Court Politics in Russia

...Their past record distinctly says no: Some kind of extraconstitutional maneuver is likely to be attempted to erase the handwriting on the wall, possibly taking the form of a state of emergency and a decree suspending the elections...

...Elected to the Russian Supreme Soviet in 1990, he backed Yeltsin against the August 1991 coup plotters, chaired an investigation of the KGB, and was rewarded with top positions in the new reincarnation of the secret police, the Federal Security Service...

...Once in office Stepashin did not prove to be as tough as either the Kremlin or the opposition anticipated...

...A prime minister could only lose, and that is natural...

...Primakov enjoyed more genuine popularity and more success than any prime minister of the post-Communist era...

...After serving the reformist former Mayor of St...

...Another theory, subscribed to by the well-informed ex-dissident historian Roy Medvedev, is that Yeltsin will resign the presidency to let Putin become acting president and take it from there...

...From there he was instrumental in pressing the fighting in Chechnya and gained a reputation for ruthlessness...

...For instance, despite its parliamentary confirmation requirement, Yeltsin's late-tsarist-style Constitution places the Prime Minister at the beck and call of the President, yet veteran bureaucrat Viktor S. Chernomyrdin managed to hold the job for over five years...

...He announced he would seek a seat in the Duma from St...

...I could not serve the interests of a particular group," he explained to an interviewer following his fall...

...By the time of the August economic crisis he was in deep withdrawal again and it was his entourage—the "Family"—that settled on Primakov after trying to reinstate Chernomyrdin...

...Would the ruling clique prevail as it did in the 1993 shelling of the old Supreme Soviet, or would it suffer the fate of the plotters of 1991...

...But again the Family could not agree on a successor...

...Primakov's worsening relations with the Kremlin were evident throughout the spring...

...On Monday August 9, Chubais was barred from a scheduled appointment with Yeltsin, who met instead with Stepashin and Putin at his dacha and announced the changing of the guard...

...That is the only conceivable constitutional approach for Yeltsin if his wish is to turn over the reins to Putin, who lacks any visible means of political support...

...The core of the entourage that steers Yeltsin through his moods—also called "a second government" and "a new Politburo"—is literally family, in the person of the younger of his two daughters, Tatyana, who is married to the entrepreneur Aleksei Dyachenko...

...But he called his rival First Deputy Prime Ministers, Aksyonenko and Khristenko, on the carpet—again in front of the TV cameras—to warn them not to go on squabbling...

...The Kosovo crisis and Russia's rallying around the flag against NATO may have briefly delayed his ouster...

...After Luzhkov et al...

...Almost simultaneously with Stepashin's nomination, the Duma took up the question of impeaching Yeltsin...

...Petersburg Governor Vladimir A. Yakovlev, with an unaffiliated Primakov at the head of the ticket, panicked the Yeltsinites...

...PRIME MINISTER DU JOUR Court Politics in Russia By Robert V. Daniels During his official visit to Washington shortly before he was fired this past August 9, Russia's latest ex-Prime Minister, Sergei V Stepashin, told the press in an unguarded moment that he was glad America understood that Russia was "not just senile old people in wheelchairs...

...And just three months later Stepashin was suddenly supplanted by his virtual clone, internal security chief Vladimir V Putin...

...Presumably it was felt he could be counted on to shield the Family and the financial oligarchs from investigations, and then to delay or deflect any electoral assault on the Yeltsin regime...

...These assurances would not apply beyond Yeltsin's biological family, and the legal proceedings for past corruption on the part of the rest of the Kremlin's denizens can readily be imagined...

...Within five months Kiriyenko fell victim to a true crisis, Russia's financial collapse, and he was replaced by the wily old Foreign Minister Primakov after an attempt to restore Chernomyrdin failed in the Duma...

...Byzantine as this may sound, it is typical of the backstabbing court politics in every autocratic regime in history, not least Russia's on the eve of the Revolution...

...announced their alliance, Yeltsin called Stepashin in to tell him he was on the skids, and informed Putin that he might be moving up...

...On the economic front he continued Primakov's pragmatic muddling...

...When Primakov was dismissed, it turned out that a successor had not yet been fully decided upon...

...Still, the Duma shunned the proffered bait to reject Putin and risk dissolution, just as it had when Stepashin was put up to bump Primakov...

...Berezovsky managed to insert Aksyonenko into the Cabinet as First Deputy Prime Minister, with the aim of taking control of the economy away from the Chubais crowd, but the latter got their man Viktor B. Khristenko in as the "second" First Deputy Prime Minister...

