Russia's Latest Prime Ministerial Shuffle and its Conflict with Dagestan

Lilia Shevtsova: The Latest Yeltsin Shuffle

Stepashin's firing was not unexpected for Russia or for Stepashin himself, for he failed to satisfy Yeltsin on many fronts.

First, he tried to be neutral and distance himself from Yeltsin and the Kremlin, evidently hoping to create his own political future. Yeltsin has a history of firing prime ministers with political aspirations and high public popularity ratings, evidenced by the rapid turnover of five prime ministers in the last seventeen months. Stepashin failed to do what he had been tasked to do  to tame Moscow mayor Luzhkov and to prevent the merger of Fatherland with the All Russia movement of governors. He also failed to prevent Yevgeny Primakov's return to the political scene.

Second, Stepashin failed to stop the corruption investigations involving "the Family" (Yeltsin's inner circle of family, advisors, and financial oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky.) Third, Stepashin failed to solidify the Family?s control over Gazprom.

Above all else, Stepashin was doomed because he worked within the regime of elected monarchy, which succeeds only through constant shuffles and ousters. This regime is incompatible with a strong or a weak prime minister. A strong prime minister within the framework of this regime becomes a new center of gravity and influence. In this situation, the president is not needed. This regime is also incompatible with a weak prime minister who can not effectively pursue the Family's interests.

Why did Yeltsin select Putin for prime minister? First of all, the bench of presidential loyalists is very narrow in the Kremlin. Putin has been chosen because he seems to be loyal to the president and to the "family corporation." In their view, Putin could create the impression of a harsh, tough leader who may play the role of a Russian Pinochet.

Can Putin pursue all of these tasks at which Stepashin failed? Most likely, yes. Can he make a "political desert" around the Kremlin? Most likely, yes. But can he play the role of Yeltsin's successor who will secure the Family and its interests after Yeltsin leaves the political scene? I doubt it.

What is worrisome in this situation is that yesterday we had Stepashin, and now we have an absolutely insignificant figure that nobody knows. The Kremlin shuffles could be a sign that the presidential family and Yeltsin himself are not going to leave the Kremlin voluntarily and are considering the use of extra-constitutional means to stay in power.

Will Putin, or whoever will serve as prime minister next, be successful in using these extra-constitutional means? I do not think so. The regime has no power sources left at its disposal. It has neither a loyal army, nor a loyal bureaucracy or regions that would support this kind of dynasty rule. But even the attempt to use extra-constitutional means to stay in power would be very disturbing for Russia and the outside world. So despite the fact that this option has low probability, we should be very concerned.

There is one optimistic sign in this very gloomy picture. Yevgeny Primakov, an aged Soviet-type personality and bureaucrat who is called a spymaster in the United States, is the politician with the highest approval rating in Russia. Why? Not because people like Primakov, but because in their minds Primakov is not tied to any criminal or oligarchic clan. This symbolizes an absolutely new type of political leadership ? moderate, pragmatic, based on the division of powers. Primakov would probably seek an independent and strong government based on the majority in the parliament. There is a chance that this sort of leadership might come to power in the next presidential election.

The candidates who plan to run for the U.S. presidential race are already known. In Russia, this is not known, and that is a good thing  it means there is choice, that there is competition involved, that there is going to be a campaign. The bad part is that by trying to pick its own successor, the Kremlin leadership is not playing the election game fairly. I cannot think of a more inept way for them to choose a successor than they have done in the last year.

Money, threats to regional governors, and manipulation of the media will not elect Putin, or whoever might be in the prime minister's chair, when the music stops and it is time for a presidential election.

The only thing that U.S. policy should care about is that the elections are free and fair. We should do all that we can to signal that we are not going to stand next to Yeltsin as we did during past transgressions of the democratic rules of the game.

Why did Yeltsin select Putin for prime minister? A few items in his biography explain why he was a suitable candidate for "the Family."

Putin was a career KGB officer in Germany from 1984-1990 and a representative to friendship committees, meaning he was a conduit for money out of the Kremlin to various communist party branches in East Germany and elsewhere in Europe. In the late 1980s, there was an effort by the KGB and the party to go commercial outside of Russia. Putin had experience setting up commercial operations before he came back to Leningrad in 1990. He helped set up the first branch of Dresner Bank in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, and this is just pure speculation, but I would imagine that he also knows something about money laundering.

