In the days and weeks before the Duma election, the Kremlin took particular aim at Moscow’s mayor Luzhkov: Yel’tsin fired the Moscow militia chief, a close associate of Luzhkov, for “unspecified shortcomings”; Moscow city government was assessed a fine of $140 million for violating unspecified foreign currency exchange laws; and, three days before the election, the Kremlin announced an investigation into the registration of OVR on the grounds that its activities may have exceeded its charter.7 The fact that Putin’s longtime right-hand man Vladimir Kozhin led the Federal Service for Currency and Export Control that imposed the fine left no doubt in the Luzhkov camp that Putin was behind the attacks.8
Putin was also directly involved in shaping the media’s attacks on Primakov and Luzhkov. Even Russia’s own Central Electoral Commission (CEC) called on the Kremlin to desist. The CEC singled out Sergey Dorenko, the host of ORT’s popular prime-time news program, Vremya, for his continuous libelous attacks against Primakov and Luzhkov. Both candidates were offered prime-time airtime to rebut, which Primakov utilized. Luzhkov took Dorenko to court, and won, but Dorenko continued his attacks unabated. Russian analysts subsequently wrote about the emergence of units within the Presidential Administration that coordinated media attacks and used what they called “media killers” (like Dorenko) as “soldiers in the information war.”9 Dorenko himself freely admitted that he frequently met with Putin and took cues from him: “He often asked me in private to provoke a situation, for example, when I suggested that our army attack Chechnya, he said, ‘Say it on the air.’ I said I was going to anyway. You say it. He answered, ‘No I want you to say it. We’ll see how people react.’ ”10 In its report on the Duma elections, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded that “the electoral campaign in the Russian media appeared to have been utterly unfair . . . often crossing the line to slander and libel.”11
The results of the election showed that the single largest winner was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which got 24.3 percent of the votes to win 113 seats. But the biggest surprise was the emergence of Unity, which, after all, had been formed barely a month before the campaign began. It received seventy-three seats with 23.3 percent of the total vote, drawn overwhelmingly from the party list portion of the ballot. And it took these votes away from OVR, which earned only 13.3 percent of the votes for sixty-seven seats. Consequently the promise of OVR, and of its two main figures, Primakov and Luzhkov, faded, and Primakov announced he would not run in the presidential elections. The Union of Right Forces won almost 9 percent of the vote, led by former prime minister Sergey Kiriyenko running under the banner “Putin for President! Kiriyenko for the Duma!” Both Yabloko and the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia barely avoided falling below the threshold and scraped into the Duma with just over 5 percent each.
Charges of fraud emerged almost immediately. The most serious came from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which had initially given the election results a “free and almost fair” rating, but in the subsequent full report of its Election Observation Mission (EOM) provided the following story, worth quoting in full:
The EOM also encountered an incident that was never satisfactorily explained. In the early hours of 20 December, it already appeared from the results arriving from the east that Unity and the Communist party each had about 25% of the votes reported. Fatherland–All Russia was lagging behind below 10%. However, when results from Moscow City and Region started to flow in, the situation in the area showed a quite different picture: in the 15 districts of Moscow City, Fatherland–All Russia fared much better at over 40%; and in the 11 districts of the Moscow region, Fatherland–All Russia had gained over 27%, while in these areas Unity hardly reached 7 and 10%, respectively. Statements released through the media by high ranking officials explained that, in spite of their major showing in Moscow, Fatherland–All Russia’s Federation-wide share remained below 10% because the results from the Moscow area were not yet entered in the overall tabulation as a result of irregularities that had appeared in the counting process in those regions. The EOM tried to learn more, but its usual interlocutors at the CEC were not able to give any explanation except to confirm rumors that irregularities in the Moscow area were delaying integration of their results. The EOM tried to contact the Moscow Subject Election Commission, but was informed that all officials were summoned to the Presidential Administration offices [italics added]. For the whole day of 20 December, it was impossible to receive any clear information on the issue. On 21 December, the EOM again inquired about the Moscow results and whether they had been cleared. The surprising answer was that there was nothing more to be cleared, and that Moscow results were already part of the overall returns that had been progressively released. Telephone calls to Fatherland–All Russia headquarters and Yabloko confirmed that the parties had no concerns to raise. Some days later, Luzhkov was pronounced the winner of the Moscow Mayoral race and his victory in the local elections was publicly acknowledged by Prime Minister Putin. However, the results published on the web site of the CEC, through which it had been possible to follow the aggregation of results for each Subject of the Federation, were no longer available. It would be imprudent to read more into these events than they warrant. However, these are not the kinds of incident that are likely to promote public confidence.12
The inescapable conclusion from the European Election Observation Mission is that OVR’s victory in Moscow was simply erased by Kremlin action, and in return Putin endorsed Luzhkov as the victor in the mayoral race. Parties and their leaders quickly came to the conclusion that the Unity victory was inevitable and that OVR would not be allowed to form a viable counter to it in the new Duma. Equally, Putin’s bid to become president would be immeasurably assisted by this demonstration of Kremlin strength. Even Putin’s erstwhile nemesis, Governor Yakovlev of St. Petersburg, signaled that he would get in line behind the Kremlin; on December 21 he announced, “The treaty concluded between Fatherland and All Russia is valid only until December 20.” Clearly he would join other regional governors in making sure that his region was not going to be punished by any loss of Kremlin subsidy in the run-up to the presidential election.13 The election results showed that Russian politics had become more fragmented, that regional elites had a considerable power base separate from the Kremlin, and that the mantra of the 1990s—that the choice was between the way back (the Communists) and the way forward (the forces around Yel’tsin and various “parties of power”) no longer held. Instead the election results showed that the question of whether the center’s power over the governors and the regions should be increased was not settled. Although the Communists, the LDPR, and Yabloko remained on the ballot in this election, their total vote counts did not significantly change between 1995 and 1999.
The main feature of the 1999 election was the battle between Fatherland–All Russia (OVR) and Unity for the regions’ votes. And here the power of the governors and their political affiliation proved decisive. Where the governor was affiliated with OVR, Unity did not make inroads. But where the governor came over to Unity (sometimes after considerable political pressure or threats, as in the Republic of Kalmykiya, where the Kremlin first opened a criminal investigation against President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and then dropped the case when he switched allegiance to Unity), the election results not only showed support for Unity but also signs of electoral fraud. Charges of fraud benefiting Unity were made at the time and were borne out by the quantitative evaluation of the returns by University of Oregon professor Mikhayl Myagkov, who plotted district (rayon)-level voting returns in Kalmykiya and Tuva, two regions where governors were both “notorious for their ability to rule as dictators” and supportive of Unity.14 In these two regions, his quantitative analysis supported the conclusion that “local election officials simply added extra ballots to the ballot boxes, and all these ‘additional’ papers were marked for Unity.”15
International observer missions expressed
reservations and made a number of significant recommendations, including that due to its “vulnerability to manipulation,” greater transparency in the electronic reporting of results via the State Automated System Vybory needed to be introduced. Their report noted, “Cynicism still lingers among those concerned about the lack of transparency surrounding the system. The CEC may want to explore measures that could be taken to increase general confidence in the system. Such measures might include the creation of an independent quality assurance working group to conduct independent tests of the software periodically in the pre-election and post-election period. This group could be appointed from recommendations of parties and blocs represented in the Duma, with strict technical qualifications requirements.”16, II Needless to say, the Kremlin never formed such a group.
So the Duma results set up the presidential race in important ways: by destroying OVR and its two leading political figures and by weakening the Communists, who officially received only 24 percent of the party list votes. Unity’s strong official showing in the 1999 Duma elections against the Communists significantly disadvantaged the presidential chances of the Communist Party leader, Gennadiy Zyuganov. A very reliable opposition Duma member, whose identity is known to the author, spoke at a Washington-based think tank of a report that was then published by David Johnson’s respected listserv early in 2000. The report claimed that the results had been substantially altered by the Kremlin (see Table 1).
Table 1. Report of Official and Actual Results of 1999 Duma elections
Party
Official Result %
Actual Result %
Communists
24
33
Unity
23
14
OVR
21
21
Union of Right Forces
9
3.4
Yabloko
6
12
Zhirinovskiy Bloc (LDPR)
6
4.5
Source: David Johnson, “Note on Election Results,” Johnson’s List, February 1, 2000. http://www.russialist.org/4082.html (accessed June 8, 2013).
If it is true, as alleged by this Duma member, that OVR had polled 7 percent higher than Unity and that the Communists’ vote against the Kremlin party was actually 33 to 14 percent rather than the officially reported 24 to 23 percent, and if these results had been allowed to stand, then the momentum would have been with Zyuganov and OVR and not with Putin going into the presidential election. Given that Dmitriy Medvedev would subsequently acknowledge in a meeting with opposition leaders, “We all know that Boris Nikolayevich Yel’tsin did not win in 1996,”18 it is certainly not beyond rational calculation to imagine that the Communists could have been denied fair results in 2000 as well.
The yearning of a broad cross section of the Russian people for stability and their support for Putin’s aggressive stance against the Chechens in the Second Chechen War, which was ongoing at the time of the voting, were demonstrated in numerous public opinion polls.III This image was bolstered by the defection of many newly elected Duma deputies to the Unity faction. OVR broke apart, the Communists lost many of the independent Duma deputies to Unity, and as the presidential elections loomed, many of the high-profile candidates withdrew, including Luzhkov and Primakov. Many key elites and parties came out in favor of Putin—the momentum had shifted clearly in his favor.
Given that Luzhkov, Primakov, and other candidates were (not altogether fairly) pushed from the scene after the Duma elections, it is not known how Putin would have fared in the presidential election against stronger candidates, like Primakov, who were also identified with stability and a conservative national security outlook. What is clear is that the general belief among opposition elites that the election was rigged indicated that the presidential election results were also already decided. The Kremlin’s signal was clear: resistance was not only pointless but perhaps even dangerous.
