Yeltsin Loses Confidence In Stepashin

In his intermittently candid memoirs—written with the assistance of a
professional journalist and leading member of the Family, Valentin
Yumashev—Boris Yeltsin observed: “Early summer in Moscow is usually dead.
The streets empty out... The Duma is out on recess... Early summer 1999
was no exception. It was clear that people were fed up with politics. The
crisis that had been dragging on since September [1998] was thoroughly
exhausting for all classes of people.” The appointment of Stepashin as
premier, Yeltsin recalled, seemed at the beginning to be a success: “[W]ith
his slightly naïve optimism, he created the very atmosphere everyone
yearned for. He gave the public a little breather.”
Vagif Guseinov, Ot Yeltsina k…?: Voina kompromatov, iyul’-dekabr’ 1999 (Moscow:
Olma-press, 2000), p. 60.
Ibid., p. 9.
Ibid., p. 35.
Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, pp. 289-290.
Less than three months later, however, Yeltsin had ousted Stepashin,
replacing him with another power minister, Vladimir Putin. What happened to
dampen the president’s apparent initial satisfaction with his premier? The key
issue, as Yeltsin stressed in his memoirs, was the perceived growing threat of
the Primakov-Luzhkov forces. “[A] new movement,” he remembered, “began
to rumble around Evgenii Primakov. After Primakov’s departure... [his] rating
rose from 20 percent in May to 30 percent in June. Analysts began to talk
about how the former prime minister could definitely run in the Duma
elections as the head of a new movement. Then, if he won, Primakov could
run for president.”72
“The movement that summoned Primakov,” Yeltsin went on, “was growing
rapidly. Its formal and informal head was the mayor of Moscow, Yurii
Mikhailovich Luzhkov. The party was called Fatherland, and Luzhkov spent a
great deal of his resources on it. Luzhkov traveled around the country,
meeting personally with regional leaders... [G]overnors quickly came under
the banner of the mayor of Moscow... Its ideological and political mouthpiece
was the ‘third channel,’ the new TV network, also funded by Luzhkov.”
But why was this necessarily a bad thing? Yeltsin attempted to educate his
reader: “The ideology of Fatherland was centrism. Its adherents were
centrists. What was so bad about that? Compared with the fractured
democratic forces that had lost the parliamentary elections to the
Communists again and again, one could only welcome both this party and its
ideology. Right?” “Wrong,” he angrily answered his own question. “I
understand that it is perfectly fair, even important, to criticize a political
opponent, especially during the campaign period... But when politicians don’t
criticize a person but instead deliberately create a national enemy, they are
not adhering to normal campaign procedures. Instead, they are practicing
Soviet propaganda... ‘The Yeltsin regime has sold the motherland to foreign
capital,’ the Luzhkov media would blare... A real mafia-like family, a real
gangster clan has formed around the president.”
It is difficult to overstate the significance of such passages in Yeltsin’s
memoirs. They show that the Russian president did not have the slightest
comprehension of how a Western-style democracy functions. For a political
grouping seeking to come to power in a democracy it is, of course, normal to
attack the policies and practices of an outgoing president. Yeltsin is also being
disingenuous in certain of his comments. His own backers, such as Boris
Berezovsky, controlled far more significant media outlets than Luzhkov’s
anemic ‘TV Three.’ Even the more influential NTV, controlled by Vladimir
Gusinskii, which Yeltsin also violently assailed in his book (“NTV was talking
about my so-called Family—myself, Tan’ya, Voloshin, and Yumashev. All of
these people were accused of everything under the sun...”
75), clearly is
exaggerated as a political threat. It was the communists and various radical
groupings who were accusing Yeltsin of most of the “crimes” he cites in his
book, not the “centrists” Luzhkov and Primakov.
In a December 2009 interview with the magazine Medved’, Yeltsin’s daughter
Tat’yana recalled this difficult period with a revulsion mirroring that of her
father: “Everything was offensive. An enormous well-equipped propaganda
machine was working against Papa. NTV, the Moscow television channels,
newspapers, magazines... Their aim was a simple one: to win the elections in
the year 2000... When it became clear that Papa did not support the
Primakov-Luzhkov tandem, the people were inundated with stories about the
Family, about stolen billions, credit cards, castles in Germany and France,
houses in London, and so on.”76
What becomes clear from a reading of Yeltsin’s memoirs (and from Tat’yana’s
blog) is that the Russian president was more than prepared to elevate his
own personal security and well-being, as well as those of his close relatives
and their cronies, above any considerations of legality or constitutionalism.
