Operation Successor: How Yeltsin Created Vladimir Putin
Boris Yeltsin wasn't the progressive democracy champion that many make of him. He gave Vladimir Putin power.
As part of my job, I interview Americans about Ukraine and Russia every week. I often ask them about Russia’s path to dictatorship and all the early signs of the Kremlin’s indifference to democracy that, in retrospect, seem quite obvious.
Every spy and diplomat speaks of the post-Cold War era as a time of great hope for democratic and progressive Russia. Every official mentions Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin, the guy whose army shelled a government building full of his opposition in 1993.
Many Americans view Yeltsin as Russia’s last chance at democracy, and Vladimir Putin as the man solely responsible for creating the mad Russia of today. Yet in many ways, Yeltsin is the man responsible for creating Putin. Yeltsin wasn’t trying to save Russian democracy; he never gave it a chance.
At 1:42 PM on Oct. 5, 1993, then-President of the United States Bill Clinton called Yeltsin from Air Force One.
“I wanted to call you and express my support. I have been following the events closely and have tried to support you as much as possible,” Clinton said.
The events in question, fully endorsed by the U.S. at the time, were the beginning of “Russia’s road to autocracy,” Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy wrote in his recent book Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History.
Weeks before the phone call, Yeltsin unconstitutionally dissolved the two bodies of the Russian parliament for opposing his increasing presidential powers and the disastrous shock therapy, which plunged most Russians into extreme poverty. His loyal Defence Minister Pavel Grachev then led an armed assault on the parliament, firing a tank at its leader’s office.
More than 100 people died. Leaders of Yeltsin’s opposition, many of whom were communists, were arrested. Dozens of organizations and media outlets were shut down.
Americans saw “an attack on a parliament as a step towards democracy”, wrote Timothy Snyder in his book Road to Unfreedom, “so long as the markets were invoked”.
“Now that these events are over, we have no more obstacles to Russia’s democratic elections and our transition to democracy and market economy,” Yeltsin told Clinton the next day.
A lot happened before and after Yeltsin’s infamous attack on the Russian parliament. What matters most is that Yeltsin, the guy who publicly preached democracy and the free market, allowed oligarchs to flourish and take control of Russia’s politics, so long as it benefited him.
In 1995, Yeltsin helped facilitate the so-called loans for shares scheme – the biggest corruption plot in Russian history – selling off massive state enterprises to bankers at a fraction of the real price, robbing the state of billions of dollars. He did this to get cash for his presidential campaign in 1996, in essence exchanging Russia’s enormous natural resources for political gain.
He also let Russia’s notorious oligarch Boris Berezovsky illegally take control of Russia’s main TV channel, the #1 source of information for nearly all Russians, in exchange for its favorable coverage before the election.
Despite terrible ratings, poor health, an unpopular bloody war against Chechen independence (which Russia lost), and an ensuing economic disaster, all of which made the election truly unwinnable for Yeltsin, he won anyway. The oligarchs, dubbed as “The Family”, ran his campaign and secured the win for him, just as he secured their wealth. The election was stolen. (But it was stolen from a communist candidate, so it’s all for the better, right?)
You probably know that Yeltsin had a drinking problem. As his term as president went on, his health was deteriorating, and everything he did got increasingly embarrassing.
The oligarchs, who comfortably ruled the country together with Yeltsin, needed to find him a replacement. It helped that Yeltsin was also obsessed with finding a successor for years; he wanted to consolidate his achievements after leaving office and protect himself.
“It was understood that whomever he handed over to had to be appointed. Yeltsin would resign and name a successor, who would run as an incumbent and would grant Yeltsin amnesty as one of his first acts,” former Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times Charles Clover wrote in his book, Black Wind, White Snow: Russia's New Nationalism.
Thus came Operation Successor (as it was known in the Kremlin).
