No Tears For Boris

By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW

New Year's addresses, dull ceremonial affairs for most heads of state, have a habit of taking a dramatic turn in Russia. On Christmas Day in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev announced the end of his presidency and, simultaneously, the end of the Soviet Union. Three years later, Boris Yeltsin raised his glass to the Russian army, which was at that moment storming the Chechen capital of Grozny. As the President's New Year's greetings were being broadcast, a 1,000-man unit of the Russian army was annihilated in the streets of Grozny. This year, with Russian troops again trying to fight their way into the Chechen capital, Yeltsin dropped a bombshell of his own. "Today, on the last day of the outgoing century, I am resigning," he said grimly and slowly.

His resignation took force immediately. Within a few minutes of the address being aired, he had handed over the powers of office--including control of Russia's strategic nuclear forces--to 47-year-old Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Russian TV showed Yeltsin, already wearing his overcoat, holding the door of his ornate Kremlin study open for his successor. "Your office," he told Putin, with a stiff sweep of the arm. Soon afterward, the traffic in central Moscow was stopped, perhaps for the last time for Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, as his convoy sped to his country residence. And a couple of hours later, Putin issued one of his first presidential decrees: "On Guarantees for the President of the Russian Federation...and Members of his Family." The decree provided bodyguards, pension--and total immunity from prosecution--for Yeltsin. Putin, a veteran of the KGB and its successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), will be Acting President until new elections are held, on March 26. By then, the people who organized Putin's lightning thrust into the Kremlin expect to ensure that he becomes Russia's next elected President.

The rapid change surprised Russians and astonished the rest of the world. U.S. officials had heard hints of an early transfer of power, but the idea seemed improbable. Yeltsin, they felt, was determined to stay. This was partly why the top officials--even as they bade Yeltsin goodbye--were struggling for a consensus on Putin, who has risen from deputy mayor of St. Petersburg to President in less than four years. Some administration officials thumbnail him as a "smooth cop"--a man tough enough to clean up Russia but charming enough to keep ties to the West. Other analysts, however, particularly at the Pentagon, are worried about Putin's disregard for democratic practices and his reliance on a war in Chechnya to boost his popularity ratings. "All we know is that he rode to power on the back of brutalizing Chechnya again," an Army colonel said. "I don't know if that's the kind of guy we want to get too close to."

Early resignation was not how Yeltsin wanted to go. In his farewell speech he stressed that he had dearly hoped to stay on until the end of his term, next June, and to hand over power in keeping with the timetable laid down by the constitution. But, he said, "I have come to understand that it is necessary" to leave early. There is a new "powerful man, worthy of being President," he said, referring to Putin. The speech left the eerie impression of a despondent leader who had been persuaded, gently but firmly, that it was time to go. This would explain the defeated tone that at times crept into his speech--his apology to the Russian people for the hardships they had suffered during his rule; the admission that he had been wrong in thinking Russia could be transformed in one sweep from its "gray, stagnant, totalitarian past to a bright, rich and civilized future." In fact, "I believed this too," he added poignantly.

Yeltsin's resignation was planned with one end in mind--Putin's elevation and the continued protection of the outgoing President, his family and their close associates. That tight-knit clique--ironically labeled "the Family" by Russians--had a close call in early 1999, when then Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov unleashed a criminal investigation. It was an alarming portent of things to come and brought home to the Family the need to find a successor who would look after their interests. What made their concern even greater was the fact that Primakov, who was fired in May, had rapidly become the front runner for the presidency.