In 1996, Chubais invited Putin to join the presidential administration as first deputy to Pavel Borodin, the property manager for the Kremlin. This was at the time when Mabatex was involved in various construction activities with the Kremlin. There are allegations that kickbacks were involved, and there is an investigation in Switzerland about these activities. Putin was almost definitely aware of this.

Putin knows where all of the skeletons are in part because he put some of those skeletons in various closets around Russia. Therefore, he is the ideal person to quash investigation into these activities. One of his first tasks as prime minister will be to put an end to investigations, primarily in Switzerland, that are being conducted at the behest of certain forces in the Russian procuracy that threaten to implicate people in the Kremlin and possibly even Yeltsin?s daughter.

The Kremlin is accumulating assets at much too rapid a rate if the elections are going to be held next summer. Extra-constitutional steps are getting greater analysis and review in the Kremlin now than they were just several weeks ago, but are still a last resort for the Kremlin group.

What they are thinking of now is what someone called the "selected application of justice." The beauty of the Russian system is that everyone is guilty of something. The Kremlin can and has used the tax police, the Ministry of Justice, and the Procuracy to go after political rivals. They have gone after Luzhkov's wife for criminal activities, and are cracking down on MostMedia and Gusinsky. I imagine that this will be stepped up over the next several weeks.

It is clear that Putin can not win a free and fair democratic election. The Kremlin goes after opponents one at a time, counting on the fact that the Russian political elite is a disunited group of cowards that is more interested in saving their own skins than looking out for the greater good of the country. The Family hopes that over time they can simply eliminate the opposition, starting with Luzhkov, Gusinsky, Primakov, and then the Communists. Their calculation is that by December and June of next year, the only one left standing will be the president's candidate. If there are still others standing next June, the Family might take extra-constitutional steps to maintain its power.

The most significant events this week are not what took place in Moscow, but what took place in the Southern part of Russia and the Caucasus.

This is a very ominous development and begins what many of us have foreseen over a protracted period of disintegrative activities. There are four main points I would like to discuss.

1. Why the north Caucasus and this event is different from what happened in Chechnya, and unlikely to become a crisis similar to that of Chechnya. While this does not mean that it will not become a prolonged war, it will not be as unpopular in Russia as was Chechnya.
2. The nature of Islam and culture in the North Caucasus in general, and in Dagestan in particular.
3. Risks to other regions and countries that these events pose.
4. Russia?s options (few).

The world always looks different depending on what glass you see it through. Stepashin's dismissal may or may not have been predictable, but we all foresaw the events in the North Caucasus that are now unfolding. What we were unsure of is when exactly they would occur.

There was an extreme disintegration of control in Dagestan. The Chechen regime was also disintegrating, and the patterns of disintegration in both Dagestan and Chechnya involved one another. There were coalescing crises in the two countries. Opposition groups in Chechnya saw the opportunity to use Dagestan for their own advantage and vice versa.

The physical proximity of these groups is important. They are physical neighbors. The groups are coming from Dagestan to Chechnya live miles apart, whereas dozens of miles and windy roads separate these regions from smaller regional cities, not to speak of Dagestan?s capital. These are people in close proximity with one another who are throwing their fates together.

I would argue very explicitly that the situation in Dagestan poses a real security threat to the Russian state. I would not have said that Chechnya in 1994 posed a security threat to the Russian state. Rather, it was a political threat to the Russian state to which the Russian government responded with military action.

One has to be aware that the situation in Dagestan poses a security threat to Russia. Whether military action was the proper response is a different question. The government of Dagestan was not in control of these territories, which created a security threat in Stavropol oblast. This security threat in Stavropol was the most important explanation of the timing of the action. Russian inaction would have allowed the free arming of the Cossacks in Stavropol, which was creating an even greater security threat to the Russian state. So what you have is the Russian state juggling two or three different kinds of security threats.

To turn to the nature of North Caucasian Islamic culture, we've heard a lot about the Wahhabi. I don't ever personally use this term in this area, but I think that what we have to look at with Dagestan is that it is not a proto- or quasi-nation like Chechnya. There is not a Dagestani people, there are residents of Dagestan, but it includes many different ethnic groups.

These different peoples and cultures are loosely bound, so it is easy for the people in Western Kazakhstan to make common cause with the people in Eastern Chechnya. Similarly, the people of Western Dagestan are making common cause with those in Makhachkala. This is a very natural grouping that is beginning to occur between Western Dagestan and Eastern Chechnya.

