You really do have to believe unreservedly, as if you have fallen in love for the first time, if you are not immediately to be struck by the obvious question: Why didn’t Putin choose a less dramatic way of presenting his future course than firing the entire government? He had plenty of other ways to provide a glimpse of his second term. He could, for example, have taken part in televised debates. But no. The week after the dismissal of the Cabinet saw unprecedented levels of cynicism. The people of Russia watching their televisions were told that actually it didn’t matter what happened on March 14. Everything had been decided. Putin would be czar. The spin doctors were all but saying, “He wants to show you his course in advance because it’s the only choice you’ve got.”
The day when the name of the new prime minister was to be announced was arranged with all the ceremony traditionally preceding the emergence of the hero of an opera to sing his first aria. The president will tell us tomorrow morning. In two hours’ time. In one hour’s time. Ten minutes to go. Moreover, the one whose name would be revealed might, we were assured over the air waves, possibly be the president’s successor in 2008.
In Russia it is important not to look ridiculous. People make up jokes, and you turn into a Brezhnev. When Putin announced his new government, even his die-hard supporters fell to laughing. No one could fail to see that the Kremlin had been staging a bad farce. It was no more than a petty settling of scores—subjected, of course, to endless spin and veiled behind all manner of claptrap and rhetorical flourishes that invoked the greatness of Russia.
But the mountains truly had brought forth a mouse. Virtually all the old ministers stayed where they had been. Only the prime minister, Mikhail Kasianov, was let go. He had been getting up Putin’s nose for many months in a big way, and in many small ways, too. He was a legacy of the Yeltsin era. When raising the second president to the throne, the first president of Russia had asked Putin not to remove Kasianov.
Prime Minister Kasianov, alone among the main actors in Russian politics, categorically opposed the arrest of the liberal oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the gradual destruction of his Yukos oil company. Yukos was the most transparent company in our corrupt country, the first to function in accordance with internationally accepted financial practice. It operated “in the white,” as people say in Russia, and, what is more, it donated over 5 percent of its gross annual profit to financing a large university, children’s homes, and an extensive program of charitable work.
But Kasianov was speaking out in defense of a man whom Putin had, for some time, counted among his personal enemies, on the grounds that Khodorkovsky was making major financial contributions to the country’s democratic opposition, primarily to the Yabloko Party and the Union of Right Forces.
In Putin’s understanding of political life, Khodorkovsky’s donations represented a grave personal insult. The president has publicly shown, on many occasions, that he is incapable of grasping the concept of discussion, especially in politics. There should be no backtalk from someone Putin considers his inferior, and an underling who allows himself to demonstrate any independence is an enemy. Putin does not choose to behave this way. He is not a born tyrant and despot; rather, he has been accustomed to think along the lines inculcated in him by the KGB, an organization he considers a model, as he has stated more than once. Thus, as soon as anyone disagrees with him, Putin demands that the “hysterics” be dropped. This is the reason behind his refusal to take part in preelection debates. Debate is not his element. He doesn’t know how to conduct a dialogue. His genre is the military-style monologue. While you are a subordinate, you keep your mouth shut. When you become the chief, you talk in monologues, and it is the duty of your inferiors to pretend they agree that the choreography is a political version of the misrule of officers in the army that occasionally, as with Khodorkovsky, leads to all-out war.
But to return to the government reshuffle. Kasianov was out. The ministers returned to their original portfolios and Putin ceremoniously parachuted in Mikhail Fradkov as the new prime minister. In recent times, Fradkov had been quietly enjoying a place in our bureaucratic hierarchy as the Russian Federation’s representative to the European institutions in Brussels. He is a nondescript, amiable, forgettable gentleman with narrow shoulders and a big bum. Most Russians learned that our country had a federal minister named Fradkov only when his appointment as prime minister was announced, which, in accordance with Russian lore, tells us that Fradkov is a low-profile representative of that same service to which Putin has dedicated the greater part of his working life.
The nation laughed out loud when it heard of Fradkov’s elevation, but Putin insisted, and even started explaining his “principled” choice to the effect that he wanted to be open with the electorate and to enter the election with people knowing whom he would be working with in his fight against Russia’s main evils, corruption and poverty.
The Russian people, both the half that supports Putin and the half that doesn’t, didn’t stop laughing. The Kremlin farce continued. If the country as a whole did not know Fradkov, the business community remembered him only too well. He is a typical member of the Soviet nomenklatura who, throughout his career, from the Communist period onward, has been shifted hither and thither to miscellaneous bureaucratic posts, independent of his professional background and expertise. He is a typical boss for whom it is not too important what he is driving, just as long as he is in the driver’s seat. While he was director of the Federal Tax Inspectorate Service, it had a reputation as the most corrupt ministry in the Russian civil service. Its bureaucrats took bribes for just about everything—for every form they issued and every consultation. The service was consequently shut down, and Fradkov, in line with the undying traditions of the Soviet nomenklatura, was “looked after.” He was transferred once again, this time to Brussels.
Prime Minister Fradkov hastily flew back to Moscow from Brussels, only to provoke further merriment. At the airport, in his first interview in his new capacity, he confessed he didn’t actually know how to be a prime minister. No, he had no plans; it had all come like a bolt from the blue. He was waiting to see what arrangements had been made and what his instructions would be.
Russia is a country where much goes on behind the scenes and most people have short memories. Despite his ignorance of the arrangements and the lack of instructions from Putin, which never have been made public, the Duma confirmed Fradkov’s appointment by a convincing majority, making reference to its duty to “fulfill the will of our electors who trust President Putin in all matters.” This Duma, its composition the result of the elections of December 7, 2003, contains practically no opposition to Putin and is firmly under the control of the Kremlin.
March 14 arrived. Everything went off as the Kremlin had intended. Life went on as before. The bureaucrats returned to their tireless thieving. Mass murder continued in Chechnya, having quieted down briefly during the elections, to give hope to those who for five years had been hoping for peace. The second Chechen war had begun in mid-1999, in the run-up to Putin’s first presidential election. In accordance with Asian traditions, just before his second presidential election, two Chechen field commanders laid down their weapons at the feet of the great ruler. Their relatives had been seized and were held in captivity until the commanders stated that they now supported Putin and had given up all thought of independence. Oligarch Khodorkovsky took to writing penitential letters to Putin from prison. Yukos was rapidly becoming poorer. Berlusconi came to visit us, and his first question to his pal Vladimir was how he, too, could get 70 percent of the vote in an election. Putin gave no clear advice, and indeed his friend Silvio would not have understood if he had. Berlusconi is, after all, a European.