Winter is Coming (18 page)

Media outlets were taken over by forces friendly to Putin and his closest associates. This “takeover censorship” was accompanied by the more conventional kind, with its lists of non grata names and verboten topics. Media power was centralized in the same fashion as political power, and with the same purpose: looting the country without causing a popular revolt. The corruption of the Yeltsin era is burned into Russia’s collective memory only because we learned about it in the press at the time. In the 1990s, the competing oligarchs waged war against one another in their media outlets. It was not a fight fought fairly or decently, but a preponderance of facts came to light and thousands of honest journalists worked to bring the truth to the Russian public.

Putin’s obsession with the media boiled over after the accident that sank the
Kursk
nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea in August. One hundred eighteen sailors died, twenty-three of them after escaping the initial explosions and surviving for hours, maybe longer, in an isolated compartment awaiting a rescue that only arrived days later. The
Kursk
was the pride of the Russian fleet, launched in 1994 and deemed, like the
Titanic,
“unsinkable.” Due to budgetary cutbacks the sub had seen very little activity and not much maintenance, just like the rest of the military at that point in time. Poor training and corroded equipment led to disaster when an old practice torpedo exploded on board, sinking the submarine in one hundred meters of freezing water.

Putin was on vacation in Sochi at the time and decided to stay there during the crisis. There was likely nothing he could have done to save the trapped men on the
Kursk
; there is no way he could have known that at the time. He accepted the navy’s statement that a rescue was in motion with no debate. He admitted later that it looked very bad for him to be seen relaxing on the Black Sea while the disaster unfolded. For nearly a week no one was sure if there were survivors. The television reports switched back and forth between images of distraught families at the Vidyayevo Naval Base and the president’s barbecues in Sochi. The Russian Navy rejected offers of help that came immediately from the United States, France, Germany, Norway, and others.

Only five days and many failed Russian rescue attempts after the disaster did Putin accept international aid. A Norwegian ship arrived on the nineteenth, a full week after the
Kursk
had sunk. It took two more days to penetrate the submarine and confirm that there were no survivors. The navy, including several of its highest officers, had begun to spin stories about the cause of the disaster almost immediately. Their favorite was that it was the result of a collision with a NATO submarine, a conspiracy theory for which there was not a shred of evidence. Officials continued to suggest the collision theory even after evidence of two internal explosions was confirmed beyond any doubt. (Russian state-controlled media sources still mention it as a valid theory today even though the 2002 official report verified that the explosion of a faulty torpedo was the cause.)

Russian media, especially Boris Berezovsky’s television station, heavily criticized the response of the government as callous and bumbling, which was nothing more than the truth. Video of Putin and other unsympathetic officials being berated by grieving family members made Putin realize what a threat the media could be to his early popularity. Revealing that his totalitarian instincts were far stronger than any he had for reform, instead of reorganizing the military that had caused the horrible accident and botched the rescue, or publicly punishing the incompetent officers, Putin went after the media that reported on it.

So in less than six months after Putin’s taking office, two of the most influential oligarchs in Russia were in exile, the constitutional power structure of the country had been shifted dramatically toward Moscow, and free media outlets were falling like dominoes. Six months! The main myth that was built up around these events was that Putin was just cleaning up the town like a good sheriff. The Russian people despised the oligarchs and viewed them as criminals who were above the law. And here was Putin, a strong man from the security services, showing everyone that this was no longer the case. Not bad! Even if he pushed the limits of legality to do it, what else could he do, went the refrain.

Never mind that Putin was taking the private assets of Gusinsky and Berezovsky and putting them in the hands of other, more loyal, oligarchs or putting them under direct state control. The Putin government wasn’t cracking down on corruption, it was sanctifying it. It was a unique method of cleaning up the town that involved deputizing one set of “entrepreneurs” while demonizing another.

Make no mistake, I have little sympathy for the first generation of oligarchs that looted Russia as the USSR collapsed. They and their political and mafioso partners exploited Yeltsin’s lack of control and combined to derail the best chance Russia had at a market economy and democracy. The epic levels of corruption made the already difficult job of reform impossible and pushed the minimum standard of living needed for economic stability out of reach just long enough for Putin, or someone like Putin, to be welcomed with open arms.

What I reject is the mythologizing by those looking to praise Putin relative to Yeltsin on grounds of progress on corruption, institutional economic reforms, and growth. When it comes to Putin fighting corruption, I don’t think that legalizing theft and then boasting of a drop in crime should be considered progress. The actual crime rate in Russia kept increasing until 2002, when the revenue from skyrocketing oil prices began to have a broader impact. Putin would rely on a similar pacification maneuver in Chechnya when he gave official status and huge payoffs to a prominent warlord, Akhmad Kadyrov.

There is a practical argument to be made for these appeasement schemes, but I find it cynical and immoral, as well as harmful to the national interest in the long run. Reducing street violence and conflict by adopting one clan of the mafia while wiping out the others came at a huge cost. With no free media, no justice system to worry about, and no competition, Putin’s preferred oligarchs were like vermin whose natural predators had been eradicated. The chosen winners had the full power of the state behind them and the Russian treasury opened wide.

