Ben Judah: Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love With Vladimir Putin

Putin’s political technique is the product of working in this St Petersburg for its local Boris Yeltsin – the ‘democrat’ Anatoly Sobchak – a man whose name came to echo in the city all the hopes and failures of those years. A perestroika darling of the intelligentsia, who stood out as an orator in Mikhail Gorbachev’s semi-elected Congress of People’s Deputies, with gushing speeches denouncing ‘greedy and incompetent leaders who could reduce our lives to absurdity’, he was to fail the democracy test in office. 12Sobchak ruled the city like Yeltsin ruled Russia. The same man who had stood on the steps of the Winter Palace defying the hardliner coup in 1991 preferred to rule by decree, treated the legislature with disdain and awarded himself the right to hand out city properties. Under his watch, the town hall was accused of skyrocketing corruption and bribery. ‘He said he was this great democrat, but he had such strong authoritarian tendencies,’ remembers Kramarev. ‘He once asked me to ban a book written about him by a deputy, who is now jailed for murder. I said that’s impossible… and besides, a job for the KGB, not the police.’

The St Petersburg democrats were ambiguous about democracy and stuffed their offices with KGB men. They were behaving just like Yeltsin in Moscow. Like Sobchak in St Petersburg, he was locked in combat with parliament as his support evaporated in an economic depression. The situation was so bad that a report by the International Labour Organization warned: ‘there should be no pretence. The Russian economy and the living standards of the Russian population have suffered the worst peacetime setback of any industrialized nation in history.’ 13

In the capital it was the liberal intelligentsia who called on the ‘great democrat’ to rule by decree, to use force against parliamentary rebels and suggested postponing the elections. If Putin had picked up the ‘liberal’ Literaturnaya Gazeta in 1992 he might have read letters from the great and the good shouting:

Mr. President,

As citizens of Russia we consider it our duty to express our firm support for the policy of radical reforms. Do not let yourself be stopped by the hysteria of temporary favourites, who, standing at the side of the road of Russian history, sense the fragility of their existence. Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin did not hesitate to put his country’s welfare above the reverence for parliamentary forms, forms which not a single people have ever acquired instantly. 14We believe that Russians support the government of the republic. We are convinced a direct appeal to them is an essential step. It can brook no delay. 15

In 1992 as Putin and Sobchak sat in St Petersburg town hall, the parliament that had once greeted Yeltsin with applause, turning into an ovation as he pulled down the USSR, moved into outright rebellion. It wanted to stop radical reform after the disaster of price liberalization. The situation was akin to wartime – the average monthly wage had fallen to $6 and over 60 per cent of wages were in arrears. 16The International Labour Organization calculated that 85 per cent were now in poverty. 17Russia seemed about to shatter. One-third of all governors were withholding their taxes and, even in St Petersburg, 74.43 per cent had voted ‘yes’ in a referendum on making the city a ‘republic’. 18

When fighting broke out in Moscow between militia loyal to the parliament and Kremlin forces, Yeltsin convinced the military to storm parliament. It was shelled into a smouldering ruin and a new super-presidential constitution rushed through, untying the executive from effective checks and balances. Sobchak mimicked Yeltsin in his treatment of the St Petersburg assembly, ordering a part-time and toothless body into existence as its replacement. As the liberals and democrats applauded, only a few ostracized thinkers such as Dmitry Furman realized what was happening:

What will happen now is more or less clear – a new authoritarian system headed by Yeltsin, who cannot be blamed for anything, because he is being carried along by a wave of history that has caught him, racing through the democratic-populist stage, and is now pushing him towards the role of ‘Grand Prince’, who relies on the democratic movement that is devoted to him and is increasingly dominated by rhetorical anti-Communism and Russian nationalism. 19

As Yeltsin’s writ was weak beyond Moscow in the early 1990s local power brokers had to improvise their own transitions. Cities such as Nizhny Novgorod became the strongholds of anti-communist democrats, whilst some provinces – like Bashkortostan – became starkly authoritarian; meanwhile, others including Yakutia became de facto controlled by local ethnic clans that excluded native ethnic Russians from the spoils. Sobchak copied Moscow.

The West liked the idea of Yeltsin being surrounded by dashing ‘young reformers’, but in fact he brought the military and FSB into government. They held as little as 5 per cent of top government posts under Gorbachev in 1998 but by 1993 occupied 33 per cent, climbing to 46 per cent by the end of his term. 20He liked them as drinking partners. Like Yeltsin, Sobchak chose to build his ‘liberal’ power base in close cooperation with the local KGB–FSB. Sobchak made many of their agents – in order not to challenge him – partners in his administration. This is why he chose Putin to be his right-hand man. Putin was one of his former students from St Petersburg State University Law Faculty, where Sobchak still taught – who now washed up back on campus as its KGB ‘curator’. This must have been a humiliatingly minor job for a man who dreamed of being the Soviet Bond. It was here that they first politically hooked up. This was the start of Putin’s second life as a powerful but municipal official, the deputy mayor responsible for foreign trade. 21He soon became Sobchak’s effective deputy for everything, and officially became the first deputy mayor. The two were in tandem almost from the start – with Putin being trusted to such an extent by the boss that he would be acting mayor in his absence, to the shock of his colleagues. Putin was a hit on local TV. He spoke neither in the old party language, nor like a moralizing new democrat – but straight from the wild 1990s. To the cameras, Putin once coldly insisted:

‘If the criminals have attacked authority there must be an appropriate punishment. It’s a policemen’s duty to be severe and cruel if necessary. It is the only way to reduce criminality – the only way. We hope to eliminate ten criminals for each officer killed… within the law, of course.’ 22

Kramarev, the police chief, is certain that Sobchak thought this was good politics: ‘He thought having a KGB number two would be good for ratings, give him support from their system and be a strong sign he was willing to work with them.’ This is when he started working closely with Putin. Kramarev recalls:

‘I thought he was just an insignificant official at the time who always stood up when I went into his office to tell him frankly – “is Sobchak crazy? What the hell is this? Can you just stop that?” – but the young Putin really knew what was going on. Unlike Sobchak, he had his feet on the ground. He saw the collapsing economy, the crime wave. He saw that the country was at death’s door. He grasped that… The essential fact.’

Kramarev and all the other people who were working with Putin, from hostile democratic deputies in the St Petersburg assembly to rival mayoral candidates, remember a quiet, efficient man, who in the words of one ‘meant no when he meant no, meant yes when he meant yes, and always explained that no. Unlike the other incoherent officials.’ 23He came across as a cut above the other officials. Well-spoken, loyal and a man who meant what he said. Kramarev remembers countless moments when Putin defused rows he was having with Sobchak – including dissuading him from banning politically damaging books. He remembers a good negotiator who knew how to make friends. But of course making friends – and winning men’s trust – are the skills of a spy. ‘I’m a specialist in human relations,’ is how Putin would hint to friends that he was in the KGB. 24