#7
Trud
October 10, 2002
PUTIN ON HORSEBACK
Historian Roy Medvedev discusses the very latest Russian history
Author: Rafael Guseinov
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN HAS CELEBRATED HIS FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY. DISSIDENT HISTORIAN AND PUBLICIST ROY MEDVEDEV SPEAKS ABOUT THE NEW RUSSIA AND ITS NEW PRESIDENT, SO DIFFERENT FROM ANY FORMER RUSSIAN LEADER. MEDVEDEV SAYS THE NATION'S REVIVAL IS ONLY JUST BEGINNING.

President Vladimir Putin has turned fifty. The Russian leader showed some modesty, spending the memorable day in intensive talks at the CIS summit in Moldova. Historian Roy Medvedev, whose latest book is titled "Vladimir Putin: the Active President", answers our questions today.

Question: As a rule, the political figures that interest you are studied over many years. These are Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov. But here you have written a third book about Vladimir Putin within a few years. I will also note another thing. Your characters (except for Chubais) you study as a historian, looking into a political life that has already finished.

Roi Medvedev: By no means every leader of this country has interested me as a historian. For example, the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, has never been an object of an individual study of mine, for a whole range of reasons.

Vladimir Putin (I write in my book about this) represents a new generation of Russian politicians - people born after World War II. Those people were educated in the Soviet Union, but they were not either lost in circumstances of the liberal reforms in the nineties. As a rule, these are sober and pragmatic people, but at the same time they are enthusiastic, able and willing to use as a support all the best values and traditions of the old Russia, the USSR, and the new democratic Russia.

Question: Change of power at the turn of the new millennium was unusual not only because it was simple and efficient. All that happened without revolutions and bloodshed, without a palace coup or conspiracy...

Medvedev: All that happened quite in time, in the first place. Let's remember in what state Russia was on that memorable December day when Boris Yeltsin last time surprised the Russians very much, announcing his voluntary resignation on television.

Coming of a new person, not from the nomenclature, not from the habitual range was predestined. Entire civilian in his life, Yeltsin himself would like to see in that role... a general and he wrote about that: "I was waiting for coming of a new general that would not be like others. To be more precise, one resembling those generals I read about in books as a young man. Time passed and such a general appeared".

The "general" turned out to be a colonel and his name was Vladimir Putin. Yet, it seemed just inconceivable that a person with such a character and intellect, such hidden potential that he has been displaying for more than two years already could at all arise in the first president's declined milieu...

I will note another thing. A person of Putin's abilities and opportunities would have never grown up and made a career in the USSR. People with a strong character, thinking and rich in intellect were inevitably weeded out by the nomenclature system.

Question: You speak about the economic, social, and other issues the new president encountered. However, nearly he most acute problem and perhaps a decisive one for his career was still the Chechnya conflict.

Medvedev: The new president understood that full well. It was not by chance that his first visit literally in a few hours after he had accepted the report of the nuclear code carriers he made not to his native St. Petersburg, but to the belligerent Chechnya. However, he had tackled Chechnya much earlier, as Federal Security Service (FSB) chief and prime minister.

The matter was not simply in application of force in Dagestan, but in it efficient application on the one hand, and on the other - that the young leader (being perfectly aware of what the failure threatened him) undertook solution of the main problems of the new war, so the army success became also Putin's. For the people who supported him and for himself Chechnya became a tool to begin turning round the entire Russia.

At the same time, I draw your attention to one more remarkable fact. Those are erroneous who assume that Vladimir Putin came to power surrounded by ardent supporters and faithful friends. The formed political elites of the country also met the new leader in a rather cold way. From one side, the Duma inimical towards the authorities, from the other - filled with sovereignties, ambitious governors, from the third - the tycoons not equally distanced yet, so considering themselves the real masters of Russia.

Those who thought themselves to be the makers of the public opinion, actually trying to manipulate the public conscience on behalf of their own pockets, received Putin's first actions with open malice and hatred.

Despite the situation, it was decided not to untie, but to cut the knot in the North Caucasus - with all the possible difficult consequences. The price of that decision was high. The second defeat of the federal troops in Chechnya might completely undermine Russia's prestige. Therefore, the risk of the failure was great, but it was justified too. And it turned out, the decision of the prime minister was not only right, it can be called epoch-making.

Question: Speaking about the problems the new president encountered, you mentioned in passing the tycoons that by that time had felt sure in both the Kremlin and the house of government, and their own mass media. So while the war in Chechnya required unambiguous decisions, the "combat operations" with the tycoons - special caution and subtlety.

