Center for Defense Information
Research Topics
Television
CDI Library
Press
What's New
Search
CDI Library > Johnson's Russia List

Johnson's Russia List
 

 

January 2, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4003  4004

Johnson's Russia List
#4004
2 January 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
  1. Bloomberg: Russia's Chubais on Boris Yeltsin's Resignation.
  2. Reuters: Kremlin says Putin can't lose election.
  3. AFP: A new Kremlin face, but "family" keeps the real power.
  4. Alastair Wanklyn: Putin's childhood.
  5. Boston Globe: David Filipov and Brian Whitmore, Russia's Putin pays a visit to Chechnya. New acting leader encourage troops.
  6. Los Angeles Times: Maura Reynolds, Democracy in Russia Remains a 'Family' Affair.
  7. Baltimore Sun: Will Englund, Putin's past may point to repression Russia's acting president led spy agency, never has run for an office.
  8. The Sunday Times (UK): Not just a party animal. Peter Millar reviews BORIS YELTSIN: A Revolutionary Life by Leon Aron.
  9. New York Times: Michael Wines, What Putin's Rule Portends for Russia.]
*******

#1
Russia's Chubais on Boris Yeltsin's Resignation: Comment
 
Moscow, Jan. 2 (Bloomberg)
-- Following are comments from Anatoly Chubais, chief executive of RAO
Unified Energy Systems on Russian President Boris Yeltsin's resignation on
Friday, as carried on NTV television.

``I understand how difficult it was. When a person realizes that at some
point it's better that the country continues along without him -- believe me,
that decision, especially when the person is the president of the country,
has a high cost.''

On acting President Vladimir Putin:

``Whether the country needs (a system of) private property is not an issue
for him. He's also not asking whether the government should interfere in the
economy. There are absolutely clear answers to these questions which for
people of our generation in Russia -- I wanted to emphasize the generation
aspect -- have been a given for a long time. You can argue about them with
(Communist Party Leader Gennady) Zyuganov, if you are hankering for an
argument, but with Putin, there's nothing like this to discuss because for
him this is all clear.''

*******

#2
Kremlin says Putin can't lose election
By Peter Graff
 
MOSCOW, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Acting Russian President Vladimir Putin, catapulted
into the Kremlin by Boris Yeltsin's shock resignation on New Year's Eve, is
more or less certain to win a presidential election in March, a top aide
said.

Russia must hold the election within three months to pick a formal successor
for Yeltsin, who resigned on Sunday after nearly a decade running the world's
largest country.

But Putin assumes the president's powers until the vote, while remaining
prime minister. The tough-talking former spy is hugely popular, and mounting
a credible campaign against him in such a short time seems an insurmountable
task.

Asked at a news briefing if anybody other than Putin could win, First Deputy
Kremlin Chief of Staff Igor Shabdurasulov said: ``I think such an outcome is
unrealistic.''

He said the best result would be for Putin to win outright in a first round,
since holding a second round run-off, if Putin wins less than 50 percent of
the vote, would ``waste time.''

Shabdurasulov said he did not expect Putin would carry out any special
election campaigning, but would prove himself through his work as acting
president and premier.

The election campaign will be brief. Candidates will have only until February
10 to gather one million signatures to register for the ballot, assuming
parliament confirms the date of March 26 for the election.

Shabdurasulov said there were likely to be some minor changes in the cabinet
and presidential administration under Putin, ``but nothing on a large
scale.''

The only personnel change Shabdurasulov mentioned was that of Yeltsin's
daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, who holds the title of Kremlin adviser, but
would ``probably change her status.''

PUTIN MAKES VIGOUROUS START

Putin made a vigorous start as Russia's acting president with a trip to
breakaway Chechnya in the early hours of Saturday to wish his troops a happy
new year. On Sunday he met Russia's chief civilian representative to
Chechnya, Nikolai Koshman.

Shabdurasulov said the New Year's morning trip to the battle zone had been
previously planned, and it was wrong to regard it is a first shot in the
election campaign.

Putin is known in the West mainly for his uncompromising Chechnya policy,
which has been strongly criticised abroad. But his rise to power won a
cordial reception from U.S. President Bill Clinton and other leaders.

``Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of the mass media, the
right to private property -- all these basic principles of a civilised
society will be reliably protected by the state,'' Putin said in a New Year's
Eve address to his countrymen before flying to Chechnya.

Heartened by these words, Clinton told Putin in a 10-minute telephone
conversation on Saturday that U.S.-Russia relations under Putin's leadership
were ``off to a good start.''

``(Putin) reaffirmed his commitment to the core value of democracy,'' White
House spokesman Joe Lockhart told reporters.

However, the two men also touched on areas like Chechnya where they disagree.

YELTSIN HAS HAPPY NEW YEAR

Shabdurasulov said Yeltsin had taken his decision to resign on his own, and
had celebrated his happiest New Year in years after stepping down.

``His mood was excellent,'' Shabdurasulov said. ``He even said that it was
the first time in years he had met the new year in such high spirits.''

Yeltsin's wife, Naina, was ``relieved'' as well, he said.

Putin has signed a decree granting Yeltsin immunity from prosecution and
guaranteeing security for him and his family.

Shabdurasulov said those guarantees would soon be worked into a law, which he
expected to be passed soon by the State Duma, parliament's lower house,
elected on December 19 with a strong showing for parties that back Putin.

He also said Yeltsin would probably continue to be addressed as
``president,'' as are former presidents in the United States.