So, deep inside the Kremlin, unknown to Russians, Yeltsin's top strategists began toying with the idea of an early resignation. Gleb Pavlovsky, the political consultant who is one of the Kremlin's main electoral strategists, told TIME that he proposed the idea last summer. Two key conditions had to be fulfilled for the gambit to work, Pavlovsky said. The President needed a successor he could trust completely, and all serious contenders for the presidency would have to be weakened beyond the point of presenting any danger. The first condition was fulfilled when Sergei Stepashin, who had followed Primakov into the prime ministership, was fired on Aug. 9 and replaced by Putin. The second came on Dec. 19, when the political bloc the Kremlin feared most, Primakov's Fatherland-All Russia Party, was beaten into a disappointing third place in parliamentary elections. The final decision, however, was probably made last Wednesday evening--a fact that suggests there was considerable debate within the Yeltsin camp on the desirability, or perhaps feasibility, of persuading the President to step down.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1952. Little is known about his childhood and family life, though he is married and has two teenage daughters. Putin graduated from Leningrad State University with a law degree in 1975. On graduation he was quickly recruited into the KGB, which he served first in Moscow and then in East Germany. The acting President's spy life remains as much a mystery as the rest of his biography. Friends insist he was involved in "economic intelligence," designed to help the Soviet Union's badly antiquated industrial sector. After Yeltsin's resignation, however, former Prime Minister Stepashin told a television interviewer that inside the KGB Putin was known as "Stasi," possibly implying a link to the East German secret service.

In 1990 Putin was sent back to Leningrad, still in the employ of the KGB, to monitor that city's blossoming perestroika movement. Among his contacts was one of the city's most progressive politicians, and a former law professor of his, Anatoly Sobchak. When Sobchak became mayor, Putin joined him and eventually handled foreign investment, among other responsibilities. Though he hunkered out of public sight--he was known as "a gray cardinal"--Putin began to accumulate power and a quiet reputation among reformers. In 1996, Sobchak lost a re-election campaign, and Putin headed to Moscow, where he quickly rose to become a Yeltsin confidant, to run the FSB and, eventually, to be handpicked as successor.

Elections at the end of March mean that Putin has hardly enough time to make a serious mistake. A disaster in Chechnya could scar him, but his strategists are calculating that for the time being he has developed a Teflon coating. The biggest threat facing Putin, says Pavlovsky, is dramatically inflated popular expectations. Two and a half months of campaigning, however, allow little chance for Putin's 65% confidence ratings or popular expectations to be significantly deflated. There is also a slight possibility that Putin's views on anything, from economics to defense, will become much clearer in this time. Last week--in what with hindsight seems like a heavy hint that Putin was preparing for greater things--the Russian-government website posted a long and somewhat turgid statement of Putin's beliefs. The statement was light on policy and heavy on theory. "Russia will not soon, if ever, become a second copy of, say, the U.S. or England, where liberal values have deep historical traditions," Putin wrote. Russians, he argued, are comfortable with a strong state, a more collective approach to society rather than Western individualism, and considerable government intervention in the economy.

In the absence of policies, a well-honed p.r. campaign by aides, directed at journalists and visiting Western officials, has created the impression of a cool, crisp and ambitious young leader. Skeptical observers saluted his behind-the-throne power with the nickname "Ras-Putin." He has put the word out that he will be an economic reformer, a promise that impresses U.S. officials more than their West European counterparts. Yet a few weeks ago, his economic think tank was still saying that its program would not be ready until the middle of the year 2000. His track record as Prime Minister suggests a cynical pragmatist rather than a tough reformer. He is, for instance, a fan of former KGB head and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, on whose grave he publicly laid flowers in June. Last fall, when riot troops stormed the Moscow headquarters of Transneft, the Russian oil-pipeline monopoly, and installed a new CEO of the Kremlin's liking, Putin did not intervene. A charitable observer, Mikhail Berger, editor of the Segodnya daily, suggests that he will turn out to be a "free marketeer...with a strong hand. 'Disciplined reform' may be the best way of putting it."

Senior U.S. officials who have met recently with Putin say he is level-headed, intelligent and clearly focused on improving life in Russia. He is, they say, more realist than ideologue. Even after the cold war ended, U.S.-Russia meetings were often tense, usually starting with a long Russian recitation about items on which the two nations would never agree. Putin, by contrast, generally starts his conversation with an old salesman's trick--reviewing things that the U.S. and Russia have in common. There is "none of the Jekyll-and-Hyde ambivalence that characterized former Russian leaders, including Yeltsin," says a State Department official.

