by Norman Lowe
(c) Conflict in Chechnya, 1994–6
The Chechens are an Islamic people numbering about one million, who live in the area north of Georgia, inside the borders of the Russian republic. They were never happy under Russian control; they resisted communist rule during its early years and the civil war, and they resisted collectivization. During the Second World War Stalin accused them of collaborating with the Germans; the entire nation was brutally deported to Central Asia, and thousands died on the way. In 1956 Khrushchev allowed the Chechens to return to their homeland, and their autonomous republic was restored.
When the USSR broke up, Chechnya declared itself an independent republic under the leadership of Jokhar Dudaev. After attempts to persuade them to rejoin the Russian Federation failed, Yeltsin decided to use force against them. Reasons given were that their declaration of independence was illegal and that Chechnya was being used as a base from which criminal gangs were operating throughout Russia. In December 1994, 40 000 Russian troops invaded Chechnya. To their surprise there was fierce resistance before the Chechen capital, Grozny, was captured in February 1995. All round the world, television viewers saw shocking images of Russian tanks rolling through the ruined city. But the Chechens would not surrender and continued to harass the Russians with guerrilla attacks. In the summer of 1996, by the time the Chechens had succeeded in recapturing Grozny, the Russians had lost 20 000 men. The Duma had voted overwhelmingly against military action and the general public did not support the war. As the elections drew nearer, Yeltsin decided to compromise and a ceasefire was signed (May 1996). The Russians agreed to withdraw their troops, the Chechens promised to set up a government acceptable to Moscow and there was to be a cooling-off period of five years. However, the Chechens did not drop their demands for independence, and fighting started again long before five years had elapsed.
(d) Elections: December 1995 and June/July 1996
Under the terms of the new constitution, elections for the Duma were to be held in December 1995 and the presidential election in June 1996. The results of the Duma elections were disappointing for the government, which was still unpopular. Yeltsin and his supporters won only 65 seats out of the 450, whereas the Communist Party, led by Gennady Zyuganov, took 157 seats; together with their allies, they could muster 186 seats, by far the largest grouping. There was obviously much residual support and nostalgia for the old days of the USSR and strong government. In a genuinely democratic system the communists would have taken a leading role in the next government; but this did not happen: Yeltsin remained president for the time being at least. The big question was: would the communist candidate win the presidential election the following June?
Almost immediately, the politicians began to prepare for the June election. Yeltsin’s popularity rating was so low that some of his advisers wanted him to cancel the election and resort to force if necessary. However, to his credit he allowed it to go ahead, and over 20 candidates registered for the first round, including the communist leader Zyuganov and Mikhail Gorbachev. Early opinion polls put Zyuganov as the likely winner, causing consternation in the West at the prospect of a return to communism. However, Yeltsin and his supporters rallied well; he had suffered a heart attack in the summer of 1995 but now he seemed to find new energy, and toured the country promising everything to everybody. His greatest boost came when the ceasefire was signed in Chechnya shortly before the election.
Zyuganov also presented an attractive programme, but he lacked Yeltsin’s personal charisma and failed to distance himself sufficiently from Stalin. In the first round Yeltsin won a narrow victory with 35 per cent of the votes to Zyuganov’s 32 per cent; Gorbachev received barely 1 per cent of the votes. In spite of his ill health, Yeltsin’s team continued to campaign vigorously; in the second round he won a decisive victory over Zyuganov, taking 54 per cent of the votes. It was a remarkable victory, considering his low popularity at the beginning of the campaign and the fact that the economic situation was only just beginning to improve. The reason for Yeltsin’s victory was not so much that people liked him, but that they liked the alternative even less. If the communists had put forward genuine social democrat policies, Zyuganov might well have won. But Zyuganov was not a social democrat; he made no secret of his admiration for Stalin, and this was a fatal mistake. When it came to the push, the majority of Russians could not bring themselves to vote a Stalinist-type communist back into power. They gritted their teeth and voted for the lesser of two evils.
