On March 26, Russian voters went to the polls to elect their next
president. Eleven candidates ran for the office vacated by Boris
Yeltsin on December 31, 1999. The leading contender--Vladimir
Vladimirovich Putin, Yeltsin's hand-picked successor and Russia's
Acting President and Prime Minister since Yeltsin's departure--won
with approximately 52 percent of the vote.
Putin's rise to power is significant
beyond the fact that this is Russia's first at least nominally
constitutional presidential succession since the fall of communism.
His ascendancy has brought ideas, approaches to governance, and new
faces to the Kremlin that likely will define the priorities and
character of the Russian government for at least the next decade.
Moreover, it has solidified the presence of post-communist
political elites who support a strong state but not the restoration
of the Soviet regime.
The
Russian voters know little about Putin, who served previously as
head of the Federal Security Service (which Russians call the FSB)
and secretary of the Security Council, and as an intelligence
officer for the Soviet KGB for 16 years, from 1975 to 1991.
Nevertheless, his popularity runs high; about 50 percent of the
voters favored him in pre-election polls, increasing expectations
that he would win the elections in the first round. Voter turnout
has been an important issue, since the election results are valid
only if 50 percent of eligible voters come to the polls.
Unfortunately, Putin's policies as Acting
President do not bode well for Russian democracy. For example, he
has promoted the indiscriminate use of force by the Russian
military in Chechnya and raised the influence of the military and
security services in Russian society. And despite repeated promises
to fight corruption and business tycoons (known as oligarchs), he
has allowed unprecedented violations of anti-monopoly legislation
by Kremlin-connected business owners. Some of these businessmen
recently acquired large aluminum interests that represent 60
percent of Russia's (and 20 percent of global) production
capacity.
Because of his popularity, Putin may no
longer feel compelled to bolster democratic reforms. The
strengthening of the rule of law, the development of a transparent
market economy, and progress toward establishing a genuine
democracy seem less certain than they were under Boris Yeltsin.
Thus, what Putin does after these elections--not what he says--will
more clearly define Russia's domestic agenda and its international
relations in the future.
WHY PUTIN GENERATES CONCERN
While the 1998 election law and the letter
of the 1993 Russian constitution have been observed in the
presidential elections thus far, serious concerns about Putin's
campaign were expressed in the West. Many observers within and
outside Russia, for example, criticize Putin for using the war in
Chechnya and control of the media to boost his popularity with the
Russian voters. They also criticize his entourage for using
outright slander, lies, negative political campaign tactics, and
other "dirty tricks" to destroy his opponents.
Moreover, pro-Putin businessmen control
crucial electronic and other media outlets. Yeltsin's inner circle
of supporters, which boosted the selection of Putin as Prime
Minister and Acting President, included Boris Berezovsky, a
businessman who controls Russia's ubiquitous television station,
Channel 1 (ORT) and who owns important newspapers, such as
Kommersant and Novye Izvestiya. These outlets, and
government-controlled Channel 2 (RTR), have been consistent in
promoting both Putin's candidacy and the war in Chechnya. They have
waged sustained and often vicious attacks against Putin's rivals,
former Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yurii
Luzhkov.
Putin's administration has implemented a
much tighter policy on spin control than was prevalent under
Yeltsin. According to some reports, at least 17 senior ex-KGB
officials have been promoted to senior Kremlin positions by Putin.
Some of these officials conducted political repression under the
Soviet regime. They have replaced
most of the reformers who came to power with Yeltsin and served in
his administration.
Putin's cabinet nominations as Acting
President also raise concerns. His nominee for First Deputy Prime
Minister (the top economic slot), Mikhail Kasyanov, had worked for
the Soviet central planning agency, GOSPLAN, and was a Ministry of
Finance official in charge of debt negotiations. Kasyanov, who
reportedly is close to the Sibneft oil company, forced through an
agreement to pay Western investors in the Russian government's
short-term bonds (known as GKOs) a mere three cents on the dollar.
He has no prior experience in macroeconomic reform.
By
comparison, Putin's only progressive steps thus far have been in
nominating German Gref, a pro-market economic policy expert, to
draft his economic program and in promoting the market-oriented
Alexei Kudrin to the position of First Deputy Finance Minister.
However, Gref's economic package came under a strong attack even
before it was published. For example, Professor Evgeny Yasin, the
leading Russian economic expert and the former Minister of Economy,
has expressed strong doubts that it will be implemented.
