#11 - JRL 6597
RFE/RL Russian Political Weekly
11 December 2002, Volume 2, Number 42
CORRIDORS OF POWER
THE 'FAMILY' IS DEAD -- LONG LIVE THE 'FAMILY.'
By Jonas Bernstein
With President Putin approaching the end of his third year as Russia's head of state, one would have thought that rumors about the ongoing influence of Yeltsin-era insiders, the so-called "Family," would have faded into history. All the more so, given that his approval rating recently broke the 80 percent barrier for the first time -- a rating that would give most leaders the feeling they had a free hand in personnel and other key areas. Yet a recent journalistic account purports to detail the various ways in which post-Soviet Russia's second president continues to cohabit with the first. This is all the more noteworthy given the frequent stories in the Russian press that Putin, upon his accession as head of state at the end of 1999, gave the Family a guarantee that he would make no drastic changes in his government and administration only during his first two years in office. If Putin indeed gave such a guarantee, it inevitably raises the question as to why he has made no major changes at the top in his third year in power.
The account referred to above appeared in the 3 December edition of "Moskovskii komsomolets" and was written by Mikhail Rostovskii, one of the paper's veteran Kremlin watchers. According to Rostovskii, Yeltsin, despite his official status as a pensioner, "remains the main 'transmitter' of the political will of his clan" and has virtually unlimited access to the man who succeeded him. Thus, while it is "rather problematic" for leading members of the Yeltsin clan to communicate directly with Putin, Yeltsin uses his direct telephone line to his successor and makes his wishes known "without hesitation." (Even Valentin Yumashev, the former Kremlin chief of staff who is Yeltsin's ghostwriter and is married to Yeltsin's younger daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, has trouble getting an audience with Putin, Rostovskii reports, though Yumashev still has a Kremlin office.)
What is more, Rostovskii writes that Yeltsin's requests are met in most cases, which means that "a great number of top officials" are obliged to the former president for keeping their posts. "For example, not long ago he pleaded for one of the members of the Constitutional Court," Rostovskii claims. "Even earlier, they say, Yeltsin interceded on behalf of Prosecutor-General [Vladimir] Ustinov. At one time, Russia's chief legal expert was treated in the Kremlin with pointed coldness. Ustinov even began to consider the possibility of imminent resignation. After Boris Nikolaevich's [Yeltsin's] intervention, everything instantly changed. The prosecutor-general was made to understand that, in principle, the president was satisfied with him." Ustinov was reportedly made prosecutor-general at the insistence of the Family.
It is worth noting that back in May 2000, when Ustinov was appointed prosecutor-general, various Russian media reported that Putin wanted Dmitrii Kozak -- who is today deputy chief of the presidential staff -- for the post, but he was reportedly overruled by Aleksandr Voloshin, the presidential chief of staff who was named to that post during the late Yeltsin period.
At the same time, Rostovskii notes, Yeltsin sometimes fails to get his way. Perhaps the best-known instance was at the start of this year, when Putin removed a key member of Yeltsin's inner circle, Nikolai Aksenenko, as railways minister. In addition, the rival "Petersburg clan," which includes many long-time Putin associates from Russia's second city, many of them from the state security services, has tried to use some of Yeltsin's postpresidential actions against him. A recent example was Yeltsin's indirect criticism of Putin this past June for cooling on the idea of a Russia-Belarus union, which led to a rare public rebuke by Putin of his predecessor. "But in general," Rostovskii writes, "all the attempts to split the two presidents' alliance have thus far been unsuccessful." It should also be noted that Yeltsin, according to Rostovskii's account, is in better health than he has been in a long time, once again playing tennis and swimming (according to the article, he still enjoys the occasional drink but has it under control), and reasonably good mental form.