Given this psychology of the Russian president, one can understand why he
might choose to approve individual points of the “Storm in Moscow” scenario.
By July of 1999, Yeltsin confided in his memoirs, he had already largely lost
confidence in Stepashin: “But how to stop them [Luzhkov and Primakov]?
Everything would be decided not by the summer of 2000 but by the fall of
1999. Only a matter of weeks was left... In July I repeatedly talked to Sergei
Stepashin about this situation. I asked what he thought and why the
governors were joining Luzhkov, whom they’d previously disliked...
Stepashin kept insisting that he was the most faithful and dedicated member
of the presidential team... But as soon as the conversation came around to
the main political problem, he would immediately grow somber. ‘I assure you
everything will work out in the fall, Boris Nikolaevich,’ he would say.”
“But what would work out?” Yeltsin exploded, “It was clear to me that the
final round of a pitched political battle was approaching... Stepashin was able
to reconcile some people for a time, but he wasn’t going to become a political
leader, a fighter, or a real ideological opponent to Luzhkov and Primakov in
the Duma elections. A new political party had to be created, and the prime
minister had to be changed. I was prepared for battle.”
“By the end of June [1999] and the beginning of July,” the authors of The
Putin Epoch wrote, “the ‘Family’ became disillusioned with the possibilities of
their own state proteges and went over to the carrying out of a radical
scenario of political actions, which involved the suppressing of those mass
media not under their control (for example, the holding ‘Media-Most’ [of
Gusinskii]), the political isolation of Yurii Luzhkov, and the change of the
leadership of ‘Gazprom.’ As the course of the ‘Family’ became more harsh,
the Presidential Administration saw all the more clearly its disagreements
with Stepashin, who, not without the support of Chubais, was inclined toward
a ‘soft’ variant.”
“The cautious position of Stepashin,” the authors of The Putin Epoch
contended, “was conditioned by his consciously chosen tactic of maneuvering
between the conflicting groups and also by his doubts over the effectiveness
of the confrontation strategy chosen by the Presidential Administration, as
well as by his growing non-acceptance of the activity of a number of highly-
placed ‘Family’ bureaucrats... However, the choice of Stepashin on behalf of
the tactic of maneuvering cost him his career: instead of being an arbiter, he
would have had to become a ‘shooter.’”80
Another emerging problem for the Family, as journalist Aleksandr Zhilin
pointed out in August of 1999, was the growing popularity of the new prime
minister: “His [Stepashin’s] rating began to rise sharply... Stepashin, like
Primakov, began to achieve something. Two or three weeks more and he
would have acquired solid political weight... In addition, according to our
sources, Sergei Stepashin categorically rejected any adventurous plans of the
Kremlin connected with the canceling of elections, the fabrication of pseudo-
kompromat against Luzhkov, etc. He insisted that in the situation which had
been created it was necessary to emerge without shocks fraught with civil
war.”
“That is why,” Zhilin concluded his analysis, “the ‘Family’ decided to hurry up
with concluding the formation of its own clan and its own executive power. In
the event that Boris Yeltsin’s psycho-physical condition worsened, the
obligations of the family would be carried out by the head of government,
Vladimir Putin, a member of the ‘Family’; Aksenenko, one of the financiers of
the ‘family’, would head the Cabinet of Ministers; the MVD would be directed
by a person of Berezovsky’s; and the FSB, by a person of Putin’s. The
Procurator General would become a person of Berezovsky and the ‘Family.’
The army was not taken into account, since it was not planned to involve it in
‘measures for introducing order in the country.’”

Ibid., p. 290.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 290-291.
Ibid., p. 295.
“Bol’shaya medveditsa: Doch’ prezidenta,” Medved’, no. 12, December 2009. URL:
http://medved-magazine.ru?mode=article_view&id=49&id=260
77 Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, p. 294.
Ibid., pp. 294-295.
Epokha Putina, pp. 81-83.