Putin’s Pursuit of the Power Vertical
By
Caroline McGregor
Staff
Writer
When
Vladimir Putin became president four years ago, the
Kremlin was largely impotent.
Defiant, often corrupt governors held seats in the Federation Council,
which gave them heavy political weight, immunity from prosecution and the
freedom to run their territories like fiefdoms.
Oligarchs ran swaths of the economy in similar fashion, while the Kremlin
turned a blind eye, or, in some cases, winked, conferring perks like cars with
government tags to the privileged few.
The nomenklatura, who were complicit in this
merger of government and business, had grown antsy that they would be exposed
once Boris Yeltsin left office, but after Putin's
succession was assured, they had relaxed, feeling confident he would protect
them.
All these characters were fair game, however, for NTV, which skewered them
along with Putin on its popular weekly satire
program, "Kukly." The feisty station, which
had supported the Kremlin's opponents in the elections, was also unrelenting in
its coverage of the Kremlin's bloody war in
One by one, Putin has brought them all into line
with the power vertical. Today,
In four years, Putin has systematically
concentrated power in his own hands and we've seen the weakening of every
institution and actor apart from the Kremlin.
He claims noble motives, saying consolidation was necessary to assert the
state's interests and steer the country back to greatness.
But critics, like Yabloko party leader Grigory Yavlinsky, say Putin is limiting
Putin, however, doesn't see
state control and vibrant society as mutually exclusive.
He counted the strengthening of "the vertical of executive power"
among the key achievements of his first term in his Feb. 12 campaign speech at
What Putin seems to want is a democracy where he
is not asked tough questions, a civil society that heeds his instructions, and
a press that is "civilized" -- in other words, cooperative.
In fact, he seems to want everything around him to be cooperative. Unlike
Yeltsin, who thrived on public battles, Putin
dislikes confrontation to such an extent that much of his consolidation drive
can be seen as a drive to root out anyone capable of confronting him.
"Putin has an insecurity complex. A very
deep and profound one, which makes him hate people who may challenge his
authority," Yevgeny Kiselyov,
the editor of Moskovskiye Novosti,
said in a recent interview.
The black and white mentality from Putin's days
as a Cold War-era spy has stuck with him, that whoever is not with him is
against him.
With friendly faces in the Kremlin press pool, he is so insulated from
provocative questions that he reacts with knee-jerk anger in the rare event
that he is challenged, memorably proposing, in November 2002, that a Le Monde reporter get a circumcision and join the Muslim
extremists he asked about.
At his inauguration, on
In recent weeks, as proof his hands are no longer tied by his predecessor,
he finished the job, replacing Mikhail Kasyanov, a prime minister who was not
in his pocket, with Mikhail Fradkov, a prime minister who is. As with the Federation Council and
State Duma, Putin now has a
government that is under his full control.
When Putin was appointed prime minister in August
1999, the Duma was still dominated by the Communists,
who for much of the 1990s had blocked budgets and laws and even threatened
Yeltsin with impeachment. By the time Putin became
president, he had a supportive, but unstable, pro-presidential majority. By the
end of his first term, he had control of the Duma
locked down.
He has more than 300 United Russia foot soldiers ready to execute his
legislative wishes, thanks to the cunning of political operatives who cut their
teeth under Yeltsin, like former chief of staff Alexander Voloshin
and his protege Vladislav Surkov.
A subservient Federation Council was achieved earlier. Fresh off his May
inauguration, Putin pushed through reforms that
restructured the upper house, stripping governors of their seats and thus their
clout in
Now, in place of stubborn regional bosses in the Federation Council, there
are pro-presidential senators, like the two from Tuva:
Lyudmila Narusova, wife of
the late former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak,
Putin's first mentor, and Sergei
Pugachyov, the head of Mezhprombank
and an oligarch seen to be close to Putin.
He also moved to diminish governors' authority back home. For help, he
called on the nebulous group of law enforcement and security services officials
known collectively as the siloviki, to whose ranks Putin belongs.
Having issued a decree creating seven federal districts within a week of
taking office, Putin dispatched seven envoys to tame
regional budgets and unruly governors, like Sverdlovsk
Governor Eduard Rossel, who
had spoken seriously of plans to introduce his own currency, the Urals franc,
on the heels of the August 1998 financial crisis. Five of the envoys came from
the ranks of the siloviki.
He dispatched prosecutors, another wing of the diverse siloviki
group, to muscle regions into rewriting the constitutions in places like Bashkortostan,
where President Murtaza Rakhimov
had proclaimed his national republic to be a sovereign island within Russia, on
par with -- not subject to -- Moscow.