``We haven't been through this before,'' he said. ``(But) we should follow
the best example of democracy and address a person who occupied the office of
president of the Russian Federation with the appropriate respect.''

Most people quizzed by Reuters said they thought Yeltsin, long dogged by ill
health, had done the right thing by quitting.

But the man who has dominated Russian politics for the past decade has not
completely left public life. Next Wednesday he makes a long-planned trip to
the Holy Land to celebrate the Orthodox Christmas at Christ's birthplace in
Bethlehem.

*******

#3
A new Kremlin face, but "family" keeps the real power

MOSCOW, Jan 2 (AFP) -
There's a new man in the Kremlin, but it is the fabulously rich and equally
elusive "family" that once surrounded Boris Yeltsin that remains the power
behind the throne in Russia, insiders say.

"What has happened here can be held up as an orderly and legal transfer of
executive power," explained a well-informed Russian political source.

"What it is in reality is a textbook palace coup d'etat," commented the
source, who asked not to be named.

"The decision for Yeltsin to step aside and for Putin to take over was taken
not in the interests of the country but in the interests of the family."

Those interests center on monopolistic control of major wealth-generating
sectors of the Russian economy -- public utilities, media, oil, factories --
and this control rests with not more than 40 people, several experts said.

Among the most well-known members of "The Family" are the billionaire
businessman Boris Berezovsky, former privatization guru Anatoly Chubais,
Yeltsin's daughter Tatiana Dyachenko and financier Roman Abramovich.

Although he did not manage it single-handedly, it is Chubais who is credited
with "inviting" Putin to Moscow from St. Petersburg and placing him
immediately in a powerful Kremlin post two years ago.

Under the family's guidance, the 47-year-old Putin rose with extraordinary
speed up through the ranks of the Yeltsin administration and was named prime
minister last summer as the Kremlin sought a no-nonsense political sentry.

"The family is better described as a financial-political clan," said Andrei
Fyodorov, director of the Fund for Political Investigation, a Moscow think
tank.

"These are the people who have built their own private business empires and
who incarnate the 'new political-economic system'," he said. "They have no
need for government posts because they run the show."

As the real rulers of Russia, however, the elite "haves" of the family are
also the targets of a steady stream of wrath from Russia's "have-not"
population and prefer to keep out of the limelight and under protection.

Estimates of the family's collective wealth run well into the hundreds of
billions of dollars, and Putin, as the family's hand-picked protector, will
be expected to help them hold onto it, the experts said.

"Putin will be allowed to think for himself, but he won't be likely to stray
far from the family's agreed wishes," Fyodorov said.

"He'll always have to keep in mind that he came to power because of the
family. Like any politician, Putin also has skeletons in his closet that the
family knows about.

"It is the family that will continue making the decisions, and it makes
little difference to them if Putin is seen abroad as 'his own man' or a
family lap-dog."

There are however two questions about the family's power that have yet to be
answered: Will Putin indeed be elected president, as is currently widely
expected? And, if so, will the family splinter after he is?

Officials and political insiders say the answer to the first question is
almost certainly yes, but they acknowledge that Putin's fate could still
hinge on the war in Chechnya and the West's responses to it.

"Western governments have a dilemma: they must decide whether it is more
important for them to take a tough moral stand on Chechnya regardless of the
implications or if stability in Russia is a more important objective,"
Fyodorov said.

The family will remain united during the election campaign, but if Putin is
elected as forecast -- a vote is tentatively scheduled for late March --
family members will fight for the highest influence over him and in that
battle their interests will collide, the experts predicted.

******

#4
From: "Alastair Wanklyn" <alastair.wanklyn@featurestory.co.uk>
Subject: Putin's childhood
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2000

You may have seen this from The Moscow Times  2/10/99   WHAT THE PAPERS
SAY: Bad Memories of Girls'  Bathroom Haunt Putin   'Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin's childhood was  hard. Of course, he was picked on by the
other boys. And their favorite trick  was well known - they would push him
into the girls' bathroom and pin the door  shut on him with their
shoulders. The girls would scream and beat the poor boy  with their book
bags and their sacks that they brought their changes of shoes  in. And he
would break out and run to me and bury his head in my lap and groan,
"Maria Ivanovna, I will chase them off one of these days. I'll get  them."
And I used to stroke his head and tell him, "Volodya, you will  grow up one
of these days and you will understand much and you will look at  things
differently, and today's offenses will seem small and insignificant in  the
future. And now, run to your lessons, Volodya." I would tell him,  "what do
you have now, Russian?" And he would walk away with a sure  step. And I
thought that I had made peace in the school. But no. Those little  menaces
would catch Volodya again and throw him right back into the girls'
bathroom.'  - From a letter published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta  on Sept. 28
by someone named Maria Ivanovna, who claims to be a former teacher  of
Putin.    Alastair Wanklyn Correspondent, Feature Story News, Moscow  bureau 

******

#5
Boston Globe
2 January 2000
[for personal use only]
Russia's Putin pays a visit to Chechnya
New acting leader encourage troops
By David Filipov, Globe Staff and Brian Whitmore Globe Correspondent,

MOSCOW - Not content to stand pat a day after assuming power in Russia, the
acting president, Vladimir Putin, reminded voters yesterday why they like him
so much, by paying a surprise visit to troops fighting the war in Chechnya.