...In May, at the evident urging of members of his personal entourage, who were nervous about pending anticorruption investigations, Yeltsin dismissed Primakov and replaced him with the faceless young police executive Stepashin...

...Primakov's successor, Stepashin, had been a career political commissar with the internal security troops (Russia's gendarmes...

...Following four peremptory ousters of the chief of government in less than a year and a half, it is easy to dismiss Russian politics as a revolving door of presidential sacrifices...

...This worry is currently at the forefront of Russian political minds...

...In personal and policy terms, though, the two are indistinguishable—both are youngish (age 47), tight-lipped career police officials from Leningrad/St...

...In his televised announcement the President merely thanked the fallen Prime Minister for "his good work," and hailed Putin as "the man who [is] capable of uniting society, based on the broadest political forces, to ensure the continuity of reforms in Russia...

...From his accession to power in 1991, Yeltsin has manifested a bipolar pattern of heated engagement alternating with bouts of depression exacerbated by alcoholism and declining physical health...

...Nevertheless, Russia has clinched two vital elements of democracy: One is observance of the letter of its Constitution...

...Given the impeachment setback, it is understandable that the Duma confirmed Stepashin with scarcely a murmur...

...There seems to have been a competition between the Kremlin and the White House to get credit for brokering a peace deal...

...The Prime Minister could not escape with protestations of opposition to impeachment, which the Kremlin as well as the press viewed as insincere...

...Kremlin lobbying sufficed to divert enough votes to block formal impeachment, but this was hardly the victory for Yeltsin that was reported in the West...

...Party leaders, including Communist chief Gennady A. Zyuganov, suspended party discipline, letting their deputies vote their material interests and avert dissolution...

...Yeltsin accomplished much of his goal of destroying the Communist legacy, but he has been driven more by jealousy and vindictiveness than by any policy commitment...

...At the time of the March 1998 governmental shakeup he became Minister of Internal Affairs (read police), and this April the Kremlin promoted him to First Deputy Prime Minister, with the expectation of using him to put the opposition in its place...

...Putin is probably a bit more political...

...Outrage extended to the democratic reformers in Chubais' camp, with Nemtsov calling the move "madness...

...Last December Primakov had him removed from the post, but he retained his Family standing and subsequently achieved full revenge when the Prime Minister was sacked...

...Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, he moved to Moscow to work in the Yeltsin Administration and in mid-1998 was designated head of the Federal Security Service...

...Then Yeltsin broke with past practice by anointing his new appointee as his designated heir forthe 2000 presidential balloting...

...We must establish such discipline that the President's decision can never be stopped anywhere in the government...

...On August 17 Primakov formalized his link to the Luzhkov bloc, whose electoral list he will head...

...Politically, instead of leading the Kremlin charge, he announced his neutrality among the rapidly crystallizing electoral blocs...

...the other is a free press—and (for Russia) extraordinary openness on the part of most politicians about what goes on inside the Kremlin's walls...

...Chernomyrdin's fall occurred when the President emerged from one of his depressions and acted so precipitously that no successor had been prepared...

...Robert V. Daniels, professor emeritus of history at the University of Vermont, is a frequent NL contributor and the author of 21 books on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs...

...Let's not divide the President's office and the Cabinet," he declared...

...Close observers of the Russian scene knew Stepashin was in trouble for some time...

...The straightforward scenario for the coming months is a decisive victory by the Fatherland-All Russia alliance in December, followed by a series of constitutional amendments to change the Russian government from apresidential monarchy to a European-style parliamentary republic...

...Whether for the slip or the general perception that Stepashin was acting too "presidential" on his first major negotiating trip (he nailed down the slice of International Monetary Fund money withheld from his predecessor, Yevgeny M. Primakov), President Boris N. Yeltsin decided Stepashin had to go while his plane was bringing him back...

...If they voted to start proceedings, they would gain immunity from dissolution, and thereby have a free shot at Stepashin without risking the loss of their offices, salaries and apartments until the next election...

...Exactly why Stepashin was put forward to take over as Prime Minister is still something of a mystery...

...But the appointment was roundly denounced across the political spectrum, and even triggered internal turf fights...

...Primakov was virtually the President until January of this year, when Yeltsin got wind of schemes to shift some of his powers to the government and, as the Russian press put it, "came to...

...Public opinion favored impeachment by as much as 80 per cent...

...Nor did Stepashin go away quietly...

...To the public at large, Vladimir Putin was an even more obscure figure than Stepashin had been...

...But that proved to be his undoing, because the President once again found his chief subordinate too threatening...

...This is consistent with Russia's historical experience: The passions and peculiarities of its individual leaders have had epochal effects on the nation's fate...