Medvedev: It is no secret that alongside with the efforts of resuscitation experts, the financial resources of the tycoons helped Boris Yeltsin win the presidential race in 1996. this, in turn, allowed the most ambitious tycoons to occupy influential positions not only in the economy, but also in the power structures of Russia. These are pure fantasies that all that did the country good. Among the addresses to the power that sounded increasingly loud and insistent were demands to do away not only with corruption and crime, but also with the domination of the tycoons, universally known names called.

Large Russian capital is not a myth, but neither it is a certain serried group of businesspeople and financiers with common interests. It should be noted that unlike his predecessor Putin and his election headquarters spent very little funds to conduct the election campaign, so the money of large business proved unnecessary to them. That time Putin first spoke about the principle of "equal distance" between the power and the tycoons. These words scared first of all those who were very close to the power or even part of it.

Question: What were they afraid of? For Putin repeatedly emphasized there would be no new re-division of property in the country.

Medvedev: The extreme sensibility and even shyness of large Russian businesspeople may be explained with the insufficient legitimacy of their capitals in the first place. Their business is based on extremely obscure schemes, it is nontransparent and rouses suspicions.

Besides, many of the people who had swallowed huge pieces of state property proved unable to digest them. Even Mr. Yavlinsky, admitting that most tycoons had grown up on bureaucratic pork, recommended to keep them off the pork without trying to find out how much and what they had swallowed already.

It should be noted, Putin did not announce any vendetta to the tycoons. He simply deprived them of support. The matter is that without the support and care of the power, without direct influence or even bribery, it was impossible to start and in just a few years to develop large business in Russia in the early nineties. However, the situation when, according to Solzhenitsyn, "the power stands over everyone of a group of people totally indifferent to the destiny of the people subject to it, nor even to whether it will survive at all or not" created great social strain in the country where more than 50% of the citizens defined their financial state as "poverty" and "misery".

Today, the positions of the tycoons have in fact been undermined in Russia. The country has switched on a new system of production relations that in the circumstances of the early 21st century can only be a system of state capitalism.

Another most important achievement I believe is creation of economic stability in the country. Russia's gold and foreign currency reserves have grown, which gives the country a huge advantage in international economic cooperation. As of late September, the reserves amounted to $45 billion, and we have never had such a volume, either in the USSR or in Russia.

Question: Many books have been written about Vladimir Putin. But you are one of the few authors who have personally spoken to the president.

Medvedev: The meeting was unexpected for me, but we spent half a day together, so I received a definite experience.

Probably, that was the most unusual meeting with readers in my entire career. To be sure, among the participants in the meeting (there were 60 generals who in different years served in KGB or the FSB) were the most attentive readers, but by no means admirers of my dissident works.

My invitation was initiated by Putin himself who headed the FSB at that time. I suppose the future president ran certain risk inviting me to that specific circle of his colleagues. He did not know what I would say, did he?

I was told later that professional FSB personnel highly estimated the fact that by the 85th anniversary of Andropov Putin restored the memorial plate on the FSB building, manifested attention to his memory. On the other hand, on his initiative the main reporter at the FSB collegium was a former dissident in my person who had suffered from the same KGB.

That was a very difficult situation and I would like to say that our president is a great master of such politically correct constructions. Meeting and mixing with both the Russian and foreign political elites, he has repeatedly erected such beautiful and intelligent constructions.

Question: Vladimir Putin's opponents often accuse him of having too few trusted staff, unwillingness to totally change his team, and the still remaining influence of the notorious "Yeltsin's family" - the inheritance from the former president.

Medvedev: Putin's staff policy principles are absolutely different from those of his predecessors. He acts thoughtfully, even cautiously, and refrains from emotional or humiliating gestures.

See for yourself: every former prime minister - Chernomyrdin, Kirienko, Primakov, and Stepashin - have received senior posts. And the matter is not that they are satisfied with their offices, but in the first place that they successfully and apparently with pleasure perform their functions, they have found themselves, so to speak. They say, the task of a politician is to make a friend of an enemy. Boris Yeltsin contrived to do everything on the contrary. He made an opponent of his faithful ally Yuri Luzhkov. Putin delicately settled that situation, he openly supports the Moscow mayor, in turn acquiring an honest and decent associate in his person.

By no means every problem the country faces have been solved. Almost nothing has been done to overcome a difficult crisis in public health, education, and culture. Very modest is the success of Russian science, housing and utility infrastructure of the country continues to worsen.

Vladimir Putin turned out to be a necessary person at a necessary time and in a necessary place. However, the need of new political and state figures is growing in Russia, and new economists that could support and continue the revival of the country that is just beginning by and large.

(Translated by P. Pikhnovsky)

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