Putin's overnight trip to the Russian-held city of Gudermes, to present
soldiers with medals and hunting knives engraved with his signature, and to
offer a ringing vote of support for their efforts to crush separatist
militants, bore the traits that make him the favorite to win in a landslide
in an early presidential vote set for March 26.

Here was the vigor, the flair for the unexpected and the gift for populist
politics that Russians once associated with Boris N. Yeltsin, the man who
stepped down on Friday to make way for Putin. Very quickly, Putin appears to
be acquiring Yeltsin's knack for using the power of his position to project
his popularity.

But Putin's trip to Chechnya, on his first full day on the job, also served
as a reminder that other than his hawkish leadership of the war effort,
little is known about the former spy from St. Petersburg, who now holds sway
in the Kremlin and who enjoys a soaring popularity rating. His political and
economic views remain a mystery, even to veteran observers.

''After watching Putin for years, I still don't really know who he is,'' said
Alexander Gorshkov, a St. Petersburg-based investigative journalist. ''In
four months as prime minister he hasn't done anything other than Chechnya. We
still don't know what his plans are for the economy.''

But Gorshkov and other analysts expressed doubt that the questions
surrounding Putin amount to enough to derail his drive to win the presidency.
In a turnaround, the man who was widely ridiculed as an obscure and bland
nonentity when Yeltsin anointed him his successor in August is now seen by
many Russians as someone who can put a halt to a decade of decline.

While much of Putin's support is based on the perceived success of the war in
Chechnya, he has also tapped into deeply held emotions in Russian society. He
is seen as being strong and decisive in standing up for Russian interests
after a decade of perceived capitulation to former Cold War enemies.

''Putin's popularity goes beyond the war,'' said Vladimir Pribylovsky, a
member of the Panorama research center. ''He represents a nostalgic
stereotype of a decisive leader with a strong hand who will defend Russia's
independent interests without bowing to the West.''

Putin has used his weaknesses to his advantage. A lackluster public speaker,
he uses simple, clipped phrases, often spiced with tough-guy jargon. The
public has taken to this and sees it as a refreshing no-nonsense style,
appealing to those weary of lofty rhetoric and promises. Most of Russia's
prime ministers in the past 10 years have been technocrats who talk about
loans and deficits and inflation and financial policies. But in Russia, more
than just the economy matters.

''Putin personifies the hopes people have that things can be changed for the
better,'' said Alexei Grazhdankin, deputy director of the All-Russia Center
for Public Opinion Research. ''People don't want miracles, they just want
order, and Putin has given the impression that he is providing order.''

Grazhdankin said that Putin's background in the Soviet intelligence
community, and as director of the main successor to the KGB, the Federal
Security Service, or FSB, is an asset with much of the public. Many Russians
today think of the Soviet-era security services as an important ingredient
for law and order that has been lost, rather than as a tool of repression
whose passing should be celebrated.

Putin, according to Grazhdankin, evokes in many the image of the late Soviet
leader Yuri V. Andropov, who ran the KGB before ascending to the pinnacle of
power in the Soviet Union. Some view Andropov's brief reign - he died in
February 1984 after just 15 months in office - as a missed opportunity for
national revival. The widely accepted view of the KGB of that era is of a
force engaged in trying to reform the Soviet Union from within, by closing
its large economic and technological gap with the West.

Most of Putin's public statements today center on a need for powerful central
authority to restore Russia's confidence in itself, and to preserve its place
as a stable world power.

''A strong state for Russians is not an anomaly, not something that must be
fought for or against, but on the contrary, it is the source and guarantor of
order, the initiator and driving force of all change,'' Putin said in a
statement issued last month at a conference of the upstart Unity political
party, which parlayed his backing to a strong second place finish in recent
parliamentary elections despite being just two months old. ''Russia will not
soon, if ever, become a copy of, say, the United States or England, where
liberal values have deep historical traditions.''

If Putin's past, and his views, have raised doubts in the West, its leaders
have gone out of their way to hide them. President Clinton told Putin in a
telephone call yesterday that US-Russia relations under Putin's leadership
were ''off to a good start'' despite differences on Chechnya and other
issues, the White House said.

Yesterday in Chechnya, Putin praised officers and soldiers in Gudermes, 18
miles east of Chechnya's capital, Grozny, where Russian planes and artillery
pounded rebels in an effort to capture the city yesterday.

''This is not just about restoring the honor and dignity of Russia,'' Putin
said in remarks broadcast live on Russian television yesterday. ''It is
rather more important than that. It is about putting an end to the break-up
of the Russian Federation. That is the main task. Russia is grateful to you.''

Before he left the republic, Putin said that Russia would pursue its current
military tactics in Chechnya, adding that he had developed the tactics
himself.

''We are going to do everything in an optimal way,'' Putin said. ''Optimal
means the fewest possible casualties among our troops and the absence of
casualties among civilians.''

As many as 40,000 mostly elderly and infirm civilians are trapped in Grozny.
Residents have been huddled for weeks in basements, too afraid to go outside
or risk the journey through the Russian bombardment to escape Grozny.

Yesterday, waves of Russian jets unleashed scores of bombs on the shattered
city, in one of the biggest attacks yet on the Chechen capital, according to
news agencies in Grozny. Tanks and artillery surrounding Grozny fired
barrages into the city. But federal forces were apparently far from capturing
the city, and were taking heavy losses, although no figures were available.