...Since Yeltsin's reelection in 1996, she has controlled all access to her father along with Valentin Yumashev, the President's longtime ghostwriter, described by some Russian journalists as a fill-in for the son he never had...

...Polls showed over 70 per cent of the public opposed to Stepashin's removal...

...Before his confirmation vote, Putin had to affirm to the Duma—for what the promise was worth—that a state of emergency was not in the offing...

...Thanks to the ruble's devaluation immediately before he took over, he had presided over the country's first modest industrial upturn since 1991...

...Within the hour this information was countermanded, thanks evidently to the influence of Chubais, and Stepashin's name was the one formally submitted for confirmation...

...The differences among each of these cases, however, are revealing...

...In 1997 Yumashev was named presidential Chief of Staff, a position substantially more powerful than its American counterpart...

...Not until March 1998 did Yeltsin abruptly conclude that Chernomyrdin was too eager to succeed to the presidency and dump him in favor of the relatively unknown whiz-kid Sergei V Kiriyenko...

...The very evening of the confirmation vote, Yeltsin—now distinctly in a renewed manic phase despite his physical infirmities—made the new Prime Minister go on television with him and submit to a public humiliation...

...Although Anatoly B. Chubais, the former Deputy Prime Minister for privatizing the economy and mastermind of Yeltsin's 1996 campaign, is another veteran Family member, he has been upstaged by Berezovsky...

...Underscoring the personal grounds for his change of prime ministers, Yeltsin kept almost the entire Cabinet intact...

...Then Primakov would be the alliance's unbeatable candidate for president in June 2000, while a newly empowered prime ministership (or alternatively, a revived vice presidency) would go to the younger, healthier Luzhkov...

...If a coup were sprung, under Yeltsin or under Putin, the outcome would be touch-and-go...

...What in fact fatally undid Primakov's tenure was the Communist-led move in the Duma to impeach Yeltsin, citing every major step he took from abolishing the USSR in 1991 to launching the futile bloody war against the ethnic separatists in Chechnya...

...Will Yeltsin and the Family accept all this and go gently into the night...

...The Family then exploited his reawakening rancor to scuttle the popular Primakov's brewing anticorruption efforts...

...Both Yumashev and Aleksei Dyachenko have business connections with Boris N. Berezovsky, the foremost of Russia's new banking "oligarchs," and with the newly prominent oil magnate Roman Abramovich...

...The anti-Yeltsin forces actually mustered more than two-thirds of the vote on all five counts, but the rules require two-thirds of the entire Duma membership of 450, not only those present and voting...

...those who try to do this must be removed from their posts at once...

...There will be order...

...Noises about a Center-Left opposition alliance between Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov's Fatherland Party and the regional All Russia Party that includes St...

...Berezovsky reportedly manages the Yeltsins' considerable financial holdings, and according to expresidential bodyguard Alexander Korzhakov passed hefty subsidies to the President in the guise of "royalties" on his memoirs...

...Hence the 301 to 55 approval on the first of the three allowed ballots...

...Former reformist Deputy Prime Minister Boris Y Nemtsov has called Berezovsky "a modern-day Rasputin...

...While Chubais intervened with Yeltsin to try to save Stepashin, Berezovsky once more pushed Aksyonenko, and Putin then emerged as the compromise candidate...

...Interestingly, the storm of denunciation set off by the latest shakeup exceeded the protests against Primakov's sacking...

...Berezovsky wanted to install his own man, the obscure but ambitious Minister of Railroads, Nikolai Aksyonenko, and the initial word the Duma got was that he would be Primakov's replacement...

...Petersburg with links to the free-marketeers who hailed from there...

...Petersburg and, after failing to establish a reformist bloc with his fellow exPrime Ministers, announced he would join forces with Grigory A. Yavlinsky's Yabloko Party...

...Naturally, this sort of behavior did nothing to slow down the consolidation of opposition blocs for the December 19 Duma elections...

...When the ax finally fell on Primakov the official reason that was given, a faltering economy, clearly made no sense...

...Putin was therefore duly confirmed—though by a tighter margin, 232 to 84, with 226 affirmative votes required...

...Either way, Russia's agony is far from over...

...Behind all these seemingly erratic moves there is one common element— Yeltsin's personality...

...Thus they took advantage of the President's growing resentment of Stepashin to engineer a new shakeup and perhaps finally provoke a political crisis that could derail the upcoming elections...

...Yeltsin, meanwhile, would be guaranteed his personal security after leaving office—an offer that enraged him when Primakov made it last winter because the President didn't want to hear that his time might be up...