cultivated in the early months of his presidency (flying a fighter jet or showing off judo moves) is giving way to one of a tough yet pragmatic manager. Or a “cold pragmatic,” as Boris Yeltsin called him in a recent interview.

Today, it is more typical to see Putin cite budget numbers without referring to a memo. Or to challenge appointed officials such as Gazprom boss Alexei Miller on the discrepancy between the prices his company is charging for gas exports and the actual prices on foreign markets: “Why are we selling it so cheaply? Where is the margin? Show me the money! Of course, one shouldn’t rush things or jump to conclusions, but we have to figure it all out.”

While the young president is not of the old apparatchik mold, bullying and humiliating his subordinates in public, he does have a “common touch” with language. He will occasionally utter a crude remark at the expense of a hapless bureaucrat, for example, “Stop munching on snot” (a folk idiom that means “Stop whining and beating about the bush! Act!”). Similarly, he is gifted in witty repartee, as when a journalist challenged his political support:

“Can you name one political actor which stands behind you?”

“The Russian people.”

Or, to a long-winded question from Larry King soon after the Kursk disaster, probing for details about the accident, wanting to know what happened, Putin replied simply, “It sank.”

Another story circulating about Putin’s wit was his reported encounter with comic actor Alexander Shirvindt in a theater. During the break, Shirvindt, who was a bit inebriated, dared to step forward and tender his hand to Putin, introducing himself like an old buddy, “Sasha.” To which Putin replied without batting an eye, “Volodya.”

And, of course, there was Putin’s classic reply, while still FSB director, to Boris Berezovsky’s allegations that the FSB was plotting against him. “I’d rather get Berezovsky to do something [rather than just talk]. He now holds the official post of CIS executive secretary, if I am not mistaken. So let him actually execute something.”

In the Yeltsin era, it was common for Kremlin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky to aver that the president was “working with documents,” which soon became a euphemism meaning he was gravely ill and could not go out. Putin keeps to a busy schedule, finds time to work out regularly and is now in his second year of intense study of English. Of course, he also is fluent in German, which allowed him to recently deliver a speech in that language to the Berlin parliament, a far cry from the drunken conducting of an oompah band for which Yeltsin is remembered  in Germany.

Putin is nothing if not tenacious. He slowly and steadily tightened his grip on the odious oligarchs Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, such that both have disappeared from Russia’s political and economic stage. While some in the West raised their voices about the “undemocratic” methods used to achieve the exile of these two oligarchs, their cries raised little sympathy from within Russia, where the oligarchs rose to power using far from democratic means.

Nor could anyone convince Putin that the Radio Free Europe journalist arrested in Chechnya (Andrei Babitsky) was not a spy or a traitor. He promised the relatives of the Kursk disaster victims that he would raise the submarine, and he did it, though many of his subordinates advised against the move. He succeeded in replacing the widely-snubbed national anthem played under Yeltsin with the favored Soviet-era anthem, with new lyrics by Sergei Mikhalkov, even though liberals called it a symbol of the restoration of communism and even Yeltsin voiced his disagreement.

But on this and on just about every front, Putin has gotten his way. And, while some may argue with the methods, Russia has traveled a great distance farther away from communism in the past three years than in many preceding years.

Righting Wrongs

It is said that Vladimir Putin has a long memory for offenses, and that he will never forgive St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev’s insults and humiliations toward Putin’s friend and mentor Anatoly Sobchak. Yakovlev had been a part of Sobchak’s team when Sobchak led the city, then split from the team to put himself forward as a candidate in the gubernatorial elections, leading Putin to call him “Judas.” Yet, for now, Putin seems ready to deal with his northern nemesis in the interests of the country and his native city. Yakovlev was recently re-elected governor and will thus play a key role in the city’s preparation for next year’s tercentennial.

No doubt the hardest trial Putin has faced in his first term was the sinking of the Kursk and the death of its 118 crewmen. While the world waited anxiously for news about the fate of the marines trapped at the bottom of the Barents Sea, and while military commanders and admirals were lying about rescue efforts and proudly refusing foreign help, the head of state continued his vacation in Sochi. He believed in the assurances of the military that the whole crew perished during the first moments after the explosion, and that there was no one to rescue. Like a true pragmatist, he was convinced that the main thing is not emotions but rather a sober take on a situation.

He was wrong on all counts. But when he realized the tragic nature of his mistake, he immediately flew to Severomorsk, knowing it would make him personally the focus of accusations and reproaches from the relatives of the victims. It was during these events that Putin learned the simple truth that the head of state, especially Russia’s head of state, is also the father of the nation. So now he does not hesitate to personally travel to wherever Russians are in pain, be it an explosion in a metro underpass, the disastrous floods in Yakutsk and Stavropol or to the funerals of the brilliant Bashkirian children who perished in the recent tragic plane crash over Germany.

U-Turn on NATO

Perhaps one of the most surprising developments in the past year of Putin’s presidency has been the abrupt turn he has led Russia through on foreign policy toward the West and NATO in particular.

In the first days of his presidency, Putin began with cautious steps toward Great Britain and Germany and frequent trips to the countries of the former socialist camp, such as China, North Korea, Cuba and Vietnam. And things began to look bleak in early 2001, when the new Republican administration in Washington, preoccupied with distancing itself from Clinton policies and infatuated with missile defense, took a decidedly cold line toward Moscow. But Putin quickly sized up the new president and realized the importance of personal relations with the American leader. After just a few hours in their first face-to-face meetings in Lyubliana, Putin had completely won over President Bush. Relations got even closer after Putin was the first international leader to call Bush on September 11, offering whatever help was necessary.