Russia's state-controlled media have ironed out the awkward details of the
war, just as they have helped build up Putin's image while slamming his
potential rivals in the presidential vote - former Prime Minister Yevgeny
Primakov, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov -
with a constant stream of allegations of wrongdoing, duplicity, and illness.

Putin denied yesterday that the New Year's visit to the troops was a planned
opening of his election campaign, saying the trip was set up months ago. The
trip nevertheless demonstrated the way the state-controlled media have helped
his popularity rating soar to 70 percent. Putin was shown flying in an SU-25
ground attack jet, touring villages captured from Chechen rebels, and
demonstrating his black-belt prowess in judo.

Putin has managed to garner support from across Russia's spectrum of elites.
The military and security services support him because he has increased the
arms budget and is giving them a free hand in Chechnya.

Nationalists support him because he is not afraid to talk tough with the
West. Russia's business and financial elite support him because he has
promised not to redistribute the former government property they privatized,
often on very favorable terms, during Yeltsin's eight years in office.

But at the same time, Putin is seen by the public as being independent from
these special interest groups. That is probably only half-true. Putin has
relied on high oil prices to fuel his war effort and lend the Russian
economy, which depends heavily on the export of raw materials, the look of
recovery.

He has presided over the Kremlin's effort to take control of the lucrative
revenue from Russia's oil pipeline and railroad transport monopolies, which
some analysts say has provided financial backing for Unity's political
campaign.

The top officials associated with this effort, Yeltsin's former chief of
administration Alexander Voloshin and first deputy Prime Minister Nikolai
Aksyonenko, are seen as closely linked to Boris Berezovsky, the financier and
informal Kremlin adviser who has long been rumored as a main strategist
behind the Yeltsin presidency. Both Aksyonenko and Voloshin appear likely to
keep their jobs under Putin.

''If that happens, the system of shadow influence remains the same,'' said
Mikhail Berger, editor of the Segodnya daily newspaper.

Financial markets soared on the news of Putin's appointment, apparently in
expectations that an energetic, popular leader could make the hard decisions
needed to spur Russia's economic recovery.

But the central question surrounding Putin's economic plans is his potential
relationship with Berezovsky and other financial elites, known here as ''the
oligarchs.'' Under Yeltsin, this group's insider practices and offshore
dealings have come to symbolize the way big business has thrived despite the
rest of the country, rather than fueling a national economic revival.

''The central question in Russia's economy today,'' said Sergei Parkhomenko,
editor of Itogi magazine, ''is whether Putin will control the oligarchs or
whether they will control him.''

*******

#6
Los Angeles Times
January 2, 2000
[for personal use only]
Democracy in Russia Remains a 'Family' Affair
By MAURA REYNOLDS, Times Staff Writer

     MOSCOW--Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin's resignation speech was
filled with fine words, but "democracy" wasn't one of them.
     In fact, while he referred four times to the constitution and six times
to national elections, Yeltsin made no mention Friday of what the
constitution and elections are supposed to bring: participatory democracy in
which the will of the people determines who rules.
     The omission is telling because Western observers usually credit Yeltsin
with bringing at least an elementary democracy to Russia during his eight
years in power, listing it near the top of his achievements.
     But in Yeltsin's own words, what he accomplished as president was to
create "a vital precedent for a civilized and voluntary transfer of power
from one president of Russia to another, newly elected one."
     Which raises the question: Is this transfer of power, in addition to
being voluntary and civilized, also "democratic"?
     Yeltsin's supporters would say yes. They point to Russia's regular
elections, to the fact that ballots have multiple candidates and that since
the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has built many of the institutions
needed for democracy.
     But Pavel I. Voshchanov, a former Yeltsin press secretary, points out
that although Russia got a new president Friday, power hasn't really changed
hands.
     Acting President Vladimir V. Putin was picked and groomed and promoted
by the same set of Kremlin power brokers who have stood behind Yeltsin. Known
popularly as "The Family," they include Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana Dyachenko,
media tycoon Boris A. Berezovsky and Yeltsin chief of staff Alexander S.
Voloshin. One of Putin's first moves as acting president was to name Voloshin
his own chief of staff.
     "The Yeltsin epoch isn't over yet," Voshchanov said. "The people who are
loyal to him are still in power. The Family is still in charge. And they have
no intention of ceding the reins of power to anyone else."
     Some might even ask whether the Kremlin has, in fact, hijacked the
democratic process.
     Kremlin leaders would defend themselves on legal grounds. They stress,
as Putin did in his first address to the nation, that Yeltsin has
scrupulously followed the current constitution. In an interview with Echo
Moscow radio, Constitutional Court Judge Nikolai Vedernikov went so far as to
proclaim Yeltsin's resignation and hand-over of power "legally pure."
     Certainly, Russia has the constitutional and electoral procedures needed
for democracy. But when analysts evaluate their outcome, it becomes harder to
call Russia's political system a true democracy.
     For one thing, constitutionality and democracy are not the same thing.
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was also scrupulous about his constitution, and
millions of Russians went to their graves or to near-death in Siberian labor
camps with their paperwork meticulously listing which articles of the
constitution they had violated.
     Elections and democracy are also not the same thing. In Soviet times,
Russians voted more regularly and with a far higher turnout than they do now.
     In fact, while voters are expected to elect Putin president by an easy
margin in March, the election is likely to be little more than a public
endorsement of a succession worked out in private in the Kremlin. It's a
system political analyst Liliya F. Shevtsova calls an "elected monarchy."
     "There is no democracy in a situation when outgoing czar Boris Yeltsin
appoints his heir and tells his people that he wants this person to rule the
country in the future," said Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Carnegie
Moscow Center think tank. "The people do not really have a choice but to
elect the protege of the ruling regime, the person who has unlimited access
to all the resources of the state."
     Russia's current presidential succession can appear eerily similar to
those of the past. In medieval times, powerful lords called boyars were the
power brokers behind the throne. In the imperial period, courtiers often
played a decisive role, especially when the czar was enfeebled. And the Putin
succession even echoes the Soviet system, when the Politburo picked the next
Kremlin leader and had its choice rubber-stamped by the rank and file.
     The fact that Yeltsin's resignation came so abruptly on the heels of
last month's parliamentary elections can also seem undemocratic because it
will limit Putin's potential rivals. Other parties and movements have little
time to muster their money and energy for a serious challenge to the Kremlin
candidate.
     "In a sense, such elections are very similar to those under Soviet
rule--people are free to vote, but there are no alternate candidates,"
Shevtsova added. "Everything that has happened in Russia in the last two days
has demonstrated the victory of the 'elected monarchy' and a defeat of
liberal democracy in which everyone is supposed to have an equal chance."
     Nonetheless, it would be impossible to argue that the current system is
less democratic than what came before. And there's always the possibility
that in time, with enough practice, Russia's democracy will acquire function
as well as form.
     "Yeltsin's main achievement is that, despite all the ordeals that have
befallen the Russian people in the 1990s, he has dismantled communism and
helped the feeble shoots of Russian democracy survive and develop," said
Alexei G. Arbatov, a deputy in the Duma, parliament's lower house, with the
liberal Yabloko faction. "Moreover, for Russia--a country with no democratic
traditions--the shoots of democracy have proven to be sturdier than one could
have imagined."

