Russia: Ghosts Of 1999 Haunt Presidential Succession

by Brian Whitmore

Boris Yeltsin thanks Vladimir Putin for his services (ITAR-TASS)

August 9, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- It was the summer of 1999, and Boris Yeltsin's boozy and tumultuous presidency was drawing to a close.

Prosecutors were investigating Yeltsin's cronies -- and even members of his immediate family -- for graft. Russia was reeling from an economic crisis. Voters were in an angry and surly mood.

And elections were looming.

Such was the atmosphere when Yeltsin went on television eight years ago this week, on the morning of August 9, 1999, to tell the country that he was firing his government -- for the third time in less than a year.

Yeltsin replaced his prime minister, Sergei Stepashin, with Federal Security Service (FSB) head Vladimir Putin. The president then shocked Russians -- and much of the world -- by anointing the dour and obscure former KGB officer Putin as his chosen heir.

Putin's unlikely ascent followed months of chaos, turmoil, and uncertainty as rival clans ruthlessly battled to control Russia's first post-Soviet transition of power. And the events surrounding his meteoric rise in 1999 proved decisive. It was at this time when Russia's clumsy, fleeting, halting, and tentative experiment with Western-style liberal democracy ended.

New Game, New Rules

It was also when the new rules of the game -- the ones Russia's political elite plays by today -- were established: outgoing presidents name their successors, the bureaucracy is expected to march in lockstep to support the heir to the throne, and the Kremlin will use any and all means necessary, no matter how brutal, to get its way.

The Yeltsin-Putin succession and its aftermath also provides a lesson that is haunting Russia's current political elite. Once they are embedded in the Kremlin, Russian presidents become virtually all powerful and are impossible to control -- even by the patrons who orchestrated their rise to power.

"The Russian presidency is so strong according to our archaic constitution that it is impossible to trust anybody with it," says Moscow-based political analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky. "It is dangerous. It turns a person practically into a Tsar. This is dangerous even for a short term."

Putin said at the time that he hadn't planned to run for president, but added that he was accustomed to following the president's orders -- and would obey this one as well.

"Sergei Vadimovich [Stepashin] and I are military men. The president has made a decision, and we will carry it out," Putin said.

Months later, on March 26, 2000, Russian voters would make Putin their president in an election that looked more like a coronation.

Putin is widely expected to be able to anoint any successor he so chooses. According to recent polls, a startling 40 percent of Russian voters are prepared to cast ballots for Putin's chosen candidate in next March's election -- regardless of who that person is.

A More Popular Spymaster

When the deeply unpopular Yeltsin anointed Putin his heir eight years ago, however, it looked like the longest of long shots.

In August 1999, the most popular Russian politician was a steely former spymaster who talked about cleaning up graft, punishing the corrupt, and restoring Russia's lost pride. That savior's name, however, wasn't Putin. It was Yevgeny Primakov, who served as Yeltsin's prime minister from September 1998 until he was fired in May 1999.

Primakov had teamed up with Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and other regional leaders under the banner of the newly formed political party Fatherland-All Russia. The alliance appeared to have all the elements for political success -- a popular leader and a nationwide political machine that could deliver votes on election day.

The thought of a Primakov presidency terrified Yeltsin's inner circle.

Many Russians welcomed Putin's tough line on Chechnya (TASS)

But the game was about to change dramatically.

Days before Putin's appointment, Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev invaded Daghestan. Weeks later, a series of mysterious bombings of apartment blocks in Moscow and other cities terrified the country and killed more than 300 people.

Without presenting any evidence, Russian authorities immediately blamed the bombings on Basayev's rebels and a wave of anti-Chechen hysteria gripped the country.

Putin spoke like a gangster, vowing to hunt down and kill what he called "terrorists," memorably saying, "if we catch them in the toilet, we will wipe them out in the outhouse too."

Russian forces then bombed and invaded Chechnya, which had enjoyed de facto autonomy.

Putin's tough-guy stance touched a nerve among Russians. His popularity soared.

Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, says he began to take Putin seriously as a candidate in mid-October 1999, when his popularity surpassed Primakov's.

"He adequately met society's demands and aspirations. He rode the wave. And therefore part of the elite was prepared to support him seriously," Ryabov says.

There is no doubt that Putin benefited from the wave of terror that swept Russia following the apartment bombings. But many analysts say that autumn's dramatic events were no coincidence.

David Satter, author of "Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State," is one of those who believes that Russian authorities orchestrated the apartment bombings.

"I think that the evidence is sufficient to conclude that the FSB blew up the apartment buildings and organized a pretext for the beginning of the second Chechen war in order to create that miracle of electing somebody chosen by Yeltsin," Satter says.

Extreme Measures

With Putin wildly popular, such extreme measures will probably not be needed this time around. But nevertheless, Satter says the precedent has been set and such options are now on the table.

"We have a terrible precedent, because in the minds of everyone is the idea that power changes hands with the help of such methods," Satter says. "So it is not excluded that there could be further provocations, maybe not on that scale, in the run-up to the 2008 elections."

Putin also benefited from a barrage of nonstop propaganda promoting him on media controlled by the Kremlin and its allies.

Satter says the bureaucracy, got the message loud and clear that it was time to march in lockstep behind the new leader.