Putin asked Yeltsin to entrust day-to-day coordination of the military effort to him. Yeltsin “did not hesitate to support him,” the first time he had delegated so many of his national-security powers.95 Putin’s forceful prosecution of the war, and his verbal jabs at the rebels, had speedy impact on public opinion. He won further respect for announcing increases in pension payments from the federal budget, something the incipient economic recovery enabled. His approval ratings skyrocketed, and so did the number prepared to vote for him in a presidential election. If in August 1999 some 2 percent of prospective voters said they would cast their ballots for Putin, by September that was 4 percent and in October it jumped to 21 percent, overtaking Yevgenii Primakov and Gennadii Zyuganov. In November Putin’s forecast vote share had doubled to 45 percent; by the time of the election to the State Duma, on December 19, it stood at 51 percent.96
With Yeltsin’s encouragement, Putin also intervened in the Duma campaign, the second critical event that autumn. The favorite in the election had been the alliance patched together over the preceding year by Yurii Luzhkov. It took final shape in August as the Fatherland–All Russia Bloc, with the widely esteemed Primakov heading its electoral slate. The bloc was center-left and nationalistic in policy orientation and included many of Russia’s most powerful regional chiefs. With the involvement of Vladimir Gusinskii and the NTV television network, its materials depicted the central government and “the Family” around Yeltsin as corrupt and devoid of ideas. The burden of fending off Fatherland–All Russia was assumed by a pro-Kremlin coalition called Unity, which took shape only in September. Led by Sergei Shoigu, the minister for emergency management in all cabinets going back to 1990, Unity put forward a hazy program that mixed liberal ideas with populism, patriotism, and national unity. Berezovskii-controlled ORT television promoted Unity, sparred with Gusinskii and NTV, and attacked Fatherland–All Russia.
Unity’s logo was a stylized drawing of a forest bear, the universal symbol of Russia. It is also the animal to which Boris Yeltsin had often been compared, but that was as close as Unity got to linking itself to the president. Yeltsin cool-headedly accepted the need for a firewall between them. After the initial discussions, “I very quickly ceased to have anything to do with this work. It was clear to me… that the party of social optimism should not be associated in the consciousness of the voters with my name…. It did not bother me that Unity distanced itself from me.”97 The movement was eager to associate itself with the Russian leader whose political coattails were now the longest—Putin. On November 24 Putin stated that “as a citizen” he was going to vote for the Unity bloc. “Our goal is to create a pro-Putin majority in the State Duma,” Unity blared the next week. “Unity supports Putin, and Putin relies on Unity.” Although Unity did not win a majority outright, it routed Fatherland–All Russia, with the Putin sound bite counting for as much as half of its vote share, and came a close second to the KPRF in the national vote. It was soon able to build a working parliamentary majority, something Yeltsin never had as president.
Yeltsin had one more trick up his sleeve. In black and white, Article 92 of the 1993 constitution gave a mechanism that permitted him to control the timing and atmospherics of his exit and to smooth the handover of power. It stipulated that, in the event of a presidential resignation, the prime minister automatically became “acting president” and there was to be a national election of a permanent head of state within ninety days. Anticipating a favorable outcome in the scheduled Duma election, Yeltsin came to the decision to invoke Article 92 the week before it. He brought Putin up to date on his plans at Gorki-9 on December 14, and Putin gave his assent, although Putin thought Yeltsin had in mind retirement in the spring of 2000, not before the end of the year. Putin expressed reluctance about his readiness for the job, to which Yeltsin answered that he, too, came to Moscow with “other plans,” and learned about national leadership only by doing it. On December 28 Yeltsin instructed Aleksandr Voloshin, the head of his executive office, to work out a resignation decree and other administrative arrangements and asked former head Yumashev to draft a retirement speech, so as to keep it secret from the regular speech writers. Yeltsin broke the news to his daughter Tatyana the evening of December 28 and to his wife the morning of his resignation.98
December 31, the final date of the millennium, was chosen as the leave-taking date for its symbolic value, as the end of one unit of history and the start of another. Yeltsin’s grim-faced address, a classic of ceremonial rhetoric, had as its centerpiece a poignant apology. He had told Yumashev to include in the speech a passage about the sufferings of the population in the 1990s and his regrets for them. The speech as delivered requested the Russian people’s forgiveness “for not making many of your and my dreams come true,” faulting the speaker’s performance and the naïveté of the dreams in whose name he attempted his anti-revolutionary revolution. “I did all I could,” Yeltsin said.
Decree No. 1761, his last, took effect at twelve noon sharp. Around one P.M., citizen Yeltsin returned to the president’s office from the farewell lunch and toasts. An adjutant slipped on his overcoat. As they waited for the private elevator of Building No. 1, he presented Putin with the fat fountain pen with which he had signed decrees and laws. He put on his sable hat at the front door. “Take care of Russia,” he said to Putin as the flashbulbs popped. He walked to the car in a light snowfall and was gone out the Kremlin gates.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Aftermath
Boris Yeltsin’s expectations for life after power were uneven. He looked forward to the peace and quiet but “had no illusions.” “People were not going to love or worship me. I even had some doubts. If… I made a public appearance or went to the theater, would they jeer at me?” What would become of him “when the old Russian tradition requires that all misfortunes and sins are heaped upon the departed chief”?1
The remaining stages of the handover of power went by without a hitch. Vladimir Putin, acting president since December 31, was elected president on March 26, 2000, in the first round of voting, without really campaigning for the job. He was sworn in on May 7. Yeltsin, standing beside him in the renovated Grand Kremlin Palace, gave remarks in which he repeated the injunction to take good care of Russia. He delivered them “slowly and with one pause so long that a handful in the audience applauded, thinking the speech was over.”2 When he was done, Putin spoke as president and the shift from one leader to the next was complete.
Yeltsin’s days now centered on his country residence—Gorki-9 in the first year, the more pleasant Barvikha-4 for the duration. The feared personal indignities did not come about. He was never jeered at or made a spectacle of. No one went after him for his actions in government or tried to do him harm through his family.
Aside from the evils avoided, retirement brought with it two good things, in particular. For one, it did wonders for Yeltsin’s physical condition. “Immediately after my departure from the post of president, an enormous, unbelievably heavy load fell from my shoulders and I began to breathe easy”; “the constant pressure that… saps the health of the strongest organism” was behind him.3 Health problems did nag at Yeltsin. He submitted to surgery for eye cataracts in 2000 and 2005. He came down with double pneumonia in January–February 2001 and spent his seventieth birthday in the hospital. In December 2001 he had an angioplasty at the German Heart Center in Berlin. A virus kept him away from Putin’s second inauguration in May 2004. Except for the bout with pneumonia—when the doctors warned the family he might have only days to live—these were pinpricks compared to what he endured from 1996 through 1999.4 Yeltsin still awoke at dawn.5 Under Naina Yeltsina’s watchful eye, he trimmed his waistline, ate a wholesome diet, and kept his drinking to a minimum. His overall condition took a turn for the better in 2002. Acquaintances thought he looked ten years younger.