*******

#7
Baltimore Sun
2 January 2000
[for personal use only]
Putin's past may point to repression
Russia's acting president led spy agency, never has run for an office
By Will Englund
Sun Foreign Staff

MOSCOW -- Vladimir V. Putin was making a little joke. Addressing a group of
top security officials during a celebration two weeks ago marking the
anniversary of the founding of Russia's "special services," he told them that
they had succeeded at last in their mission to penetrate the corridors of
power.

The prime minister was referring to himself -- a former agent of the KGB,
one-time director of its successor, the Federal Security Service, and since
August the No. 2 figure in the government after Boris N. Yeltsin.

It was a joke, of course, because there was nothing surreptitious about
Putin's ascension to power; he had been appointed by Yeltsin and approved by
the parliament precisely as the law requires.

Today, he is president of the Russian Federation -- having had the job handed
to him Friday by a retiring Yeltsin.

Some people here view his promotion as the crowning moment in the resurgence
of the KGB (everyone here still calls it by its old name). Others believe him
to be a representative of its most progressive wing and, moreover, a tough
leader who could be Russian democracy's best bulwarkagainst a Communist
comeback.

But in either case he is a product of a system and an organization that puts
its stamp on all who work for it.

"In Russia," Sergei Grigoryants, chairman of the Glasnost Fund, said
yesterday, "once you're in, you don't leave the KGB."

"It's as though they go through obedience school," said Nikita Petrov, a
historian, "and after that, they cannot break the umbilical cord."

What kind of politician can Putin be, asked Petrov, when he was "raised by a
secret, closed service"? Where is his experience debating, persuading, making
deals, forging compromises?

Indeed, Putin has never run for office. In his four months as prime minister
he never had to engage in serious politicking with the parliament. Even his
defenders acknowledge that he is not an open person.

"The most frightening thing is that we don't know much about him," said
Natalya Gevorkyan, a specialist on the KGB who writes for Kommersant
newspaper.

Putin, 47, went to work for the KGB in what was then Leningrad in 1975, and
nine years later moved to East Germany to work in intelligence. He was
recalled in 1990 and reportedly resigned in 1991 as a colonel.

He spent the next few years working with liberal reformers -- including
Anatoly A. Sobchak, then the mayor of St. Petersburg (the renamed Leningrad)
-- and in July 1998 Yeltsin appointed him head of the FSB, a retired colonel
giving orders to generals.

Putin kept that post, working largely out of the public eye, until Yeltsin
picked him as his last prime minister in August.

There are different kinds of people in the KGB, and it's unfair not to
distinguish among them, said Gevorkyan, whose father was in the agency. When
Putin took command, she said, "he was concerned that he had to change the
whole atmosphere. He got rid of the most ridiculous and most orthodox people
there."

It suggests that he has shed the old Soviet ways. "But we don't know
anything, exactly, about him," she said.

And, judging by Putin's own words, it is clear he hasn't turned on the past
entirely.

"Several years ago," he told the assembled security chiefs at that
celebratory occasion, "we fell prey to an illusion that we have no enemies.
We have paid dearly for this. Russia has its own national interests, and we
have to defend them."

This remark, said Petrov, is typical of traditional KGB thinking, which sees
the world through the prism of "ours" and "not ours."

Even as prime minister, said Grigoryants, Putin seemed to relish the way the
war in Chechnya has pitted Russia against the rest of the world. It has
served to draw lines in the sand, maybe even bestowed on Russia some of the
sense of purity that comes with isolation.

Putin was not the first KGB veteran to become prime minister in the new
Russia; Yevgeny M. Primakov and Sergei V. Stepashin preceded him. Primakov,
in particular, brought KGB people into the government, many of whom have
stayed.