Putin's parliamentary deal with communists
on the nomination of the Duma speaker and the division of
parliamentary committees would have been inconceivable under
Yeltsin, who publicly expressed disdain for communists. However,
Putin's alliance with the communists may have been opportunistic.
Moscow-based observers have said that Putin's goal was to deny his
chief rival for the presidency, Evgeny Primakov, the opportunity to
create a coalition with the communists and become speaker of the
Duma. As the result of
the Duma deal, Russians apparently perceived that the communists
had lost their zeal. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov's popularity
has declined steadily from 30 percent to about 15 percent since the
deal was announced.
| Putin's Past: Spy, Reformer, Enforcer
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on October 7, 1952, to a
working-class family with connections to the secret police in
Leningrad, now St. Petersburg (the imperial capital of the Romanov
dynasty). An overachiever, Putin excelled in his studies,
particularly German, wrestling, biology, and the humanities.
Fascinated with espionage, he volunteered his services to the KGB
but was rejected. Upon graduation, he was accepted to the Leningrad
State University Law School. In 1974 he became a Leningrad city
judo champion, and in 1975 he was recruited to join a Leningrad KGB
counterintelligence department.
Later, he was transferred to a political intelligence unit, and
in 1985 he was sent to Dresden, in the German Democratic Republic
(GDR), where he apparently coordinated Soviet espionage operations
with STASI, the notorious East German secret police. The STASI
decorated Lieutenant-Colonel Putin with a minor medal before he
returned to Leningrad in 1990. There, amidst the chaos and agony
that characterized the death throes of the Soviet Union, he was
appointed Deputy Rector of the Leningrad State University for
international affairs, a dead-end appointment for a mid-ranking KGB
officer.
Putin's friends in Leningrad recommended him as an assistant to
former Leningrad University law professor and then Mayor Anatoly
Sobchak, a rising star in democratic politics. An efficient
executive, Putin became Sobchak's chief of staff, then Deputy
Mayor. Sobchak reportedly relied heavily on Putin for day-to-day
management of St. Petersburg's affairs, especially in the area of
international investments by companies such as Coca-Cola and
Dresdner Bank. Putin played a key role in rehabilitating St.
Petersburg's decrepit infrastructure and privatizing numerous
assets worth billions of dollars.1
St. Petersburg, however, was also one of the most corrupt cities
in Russia and the site of many murders of city officials and
businessmen. The most tragic was the November 1998 contract killing
of Galina Starovoitova, a Duma member, a leader in the democratic
movement, and an anti-corruption crusader. Her murderers are still
at large.
Putin rose through the ranks of the Kremlin bureaucracy, first
occupying the position of deputy to the powerful Pavel Borodin,
head of the Kremlin business empire, in 1996. He specialized in
multimillion-dollar international contracts and transactions and
supervised many state holdings abroad. Later, he became deputy
chief of administration and head of the control department
responsible for executing presidential decisions. This position
offered Putin unique influence over federal and regional leaders
who were tainted with corruption.
In 1998, Putin was promoted to chief of the secret police, the
FSB, which was the successor to the KGB's Second Chief Directorate
(internal security). He purged the FSB of pro-communist officers
and promoted a number of former St. Petersburg associates. Yeltsin
reportedly was impressed with his cold efficiency and entrusted him
with the most sensitive missions. He was made Secretary of the
Security Council in early 1999 and was instrumental in the firing
of Prosecutor General Yurii Skuratov, who had authorized
investigations into members of Yeltsin's inner circle for corrupt
activities.
Throughout 1999, Boris Yeltsin sought a successor. On August 9,
he fired then-Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin and promoted Putin to
that post. In his nomination speech, Yeltsin "officially" named
Putin his heir apparent.2
1. Michael Wines, "Putin Retains Soviet
Discipline While Steering Toward Reform," The New York
Times, February 20, 2000, in "The Johnson's Russia List," No.
4121, February 20, 2000.
2. Putin's reaction, as carried by the
Russian media, was characteristically understated: "we are military
people, we do as we are told."
|
Popularity and Power
Putin remained extremely popular during
his term as Acting President, trying to be all things to all
people. During a voter call-in session on a radio station, he told
listeners that he shared their concerns about the threat of
communism in Russia. Later, however, he
initiated a Duma coalition with the communist faction to the
detriment of the center and the center-right factions. He tried to
stake out a centrist position by enunciating public support for a
referendum on the introduction of private land ownership but then
shied away from granting political support to the Union of Right
Forces, which sought a referendum on the issue. He encouraged his
surrogates to call him a statist (a gosudarstvennik or
derzhavnik) as well as a liberal conservative
(liberal'nii conservator).