(e) Yeltsin’s second term, 1996–9
As Yeltsin began his second term as president, it seemed that at last things had reached a turning point: inflation had fallen to only 1 per cent a month, and for the first time since 1990, production ceased to fall. But the promise was not fulfilled. The great weakness of the economy was lack of investment, without which no significant expansion could take place. In the autumn of 1997, external events had an adverse effect on Russia. There was a series of financial crises and disaster in the Asian ‘tiger’ economies – Thailand, Singapore and South Korea – which affected stock markets all over the world. There was a fall in the world price of oil because of overproduction, which was a disaster for the Russians, since oil was their greatest export earner. The projected profits for 1998 were wiped out, foreign investors withdrew their funds and the Central Bank was forced to devalue the rouble (August 1998). It was another financial catastrophe in which millions of people had their savings and capital rendered worthless.
With the government floundering, the Duma suggested a new prime minister, Evgeny Primakov, a distinguished economic scientist and veteran communist who believed that the state should continue to play an important role in organizing the economy. To the surprise of most people, Yeltsin agreed to appoint Primakov, who planned to reduce imports, prevent capital from leaving the country, attract foreign investment and root out corruption. Almost before his policies had begun, the economic situation quickly improved. The world oil price recovered, devaluation made foreign imports too expensive, and this provided a boost for Russian industry. The government could afford to pay the arrears of wages and pensions, and the crisis passed. Opinion polls showed that 70 per cent of the voters approved of Primakov’s policies. After only eight months, however, Yeltsin sacked him (May 1999), claiming that a younger and more energetic man was needed (Primakov was almost 70). It was rumoured that the real reason was Primakov’s determination to eradicate corruption; many influential people who had gained their wealth and power by corrupt means put pressure on Yeltsin to dismiss Primakov. However, his dismissal caused consternation among ordinary Russians and Yeltsin’s popularity rating fell to only 2 per cent. Yet Yeltsin’s regime was certainly not a complete failure. By his programme of privatizations and allowing what passed for competitive elections, he had laid the foundations of a new Russian-style capitalism for the twenty-first century. Certainly in the eyes of the US Clinton administration, he had done as well as could be expected in such a rapid transition from communism to capitalism.
(f) Enter Putin
In preparation for the Duma election set for December 1999 and the next presidential election (June 2000), Yeltsin appointed as prime minister Vladimir Putin, the director of the security police, and a former KGB leader. The constitution prevented Yeltsin from standing for a third term, so he wanted to make sure that the candidate of his choice became next president. If a president were to retire before the end of his term, the constitution stipulated that the prime minister would automatically become president for three months, during which time presidential elections must be held. Opinion polls suggested that Primakov might well be elected next president, but events in September 1999 changed the situation dramatically. There was a series of bomb explosions in Moscow; two large apartment blocks were blown up and over 200 people killed. Putin claimed that the Chechen rebels were responsible and he ordered an all-out attack on the Chechen separatists. This time public opinion, outraged by the bomb attacks, was in favour of the war. Putin impr
essed people by his decisive handling of the situation and his determination to wipe out the warlords.
The renewed war in Chechnya worked in favour of Putin and his party – the Unity bloc. In the Duma elections Primakov’s supporters won only 12 per cent of the seats, Putin’s Unity bloc 24 per cent and the communists 25 per cent. On 31 December 1999 Yeltsin resigned as president, confident that his candidate, Putin, would be next president. As acting president Putin immediately pulled off a master stroke: his Unity bloc formed an alliance in the Duma with the communists and a few other smaller groups, giving the pro-Putin bloc a majority, something which Yeltsin had never achieved. In the presidential election held in March 2000, Putin won outright on the first ballot, taking 53 per cent of the votes; once again Zyuganov came second.
