during the
first term of his presidency, in his efforts to recapture the state
putin pursued a two-pronged strategy, in which the measures to
subdue the local princes were combined with an attack on the
entrenched interests of semi-criminal financial and industrial
magnates, the so-called oligarchs.
the oligarchs?
unholy alliance with senior members of the yeltsin regime had
allowed them to fuse power and capital and achieve control over the
lion抯 share of the national economy. their dominance, especially
over banking and the extraction of raw materials for export, had
cost the state immense revenues. more importantly, their omnipotence
and monopoly played a critical role in preventing the emergence of a
working free market and in discouraging foreign investment in
russia.
in effect,
putin faced the daunting task of dismantling the system of 搑obber
capitalism,?that thrived on russia抯 insider privatization,
allowing a handful of politically well-connected tycoons to
manipulate the post-soviet sell-off of state assets to their
personal advantage. the dimensions of the
challenge that the oligarchs, organized crime, and corruption posed
to putin抯 leadership can hardly be overestimated.
the situation
in russia demanded that putin be an independent actor, and it was
not at all certain whether he would be his own man or a mere puppet
of yeltsin抯 entourage, beholden to the same oligarchy that captured
the yeltsin regime. in the three months from january to march 2000,
while he was acting president, putin appeared to follow a fine line
of honoring his former boss while simultaneously reinforcing his own
independence: on the one hand, he signed a decree immunizing yeltsin
from future prosecution on any corruption charges; on the other,
putin fired from the kremlin staff tatiana diachenko, yeltsin抯
daughter and a target of corruption allegations. her dismissal sent
a signal that, whatever loyalty he felt, he was now the acting
president.
finally, his
election as president at the end of march 2000 gave putin a popular
mandate, a political base, and supreme institutional power as
russia抯 chief executive.