There's no question, most analysts believe, that the KGB has been flexing its
muscles in recent years, probing, pushing to see how far it can go.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was pressure for reform
of the agency, but nothing came of it.

"If strict parliamentary oversight had been established, along with judicial
review, real change might have been possible," wrote Yevgenia Albats in her
book, "State Within a State." "But nothing of the sort happened.

"Rather, we must understand that the KGB was -- and in a way still is -- one
of the most powerful and important components of the oligarchy that ran the
U.S.S.R., and still runs Russia."

Albats traces the first stirrings of a KGB revival to October 1992, and the
arrest of a chemist named Vil Mirzayanov, who in an article in Moscow News
and in an interview with The Sun had revealed that Russia was pursuing secret
chemical weapons research. Mirzayanov was eventually released, but in its own
strange way the case was seen as something of a victory for the KGB -- a
calling card, of sorts, for those who recklessly believed Russia had entered
a new era.

A more recent criminal case brought by the FSB involved a Navy captain,
Alexander Nikitin, who was accused of treason after writing a report for the
Bellona Foundation of Norway about the dumping of nuclear waste. In an
interview yesterday, Nikitin noted that he had seen the inside of a lot of
FSB offices over the past three years.

"The people from the FSB, I have learned, are the most reactionary element,
and have changed the least over the past 10 years," he said. "They still
worship the god of the totalitarian past."

Nonetheless, he pointed out, the rest of Russia has changed considerably.
Last week, on trial for the second time, Nikitin was acquitted of the charges
against him -- an utterly inconceivable conclusion to such a case even a few
years ago, when the courts meekly took orders from the prosecutors.

The question is, how much has Putin changed?

In Petrov's view, the recent parliamentary election campaign was not
encouraging. The manipulation of public opinion, the reassertion of control
over the press, the seeking out of enemies, all smacked of old Soviet
methods, he said. Putin was unknown before August, and he is still
essentially unknown. "They have made a leader from nothing," Petrov said.

Democratic liberals, led by Sergei V. Kiriyenko, embraced Putin earlier in
December, seeing him as the kind of "strong hand" who will be able to fend
off the Communists. Some have compared him, admiringly, to Gen. Augusto
Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator.

"This is a pact with the devil to get liberal reforms at the expense of human
rights and democratic freedoms," said Andrei Piontkovsky, head of the Center
for Strategic Studies. "History teaches us that pacts with the devil don't
work. They destroy people morally, and they will be left with nothing,
neither rights nor freedom."

In December, Putin's government introduced legislation giving the FSB new and
expanded powers -- to seal off regions, confine citizens at will, restrict
travel through specific areas and order people to leave or stay in these
areas.

On New Year's Eve, in his first address as president, Putin declared that the
special services, with the army, are to be the main means of preserving
order, ostensibly to protect personal freedom. Grigoryants called this a
"cynical promise," and a harbinger of a tough line to come.

"If Russia is ruled by the special services," he said, "it could be a
catastrophe for Russia and a serious problem for the whole world."

******

#8
The Sunday Times (UK)
2 January 2000
[for personal use only]
BOOKS: POLITICS
Not just a party animal
By Peter Millar

BORIS YELTSIN:
A Revolutionary Life
by Leon Aron
Harper Collins £29.99 pp934

There are many moments that will come to be considered as critical to the
course of history in the 20th century: the arrival of Lenin at St
Petersburg's Finland station in 1917, Hitler's duping of Chamberlain at
Munich in 1938, Kennedy's ultimatum to Khrushchev over Cuba in 1962. One that
will live, not least because in a world of increasingly audio-visual history
it was splendidly photogenic, was Boris Yeltsin clambering onto a tank
outside the Russian parliament in 1991.

It is too easy today to dismiss the coup of August that year as an
ill-conceived and badly executed panicky last-minute attempt to hold back the
unstoppable tide of liberalisation. The men who carried it out were
mediocrities, short-sighted die-hards who refused to face reality. But it was
precisely men of that sort who had been running the vast Soviet empire for
the previous two decades. In the uncertain summer of 1991, with the Soviet
military still smarting over the loss of eastern Europe, Gorbachev a prisoner
in the Crimea, and the near-absolute powers of the Soviet state as vested
(theoretically irrevocably) in the Communist party leadership abrogated to
the coup leaders, it could all too easily have worked.

In a country where the rule of law had long equated to the secret policeman's
knock on the door and obeisance to brutal authority was the norm, the last
thing they expected was a heroic, theatrical, public act of defiance. It was
the ultimate political opportunity, well taken by the ultimate political
opportunist. With his current sorry state of health and wildly oscillating
moods - reflected in his arbitrary dismissals of successive prime ministers
-- Yeltsin today looks more like a dictator in increasingly tatty democrat's
clothing.

When I last interviewed him in the Kremlin two years ago, his lumbering gait,
drooping eyelids and slurred speech were already a far cry from the energetic
and ambitious politician-on-the-make he had been in his "wilderness years".
But whatever fate may yet befall him - which will be decided by events in
Chechnya and the attitude of his successor in office towards the alleged
abuses of the Yeltsin family - his role in the demise of the Soviet empire
was pivotal.

