Putin's Russia: Slowing the pendulum without stopping the clock

International Affairs

Volumn 77, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 867-884

  Nicholson, Martin ^a  

^a Royal Institute of International Affairs   (Russian Federation)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0041077676     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2346.00223     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Interview with Eldar Ryazanov, broadcast on Ostankino Channel 1 TV, 16 Nov. 1993, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, 19 Nov. 1993, SU/1850 B/8.
2. Gleb Pavlovsky, 'Termidor 9: zavtra pravy konservatism', Ekspert, no. 001, 18 Jan. 1999.
3. Yu. M. Baturin et al., Epokha Yeltsina: ocherki politicheskoi istorii (Moscow: Vagrius, 2001), p. 782.
4. This is Putin's own account in a series of interviews published during his presidential campaign. See Natalya Gevorkian et al., Ot pervogo litsa: razgovory s Vladimirom Putinym (Moscow: Vagrius, 2000), p. 131. The interviews were also published in English as Vladimir Putin, first person (London: Arrow, 2000). Page references are to the Russian edition.
5. Decree of 31 Dec. 1999, 'On guarantees for the President of the Russian Federation, having laid down his office, and members of his family', http://press.maindir.gov.ru/press/messages.asp?yy=1999&mm =12&dd=31&nn=7 (in Russian, as are further internet references in this article, unless otherwise indicated). This was one of the first decrees Putin issued as acting president following Yeltsin's New Year's Eve resignation.
6. The sequence of events was convenient enough from an electoral point of view to have aroused the suspicion that the bombings and even the incursion into Dagestan had been provoked by Yeltsin's regime to launch Putin into the presidency. But no hard evidence has been produced to support this theory.
7. Putin's election website named the complete team: http://www.putin2000.ru/05/.
8. Yelena Tregubova, 'Vladimir na shee', Kommersant vlast, 22 Feb. 2000, pp. 5-7.
9. 'Otkrytoe pis'mo Vladimira Putina k rossiyskim izbiratelyam', http://www.putin2000.ru/07/. Also published in Izvestiya and other central newspapers on 25 Feb. 2000. A translation, 'Open letter by Vladimir Putin to the Russian voters', was carried in Johnson's Russia List, no. 4133, 25 Feb. 2000, http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4133.html.
10. Russia at the turn of the century, http://www.pravitelstvo.gov.ru/english/statVP_eng_1.html (in English).
11. Gevorkian et al., Ot pervogo litsa.
12. For the first, see his inaugural speech on 7 May 2000, http://www.press.maindir.gov.ru/press/messages.asp?yy=2000&mm=5&dd=7&nn=1, and for the second, his interview with some of the central media on 25 Dec. 2000 (Nezavisimaya gazeta, 26 Dec. 2000).
13. Gevorkian et al., Ot pervogo litsa, p. 39.
14. Interview with Komsomolskaya pravda, 11 Feb. 2000, translation in Johnson's Russia List, no. 4106, 13 Feb. 2000, http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4106.html.
15. Putin's demonstrative support of a Chief Rabbi who is a rival to one supported by Vladimir Gusinsky betrays ulterior motives, however.
16. 'Russia was and will remain a great country. This is determined by the inalienable characteristics of its geopolitical economic and cultural existence' (millennium article); 'Russia is not haggling for the status of a great power. It is one. This is determined by its great potential, history and culture' (interview with Welt am Sonntag, 10 June 2000, http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events/38.html).
17. 'Russia was and will remain a great country. This is determined by the inalienable characteristics of its geopolitical economic and cultural existence' (millennium article); 'Russia is not haggling for the status of a great power. It is one. This is determined by its great potential, history and culture' (interview with Welt am Sonntag, 10 June 2000, http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events/38.html).
18. Gevorkian et al., Ot pervogo litsa, pp. 119-22.
19. Apart from a number of public remarks by Pavlovsky, it is clear from apparently genuine intercepts of telephone conversations between him, Voloshin and Surkov that the three were behind this episode. The Russian text of the intercepts was posted on the internet at http://www.stringer-agency.ru.