(g) Putin’s first term, 2000–4
Putin had a reputation for political acumen and the ability to get things done. He was determined to stamp out corruption – to destroy the oligarchs as a class, as he put it – to develop a strictly controlled market economy, to restore law and order and to bring an end to the war in Chechnya. He was able to get his new measures approved by the Duma thanks to the continuing alliances formed after the December 1999 elections, and he achieved considerable success.
Two of the most influential ‘oligarchs’, Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, who between them controlled most of Russia’s television companies and had been critical of Putin, were both removed from their positions and threatened with arrest on corruption charges. Both men decided to leave the country, and state control over the television network was re-established. In 2003 a third business tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once said to be the wealthiest man in Russia, was arrested and jailed.
New regulations for political parties meant that no party with fewer than 10 000 members would be allowed to take part in national elections. This reduced the number of parties from 180 to about 100, and the great advantage for the government was that it would prevent wealthy oligarchs from financing their own groups of supporters. In October 2001, Putin scored another success when his Unity party merged with one of its largest rivals, the Fatherland movement; together they were set to become the majority group in the Duma.
The economy continued to recover, production increased and Russia continued to benefit from the high world price of oil, though this began to fall at the end of 2001. The federal budget moved into surplus and the government was able to service its debts without any more borrowing. Putin felt that the recovery was still precarious and he continued with more economic liberalization policies.
In contrast to the Yeltsin presidency, Putin cultivated a ‘strong-man’ image. He was firm and authoritative, and he could be ruthless if the situation required it. As a precaution, the budget of the secret police (the FSB – successor to the KGB) was trebled, and an increasing number of important positions in the government administration apparatus were filled by people with a background in the security services.
Putin also had less successful experiences. When the nuclear submarine Kursk sank mysteriously in the Barentz Sea with the loss of all 118 crew members (August 2000), the government came under criticism for its unimpressive handling of the tragedy. Putin failed to bring a decisive end to the conflict in Chechnya, and terrorist bomb outrages continued. In October 2002 a group of between 40 and 50 armed and masked Chechens occupied the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow, and took some 850 members of the audience hostage. They demanded the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Chechnya and an end to the Second Chechen War. After two and a half days, neither side would make any concessions, so government troops pumped noxious gas into the theatre through the ventilation system and then launched an attack. They killed 39 of the rebels, but unfortunately 129 hostages were also killed, most of them by the toxic gas. Again the government came under criticism for its handling of the crisis, especially from doctors. They claimed that they would have been able to save more of the hostages if the government had not refused to disclose the name of the gas used. To make matters worse, estimates published in the summer of 2003 suggested that one-third of the population were still living below the poverty line.
However, Putin’s personal popularity remained high among the general public, enabling him to face the elections of 2003–4 with confidence. He had achieved a great deal for the Russian people, especially through his tax and pensions reforms. Most people were delighted with his attacks on the ‘oligarchs’, the economy was flourishing and foreign investors were showing interest in Russia again.
It was no surprise when in the Duma elections of December 2003, Putin’s United Russia party won a massive 222 seats out of the 450. The real surprise was the poor showing of Zyuganov’s Communist Party, which lost almost half its MPs and was left with only 53 seats. Some observers believed that this marked the end of the road for the communists, who had provided the only real political opposition to the government. One reason for the communists’ poor showing was the creation of a new party – Rodina (Motherland) – only four months before the elections. This was a nationalist party pledged to raise company taxation and return to ordinary people the fortunes made by the oligarchs in their shady privatization deals. Rodina took most of its votes from the communists and ended up with 37 MPs, who would vote for Putin.
Analysts pointed out that Putin was developing distinct authoritarian tendencies: Rodina had been deliberately founded by the Kremlin in the hope of taking support away from the communists, as part of Putin’s strategy for ‘controlled democracy’. In other words, he was trying to create a parliament ‘in his own image’. If he could secure a two-thirds majority in the Duma, he would be able to change the constitution to allow himself a third term as president. Clearly democracy in Russia was in the balance.
