Russia. A History

With elections scheduled for 26 March 2000, Putin was the only real candidate. The few serious contenders, such as the former prime minister Evgenii Primakov and Moscow mayor Iurii Luzhkov, became the target of smear campaigns in oligarch-owned media and withdrew their candidacy. As in 1996, the nominally ‘independent’ media provided lavish coverage of Putin, from his everyday perorations to his bravado as co-pilot in a military jet flown to Chechnya six days before the election (a dramatic contrast to ‘Tsar Boris’). Putin won a majority (53 per cent) in the first round and thus avoided a run-off such as Yeltsin had had to endure in 1996. Indeed, whereas Yeltsin barely edged out the communist Gennadii Ziuganov in the first round in 1996, Putin received nearly twice as many votes (39.7 million) as Ziuganov (21.9 million). Despite claims of vote-rigging, Putin was a clear winner; even if a run-off had been necessary, few doubt that he would have dealt Ziuganov a crushing defeat. Putin thus became president with both a cooperative Duma and a popular mandate; he had an unprecedented opportunity to embark on a new course and realize his vision of a new, more prosperous, and more powerful Russia.

The Putin Vision

Boris Yeltsin had no coherent political philosophy or goals, but the same could hardly be said of Vladimir Putin. On 29 December 1999, two days before Yeltsin resigned and made him acting president, Putin posted on the internet a manifesto called ‘Russia at the Turn of the Millennium’, which had been prepared under his guidance by the newly established Centre for Strategic Development. Thereafter Putin regularly presented his views in an address to the Federal Assembly (a joint session of the two houses of parliament), a ‘state of the union’ speech identifying achievements, elucidating problems and setting goals. He also held an annual televised press conference ‘with the nation’, a kind of virtual town meeting, where citizens phoned in, wrote emails, and appeared on live TV asking Putin to address broad issues and their own personal problems. These three-hour town meetings were carefully staged, excluded political critics, and allowed Putin to demonstrate his amazing grasp of detail and data (aided, to be sure, by having the questions in advance). But these personal appearances, interviews, and speeches (routinely posted on the presidential website) revealed a firm commitment to several core principles and values.

One was patriotism—a salient theme in his rhetoric. He emphasized that patriotism was essential for binding so heterogeneous, so dispersed a nation together, especially at a time of adversity which required the country to rebuild its basic institutions, economy, and power. In his first day in office Putin reiterated that a crisis dictates decisive action: ‘Russia is in the midst of one of the most difficult periods in its history. For the first time in the past 200–300 years, it is facing a real threat of sliding into the second, and possibly, even third echelon of world states.’ In the face of adversity, he declared, ‘patriotism is a source of courage, staunchness and strength of our people. If we lose patriotism and national pride and dignity, which are related to it, we will lose ourselves as a nation capable of great achievements.’ To nurture that patriotism, Putin refurbished evocative, and unifying, national symbols. In December 2000, for example, he persuaded the parliament to adopt a new national anthem (with new lyrics, including references to God, but using the music from the Soviet anthem), to proclaim the two-headed tsarist eagle as a state emblem, and to codify the use of the tricolour as the Russian flag. He also amended Yeltsin’s decision to rename 7 November (the Soviet commemoration of the October Revolution) as ‘the day of concord and reconciliation’. Putin shifted the holiday to 4 November to celebrate ‘the day of national unity’, recalling the defeat of Polish occupiers in the Kremlin by a popular militia in 1612. He later restored the red flag, and then the red star, for Russian military forces. It seemed entirely natural when, asked at a town meeting ‘What do you love most?’ Putin instantly replied: ‘Russia.’ Disingenuous or not, such rhetoric helped to consolidate his image as national leader and to revalorize commitment to the country and its resurrection.