20. Gevorkian et al., Ot pervogo litsa, pp. 181-2.
21. Vadim Volkov, 'Organised violence, market building and state formation', in Alena V. Ledeneva and Marina Kurkchiyan, eds, Economic crime in Russia (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2000), pp. 571-9.
22. See Putin's 18 July 2001 press conference, http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events/264.html.
23. Putin, like Yeltsin, belongs to no political party.
24. A Communist, Gennadii Seleznev, retained his post as Speaker, and the Communists gained the chairmanship of significant Duma committees.
25. Lilya Shevtsova, 'Vybornoe samoderzhavie pri Putine: perspektivy i problemy evolyutsii politicheskogo rezhima', Moscow Carnegie Centre Briefings 3: 1, Jan. 2001.
26. In his 8 July 2000 address to parliament Putin said, 'It is advantageous for a weak power to have weak parties. It is calmer and more comfortable for it to live according to the rules of political bargaining. But a strong power is interested in strong rivals. Only in conditions of political competition is a serious dialogue on the development of our state possible.' http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events/42.htm
27. Gevorkian et al., Ot pervogo litsa, p. 133.
28. 'Otkrytoe pis'mo'.
29. Putin's predecessor as prime minister, Sergei Stepashin, made several statements to this effect. See e.g. his address to a Strengthening Democracy Institute event on 13 March 2000, http://ksgnotesi.harvard.edu/BCSIA/SDI.nsf/web/Election2000?OpenDocument&ExpandSection=9,6>.
30. He paid two dramatic visits to the war zone, on 31 Dec. 1999, the day of Yeltsin's resignation, and on 20 March 2000, six days before the elections, in an SU-27 training jet.
31. Putin interview with Kommersant Daily, 10 March 2000.
32. He has paid only one visit to Chechnya since becoming president, on 14 April 2001.
33. VTsIOM monthly review for June 2001, 3 July 2001, http://www.polit.ru/documents/428650.html.
34. Percipient observers at the time questioned whether such a far-reaching attempt at recentralization would not run into the sand, as have top-down reforms throughout Russia's history. See William Tompson, 'Putin's power plays', The World Today, July 2000, pp. 1-3.
35. The last of the federal treasury branch offices was opened in Tatarstan on 17 March 2001.
36. Interview with the Russian TV station RTR, 23 Aug. 2000, http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events/60.html.
37. Putin was on a visit to Spain when Gusinsky was arrested in June 2000 and was unable to respond cogently to press questions. Gazprom Media's boardroom coup against NTV on 3 April 2001 stole the limelight from Putin's annual address to parliament on the same day.
38. Interview with Le Figaro, 23 Oct. 2000, www.president.kremlin.ru/events/85.html.
39. Speech to a conference of heads of regional courts, 24 Jan. 2000, http.president.kremlin.ru/events/2.html.
40. The classic case is Moscow Mayor Luzhkov's breach of a Constitutional Court ruling that his system of registration for Moscow inhabitants is unconstitutional.
41. Putin was speaking at a meeting in Moscow on 9 July 2001 with the president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, and to participants to an international conference on justice: http://www.president. kremlin.ru/events/254.html. Seventy-two per cent of respondents to a VTsIOM survey in June 2001 favoured the death penalty for serious crimes.
42. Nikolai Aksenenko, the railways minister, has family interests in commercial enterprises linked to his ministry; the press minister, Mikhail Lesin, has commercial interests in TV advertising.
43. Putin, press conference, 18 July 2001, http://www.president.kremlin.ru/events/264.html.
44. Legislation urged by the Financial Action Task Force against Money Laundering (FATF) in its annual report in June 2001: http://www.oecd.org/fatf/pdf/PR-20010622_en.pdf (in English).
45. VTsIOM survey of the social-political situation in Russia in June 2001, 3 July 2001, http://www.polit.ru/printable/428650.html.
46. 'Otkrytoe pis'mo'.
47. VTsIOM survey of social and political opinion, Jan. 2001, polit.ru, 26 Jan. 2001.
48. For a discussion of this vital subject see Alena Ledeneva, Unwritten rules: how Russia really works (London: Centre for European Reform, 2001), reviewed in this issue of International Affairs.