Although Putin kept the details of his
platform fairly quiet, on many occasions he communicated his belief
in a strong state as a "traditional Russian value" while calling
for an increase in Western investment. He explicitly rejected the
Anglo-Saxon model of liberal governance, saying it was ill-suited
for Russia. He talked about
fighting corruption but allowed those accused of corruption by
Russian ex-Prosecutor General Yurii Skuratov or wanted for
interrogation by the Swiss authorities, such as his former boss
Pavel Borodin, to walk free.
Yet
Putin often states that a return to the Soviet past, whether
economically or through any attempt to recreate the U.S.S.R. "in
its former shape," is out of the question. He has promised not to
introduce censorship, and he hails democracy. Putin frequently
remarks that the only dictatorship he supports is the dictatorship
of the law.
| Constitutional Changes Wanted by Putin
Putin has indicated that the Russian constitution should be
changed to strengthen the president's powers. He feels that a
four-year term is too short and suggests extending it to seven
years, starting in 2004. He has suggested a referendum to confirm
such a change. If this occurs, Putin conceivably could stay in
power until 2011. By then, he will be 58. He might decide to
further amend the constitution to allow a third presidential term,
which would allow him to stay in power until 2018.
Putin also dislikes the fact that regional governors are elected
rather than appointed, though he admits that there are ways to keep
governors accountable to the central authority in Moscow without
abolishing the elections. Political allies of Putin have floated
the idea of nominating governors-general, or super-governors to
supervise large regions of Russia.
However, both the length of the presidential term and the
election of governors are part of the 1993 constitution. If Putin
opens the Pandora's box of constitutional amendments, the governors
and other opponents might retaliate with demands that the
president's powers be restricted. For example, they could press for
the abolition of one of the president's broadest powers-the right
to fire the cabinet or dissolve the Duma.
|
Credibility Gap
It is more important to watch what Putin does than
to listen to what he says. Putin's actions since becoming Acting
President have caused increased concern among Moscow's democrats
that he may be an authoritarian camouflaged as a liberal.
One
of his spokesmen, while visiting Washington, recently said that the
Duma will feature a "shifting coalition," in which the Unity Party
will cooperate with both the communists and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's
nationalists on some legislative initiatives while working with the
center-right on others. This spokesman also said that discipline,
the scrupulous execution of presidential decisions, and a
"tightening of screws" will take place, but without destroying
democratic norms. Attraction of
foreign investment was mentioned as a priority. Yet Putin has not
yet provided the vital support that the right needs to conduct a
referendum on private land ownership and other such important
policies.
Putin has expanded his political base
beyond his initial circle of governors, military generals, and
security officials. It now includes the center-right, the
nationalists, and some elements of the communist electorate. By
doing so, he has attracted some of nationalist Vladimir
Zhirinovsky's supporters. He also has
captured the support of the leaders of the center-right party known
as the Union of Right Forces.
However, many in the anti-communist
electorate, and especially the veterans of the dissident movement,
remain deeply uncertain about Putin's motives, primarily because of
his KGB credentials, the war in Chechnya, his efforts to expand the
role of the military in society, and his penchant for rough
rhetoric.
Putin, for example, has expressed
admiration for two of Russia's cruelest and most dictatorial
leaders.
The
image Putin projects is that of a rational politician--a statist
guided by what he considers to be Russia's national interests and a
supporter of order and discipline, but one who understands the need
for Russia to lure foreign investment and develop market
mechanisms. His rhetoric often matches his tough image.
Not
an eloquent public speaker, Putin sometimes uses colloquial words
that resonate with the public. For example, his description of the
goal of the Chechen campaign--"whacking the bandits in the john
[toilet]"--became a popular quote. Russians compare him to Andropov
and Chilean General Augusto Pinochet, but his supporters choose
instead General Charles De Gaulle, the democratically elected
patriotic French general with an autocratic style. Putin, who did
not seize power like Pinochet in a military coup, would be more
like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Peru's Alberto Fujimori.
Consolidation of Power
The
broad support for Putin among Russia's regional leaders, as well as
its military and business tycoons, demonstrates that the
post-Soviet elite has found its leader. In a move some Russian
political scientists compare to the consolidation of power
following the 1789 French Revolution (a "Thermidor"), Putin is
expected to curb down the free-for-all nature of post-communist
politics and business practices, including rampant corruption, and
uphold discipline, law, and order.