Had Putin come in and threatened to do to all that he selectively did to a few—that is, had he applied the rule of law properly—it would have been a very different story. He could have ended the looting, told his friends and foes alike that the party at the expense of the Russian people was over. At first it looked like he might be making an example of Gusinsky and Berezovsky for just this purpose. After all, if he could kick out two of the most influential and wealthy oligarchs so quickly, the others would surely fall into line. Instead, Putin’s message to the rest turned out to be that of a mafia don. Either you swore loyalty to the capo to steal within his system or your freedom and your assets could disappear overnight. As became increasingly clear during Putin’s first year in office, what was good for Putin and his friends was far more important than what was good for Russia. That is still very much the case today.

The many business-related reforms that were passed were never applied as envisioned. The assertion that there were successful institutional reforms in the 2000s is inherently false, although this remains a fundamental legend of the systemic liberals to this day—many of whom, remarkably, are still in government. They tell us that important laws were passed that lowered taxes, made it easier to start up a business, and so on. However, in my view, “institutional reforms” are not simply paper documents: the Duma rubber-stamped whatever decisions came down from on high. In a dictatorship, the formal content of the law is not important. What is important is how the law is applied. Reforms are only institutional if they have a real effect on how people live.

And just in case it wasn’t completely clear where Putin was steering the country, we come to one of those symbolic moments that can say as much as the legislation and persecution. In the fall of 2000, supposedly in response to complaints from Russian athletes that the new Russian anthem from 1990 was embarrassing them because it had no words for them to sing, Putin restored the old Soviet anthem. Not with the old original Stalinist lyrics, of course, or the updated ones from 1977 I remembered all too well. That is, instead of writing new lyrics for the Russian anthem, the old Soviet song was brought back and new lyrics were commissioned for it, and from the same author. And while I surely prefer the new “Our loyalty to the Motherland gives us strength” over “Barbarian invaders we’ll swiftly strike down” from 1944 or “The victory of Communism’s deathless ideal,” in 1977, the symbolism of bringing back the Soviet music was both obvious and shocking. The words change, but the song remains the same.

Anyone who says they are still uncertain about Putin’s true nature at this point must be joking, a fool, or tricking us. There is no reason to waste time on jokers or fools, however useful they may be in Putin’s marked deck of cards, but tricksters must be watched carefully. For at least a decade now, those who defend Putin either have something to gain from it or they are dangerously ignorant. People can be excused for letting optimism and diplomacy blind them for a while to Putin’s character and ambitions. One of the strengths, and weaknesses, of liberal democratic societies is giving the benefit of the doubt even to one’s enemies. If Putin really was an anti-democratic thug, he was going to have to prove it.

And prove it he did, year after year, as his Western defenders migrated from the “ignorant” camp to the “something to gain” camp one by one. From energy companies trying to get a piece of Russia’s oil reserves to European prime ministers and chancellors willing to sell out their countries’ strategic interests in order to do business on the side, Putin had no trouble expanding his international fan club despite his dictatorial turn in Russia.

As soon as Putin appeared on the international stage, every foreign leader and pundit was obliged to have an opinion about him. Reviewing this literature in news reports and memoirs today is a master class in the art of saying something nice without saying anything at all-while also engaging in that most critical of the political sports: covering one’s posterior. Needless to say, the memoirs written with the benefit of hindsight are far more critical of Putin than the contemporary comments. Only a rare few have the honesty to admit they were mistaken about Putin, or worse, that he fooled them.

The cumulative impression is that everyone knew Putin had troubling autocratic tendencies but didn’t believe it was worth making an effort to challenge those tendencies early on when it would have been much easier to do so. After all, Russia’s relationship with the West was already on the rocks and the Russians were looking for a strongman anyway, went their logic. So why not hope for a fresh start with the new guy?

It was a difficult position for Western leaders to be in. Putin spoke the language of reform and Russia’s post-Soviet difficulties very well and he had none of Yeltsin’s baggage or bluster. When they looked at his actions, however, the picture was very different. I recently asked my friend and US State Department veteran Steve Sestanovich what surprised or worried him most about Putin in the early days. His reply is an excellent introduction to how the West struggled to understand the new Russian leader and what this meant for Russia:

From the very beginning “Putinism” was an uneasy package that honestly we didn’t know how to handle. On one side there was the reformist talk of his campaign platform, and his blunt statements about how far Russia had fallen behind the West. All that seemed encouraging. But there was also the relentless shutting-down of independent media-and the scorched earth campaign in Chechnya. That was disturbing. Who was this guy?

I remember a conversation that Madeleine Albright had in her office in the spring of 2000 with a Russian visitor, one of the most influential figures of the Yeltsin era. She asked me to sit in. He said to us, “I want you to know that Russia now has the best successor to Boris Yeltsin we could have hoped for. We also have a president who is going to be rolling back some of our democratic achievements. He is going to attack press freedoms first. Here we who support him count on you to oppose him.” I came out of that meeting thinking, how are we ever going to get this right?

I could essay a few good guesses as to the identity of that Russian visitor to US Secretary of State Albright’s office that day, but there is no point. The guest was quite accurate in his assessment of what Putin was going to do and how the United States should react to what was coming. And you can easily see the dilemma Sestanovich and the entire administration could see forming in front of them, especially if you remember that Bill Clinton was still the president at the time.