In the presidential election of March 2004, President Putin won a sweeping victory, taking 71 per cent of the votes cast. His nearest rival was the Communist candidate, Nikolai Kharitonov, but he gained only 13.7 per cent. Observers from the Council of Europe reported that the election had failed to meet healthy democratic standards. In particular, it was alleged that rival candidates had not been allowed fair access to the state-controlled media, and that there had been no genuine pre-election political debate. However, President Putin dismissed these criticisms; he promised to press ahead with economic reform and to safeguard democracy.
(h) Putin’s second term, 2004–8
There was a tragic early reminder of the Chechen situation when, on 1 September 2004, the traditional start of the Russian school year, a group of heavily-armed Chechen guerrillas occupied a school in the town of Beslan, in North Ossetia, and took around 1100 children and adults hostage. They demanded an end to the Second Chechen War and the complete withdrawal of all Russian troops from Chechnya. After three days Russian security forces stormed the building, using tanks and rockets. This soon ended the crisis, but not before over 300 people had been killed, including 186 children. The government was criticized for its handling of the situation on the grounds that excessive force was used. Alexander Litvinenko, a former member of the KGB, claimed that it was an ‘inside job’, that the security services had organized the hostage-taking to keep public opinion anti-Chechen and to justify stricter security measures. Soon afterwards Putin introduced tougher anti-terrorist laws and increased the powers of the security forces. In June 2006 the Duma passed a new law which gave the FSB (successor to the KGB) authority to send commandos abroad to assassinate ‘terrorist groups’; this power was to be used only at the discretion of the president.
Litvinenko had a history of criticizing the government and the security services: in 1998 he accused FSB bosses of ordering the murder of the oligarch Boris Berezovsky. This led to Litvinenko’s arrest on charges of ‘exceeding his authority’. The charges were dropped, but in 2000 he took refuge in the UK where he worked as a journalist and acted as a ‘consultant’ for the British intelligence services. In 2002 he published a book in which he accused the FSB of organizing the series of terr
orist attacks that were blamed on the Chechens, in order to justify the Second Chechen War and bring Putin to power. This was dangerous stuff, and his comments on the Beslan crisis proved to be the final straw. In November 2006 Litvinenko was killed in London by a rare radioactive poison, Polonium 210. Investigations suggested that the poison had been administered by Andrey Lugovoy, a Russian security agent, who was charged with the murder. The UK authorities requested his extradition from Russia, but this was refused. Although the UK government did not directly blame the Russian government, there was a clear inference that the murder was indeed sponsored by the Russian state. In 2007 another Russian exile, Alex Goldfarb, with the collaboration of Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, published a book containing compelling evidence that Putin himself must have ordered the murder. Nor was this the first time a critic of the Putin regime had been murdered. A few weeks earlier, in October 2006, Anna Politskovskaya, a journalist and writer, was shot dead in the lift of her apartment block. She had been a long-time critic of the Chechen War, and in 2004 had published a book, Putin’s Russia, in which she claimed that Russia still had elements of the police state, or mafia state. On the more positive side, as Putin began his second term as president, the economic situation was looking bright. Oil prices were rising: around £28 a barrel in 2000, they now stood at £40 a barrel, and by the end of 2006 they had reached over £60. By this time Russia was the largest producer of gas in the world, and the second largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia. As Europe becomes more dependent on fuel supplies from Russia, this could well strengthen Moscow’s influence and leverage. The economy had grown steadily by over 6 per cent a year since Putin became president in 2000. Another contributor to the success story was the software-manufacturing industry: in 2006 exports of software were worth $1.5 billion as opposed to only £128 million in 2001. This success was encouraging more foreign investment. There were plans to use some of the increased revenue to improve living standards. In 2005 the National Priority Projects were announced, designed to improve the health system, education, housing and agriculture, including wage increases for health workers and teachers.