However, he is not expected to undo the
main accomplishment of the post-communist era--the division of
Soviet state property. Thus, his regime will not restore the Soviet
system, but rather will consolidate and continue the Yeltsin model
of "bureaucratic capitalism."
What
is unknown is how well Putin understands that heavy-handed state
regulation and pervasive bureaucracy stifle democratic policies and
economic freedom. It is also unclear whether Putin or his advisers
understand that technological innovation, advanced
telecommunications, and venture capital--the engines of economic
growth in the early 21st century--thrive in open and free societies
but not in police states.
Putin's heavy-handedness can be seen in at
least one recent move. Russia has a state-run structure for
supervising elections, the Federal Electoral Commission, with
regional and district commissions functioning on the local level. Nevertheless,
Putin recently placed the Interior Ministry, which supervises the
uniformed police, in charge of the electoral process, putting
Russia's evolution into a full-fledged democracy in jeopardy.
Andrey Piontkovsky, Director of the
Strategic Studies Center in Moscow and a prominent analyst of
contemporary Russian affairs, has been harshly critical of
Putin:
This is a man who has shown a complete
disregard for human life, cynicism and hypocrisy, and a willingness
to use war and the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers and
innocent civilians as a PR instrument in his election campaign.
Other critics, mostly Soviet-era
dissidents such as Andrey Sakharov's widow, Elena Bonner, called
for a boycott of the elections by citing the lack of real
alternatives. Their calls have
not resonated with the people.
Chechnya: Military Vehicle for Electoral
Victory
Putin's rise to power indicates that
Moscow is willing to use its massive military might to establish
central control and repel any threats to its rule. Since the
beginning of the Chechen war, the military has played a more
prominent role in Russian politics and society as a whole. For the
first time since communist rule ended, military education for
Russian boys in secondary schools has begun. Now, teenagers will be
taught weekly to march and shoot Kalashnikov submachine guns
and will spend five days at a military base to prepare them for
military service.
Putin also has signed a decree allowing
the military to enlist 14-16-year-old orphans or "problematic"
boys, turning the military into a quasi-correctional
institution.
For
the military, the war in Chechnya was an opportunity to
rehabilitate its image following defeats in the Afghanistan war
(1979-1989) and the first Chechen war (1994-1996). It is true that
Chechnya had turned into an enclave of lawlessness, hostage-taking,
and even instances of slavery, and that Russia had to address the
security challenge that this posed. But for the Russian military,
it was an opportunity to send a signal to Russia's neighbors, as
well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), that Russia
would not bow to Western criticism of excessive use of force
against innocent civilians. Finally, it was a
signal to the Russian Federation's other ethnically based regions
that separatism will be crushed with an iron fist.
Putin hailed the war as a rallying point
that would revive territorial unity, national pride, and the
military's morale. As a statist, he believes that Russia's armed
forces play a central role in upholding Russia's power and
international standing. According to Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) election observers and Russian
reporters, military officers apparently instructed their large
conscript body (close to 1 million people) to vote for Putin's
Unity Party in the elections.
As
far as Russia's voters are concerned, the Russian military's
heavy-handed approach in Chechnya was appropriate, despite the fact
that Chechens are Russian citizens. Moscow made little distinction
between rebels and non-combatants in Chechnya. All Chechens were
demonized on Russian television and in the media as "animals,"
"terrorists," and Russia-haters. Incidences of Russian artillery
firing on civilian targets and military units carrying out
executions and rapes, torturing suspects, arresting civilians with
no warrant, and creating obstacles to the evacuation of wounded
Chechen civilian personnel, including children, were documented.
As
operations continue in Chechnya, the Russian military demonstrates
that does not adhere to internationally accepted norms of warfare,
especially regarding the treatment of civilians. Thousands of
civilians, Russian soldiers, and Chechen fighters have been killed
in the war, and an estimated 250,000 people are refugees.
Nevertheless, the war remains popular in Russia and Putin continues
to endorse it.
Threats to the Freedom of Speech
Putin's pursuit of a strong presidency
already has endangered one of the most important achievements of
the Yeltsin era--a vibrant media. Putin's deputy campaign chief has
proclaimed that Putin has the right to control the media to achieve
national accord and to "use all power at Mr. Putin's disposal" to
punish critics. The war in
Chechnya triggered unprecedented attacks by the government against
the media. This development bodes poorly for freedom of speech and
the future of the free press in Russia.