Like Yeltsin, the Family businessmen remain highly influential, despite Putin's vow to keep Russia's competing oligarchs at an equal arm's length from the state. Citing unidentified "international bankers," Rostovskii claims that the Yeltsin clan controls up to 20 percent of Russia's gross domestic product, playing "first violin" in the oil business, metallurgy, and auto manufacturing, among other sectors. Meanwhile, Family-connected politicians continue to hold key positions in various agencies, including the State Customs Committee and the Pension Fund. (One could also mention the Russian White House. Indeed, despite constant rumors over the last few years that Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, another reputed Family man, was facing imminent dismissal, he has not only survived but has even contradicted the head of state publicly on various issues, including economic growth rates and tariffs on foreign-made automobiles.)
Still, by Rostovskii's account, some things have changed for the Family, for instance, in the way that the oligarchs interact with top state officials. "Before, each business clan fed its protege in the corridors of power," he writes. "Now, a new procedure has been established in some state departments. All the oligarchs pay tribute into one common 'black' cash box, so that the bureaucrats receive the money already 'depersonalized.' There's your 'equidistant from power!'"
More significantly, the Yeltsin clan can no longer treat the halls of federal power in Moscow as a kind of private preserve. Instead, some key Family members have set up what amount to fiefdoms in the regions. The most notable among these, of course, is Roman Abramovich. According to Rostovskii, Abramovich has not only de facto substituted himself for federal power in Chukotka, where he is governor, but he also holds "practically limitless" power in Omsk Oblast, the home base of Sibneft, the oil major that, by all accounts, he continues to control.
Another major change for the Yeltsin clan, of course, is the eclipse of the man who was once perhaps its most powerful member, Boris Berezovskii, who continues to attack Putin from self-imposed exile in Britain. Still, while the other Family members understand that maintaining an open friendship with "presidential enemy No. 1" would be "a demonstration of glaring disloyalty," Rostovskii says some observers are convinced that the Yeltsin clan, and specifically Yumashev, maintains contact with the exiled tycoon "under conditions of deep secrecy."
Similar points about the ongoing influence of the Yeltsin-era Family were made by Dzhalol Khaidarov, former general director of the Kachkanar vanadium-mining complex (GOK), in an interview with investigative journalist Vladimir Ivanidze published in France's "Le Monde" on 28 November. In the interview, Khaidarov, who was close to Family-connected metals kingpins Mikhail Chernoi and Iskander Makhmudov before being ousted as GOK chief in a January 2000 armed takeover, describes the leading roles that Abramovich and Voloshin play in the affairs of the Family, which he describes as the group "that holds the real power." Khaidarov mentions other key Family members, including Chernoi and Oleg Deripaska, who owns the giant Russian Aluminum holding jointly with Abramovich. Khaidarov describes how kinship ties, in the literal sense, have become increasingly salient inside the Family. Not only did Dyachenko and Yumashev marry, Deripaska recently married Yumashev's daughter. This latter pairing, according to Khaidarov, was no accident: Deripaska's marriage was an issue inside "the Chernoi group" as early as 1998, he claims. "They first wanted to marry him to the daughter of an FSB general, then to Boris Berezovskii's daughter," Khaidarov says. "They finally settled on the Yumashev option." Unlike Rostovskii, however, Khaidarov says that Yeltsin was long ago "thrown out" of the Family. Concerning Putin's power, Khaidarov asserts, "In theory, the president of Russia can do anything, but that is only a theory."
It would be incautious -- putting it mildly -- to take everything stated in these two articles at face value, given the fact that they contradict one another in key areas and given the degree to which the Russian media are still used as a weapon in internecine power struggles. The same caution applies -- and even more so -- to gazeta.ru's 21 November interview with State Duma Deputy Sergei Shashurin, in which he claimed, among other things, that many members of Russia's elite, including leading politicians and entertainers, belong to a secret society called "the Order of the White Eagle" (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 21 November 2002). But even if only a fraction of the claims made in these media items are true, they nonetheless suggest that a giant gulf remains between the public face of Russian politics and the real decision-making processes that go on behind closed doors.
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