On top of this, there is a real struggle over who shall define Islam in the context of the Eastern North Caucasus. The two groups that are arguing this out are a group of conservative Islamists and a group of radical Islamists. The group that has now declared an Islamic Republic is radical, but the leadership in Makhachkala that they are rejecting is also Islamic, and a fairly conservative one at that.

Superimposed on top of this is the criminalization of the whole region. There are criminal trade networks that want to be able to sell their goods through the area and use this as their center.

In Western Dagestan, it has suited the interests of some of these people to adopt Islamic coloration. So you have activists who have Islamic coloration supporting radical Islamic groups, and this has increased the population in the region of the radical Islamic groups. They are helping them get money.

The most serious aspect of the events in the North Caucasus in the past several months is the internationalization of the resistance. The region is now a main stop on the Islamic "terrorist" network. These are no longer isolated Islamic protests, which was the case until 1990-1. What you have now are itinerant Muslim activists who will come through this region with serious training and organize insurgent activity. When 50 people like this with serious training descend upon the region, a military opposition is created where before there was only unrest. This is why Karimov is reacting so strongly in Uzbekistan.

The situation in Dagestan poses a threat to Azerbaijan and Georgia. Russia has very few options at its disposal to respond -- periodic intervention or permanent intervention. The option of doing nothing poses too great a threat to the Russian state. But the risks of either strategy, and certainly the risks of permanent intervention, are much less to Russia than they are to the neighboring states.

In the long run I think if we are interested in securing Azeri or Georgian independence, we have to maintain a really close watch over what is going on there. There is no way that those two states could afford a long-term Russian military intervention in Dagestan or Chechnya.

Question: Is the Russian military so weak that it could not, if called upon, successfully intervene before the elections? Could the Kremlin shakeups lead Capitol Hill to kill Nunn-Lugar?

Mike McFaul: I do not think that the military would intervene to support extra-constitutional measures before the elections. On whose side would they intervene? Coups are led not by privates or generals, but by colonels and captains. A typical captain in the Soviet and then Russian army was sent to Afghanistan, humiliated there, called in 1991 to protect their government, retreated later, called in 1993 for political reasons (and that was a tremendously humiliating experience), and then sent to Chechnya for political reasons. If I were that soldier, I don?t know if I would agree to be called in to defend any politician.

What worries me more are the disintegration and anarchy scenarios. What if Yeltsin and his entourage decide to declare emergency rule and not have elections? Some individual commanders would likely go against this command, resulting in even more turmoil. I do not believe that the Kremlin would be able to pull off an extra-constitutional act, but that does not mean that they won?t be tempted to do so. Clearly, those sitting in the Kremlin feel all-powerful.

It would make sense to cancel Nunn-Lugar and everything else if the elections did not happen. The continuation of the program in such a case would legitimize an illegitimate government that would eventually fall. I believe we should quietly disband the Gore  "fill in the blank" Commission. It would be absurd for Gore to gear up yet again to meet another Russian prime minister. There is an interesting correlation between prime ministers' trips to the United States and the date of their firing.

Lilia Shevtsova: While we are taking notice of the military in Russia, we should also closely observe the role of the interior troops that are much more influential in current Russian political life. If there is a struggle for the Kremlin, we cannot ignore the fact that Mayor Luzhkov is controlling these interior troops in Moscow. They could be drafted into the political struggle.

Question: Is it true that Yeltsin himself would be vulnerable to indictment after he leaves office?

Tom Graham: Given the fact that almost everyone is guilty of something in Russia, and that after the transfer of power the next government will be looking for scapegoats for what has happened over the last 8 years, Yeltsin will be vulnerable. He certainly remembers what he did to Gorbachev. Knowing that society has become cruder and rougher, Yeltsin probably fears something worse, which is a big factor in his thinking.

The real danger is that it is going to explode beyond control. This is not simply in the Kremlin. It is the entire ruling class that is somehow involved in this network of corruption. If you go after Borodin or Berezovsky, can you really stop it there? My guess is that if this was explored to its end, you would find out that the web of corruption includes many of those who we call radical reformers that we've worked with very closely over the years. It would include the Communist Party senior leadership. This would lead to a total discreting of the ruling class, certainly in Moscow and probably further than that.

Lilia Shevtsova: It is very difficult to stop the investigation cases, even if the Kremlin fires all general prosecutors one by one. Why? Because Swiss Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte has made leaks to the Swiss press. The leaks make it impossible to stop investigations of Borodin, members of his Family, and members of the presidential family.