The governors, including Rakhimov, grumbled at
such treatment but were quick to read the political winds and began to toe the
Kremlin line, at least superficially. Thirty of them lent their names and
influence to United Russia's win last December.
Yet Putin took the opportunity of Rakhimov's reelection campaign in
December to teach the authoritarian leader, whose outspoken criticism of the
federal center had grown tiresome, a lesson in whose
hand was heavier. The Kremlin backed a candidate who forced Rakhimov
into a second round, a shock for someone accustomed to landslide victories.
Ultimately some deal was struck, the Kremlin candidate dropped out at the last
minute, and Rakhimov won.
Putin leveraged another
problem governor, Yevgeny Nazdratenko,
out of the Primorye region by offering him the top
spot at the State Fisheries Committee, ironic since Nazdratenko
had been known for awarding lucrative fishing licenses to his cronies, or
pocketing them himself.
In theory, Putin could dismiss such governors by
decree. Laws passed during his tenure give him this power, and although they
are complicated and have not been tested, the threat hangs over governors'
heads.
Putin also dangled that
threat -- that laws could be used for political ends -- over uppity oligarchs.
In summer of 2000, Putin is said to have summoned
oligarchs for a meeting, where he informed them of a new, unwritten rule. He
would not question their questionably acquired empires if they would not
question his exclusive right to political power. Businessmen needed to behave
like businessmen, the message was, not like businessmen with political power,
as they had become accustomed and the label oligarch was originally coined to
connote.
This meeting signaled that time was running out
for media magnates Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, as Putin's Kremlin
had begun to equate television control with political control.
Berezovsky handed over his
controlling stake in Channel One to the state without much of a fight shortly
after he went into hiding in the West in late 2000, while the Kremlin's
campaign against Gusinsky's channel was an 11-month
war of attrition, packaged as a legal debt dispute, that
ended with the takeover of NTV by state-run Gazprom.
"They're obsessed with television, they see
it as the ultimate weapon. Probably they're right," said Kiselyov, who ran NTV before the takeover. He jumped first
to TV6, then TVS in search of an independent home, and
later moved to Moskovskiye Novosti
after TVS was made a state sports channel.
In Putin's most brazen move to assert his power,
in 2003 he went after Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had, equally brazenly, challenged it.
The fate of Khodorkovsky, jailed on charges of
fraud and tax evasion, serves as a potent reminder to other ultra-wealthy
businessmen that Putin requires unwavering loyalty.
When Putin spoke last month to a meeting of the
Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, known as the oligarchs'
union, the businessmen "were afraid to stop applauding," Yavlinsky said.
It's easy to overestimate Putin's power.
He is not omnipotent. He has a puzzling inability to get rid of odious
figures like Nazdratenko, who instead of being
unceremoniously fired from the fisheries committee as an example of the
Kremlin's commitment to fighting corruption was rewarded with a seat on the
Security Council. Or Vladimir Yakovlev, Putin's nemesis from
Nor has the army of public servants been brought to bay. In emphasizing the
state's central role, Putin has indirectly emphasized
the bureaucracy -- precisely what he has vowed to cut back. His perch atop the
power vertical creates the impression that he is involved in every decision, giving
underlings the room to abuse their power in his name.
Yet he is far and away the country's most powerful public figure, and no
one denies that his campaign to fortify his position has been remarkable for
its efficiency.
But if power is cemented so far that it becomes a concrete block, it may
prove to be not a blessing to Putin, but a curse.
Without independent forces capable of pushing or pulling the country forward,
all momentum must come from him.
In the absence of institutions and individuals that provide checks and
balances on executive power, the country is left with little choice but to
trust that Putin will act in their best interest.
He has given little indication that he will chart any brave new territory
in his second term, so at least four more years of the status quo seems likely.
And people seem content with that. After 13 years of tough transition, people
are weary of upheaval and don't want to throw things up in the air all over
again. Even many long-time Communist voters say they will vote for Putin on Sunday because they don't want change.
Once the election comfortably reinstalls Putin in
the Kremlin, will he become less jealous of his power than he has been in his
fight to the top of the political heap? Will he breathe a sigh of relief that
the hard part is over and relax his grip, letting criticism from the margins
roll off his back? Or will he steamroll the vestiges of opposition, like the
newspapers that barely nip at his heels, into the pro-Kremlin camp? With power,
as with money, it's human nature to want more, no matter how much you have.
So if all levers of state control are in Putin's
hands, the single question becomes: Where will he lead? No one knows. In four
years in office, Putin has shown himself to be
predictable in his ability to be unpredictable.
Will he let the country sit and stagnate, or will he take us forward?