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N. 03/2000
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Livio
Caputo |
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The West must accustom to
deal with a new Czar: an only 47 years old Czar, that after having been
nominated lightning for the succession by Boris Eltsin, has also achieved
the popular investiture and, save dramatic turns of events, has good
chances to keep at the lead of Russia maybe for a long long time. On
the opposite, it can be reasonably conjectured that Vladimir Putin will
stand on breach still when the several Clinton, Chirac and Schroeder
will be only a memory, and so he will have the chance to shape the new
Russia his own image and likeness. The problem is by now that nobody knows with certainty
what does it mean. Called directly at the Kremlin on last August by
the Intelligences Services direction, Putin does not have a political
past over which make reference, he has not had good level international
contacts, he takes up a position only when strictly required and, as
an ex-spy, he does not have either and reliable biography. We know about him that, after university, he was recruited
by KGB and sent soon to East Germany. Nevertheless, nobody remember
to have met him and the less to have dealt with him. The only certainties
are that during this period he learnt German and that from the half
eighties he pondered the conviction that the Soviet Empire would loose
its challenge with Western, and transmitting, surely with the due caution
by those times, his opinion to his seniors in Moscow. He would also
advised against, since his observation post in Dresda, an armed intervention
to support the Honecker's regime in order to prevent the fall of the
wall of Berlin, and so he would have influenced over the Gorbaciov's
decision to give up in front of the "fait accompli". It's
likely with these credentials that, after the fall of the regime and
the URSS disintegration, he got to Saint Petersburg as the right-hand
man of the reformist mayor Anatoli Sobchak. It is not known much about his activities in this role,
save that he attempted to open the town to foreign investments and seconded
the attempts of Sobchak to introduce liberal reformations. But just
from the esteemed Sobchak it comes in the middle of the electoral campaign
the most convincing sponsoring of Putin. In an article written for "Los
Angeles Times" few days before dying and entitled "Western's
Worries about Putin's presidency are groundless ", the ex mayor,
backing on his deep acknowledge of the man, wrote: "Some fear that
Putin will be an authoritative modernizer, that is that he will throttle
political and cultural freedom while he will try to reform economy (someone
wrote that the new president will be in the middle between Deng Xiaoping
and general Pinochet-e.d.).
About the war in Cecenia, Sobchak wrote: "The
hard line against the Cecenia's rebels does not turn Putin into an enemy
of democracy and human rights. He is a real Russian patriot, trying
to solve the problem by basing on the evaluation of what is the interest
of the country. Basing on these criteria he came to the conclusion that
the military solution was the sole realistic option. World chancelleries has surely read and pondered with
the utmost attention this article. Many deem that its content has been
previously agreed with the Kremlin, and therefore it must be considered
an informal manifest of the new Czar, and at the same time an explanation
of his past actions and an indication of his future intentions. But
the document is surely not enough to formulate clear outlooks. Rather
it constitutes the confirmation that the sudden ascent to the country's
highest authorities of the Intelligence Services' ex chief - an event
hardly conceivable in a Western democracy - represents without any doubt
and epochal turn for the new Russia, but a turn that shows many contrasts
for the West. The natural diffidence toward a man spending twenty
years of his life as a spy found a first corroboration in his management
of the "dossier Cecenia". As reminded also by Sobchak, first
instance Moscow sparked off its offensive as a reaction to a set of
armed raids by rebels in the Russian Dagestan. But, at the beginning,
war was not very popular among citizens, distressed by quite different
problems and mindful of the humiliation undergone by the Cecenia's separatists
in 1994-1995. Then, on fast succession, the three big explosive charges
bursting in Moscow and grazing to ground as much as buildings and provoking
hundreds of victims. Nobody has ever claim responsibility for these
terrorist attacks, quite the opposite, Cecenian hurried to deny the
paternity. But Russian authorities, supported by media chorus, did no
have any doubt: they were Islamic terrorists, and to prove it they made
some arrests (that later did not come to nothing). The effect of bombs
on public opinion instead was almost instant: war against Cecenia become
a kind of counter-Jihad, Putin's popularity increased vertiginously,
all parties aligned with government positions. Nobody in Moscow ventured
to formulate the conjecture that the Intelligence Services staged for
the case a " state-organized killings ", but in the Western
chancelleries the doubt keep still. On December, on the occasion of
the very expected elections for the Duma renewal, there was a second
prove that the new premier was not to be undervalued. Nobody imagined
that, in the situation Russia was by then, the "Eltsin's party
" could resist the opposition's attacks. Instead Putin was the
real winner, and newspapers could write that a new star has risen in
Moscow. The sounding electoral success has anyway proved that,
moving onslaught of Grozny, Putin has killed three birds with one stone:
he conquered the favour of army, anxious to get their revenge for the
1995 events; he has succeeded in consolidate the public opinion backing
focusing on a cause prodding the primordial instincts of the "mother
Russia"; he found the way to show the same quick decision maker
manner that by his times made the luck of Eltsin and that his predecessors
lacked. The effect of his success was felt at soon on the internal
political scene, meaning that several potential candidates to presidency,
starting from the formidable Evgheni Primakov, understood that the result
of the match was already expected and backed down. On December 31st,
finally, it was Eltsin himself to give his protégé the decisive push,
by giving his resignation and charging him with the interim that allowed
him carrying on the electoral campaign from the Kremlin, with all the
means on disposal of a head of state. The exit from the political scene
of the Czar Boris has been so sudden that analysts wondered if someway
his successor's "KGB background" were not involved; they wondered,
in other words, if Eltsin left really of his own free will, getting
in exchange the judicial immunity, or he threw out of the tower under
the menace of devastating disclosures about his conduct. Exhorted to put and end by diplomacy to the war in
Cecenia and criticized for the brutal methods the army employs against
the civil population he showed impenetrable at all, and the campaign
against rebels went on till the proclamation (at least on paper) of
the final victory. We still know very few about his intentions as regard
to the main problems of the country: the economic crisis, just lightened,
for the Putin's joy, thanks to the increase of the oil incomes; the
endemic corruption, that makes many say that Russia nowadays is a country
governed by the mafia; the uncertainty of right, still keeping far the
most potential foreign investors; inflation, going on eating away the
ruble's value and the already very low purchasing power of lower classes;
the dilapidated infrastructures, from transports to health, making the
democratic Russia let-down even as regard to the times of the URSS. |
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