And it is possible to tease some hopeful signs from the ice-head's resume. Though he has let the military manage the war in Chechnya, for instance, U.S. officials say Putin, unlike Yeltsin, seems to be ultimately in control. Visiting U.S. officials like Attorney General Janet Reno have been impressed that Putin realizes corruption poses a major threat to the creation of a market economy in Russia. If this is so, Putin is in for a struggle. The fight against corruption could turn out to be the defining theme of a Putin presidency. The fact remains that his ascent to power has been facilitated by a group of political insiders and businessmen who have been publicly accused of corruption on a vast scale. If he hits out at minor corruption and closes his eyes to the big fish, he will do his reputation in the West incalculable damage. If he challenges the mega-corrupt, he will face the fight of his political life. After all, even a politician as experienced as Primakov was thwarted, then forced out of office, when he tried to take on high-level corruption.

Soon after assuming his new office, Putin flew unexpectedly to the Chechen town of Gudermes, where he awarded hunting knives to troops who had distinguished themselves in the fighting. Meanwhile, as word of the resignation spread across Moscow, the Russian stock market jumped about 20%; politicians paid their predictable tributes, and ordinary citizens responded largely with indifference. Gorbachev, who is spending the New Year's holiday in Paris with his children and grandchildren, told the French press agency that Yeltsin should have resigned earlier. Human-rights activist Elena Bonner--Yeltsin nominated her husband Andrei Sakharov as TIME's Person of the Century--was scathing. "After eight years in the Kremlin, sadly, what has Boris Nikolayevich achieved? Nothing. He left Russia with a dangerous constitution that was made just for him, and now Putin will exploit it." Other former associates remembered Yeltsin warmly. Boris Nemtsov, a onetime Yeltsin favorite, declared, "Yeltsin has proved that as a politician he is much stronger than any other politician in Russia." Yeltsin "came and went beautifully," Nemtsov said.

There was, in fact, little beauty in Yeltsin's career, though there was much drama and passion. Yeltsin, born in 1931, was a tough, disciplinarian Communist Party chief from Sverdlovsk, in the Urals. He made his career in Moscow under Gorbachev but constantly fretted that he was not given the authority he deserved. In mid-1991 Yeltsin became President of the Russian republic, then just a part of the Soviet Union. His finest hour came a few months later, when, with Gorbachev isolated in the Crimea, Yeltsin faced down a junta of ham-fisted communist leaders who were trying to reverse the tide of political change and liberalization. From that point on, he, not Gorbachev, was the unchallenged leader of the country.

There is also much blood in Yeltsin's legacy. Thousands of dead--in Chechnya, in the Russian parliament's revolt in October 1993 and in other smaller conflicts. The destruction of the Russian parliament was in many ways the turning point in his presidency. As rebels moved across Moscow, meeting little resistance, close aides went to his office to ask for instructions. They found Yeltsin sitting in a darkened room, seemingly paralyzed by depression or despair. After the parliament's revolt was crushed, Boris the populist disappeared. The man who had once expressed near physical revulsion at the luxury (very modest, by current standards) of Soviet leaders now lived in a series of opulent residences in and around Moscow. He became withdrawn, a tendency reinforced by his declining health, alcohol abuse and dependency on a small number of deeply manipulative aides.

The West managed for most of his rule to overlook the dark side of Yeltsin's personality and presidency. The 100,000 or so deaths during the first Chechen war were regrettable, Western officials said. His character was sometimes a problem, but things were never boring with Boris, they added indulgently. He insulted the West but never broke with it. He was firmly and uncompromisingly anticommunist.

But he failed to do what he had set out to achieve, many years ago, when he was an ambitious young populist. He brought neither predictability nor prosperity to his country. It was perhaps this he had in mind on New Year's Eve when, after apologizing for his failures, he told Russians in a plaintive farewell: "Be happy. You deserve happiness."

--With reporting by Jay Branegan, Massimo Calabresi, James Carney and Mark Thompson/Washington and Andrew Meier and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow

With reporting by Jay Branegan, Massimo Calabresi, James Carney and Mark Thompson/Washington and Andrew Meier and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow