Crucial Monday Monday October 1 will go down in history as a crucial day for post-communist Russia. That day, President Vladimir Putin said at a congress of the ruling party United Russia, which chose bear as its symbol, that he would head its lists in the December 2 parliamentary elections without becoming a party member.
Putin’s decision increased the pro-Kremlin party’s ranking by 10%-15% over the week, pushing back other parties.
Only the Communist Party led by Gennady Zyuganov retained the chance to overcome the 7% barrier.
Quickly grasping the importance of Putin’s decision, the Communists proclaimed readiness to set up a bipartisan political system in Russia. The leaders of other parties said bitterly that Russia would have only one party, “the party of Putin.” Putin smiled at the United Russia congress when an ordinary weaver, who claimed to represent Russia’s workers – just like in Soviet times – asked him to accept nomination for a third presidential term. “If this takes amending the law, we’ll do it; we will adopt a new law and respect it,” the woman said. She was later elected to the party’s ruling body.
Her appeal should have been followed by a legislative initiative, “supported by the whole people,” to amend the Constitution, which stipulates that presidents in Russia may be elected only for two consecutive terms. But who cares about the Constitution, when we have had so many of them? Putin did not yield to the temptation to become a president for life, like the leader of Turkmenistan, or to prolong his term “at the request of the people,” like in Kazakhstan, where Nursultan Nazarbayev was elected for a third term. Russia is not an island; it is a European country rather than an Asian one, which places a different kind of responsibility on it.
Putin said in reply to the weaver’s appeal and to all others who had done their best to convince him to amend the Constitution and remain in power for a third term: “I don’t consider it correct to amend the Constitution to suit one particular person.” This seemingly solved the problem. However, the president said when speaking about his political future that he might accept the post of prime minister after the presidential elections, provided a top-class professional, “an honest and upright person is elected president.” Unfortunately, few people in the Russian elite satisfy this requirement. So it is difficult to guess whom Putin meant.
New favourite In my opinion, that he meant Viktor Zubkov, former head of the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring (see the September issue for my article on him).
I know him personally and can assure you that he is an upright and lily-white man and a top-class manager. Two weeks before the United Russia’s congress, Putin appointed Zubkov prime minister in a move that surprised everyone.
(Former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov was later made head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.) Few people knew that Zubkov, an obscure official, was one of the president’s closest associates and allies, and one of the few who Putin invites to his home for his birthday parties.
He gave a sensational interview shortly after the approval of his nomination by a landslide vote in the lower house of parliament.
He said that he might consider running for the presidency in March 2008 if he succeeds as prime minister.
Everyone knows that in Russia such statements are never made without approval of the chief executive.
Russian and foreign journalists have learned this when they asked Putin’s possible successors – deputy prime ministers Sergei Ivanov, Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Naryshkin, head of rail monopoly Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin, and St Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko – if they would run. All of them shied away from the question, saying that they love their jobs and were not considering any other career, let alone the presidential post.
The majority of political analysts, who had scrutinised all possible presidential candidates but never thought to look at the resume of the head of Russia’s financial intelligence, agreed that Zubkov is the most likely candidate for succession.
Putin has indirectly confirmed this conclusion. He said immediately after Zubkov made his sensational statement that the prime minister, just like any other citizen of Russia, had the right to be elected president. Analysts interpreted that statement as proof of their forecast. There were also other signs pointing in the same direction.
Professional ‘Putinologists’ have long noticed a specific element in all of Putin’s speeches. He seldom changes his assessment of his team members, speaking about them as if reading from their reference files.
To follow the logic of analysts of the Kremlin mode de vie, we should remember Putin’s speech at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club organised by RIA Novosti, held soon after Zubkov’s appointment to the post of prime minister.
The president described him as “a true professional, and an upright, balanced and wise man,” which is a perfect portrait of the man Putin said he would like to work with.
But which post should this person hold? What power configuration will Russia have after the March 2008 presidential elections? Putin said at a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Wiesbaden on October 25 that Russia “will have a new power configuration.” This is how he described changes in the Russian political and power structure after the elections. He later did his best to avoid repeating the new term, but “a word spoken is past recalling.”
Political analysts at a loss Putin does not look like a lame duck president. He was and still is a leader, and plans to remain one. Everyone wonders what post he will opt for. The G8 and other countries are trying to guess Putin’s new scenario of remaining in power.
Some sharp commentators said that US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had come to Moscow in mid-October not so much to discuss Washington missile shield plans for Europe, as to fish around for details of Operation Successor.
However, Condie’s charms left Vladimir cool, so much so that President George Bush later expressed concern over Putin’s reserve.
Eight Russian political analysts decided to help Ms Rice by holding a roundtable during her visit to discuss where Putin would go after March 2008. More than half of them agreed that after serving his term Putin will take the post of speaker of the lower house of parliament, the State Duma. However the post of the Duma speaker is the third most important in the country after the president and the prime minister. Putin will never agree to be the third most important leader. He knows that the idea of keeping the reins of power by accepting the post of the Duma speaker theoretically involves the risk of losing these reins.
The confrontation between parliament and President Boris Yeltsin in 1993 came to a head when the president, removed from power by parliament, ordered the shelling of parliament and the arrest of the culprits. We cannot rule out the possibility of a repetition of such scenario now, although it seems improbable in the Zubkov-Putin configuration.
On October 17, when Putin was in Tehran, the official daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta, which has successfully replaced the Communist Party’s Pravda, published a large interview with Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the lower house of parliament and chairman of United Russia, titled “Putin remains Russia’s leader.” Gryzlov offered a new vision of the president’s political future.
Below are several excerpts from the interview, which can be described as his party’s election manifesto.
“The upcoming Duma elections will be actually a national referendum in support of Vladimir Putin,” Gryzlov said. “The question of the country’s leader will be decided on December 2, 2007. Such leader is, must be and will be Vladimir Putin.” Is Putin’s new role determined, and there are no more mysteries left? Did Gryzlov infer that Putin would not become president, prime minister, or speaker, but will be the “national leader,” Citizen Number One? There is no such post in the Constitution, but, according to Gryzlov’s logic, it is a position higher than any and all of the abovementioned elected posts. Isn’t this wishful thinking on Gryzlov’s part? Here’s what he said about the ability of a party with a constitutional majority to support its leader (he is confident that his party will have such a majority): “I want to remind you that the party has enough powers for that, in particular in parliament.
One of them is the power to adopt the budget and other laws, to approve candidates for the posts of prime minister, chairman of the Central Bank, Prosecutor General, the Supreme and Arbitration courts, and the Audit Chamber. It will also have control functions, including the power to authorise parliamentary investigations, propose a no-confidence vote on the government, and take part in nominating and approving candidates for the posts of regional heads. Every possibility will be employed to ensure that the country is led by Vladimir Putin.” Gryzlov did not mention, possibly out of modesty, the lower house’s rights to amend the Constitution and impeach the president. But they were probably implied in the “every possibility” category.
Judging by his interview, Gryzlov views the parliamentary and presidential elections as part of Operation Successor.
“The December 2 vote will be a vote for Vladimir Putin. He remains the national leader irrespective of the post he holds,” he said concluding his “manifesto.” However, even that explicit interview of the Untied Russia leader did not say exactly which post Putin will accept after ceding his presidential powers in March 2008.
Some say the Kremlin experts have prepared a scheme of shifting some of presidential powers to the prime minister.
According to it, the lower house will turn over control over security-related agencies from the president to the cabinet, which is led by prime minister, of course.
French scenario Putin overturned later all forecasts and scenarios of the change of power in Russia without disclosing his plans. He said during the question and answer session broadcast live from the Kremlin on October 18 that Russia would have a new president in 2008, adding that nobody would curtail his powers or shift some of them to the prime minister.
He repeated this after the Russia-EU summit held in Mafra, Portugal. He spoke at a conference of the heads of local governments in Moscow about the need of guaranteeing continuity of the government’s policy after the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.
He was referring above all to the key decisions on economic development, priority national projects, and the armed forces. “We have not simply taken decisions,” he said about his agreement to head the election list of Untied Russia, a party as important in Russia as the Communist Party was in the Soviet Union.
“We have reserved the resources for implementing them for years ahead. Imagine that people who don’t care for these decisions come to power. They would change the priorities very quickly, distributing funds and reducing the country’s gold and foreign currency reserves.
This would destroy the positive set of tools we are using now to develop, which are an earnest of the country’s future development.” Although Putin rejected the idea of two centres of power and said the presidential powers would not be curtailed, the highly influential weekly Expert (#39, October 22-28) published an article, “Idling Resources of the Russian System of Power,” immediately after Putin’s Q&A session.
It was contributed by MP Alexander Lebedev, a banker and ex-colonel of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service who had spied for his country in London.
Lebedev is a highly informed man with connections in the corridors of power and good acquaintances in the president’s team.
He proposed enhancing parliamentary control over the executive branch, limiting the right of the president to dismiss the government, transferring command over security-related and lawenforcement agencies to the Kremlin administration, and formalising all of these changes in laws, including a federal law on the status and operating regulations of the Russian Security Council.Taken together, this is a clear-cut scheme for “a new power configuration,” as Putin said.
The same issue of the magazine carried an article by a Kremlin-backed analyst Gleb Pavlovsky “The Change of Power,” in which he provides a clear view of the new structure: “Putin said during the Q&A session that he would not create diarchy. But he will have to restructure the concept of power. This is a specific kind of pluralism, pluralism a la fusion. The power is becoming flexible and fluid. It can be shifted to the prime minister with a wave of a hand, and if this turns out to be improper, it can be moved on to a party, speaker or the commander-in-chief. And all the while, power will not lose its cohesion and indivisibility, which is a matter of principle for Putin.
Power is portable and easy to program, like the nuclear button.” The two articles reflect the plans and aspirations of those on Putin’s team who have asked him to run for a third term, using “a simple worker” and “collective letters from the artistic intelligentsia.” The president has rejected all of these scenarios of keeping power, for several reasons.
Although his future seat on Russia’s political Olympus has not yet been determined – or created – the West hastily expressed concern over his team’s attempts to keep him in power even without re-election. Broad hints were sent to the Kremlin from Washington, Berlin, London and Paris, and voiced also at the summit in Portugal. Traditional democracies were alarmed by the demonstrations and knee-crooking public speeches by Putin’s “supporters,” which reminded many in Russia and outside it about the first years of Stalin’s personality cult, and the lauding of Soviet Communist Party leaders. We all know what this had led to.
The unbridled praise of “the national leader” is indeed alarming. It is difficult to comprehend, but some people have proposed restoring monarchy and making Putin the new tsar.
A wise man, Putin is ignoring them, just as he pretended not to hear the hysterical cry from the crowd during the Q&A session not to leave the people in the lurch. The crowd is never wise, but for the Duma speaker it is not wise to confuse an analysis of the political situation in the country with a panegyric to Putin.
“Modern Russia is Putin,” he writes in his interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
“Russia without Putin [the opposition’s slogan – Author] is Russia without leadership, Russia without a will, Russia that can be divided and treated any way imaginable, Russia as prey. They will not get their wish. Putin will remain the leader of Russia. And his leadership, his guidance of the country will remain the key condition for a successful development of Russia and its ability to deal with the most serious threats and challenges.” I respect Putin, but this is going too far; this is only one small step from a personality cult. Return to authoritarianism in any of its forms would be extremely dangerous for Russia, which has opted for the road to democracy, even when such a return is justified by “national interests.” It is a pity that the leader of Russia’s most influential party has forgotten about the sad experience of the Soviet Communist Party.
Putin, who seems to see the danger, is restraining his team, some of whose members are ready to prostrate themselves before him. This is why he has refused to run for a third term, creating a precedent for his successors.
He clearly doesn’t want to leave the political scene and lay down the reins of power, because he believes that there is no other more respected leader in Russia. In his opinion, we will have to wait for a transition from manual to automatic control in Russia for another 10 or 15 years.
Putin said he hopes that by that time the Russian people and officials, who have not yet got rid of the leader-worshipping tradition, will become used to democracy, just as the countries of the so-called “golden billion” did over the past 200 years. It is to ensure a smooth transition to that time, and to implement his plans, that he wants to remain an active and the most influential player in Russian and global politics. To attain his goals, he must be the Politician Number One.
The role of the national leader proposed by United Russia is similar to the posts of the Communist Party General Secretary or the Ayatollah in Iran. The post of Ayatollah is stipulated in the Iraqi Constitution, although the post of General Secretary was not written into the Soviet fundamental law.
The latter created problems with diplomatic protocol during meetings with the Eastern and Western leaders, because there are no civilised analogues of general secretaries outside Russia.
Therefore, general secretaries were “elected” chairman of the Supreme Soviet (parliament speaker) or chairman of the Council of Ministers (prime minister), or, in the case of Nikita Khrushchev, both. This simplified the situation, because Western and Eastern leaders could call the Soviet (and Chinese) heads of state Mr Chairman.
Taking this into account, I doubt that the post called “national leader” will be added to the Russian Constitution.
To become the de facto leader of Russia in a world alarmed by the possibility, Putin will have to strictly comply with the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
He will also need to guarantee the personal loyalty of the security and lawenforcement agencies, the leaders of all levels and branches of power, in accordance with the scheme outlined by Gryzlov in his interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta (reshuffles in the Russian leadership following the appointment of Viktor Zubkov as prime minister show that the process is already under way).
Putin will also have to choose a successor who will formally take over the presidential powers while recognising the role of Putin as the “national leader” and will not attempt to take any decisions without consulting him and getting his approval.
If he complies with these three requirements – with due regard for specific Russian conditions and the world’s reaction, Russia might enact the 1987 French scenario March 2008. In 1987, Francois Mitterrand, a socialist, was elected president and Jacques Chirac, a conservative and Gaullist, became prime minister after parliamentary elections.
Mitterrand as president was the guarantor of the Constitution, the commanderin- chief of the armed forces, and the head of state. Chirac was responsible for everything else, including the foreign policy (to a large degree), despite Mitterrand’s attempts to limit his powers.
Chirac appointed the heads of security and law-enforcement agencies, and his parliamentary majority ensured him the support Gryzlov has promised to Putin as the future “national leader.” Mitterrand could not – and possibly didn’t want to – tie Chirac’s hands. That political diarchy was called “coexistence.” Later the scenario was applied during Mitterrand’s second presidential term with Edouard Balladur, another Gaullist, as prime minister. The French liked that system, and thought it was a good example of effective democracy.
If Putin becomes prime minister with Zubkov as president, we will not have diarchy (or two centres of power, according to Pavlovsky). He will not have the problems Yeltsin had with Ruslan Khasbulatov or Mitterrand had with Chirac.
Zubkov and Putin are members of the same team. Putin sill has enough time until the presidential elections to replace Zubkov with any other of his favourites (see the list above), or introduce a dark-horse candidate, if he chooses to do so.
But he will most likely make Zubkov president. He will see to it that Operation Successor proceeds according to his plans. Most importantly, the reins of power will be held by “the Putin party,” in which you don’t need to carry a card or convene congresses to nominate presidential candidates. His party is a close-knit team whose goal is to serve Russia, a group of united by years of studies in the same university, or service in the KGB, or work in the St Petersburg government under Mayor Anatoly Sobchak.
It is this team that governs Russia, as well as United Russia and other parties set up in the Kremlin political design bureau. This is why Putin does not need the emperor’s scepter or the presidential regalia to keep the power. He has at his disposal the vertical system of power he has created, in which all key figures, from top to bottom, owe their posts, career and everything they have to him, and him alone.