Acting President, December 31, 1999
On the day before he was named acting president, a document attributed to Putin was posted on the government’s website. In “Russia at the Turn of the Millennium,”19 Putin cautioned against the adoption of any new official ideology, yet at the same time blamed the slowness of necessary reform on the lack of societal cohesion characteristic of the 1990s. He called for building on people’s embrace of universal rights implicit in rights to free speech, foreign travel, and property ownership by also recognizing Russians’ unique, native, and traditional values. Among these he listed patriotism; derzhavnost’ (Great Power–ism: “The funeral service for Russia as a great power is, to put it mildly, premature”); gosudarstvennichestvo (statism: “A strong state for the Russian is not an anomaly . . . but on the contrary, the source and guarantor of order, the initiator and main driving force of any change”); and sotsial’naya solidarnost’ (social solidarity). He declared that a new Russian idea would be created as an “alloy” of these universal human rights and traditional Russian values.
He made it clear, however, that the resilience of this alloy would result from the creation of a strong state to defend it, and he provided an analysis of the rationale for and features of this stronger state. He planned to restructure the state’s personnel policy, putting into place “the best professionals”; to restore the center’s control over the regions; to launch a more aggressive fight against both crime and corruption; and to launch a national strategy for development.
He called for an increase in the role of the state in both the economy and the social sphere, recognizing that ultimately the state would withdraw and become only an arbiter. But in the meantime “the situation demands of us a greater degree of government influence on economic and social processes.” Evidently in preparing for the withering away of the state, its role even under capitalism, once again, needed to be strengthened.IV
On the day he became acting president, December 31, 1999, Putin gave an address to an expanded meeting of the Security Council in which he showed how he intended to implement some of these ideas. For example, in speaking about the law as stipulated in the Constitution and general rights, he noted, “Everything that is stipulated in the law, in the Constitution, must be strictly respected, especially civil and human rights. But we must not overlook the rights of state institutions and society as a whole either.” He admonished the security services chiefs present, “I want you to maintain and even accelerate the pace you have gathered in the past few months.” No other chiefs represented at the meeting were given such instructions.21 Reflecting this special mission given to the security services to resurrect the state and its authority, retired KGB general Leonov gave an interview published in 2001 in which he stated, “The demand today is precisely for such tough, pragmatically thinking politicians. They are in command of operative information. . . . But at the same time, they are patriots and proponents of a strong state grounded in centuries-old tradition. History recruited them to carry out a special operation for the resurrection of our great power [derzhava], because there has to be balance in the world, and without a strong Russia the geopolitical turbulence will begin. . . . What is a KGB officer? He is, above all, a servant of the state. . . . Experience, loyalty to the state . . . an iron will—where else are you going to find cadres? . . . The only people that can bring order to the State are state people [gosudarstvennyye lyudi].”22
In line with this intention, Putin from his very first day as acting president paid enormous attention to personnel issues. After granting Yel’tsin permanent immunity from prosecution, one of the first items of business on his first afternoon in office was to appoint Igor Sechin and Dmitriy Medvedev as deputy directors of the Presidential Administration. Now working next to him were the two men he would send to head the oil and gas industries, the linchpins of his economic plans.
Putin had promised Yel’tsin not to change the top power ministries for a year, so he kept Voloshin as head of the Presidential Administration,
but in a move that was popular in the country, and an ominous signal to Berezovskiy, he dismissed Yel’tsin’s daughter Tat’yana D’yachenko as a presidential advisor in his first action after the New Year (Decree No. 7 2000).23 The same week he appointed Viktor Ivanov as deputy head of the Presidential Administration for personnel. Ivanov shared with Putin the trifecta of experience: former KGB, business dealings in St. Petersburg, and work in Sobchak’s office. Beginning in 2000 and for the next eight years, no one would get appointed to Putin’s Presidential Administration without Ivanov’s endorsement. These appointments complemented the close circle of key people from St. Petersburg: Nikolay Patrushev as director of the FSB (formerly Leningrad KGB); Sergey Ivanov as secretary of the Russian Security Council (KGB); Viktor Zolotov as head of Putin’s personal security team (Baltik-Eskort security company, St. Petersburg); Leonid Reyman as minister of communications (St. Petersburg businessman); Aleksey Kudrin as deputy prime minister and minister of finance (first deputy mayor of St. Petersburg); German Gref (legal advisor to Sobchak’s office on property and real estate); and Dmitriy Kozak as deputy head of the Presidential Administration (Sobchak administration). Two men unconnected with Putin’s past who nonetheless emerged as central figures in his regime were Sergey Shoigu, named minister of emergency situations, and Vladislav Surkov, who remained as another deputy head of the Presidential Administration after his initial appointment in August 1999. With these appointments, the main figures that would drive the “Putin revolution” for the next decade were in place. Now he was ready to enter the presidential race—by refusing to campaign.
Putin's Kleptocracy_Who Owns Russia? Page 28