His first electoral victory behind him, acting Russian President Vladimir Putin turned his focus Monday to the complex task of rebuilding a nation battered by a decade of radical changes.
The 47-year-old former KGB spy, elected Sunday with 52.6 percent of the vote, told the Russian people that hard work and no miracles lay ahead. At the same time, he again sought to reassure the West that he intends not to withdraw Russia from the international community but to move it closer.
Putin’s challenge will be to strike a balance that always escaped his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.
Putin must strengthen Russia’s chaotic and often corrupt government. But he must not allow it to strangle the economic and social freedoms of the Yeltsin era.
Putin must court his political opponents. But he must not let them block reforms.
Putin must subdue Russia’s powerful business tycoons. But he cannot afford to lose his own base of support or scare off investors.
How Putin might do all this is anyone’s guess.
In typical style, Putin gave no details Monday about his plans. A spokesman even acknowledged that Putin’s economic program is not yet finished. It may have to wait until after Putin’s inauguration in early May.
Instead, Putin met with his Cabinet on Monday and accepted congratulatory phone calls from fellow world leaders, including President Clinton.
Clinton said that in their conversation, “I emphasized the importance to Russia and the world of strengthening the foundations of Russia’s democracy and deepening its international ties.”
He said he also emphasized his concerns about Russia’s struggle against rebel forces in Chechnya and urged Putin to launch investigations of human-rights violations in the war-torn republic.
Putin spoke of the great responsibility that Russian voters have placed on him.
“Many people in the country are dissatisfied with the state of affairs,” Putin said. “People are tired. Things are tough for them. They expect better things from me.”
Sunday’s election failed to give Putin the sweeping mandate that he and his Kremlin team had expected. Talk of Putin’s winning as much as 60 percent of the vote died early Sunday evening as returns from Siberia and the Far East showed him stuck in the mid-40s.
A strong showing by Communist Gennady Zyuganov nearly forced Putin into a runoff. In the end, though, voters in the European part of Russia pulled Putin past the 50 percent barrier needed to make the first round the only round.
With nearly 30 percent, Zyuganov did better than expected. But no one looks for Putin to bring the Communists into government when he forms a new one after his inauguration.
“There have been no signals about a coalition government,” said Kremlin aide Dmitry Medvedev. “Neither second nor third place is prize-winning. The new government must be that of professionals.”
Some of Zyuganov’s support was seen as a protest vote. Russians who may not embrace the Communist Party’s tenets–renationalization of some private industry, for instance, or a more adversarial stance before the West–backed Zyuganov to protest the Kremlin’s brand of crony capitalism.
Putin came to power because Boris Yeltsin wanted him to. To be successful, Putin must step beyond Yeltsin’s shadow. He must shake the grip of the “Family,” the Kremlin insiders and business tycoons who held Yeltsin’s ear and sponsored Putin’s rise.
“This will be a struggle for the choice of Russia’s path, for resources, including financial ones,” said Boris Nemtsov, a former Yeltsin aide who lost his battles with the “oligarchs,” as the tycoons are known.
In the early hours Monday, several Family members joined Putin at his campaign headquarters. Among them was Tatyana Dyachenko, Yeltsin’s daughter and a close Berezovsky associate.
Putin fired Dyachenko from her Kremlin post of image-maker when he took over after Yeltsin quit on New Year’s Eve. But Dyachenko stayed on to help Putin run his electoral campaign.
“Putin desperately is trying to loosen his links with the previous Kremlin entourage, with Yeltsin’s advisers, supporters, oligarchs,” said political analyst Lilia Shevtsova. “But he has failed to cut his ties. … He still is in the embraces of Yeltsin’s clique.”
Partly in a bid for independence, Putin has stacked his team with trusted associates from his days in St. Petersburg. Many of those associates also served in the KGB. Putin says they are best qualified, both by training and integrity, to root out the corruption that permeates Russian government.
“Putin’s team already has young, dynamic, aggressive, straightforward and very pragmatic guys who do not belong to the old Moscow political establishment,” Shevtsova said. “But they are inexperienced. They cannot compete with the old guard.”
In Putin’s favor, Russia’s economy is doing surprisingly well. Tax revenues are up, partly due to high worldwide oil prices. This has allowed Russia to whittle down its budget deficit and, so far, stay a step ahead of its international creditors.
To meet all its debts, though, Moscow probably needs help from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF approved a $4.6 billion loan package last year but it has yet to disburse most of the funds while it awaits Putin’s economic program.
The aid issue is one point of leverage the West has with Russia.
The U.S. and its European allies are encouraging Putin to level the playing field for international and domestic investors. They are hoping he protects freedom of the press and freedom of speech that Yeltsin so boldly and successfully imposed on a country that had long held its tongue under totalitarian rule.