The heroic farce of converting the Russian empire from dictatorship to
free-for-all required at its heart a doughty double act, with Mikhail
Gorbachev as the worthy straight man but the jester getting all the applause.
Yeltsin was Gorbachev's nemesis. A keen supporter of his reforms in the early
days of glasnost and perestroika, he was too much of an individualist, and
too hungry for power, to play the old-fashioned insider game. Whereas
Gorbachev would either ignore an awkward question or answer it with a speech,
Yeltsin would give a blunt answer. For example, when asked if Yegor Ligachev,
a hard-line opponent of reform, should be removed from office, he replied
simply: "Yes."

Yeltsin was the bull Gorbachev had unwittingly admitted into the china shop.
He was to prove uncontrollable. He used glasnost to accuse Gorbachev of
fostering his own "cult of personality" - which ironically only really
existed in the
"Gorbymania" of the West, particularly West Germany. Gorbachev's decision to
banish him from high office was interpreted by Yeltsin, unsurprisingly, as
proof that diktat was still the rule and the old order had not changed. But
it is equally easy to see it from the Gorbachev angle that here was a
reckless troublemaker who rather than help with the delicate restructuring
needed to democratise a fossilised system would simply pull the whole house
down. And that is what he did. While the wilfully blind Gorbachev continued
to believe he could heal a state that was terminally afflicted, Yeltsin saw
personal opportunity in the imminent chaos. His masterstroke, carried out
from his supposed political exile, was to reinvent Russia from within. The
RSFSR - the clumsy, bureaucratically entitled Russian Soviet Federated
Socialist Republic - was nominally just one, albeit by far the largest, of
the USSR's 15 constituent republics. In unmentionable reality, of course, it
was the heart of the empire, to the Soviet Union what England is to the
United Kingdom.

Yeltsin raised the Soviet equivalent of the Midlothian Question. He first got
himself elected as chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, nominally a
meaningless figurehead role, and then, as Gorbachev loosened the reins and
other republics demanded increasing degrees of independence, he claimed the
same for Russia. It was a brilliant move that left Gorbachev totally
outflanked, rather as Tony Blair might be if Ken Livingstone or even William
Hague got themselves elected speaker of an English assembly to equal the
Scots and Welsh and then declared independence.

In Yeltsin's case it was also the platform which allowed him to defeat the
coup of August 1991. The plotters claimed to represent the best interests of
the Soviet Union: Yeltsin had been democratically elected to represent the
people of Russia. The man it left without a leg to stand on, however, was the
man he nominally rescued: Mikhail Gorbachev. The details of those crucial
weeks and months, and the fraught power-brokering, brinksmanship and
showmanship are all chronicled with insight and flair in Leon Aron's masterly
biography, which is by far the best of the many attempts yet to pin down
Boris Yeltsin the man and the myth. Aron, a Soviet Jew who was allowed to
emigrate in 1977 at the age of 23, and has since carved an impressive
academic and journalistic career monitoring the affairs of his former
homeland, has produced a comprehensive and painstakingly well-researched -
and indexed - study that will be definitive when the obituary columns allow
him to add a final chapter. The book is much enriched by a selection of
well-chosen photographs, ranging from the formal Soviet-era pictures of Boris
the young apparatchik, to the surreal spectacle of the president with go-go
dancers on stage at a 1996 election rally, and a more sombre image of him
signing the accord that terminated the last bloody Chechen war.

One of Aron's more pertinent points, particularly to an Anglophone audience,
is identifying as Yeltsin's role model Charles de Gaulle and his idea of an
"authoritarian republic". In telling contrast, however, it should be
remembered that, asked for his own heroes, Gorbachev signally cited Spain's
King Juan Carlos, a man who inherited near absolute power and chose to give
it away. Looking at the shambling, sorry figure Yeltsin cuts today - forever
in and out of hospital, mumbling through an alcoholic daze, only coming round
occasionally to order brutal suppression of legitimate claims to
self-government, clinging to power to the last possible moment - it is the
ultimate irony that he resembles nobody so much as the late and unlamented
Leonid Brezhnev. Yet Brezhnev's long declining years are now known as the
"time of stagnation"; nobody could say that about the Yeltsin years. The past
decade under "Tsar Boris" has witnessed Russia teeter on the brink of both
anarchy and a return to authoritarianism, has seen communists revive and join
forces with God-fearing neo-Nazi Slav nationalists while the economy survives
only through the profit-driven efficiency of organised crime. It will be no
mean achievement if history's one-sentence verdict on Yeltsin is, as Aron
supposes: "He made irreversible the collapse of Soviet totalitarian
communism, dissolved the Russian empire, ended state ownership of the economy
- and held together and rebuilt his country while it coped with new reality
and losses."

That might yet prove to be wishful thinking on the part of an emigré who
wishes well to the land of his birth. But if true, it will be one of those
jokes of history that it should have fallen to Boris the boozer to keep his
country on a relatively straight line. For an epitaph, Aron looks to Samuel
Johnson's biography of the violent yet impressive poet Richard Savage: "Not
so much a Good Man as a Friend of Goodness."

*******
#9
New York Times
January 2, 2000
[for personal use only]
NEWS ANALYSIS
What Putin's Rule Portends for Russia
By MICHAEL WINES

MOSCOW, Jan. 1 -- Only Vladimir V. Putin knows for certain where he wants to
take Russia as the nation's acting president. But if his visit last week to
the federal Railways Ministry is any indication, Russia may be in for an
interesting trip indeed.

As the Moscow daily Kommersant reported, Mr. Putin performed the rote
ceremonial duties at a packed meeting of ministry employees eight days ago,
doling out awards and praising the railroads' contribution to the economy.