Question: There are distinctions between Mike's and Tom's comments. Mike says that money, threats, and media manipulation will not ultimately determine who the successor will be. Tom believes that these forces will have more of an impact. Can you comment on this? Also, if Putin is able to stop the investigation of the family, is this a thumbs up for Berezovsky?

Tom Graham: Berezovsky is one of the leading destructive forces in Russian politics. He is very good at bringing down prime ministers and besmirching the reputations of leading government figures, but he doesn?t do very well at getting his people in place after he?s brought down a prime minister.

I don't believe that Putin and Berezovsky are friends. Earlier this year, Berezovsky accused the FSB of hatching an assassination plot against him. Putin is probably more the candidate of someone like Tatyana and other people in the immediate family. One of the strategies of the family might be to protect itself and sacrifice other people.

I think we are looking at the other issue from different angles. The media money is important within elite politics, but not so much in broader popular politics. Buying off the ruling elite, governors, media magnates, and so forth ? undercuts support for other rivals and demonstrates that you can do extreme harm to certain individuals. It is an effort to clear the field of all possible rivals and hope that only your candidate is left standing. The Kremlin is using assets to kill off opponents rather than to build popular support.

Mike McFaul: That may be the strategy, but it is not a successful strategy. I do not believe that the Kremlin has the resources available to cut down every single candidate so at the end of the day only one is standing. It is the voters, not the governors or media magnates, who choose the president. The assumption that they can just destroy opponents to guarantee their choice of successor is a radically misplaced strategy. Moreover, the opposition is not as afraid of the Kremlin as they were in 1996.

Question: Is it possible that we are watching a process that gives every player in Moscow politics a stake in respecting democratic procedures, hence aligning them against one faction, "the family corporation"?

Tom Graham: The notion that all of the other forces support working through the transition with democratic procedures is very optimistic. 99 percent of Russian political leaders are united against Yeltsin. However, they are not a united front. They can't agree on who should succeed Yeltsin. We would like to see the Russian ruling class finally demonstrate some political courage and put their parochial concerns behind for the better good of the country.

Mike McFaul: We should keep in mind that the balance of power that we perceive is not what the Kremlin perceives. That there is uncertainty about the electoral outcome is a positive sign. The current system in place gives enormous power to the president. The opportunity was missed to change the constitution after the August 1998 crisis when Yeltsin was very weak. It will be easier to revise the constitution before the presidential election because the new president will probably not have an interest in changing rules that diminish his power.

Lilia Shevtsova: In the morning the Family is desperate, in the evening they?re jubilant that they can do everything. This mixture of moods is very dangerous, and leads the Kremlin leadership to irrational steps. It might lead them to extra-constitutional steps.

Tom Graham: I do not think that they are being irrational. I think they are being rational within their own context. They understand what the rules of the game are. They want democratic elections and for Yeltsin?s successor to be chosen through this process. However, the Russian ruling class are not exactly profiles in courage. They will not enjoy the support of institutional coercion if it is used in an extra-constitutional fashion. So they might create a situation in which destabilization looks like it is coming from the other side. This is why there is talk of removing Lenin's body from the mausoleum, which might provoke the Communists into some sort of reaction -- hopefully violent -- that then lets Yeltsin enlist the institutions of coercion to restore order.

Question: What are your predictions for the elections?

Mike McFaul: The parliamentary elections will be a primary for the presidential elections. The Primakov-Luzhkov team will be strong. The Communists will do well in the first round and will lose the second, as has been the trend. Unfortunately, turnout might be much lower than in the last electoral cycle, which will work to the favor of the communists.

Lilia Shevtsova: Everything depends on whether Primakov participates or not. If he does, there will be three possible contenders for Russian presidency, Primakov, Luzhkov, and the prime minister at that time.

Tom Graham: We must also remember that there will be a mayoral election in Moscow at the time of the parliamentary elections. Luzhkov must pass a certain threshold, or he will appear like damaged goods going into a presidential contest. There will be at least one more prime ministerial change before the elections. If Primakov and Luzhkov do team up, there is a chance that there will not be a second round in the presidential election. Whoever leads that team will win the first round.

Summary by Elizabeth Reisch

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EXCERPTS FROM THE QUESTION AND ANSWER PERIOD

Martha Olcott
The Dagestan Conflict

Tom Graham, discussant

Mike McFaul, discussant