In the last two years of his presidency, Yeltsin rotated four prime ministers – Sergey Kirienko, Evgeny Primakov, Sergey Stepashin, and Vladimir Putin.
It was a casting. “We were looking for the successor, the way a director casts a film,” Yeltsin’s advisor, political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky told Clover, who describes the operation in his book in great detail.
First and foremost, Yeltsin was looking for loyalty. He needed a successor who would protect him and his family – both the literal one and the oligarchs.
He also needed someone from within the military or security apparatus, so the president could control them.
Looking for the perfect candidate, the Kremlin needed sociological data, so it ordered probably one of the largest polls in Russia’s history: 350,000 Russians all across the country were surveyed. It showed that the people wanted the next president to be someone decisive with a military background.
Yet Yeltsin’s team was most interested in another, peculiar survey that asked: “Which film character would you vote for in the upcoming presidential elections?”
The most popular answers were a detective from a crime thriller, a Soviet military commander from films about WWII, and Max Stierlitz – a fictional Soviet spy who penetrates the German Gestapo and uncovers American plans to sign peace with Hitler. Stierlitz is the main character of a hyper-successful series that was funded by the KGB and influenced millions of Russians. (Not only Russians. As a child, I remember hearing people being called Stierlitz if they did something sneaky and clever)
The Russian people wanted a Stierlitz, so Yeltsin gave them one – a former Germany-based KGB operative, Vladimir Putin.
The head of FSB – Russian Federal Security Service – Putin became Prime Minister in August of 1999. The Russian public didn’t know anything about Putin then; his approval ratings were at 2%. Russians also mistrusted security services, so all in all, Putin was a difficult candidate. But Yeltsin respected him and thought he was a loyal team player.
So how do you make someone unknown to the nation a President? You generate a crisis that needs a hero.
In the two weeks of September 1999, four apartment buildings were blown up in Russia, killing more than 300 people and plunging the country into paralyzing fear.
The Russian army was fighting the Chechens again, so the Kremlin blamed Chechen terrorists for the attacks, galvanizing support for a brutal bombing campaign and the invasion of Chechnya that followed.
No Chechen ever claimed responsibility for the bombing, which is strange, given that terrorists thrive on exposure.
Whatever evidence there was, it didn’t incriminate the Chechens; it pointed to the FSB.
On Sept. 22, local police in the city of Ryazan arrested FSB officers after they were seen supposedly placing explosives in the basement of an apartment building. In the basement, police found bags of hexogen, the same powerful military-grade explosive that already killed hundreds of people by then.
The FSB ordered the suspects’ release. The FSB director said the whole thing was a training exercise, and the bags were actually full of sugar – two days after the local FSB branch and the Interior Minister happily reported that a terrorist attack was averted.
Despite journalists investigating the incident and suggesting FSB’s possible involvement, amid all the fear and chaos, the Russian society accepted the Kremlin’s theory. Less than ten days later, the Russian military invaded Chechnya, and the country united in fighting the radical Islamists who killed people in their sleep.
Prime Minister Putin became the face of this struggle. His ratings jumped from 2 to over 45 percent in November.
Days after the first bombing, Yeltsin told Clinton he’ll be meeting Putin soon.
Yeltsin announced his resignation in 1999, naming Putin as the acting president of Russia until the election.
As he told Clinton, the Kremlin was “working…accordingly” to make Putin president.
“Thanks to unequal television coverage, manipulation of the vote tally, and the atmospherics of terrorism and war, Putin was accorded the absolute majority needed to win the presidential election in March of 2000,” Timothy Snyder writes.
Yeltsin and his family were never prosecuted – he chose his successor well.
“I was sure that (Putin) was an honest, pure, and democratic person,” Yeltsin said in an interview years later.
Thanks for writing this. I knew some of the story. This added a little more information. It is really disgusting how we supported Yetsin and later Putin. Hopefully, we learned from our mistakes
Thank you very much for sharing this information. I learned so much from this.