But then his tone turned icy. Why, he asked, did the railroads beseech the
Kremlin for money when certain customers got special shipping discounts? And
was it not odd that the ministry had granted certain unnamed people the
rights to collect a mountain of unpaid freight bills? And why was the
ministry buying rails from Japan when Russia's steel mills were idle and
offering fire-sale prices?

Then he left, even before the flustered deputy prime minister for industrial
policy could read remarks congratulating the Kremlin on its victory in that
week's parliamentary elections.

The extraordinary scene suggests there is more than one way to look at Mr.
Putin's pledge, made even before he became president on Friday, to restore a
strong central government to Russia.

Among Westerners, that promise mostly raises fears of a crackdown on civil
liberties or a return to authoritarian rule, fears fanned by Mr. Putin's
direction of the savage war in Chechnya. But his admirers insist that what he
truly wants to subjugate is the fantastically corrupt Russian bureaucracy and
economy.

There is little doubt which is the tougher task. President Boris N.

Yeltsin held immense power, but under his rule the ties between the Kremlin
and major state agencies, provincial governments and industries steadily
atrophied.

The national tolerance of corruption -- bribes, after all, were sometimes the
only way to accomplish anything under Soviet rule -- allowed bureaucrats to
ignore Moscow's dictates and to accumulate fortunes at the same time.

Moreover, much of the bureaucracy remains under the control of Soviet-era
bureaucrats who are either ideologically opposed to the Kremlin or simply
indifferent to its demands.

"To this day, the power structures of our country remain, according to the
method of work and the personnel that they have, in conflict with the new
regime," said Anatoly A. Sobchak, the former St. Petersburg mayor who is
regarded as Mr. Putin's mentor. "These aren't democratic structures that live
in a democratic state and are merely in opposition to the democratic state."

The new president, he said, "is capable of making these power structures
loyal and to make them work for the new democratic Russia."

Russians have heard all this before, of course, as recently as 1991, and it
has yet to come to pass. And Russians have swallowed promises of strong,
benevolent and progressive rule, from Nicholas II to Stalin, only to see them
end up in chaos or autocracy or both.

The new president will inherit near-dictatorial powers in the constitution
which his predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin, pushed into law after thwarting a
communist-led coup in 1993. Mr. Yeltsin never fully used those powers, either
because of physical or political infirmity or out of a belief they were not
needed.

Mr. Putin says he does not believe a new constitution is needed now. But he
also has indicated that he wants to make changes through the system using the
new plurality he won in Parliament in last month's elections.

Mr. Putin indicates in his writings that he believes Russia cannot become an
advanced nation until it roots out Soviet traditions and bridges the divide
that pits the communist third of the nation against the democratic remainder.

In a special document, "Russia at the turn of the millennium," published on a
Kremlin internet site (www.pravitelstvo.gov.ru/english/ statVPengl1.html), he
said that Russia would be mistaken not to recognize communism's
accomplishments. "But it would be an even bigger mistake not to realize the
outrageous price our country and its people had to pay for that Bolshevist
experiment."

"Russia needs a strong state power and must have it," he wrote. But a strong
state, he added, means "a law-based, workable federative state." And crucial
to that, he added, are a streamlined and corruption-free bureaucracy, a merit
system for hiring and rewarding government workers, a more powerful judiciary
and closer ties between Moscow and its regions.

Mr. Putin backed up his call for reform with some sobering statistics: even
if Russia's per-person gross domestic product were to rise by 8 percent per
year for the next 15 years, he wrote, the nation would still only reach the
level of present-day Portugal.

Achieving the level of Britain or France would require a 10 percent annual
growth rate -- and even then, Britain or France would have to stand still.

Investment has dwindled: only 4.5 percent of the nation's industrial
equipment was less than five years old in 1998, compared with nearly 30
percent in 1990.

Except in the electricity and raw-material industries, individual
productivity is one quarter of that in the United States.

Such shortcomings can be overcome, he said, but only by devising and swiftly
carrying out a plan for the nation's restructuring and recovery. "The
paramount word is fast," he wrote, "and we have no time for a slow start."

Mr. Sobchak, who recruited Mr. Putin to a team of economic experts when he
was St. Petersburg's reformist mayor in the early 1990's, said the new
president would benefit from his years as an intelligence agent in East
Germany, where he was in regular contact with Western businesses and
governments.

"He is a convinced supporter of the market economy," Mr. Sobchak said. "But
in contrast to the majority of Russian politicians, he knows the western
model of economic and political life not as a outsider but from the inside."

"He will not blindly transfer some of the recommendations of the West onto
Russia. And I don't think he'll repeat the mistakes we made in the beginning
of the 90's," when the country plunged into capitalism without the system of
laws and government regulations needed to sustain it.

Rather, Mr. Sobchak said, he expects Mr. Putin to follow the example of two
American presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who
amassed state power over the government and economy to shape the capitalistic
system that exists today.

Theodore Roosevelt took on entrenched monopolies, helping small businesses to
thrive and competition to flourish. Franklin Roosevelt reworked the federal
government to aid the poor, improve education and create a less crash-prone
financial system.

"His decisive interference in the economy during the Depression saved
America," Mr. Sobchak said of Franklin Roosevelt. "I think Putin has a
wonderful opportunity to become for Russia what the Roosevelts are for
America. And if he does this, he'll become the great president in the history
of the country."

*****

 
Return to CDI's Home Page  I  Return to CDI's Library