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From the KGB to the Kremlin

Ramesh Menon

A year ago, if you asked anyone on a Moscow street who Vladimir Putin was, chances are that you would have got a blank stare. Boris Yeltsin stunned the world by naming Putin, a former KGB spy, as his prime minister. There were cynics all around who wondered if he was the right choice even though Yeltsin went a step further and said he was the best man to succeed him as president.

After all, Putin had had no experience of the heady world of Russian politics, was shy, and the common question in everyone's mind was whether he could deliver. Putin was not well known internationally or even in Russia.

But since he took over as Russian president, the sandy-haired, once-obscure bureaucrat is largely being seen as Russia's new revolutionary.

Putin has strongly reigned in the financial mafia, enforced law and order, cracked the whip to get people to pay their taxes, and generally begun to put the economy back on the rails. Mikhail Kozhokin, editor of the powerful Izvestia, echoes a common sentiment when he says that Putin is trying to reinvigorate the Russian State.

In Russia, battered after the break-up of the Soviet Union, there is hope once again. The riotous Yeltsin years, people hope, are history.

When Putin took over, the State was shattered. The government was in no shape to even ensure that taxes were being collected. The constitution was not very clear on relations between the Centre and the states. So there were several power centres -- all of an arbitrary nature. Putin's job was hardly unenviable.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the break-up of the Communist Party had affected all the states of the former Union, leading to a breakdown of law and order, growth of the mafia and flight of capital.

Disciplining the financial mafia is not easy. Putin has been squarely criticised for being authoritarian and called a control freak. Even his supporters feel that he has made too many enemies too fast and the powerful are just waiting for an opportunity to strike back.

But Putin is determined to make the Russian economy spring back to life. His moves to slam down on terrorism in Chechnya are being paraded as proof of his steely resolve.

Putin knows that Russia is today seen as a Third World country that is struggling to survive. He knows he cannot re-create a Russian empire that would include some of the former republics of the Soviet Union. But he is clear about one thing: Russia's decline must stop.

Putin does not have an easy task. But he is systematically getting to the financial mafia, better known as oligarchs. They had financed the Yeltsin government, but now Putin has got them running. When privatisation came in 1992, it was these oligarchs who cornered most of the shares. The Communist Party lost control. Soon Russia stepped into a killing debt cycle.

Russians largely equate the oligarchs with the corruption that the country is now notorious for. Putin has repeatedly said he is determined to crack down on corruption.

Russians hate the oligarchs for systematically siphoning off the State's assets in shady deals while millions struggled to buy bread. And these business magnates had little interest in Russia other than looting it. Most of them have invested their ill-gotten money abroad.

Russians today want Putin to crack down on these crooks and help a real free market develop.

Despite the Kursk submarine disaster, the president's image remains largely intact and he wants to capitalize on the strong public support he still enjoys.

As a KGB spy, Putin probably never dreamt that he would one day be president of Russia. He did not even have any really big assignments to boast of and so resigned to become an adviser to the mayor of St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). He soon became deputy mayor. Then he was picked to be a deputy on Yeltsin's Kremlin staff. In 1998, Putin was made chief of domestic intelligence and secretary of the National Security Council.

Putin increased the powers of the security agencies. Many of his appointees were intelligence officers. He gave security agencies real-time access to all e-mail and electronic commerce.

As the Russian Army battled the Chechen rebels, Putin remarked: "We will get them, even in the outhouse." This remark symbolised his policy as far as the rebel provinces went and made him hugely popular.

Putin knows the power of images. He was often seen on television getting into a fighter jet, getting off in Grozny where his army is, looking out into the blue sea from the deck of a nuclear submarine or practising martial arts.

Yet Putin realises that his real victory will not be in Chechnya, but in grappling with and controlling the economy and nursing it back to health. This is what Russians want. This is what he is working at. It's not an easy job, being president of Russia.

The Putin visit: The full coverage

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