Prior to the two leader’s next meeting, at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, Putin decided to liquidate Russian military bases in Cam Ran Bay, Vietnam and Lourdes, Cuba. While some Russian generals and politicians were quick to accuse the president of betraying the national interest, in fact, Putin made a decision dictated by common sense and economic necessity.

Insiders say Putin is fond of quoting the Russian saying: “Friendship is friendship, but to each his own tobacco” (i.e. “Don’t mix-up business with friendship”). That’s why, from their very first meeting Putin has relentlessly lobbied for a handful of specific measures designed to improve US-Russian economic relations: the abolition of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, the recognition of Russia as a country with a market economy, assistance with Russia’s entry into the WTO under acceptable conditions, and increased US investments in the Russian economy. By the summer of 2002, Putin had achieved at least two of his goals: first, EC countries and then the US agreed that Russia now has a market economy, which puts Russia in a better position in trade disputes, and, second, there is the expectation that Russia will be offered entry in the WTO within two years.

GDP Rising

George Bush may call his counterpart by the less than flattering nickname “Pootie-Poot,” but in the Kremlin, Russia’s commander-in-chief has the nickname “VVP.” It is an acronym which at once stands for the president’s initials (his patronymic is Vladimirovich) and for the Russian translation of GDP—the growth of which is Putin’s top priority.

It is a higher priority, say, than the creation of a unified state with Belarus, which ranked quite high with Yeltsin. Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko had ambitious plans to create a new state unifying Russia and Belarus, putting tiny Belarus on an equal footing with Russia and providing the Belarussian parliament with the right to veto Russian laws. These ambitions unnerved Putin and the unified state idea is on hold. “Kotlety otdelno, mukhi otdelno,” (“Don’t mix up cutlets with flies”) Putin said, rejecting Lukashenko’s proposals. [At press time, Putin offered Lukashenko a new alternative: that Belarus could merge with Russia under the terms of the Russian constitution. Translation: Belarus could become a republic of the Russian Federation, like, say, Karelia or Tatarstan. Lukashchenko refused.] When former President Yeltsin carped in on the debate, unexpectedly siding with the Belarussian leader, Putin dryly stated: “He has his opinion, and I have mine. Today I am in charge of the country and bear responsibility for it.”

That responsibility is increasingly being delegated to newly appointed functionaries with roots in Putin’s home city of St. Petersburg. Given three centuries of rivalry between the two capitals, jokes about the trend are not surprising:

A passenger gets off a train.

“Where are you from?” someone asks.

“I am from Piter”

“OK, OK, no need to threaten me straight off…”

Putin has indeed appointed many people from St. Petersburg and from the intelligence community to key posts in the state and in state-owned enterprises. He explains it by his desire to work with people he trusts unconditionally. His defense minister served with him in the foreign intelligence service (and also hales from “Piter”); the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, worked with Putin in the St. Petersburg administration; the mastermind of Putin’s legal reform and deputy head of his administration, Dmitry Kozak, is from St. Petersburg; Minister of Economic Development German Gref is from Piter, as is the Chairman of the Federation Council, Sergei Mironov.

However, in some other key positions one can still find “relics” of the Yeltsin administration: for example, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, or Mikhail Vanin, head of the Customs Committee (which provides more than 50% of Russia’s budget revenues). And then there is the unsinkable head of the Kremlin administration, Alexander Voloshin (who was part of the Yeltsin troika that got Putin the job). Last but not least, Anatoly Chubais, head of the state Electricity Monopoly RAO ES, was also a member of Yeltsin’s team (though, notably, he also happens to be from St. Petersburg).

Perhaps more significantly, the president’s close retinue is divided into two groupings. First are the overt proponents of liberal reform: Vice-Premier Alexei Kudrin, German Gref, Dmitry Kozak, and deputy head of the presidential administration in charge of regional issues, Alexander Abramov. A second group is called “the siloviki” (local political slang for representatives of the “power ministries”): head of the presidential chief of staff Igor Sechin, Kremlin main human resource manager Viktor Ivanov, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev and, St. Petersburg banker Sergei Pugachev, who is said to have close relations with Putin and stands behind many Kremlin economic initiatives. This “clan” wages political and psychological war with the “Family’s” appointees mentioned above, seeking  to wrest from them control over financial flows. The most recent case in point was the scandal over the State Customs Committee and the major oil company Slavneft, and the dissemination via the internet and mass media of taped telephone conversations compromising the office of Alexander Voloshin.

“You can’t manage it all from the Kremlin”

At a Kremlin press-conference this summer, President Putin was asked whether, sitting as he does behind the thick Kremlin walls, he knows how simple Russians live or knows what their concerns are. To this Putin replied: “I know even today how it feels for the simple citizen. I have been living in the presidential residence for two years, yet I lived for 30 years in a communal apartment. This is a huge advantage for decision-making. You badly need feedback, you must not lose it, though it is hard to preserve it. You just can’t solve all the problems from here. You can’t manage it all from the Kremlin. Besides, I am trying not to lose contact with the people who are not big bosses, who knew me before I became a boss. I am trying to meet with them.”

Thus, at least once a month Putin tours a distant region of Russia to become familiar with local problems. People on the street rush up to him to complain about local leaders, and ask him questions about their pensions and salaries. Not surprisingly, in his annual address, the head of state indicated that his top priority is to create conditions under which citizens could earn money and invest it at a profit in the country’s economy. It was a no-nonsense declaration which highlights both Putin’s pragmatism and also how well he understands the needs and concerns of his fellow citizens. And, as of this writing, two-thirds of Russians say they support Putin’s policies. Which proves the 50-year-old president is doing much more than “working with documents.”