Siding with the oligarchs
In that summer of 1999 oil prices began to pick up, slowly but steadily, and the men running Russia could breathe more easily. But the cabinet imposed on Stepashin by the ‘family’ looked too much like an insiders’ club of oligarchs and their princes. Berezovsky was suspected of picking his cronies, and together with young Roman Abramovich, using his Siberian oil wealth, he seemed to control all money matters of importance. They were powerful players, but none of them secured the trust of the ‘family’ to win the forthcoming elections. The prize would go to the man who could win the full trust of the Kremlin and ensure that, after the event, no painful questions would be asked, let alone criminal proceedings opened on the lines proposed, only a few months earlier, by the Duma.
Luzhkov of Moscow was a runner-up, enjoying much support on TV. Primakov could profit from his professional image and his posture as a kind of political patriarch, supported by the regions. On the liberal left Nemtsov, Kiriyenko, Gaidar, and Yavlinsky were preparing to run. The most dangerous candidate, in the eyes of the ‘family’, was Luzhkov. He formed a movement named ‘Fatherland’ to promote a leader much more than an ideology, gathering widespread support including that of Tatarstan’s powerful president Mintimer Shaimiev, who brought not only the resources of his oil-rich republic but also the sympathies of a couple of million Muslims. The communists under Zyuganov campaigned against the President, renewing their wild accusations and promising re-nationalization of key industries. The ‘family’, meanwhile, drifted into a strange state of both nervousness and paralysis – a typical case of fin de régime. The only good news was coming from the oil markets: prices were rising, and tax receipts began picking up.
The Chechen rebels’ attack on Daghestan brought developments to crisis point. It was open rebellion against Moscow. Rasayev, the rebel leader, promised an Islamist state and threatened to cut Russia off from the Caspian Sea; this of course would affect one of Russia’s most important oil pipelines. The rebels were well armed with money and weaponry, some of it sophisticated. Where did the money and arms come from? And who were the fighters? Some obviously came from Pakistan, from Afghanistan, from Saudi Arabia, suggesting a concerted effort by radical Islamists planning to set up a bridgehead inside Russia. Moscow’s rumour mill was in full swing, producing likely and unlikely scenarios, from an Islamist conspiracy to the hand of the Kremlin directing a spectre to frighten the people, justify strong-arm politics and secure the presidential elections. The Russian troops sent into the province, mostly raw recruits, were ignominiously repulsed. Some of their weapons, sold or captured, turned up on the other side.
Prime minister
This was not a time for the faint-hearted. The Kremlin fired Stepashin, whose half-hearted crisis management had allowed things to go from bad to worse. On 9 August 1999, Vladimir Putin was appointed prime minister. Was he just another intelligence chief running the government? Russia had seen five prime ministers within seventeen months – why should a widely unknown Kremlin insider make much of a difference?
The difference was furnished by Yeltsin, who pronounced Putin his heir apparent. People in the street wondered at the FSB running the government, but Berezovsky contributed an appropriate explanation: ‘During the transition we need authoritarian measures to protect our way of capitalism. This is the only way to find the perspective of a democratic order of society.’
Some people rise because they overwhelm the world. Others rise by being underrated, and so it was with Putin. The Duma confirmed his appointment without any of the usual fuss. Yeltsin’s umpteenth premier was seen as a stopgap and not taken seriously; everybody was looking to the day after tomorrow. But the smart money, most of it belonging to Berezovsky, was on Putin. Berezovsky, visiting the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik in Berlin, explained his view of the situation back home: ‘There were two criteria. Our candidate had to be a reformer and to be able to push through his policies’ – as quoted by Alexander Rahr, who hosted the meeting.
But there were only a few months left to turn the widely unknown Putin into a national leader prominent enough to beat Luzhkov and Primakov in the forthcoming elections. The war in the northern Caucasus was an unavoidable test, but very risky. Putin lost no time in throwing more and more troops into the raging battle. He wanted, once and for all, a military answer to a political challenge. Official media reported from what was called the campaign against terror but failed to impress the general public. Meanwhile, time was running out, there was no Kremlin party, and opinion polls saw Putin only among the ‘also ran’ at a modest 5 per cent. In addition, new rumours about corruption among the ‘family’ made the rounds, and high-ranking Kremlin officials were said to have channelled vast amounts of IMF money into their private accounts out of Russia.
At this critical juncture war seemed to knock at the gates of Moscow. Several bombs went off, one bringing down the apartments of officers’ families in the northern Caucasus, another ripping apart an eight-storey building in a south-eastern suburb of Moscow, with 200 casualties. Four days later, the carnage was repeated, and 130 people died in a Moscow apartment block. The authorities accused Chechen terrorists of having instigated and coordinated the carnage, though proof was never provided. Instead, vigilante tenants in an apartment block in Ryasan apprehended a group of intelligence officers hiding sugarbags full of explosives in the basement. The excuse given by the embarrassed services was that they wanted to test the reaction of people.
Whatever the chain of responsibility, Russians were convinced that fighters from the Caucasus mountains were out to get them, and patriotic fever gripped the people. The miseries of daily life were conveniently forgotten. Questions of life and death dominated public discourse, and the security services moved to centre stage in their patriotic effort to save the Russian people. The name of Osama bin Laden was mentioned as the ominous financier in the background, sending a message to the outside world.
Putin put an ultimatum to the Chechen president Maskhadov to apprehend and extradite the terrorists – or else. When nothing happened, Putin had villages bombed and much of the Chechen capital Grozny flattened.
Saviour of the nation
Overnight, the war made the prime minister a hero, saviour of the Russian nation. When, on top of the political turmoil, Berezovsky mobilized the full furore of television and the provincial authorities followed advice from the Kremlin, the presidency seemed no longer out of sight. While war was unleashed on Chechnya, a new political party, Edinstvo (Unity), was called into being, with a bear – medved – as its emblem. The price of oil was rising, the state budget was recovering, and after the catastrophic breakdown of the past few years some modest growth was in the offing. The stage was set for Yeltsin’s not-so-secret crown prince to take his place centre stage. The Duma elections put Edinstvo, the hastily produced child of oligarchs and the Kremlin, into the pole position and prepared the launchpad for Putin.
On 26 March 2000 Zyuganov collected 29.4 per cent of the popular vote, Grigori Yavlinski put up a brave fight but reached not much over 5 per cent, while 52.6 per cent of the overall vote, with more than 70 per cent of the voters caring to go to the polls, carried Putin to the presidency of Russia. What was his past? What would his future be? And what are the implications of his political philosophy?