Throughout the war, Putin authorized
stronger military controls over the media in the battle zone and
appointed a wartime media czar, Yeltsin's former spokesman Sergey
Yastrzhembsky, to control the flow of information about the war to
the press. He authorized the creation of SORM, a government program
to monitor e-mail and other electronic or Internet forms of
communication. In mid-February 2000, the government openly
acknowledged that all Russian Internet traffic is copied to the
secret service's servers. The Russian
government is also seeking to regulate Internet sites in the same
way that it now controls the print media.
The
recent disappearance (and reappearance) of Vladimir Babitsky, a
Radio Liberty correspondent who was critical of Russia's military
conduct in Chechnya, has heightened concerns about freedom of
speech and freedom of the press. Radio Liberty is funded by the
U.S. Congress. Babitsky, a Russian citizen, was apprehended by the
Russian military in the Chechen war zone on January 15. He was
subjected to interrogation by the military and civilian
authorities, and held in the notorious Chernokozovo detention
center.
Acting President Putin declared that he
was supervising Babitsky's case personally. Babitsky was not
formally charged with any crime; instead of being released,
however, he was allegedly "exchanged" by the military for several
Russian soldiers who had been captured by the Chechens --a story that
Chechen commanders denied. Three weeks later, Babitsky surfaced in
Daghestan. The Russian government rearrested him and said he would
be prosecuted for possession of a forged passport and cooperation
with the Chechens. He was released from custody only after repeated
high-level pleas from the West and the personal intervention of
Putin. The journalist is
under criminal investigation and is not allowed to leave
Moscow.
During Babitsky's detention, journalists
from both sides of the political spectrum in Russia issued joint
statements denouncing the government and demanding the truth about
his whereabouts. Leaders of the Russian Union of Journalists wrote
that "the threat to freedom of speech in Russia has for the first
time in the last several years transformed into its open and
regular suppression."
The
Babitsky case is perceived "not as an isolated episode, but almost
as a turning point in the struggle for a press that serves the
society and not the authorities." The Glasnost
Defense Foundation, a respectable organization that fosters the
development of civil society in Russia, lists 88 instances of
intimidation of journalists and writers by authorities since last
December.
CONCLUSION
Putin's ascendancy to power in the Kremlin
reflects yet another historic transformation in Russia. All rulers
have imposed their indelible stamp on the country, and under each,
life has been very different. Under Putin, the state will once
again become stronger while certain civic freedoms may well become
weaker. The probability of a large-scale crackdown is not very
high, but it is possible that the government under Putin might take
"pinpoint" actions against its opposition.
The
task for Putin will be immense. Russia's foreign debt schedule
(repayments will mushroom by 2007 to over half of the projected
federal budget), its obsolete industrial base, and its aging
population will force Moscow to seek massive Western investment and
take steps to prevent capital flight, which annually reaches up to
$24 billion. To succeed, the new President must make the Russian
economy more attractive for foreign and domestic business. To do
so, he must move fast on all fronts: pushing through legislation to
allow land ownership, including the right to sell and mortgage
agricultural land, cracking down on corruption, disciplining the
bureaucracy, and introducing a business-friendly tax code and new
bankruptcy legislation.
President Bill Clinton has attempted to
personalize relations with Putin, just as he did with Yeltsin, and
has lavished praise on the presidential frontrunner. Paraphrasing
Margaret Thatcher's assessment of Gorbachev, he has said that Putin
is a man "the United States can do business with." Regarding the
Chechen war, President Clinton stated recently that Putin is
engaged in the "liberation" of Grozny, Chechnya's capital. Rather than join
with the European leaders who have condemned the bloodshed in
Chechnya, President Clinton has said that he sees the conflict as
an internal Russian affair. He also has been intent on
distinguishing the Russian military's atrocities in Chechnya from
Belgrade's treatment of Kosovars.
Yet
international organizations, including the European Union, the
United Nations, and the OSCE, have documented and denounced
Russia's excessive use of military force against Chechen civilians.
The Clinton Administration should not attempt to minimize the
suffering in Chechnya just to secure good relations with Putin or
favorable ratings from the Russian people.
Russia is going through an important
political change in which the post-communist elite and the Russian
voters are electing a new leader and a new administration for a new
era. Many of the elites, who were given control of important
properties during privatization, will seek to consolidate their
political control of the next government. Because a democratic
Russia is less likely to become a threat to its neighbors and the
world, the safety and survival of Russian democracy should be of
utmost importance to the United States.
Dr. Ariel
Cohen is Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies in
the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International
Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Endnotes