The image of Vladimir Putin as
legitimation technique for Russian politics
MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School for Humanities Universiteit van Amsterdam Author: Anne-Lise Bobeldijk Main supervisor: dr. C.U. Noack Second supervisor: dr. E. van Ree September 2014
Table of content
Introduction 3
Chapter 1 – The basics of Vladimir Putin’s image 8
1.1 The Kremlin as image maker 8
1.2 Why Putin as Yeltsin’s successor? 9
1.3 The basics components of Putin’s image 12
1.4 The transformational/crisis period 13
1.5 The components of Putin’s image 15
1.5.1 Not being Yeltsin 16
1.5.2 Patriotism/traditionalism 17
1.5.3. Being human 18
Chapter 2 – The first presidential term, 2000 – 2004 21
2.1. Strengthening of power 21
2.2 Legitimation through traditionalism and patriotism 23
2.2.1 The church as sacred and cultural legitimation 24
2.2.2 Historical institutions and figures as example for the future? 25
2.2.3 Militarism as the ultimate expression of patriotism 27
2.3 A parallel persona 29
Chapter 3 – The second presidential term, 2004-2008 34
3.1 Patriotism and the enemy 34
3.1.1 The colour revolutions 35
3.1.2 NGOs as western covert actions 37
3.2 The national leader 39
3.3 Diminishing freedoms 41
Chapter 4 – The second premiership, 2008 -2012 44
4.1 Medvedev the puppet? 44
4.2 Putin as ‘Father of the Nation’ 45
4.3 Increasing civic activism 47
Conclusion 49
Introduction
In August 1999, Russian president Boris Yeltsin announced that Vladimir Putin would become his new prime minister and his chosen heir. The whole world, including many Russians, wondered who this new politician was. Putin had spent most of his political career in the shadow of charismatic politicians and was seen as a grey cardinal within the presidential staff. Even those who were close to Putin did not seem to know him at all. Boris Berezovsky, a highly placed official in the Russian administration of Yeltsin, admitted in an interview that he did not know Putin and that Putin did not interested him, even though Berezovsky helped in getting Putin appointed as Yeltsin’s successor. He thought that Putin would be a perfect candidate to succeed Yeltsin, because Putin seemed to be someone without a personality or any personal interests.1 However, this assumed lack of personality enabled the Kremlin and other stakeholders to build an image around Putin in a very short period of time which would be of benefit to them and appealing to the Russian people. As it turned out, they were successful. On 21 October 1999, the New York Times reported that according to a poll, support for Putin support went up from 2% in August 1999, to 28% in October 1999.2 Amongst other things, Putin’s reactions to certain events, such as the bombing of apartment buildings by Chechen separatists in August 1999 and the consequential start of the Second Chechen War, helped to create a certain image around him which was emphatically emphasised by the Kremlin’s public relations department. Within a very short period of time, Putin became the most popular politician of Russia and a real hype grew around him and this particular image.
The hype around Putin has often been addressed as a cult of personality.3 While it is understandable that this terminology comes to mind, it is a historic definition that has certain connotations attached to it. This was mainly the case because the most infamous cult of personality was that of Joseph Stalin. At the end of the 1920s and in the early 1930s, at the time Stalin secured his autocratic rule over the Soviet Union, a cult of personality was created around him. Stalin himself contributed extensively to this as well by allowing the incorporation of his image in cultural
expressions, his personal history became part of the compulsory curriculum of primary schools and he rewrote history for his own benefit. 4 Stalin saw the need for this cult, as he supposedly once said: ‘Don’t forget that we are living in Russia, the land of the tsars…. the Russian people like it when one person stands at the head of the state.’ 5 This phenomenon was nearly never referred to as a personality cult during Stalin’s reign, therefore his successor Nikita Khrushchev gave it this name in his secret 1 M. Gessen, De man zonder gezicht, de macht van Vladimir Poetin, Amsterdam (2012), p. 26.
2 C. Bohlen, ‘Popular Russian Prime Minister tours Chechnya front’, The New York Times, 21 October 1999, accessed 11 December 2013.
3J.A. Cassiday and E.D.Johnson, ‘Putin, Putiniana and the question of a Post-Soviet cult of personality’, The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 88, no. 4 (2010), pp. 681-707.
4 S. Davies, ‘Stalin and the making of the leader cult in the 1930s’, in: Apor, Balázs, eds., The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships. Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, Basingstoke (2004), p. 29.
5 D.L. Brandenberger and A.M. Dubrovsky, ‘“The people need a tsar”: the emergence of national bolshevism as Stalinist ideology, 1931-1941’, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 50, no. 5 (1998), p. 873.
speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, three years after Stalin’s death. In his speech, On the cult of personality, Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s rule and the use of this cult. According to Khrushchev, the cult led to the terror and the brutalities that were ordered by Stalin between the 1930s and the 1950s. 6 It should be noted that it is difficult to apply this concept to the presumed personality cult of Putin, because it has been said about other people, such as Mussolini and Hitler, that they also had a cult of personality. Their physical presence or traditional legislation have often been underlined and exaggerated in their propaganda. Despite the variety of dictators who all had a personality cult, the link between Stalin and Putin is more easily made since Putin is a Russian president with a past linked to the Soviet history. However, it would be
inappropriate to compare Stalin’s Great Terror with the way in which journalists are treated in contemporary Russia, or to compare the actions of the Russian army during the Second Chechen war with the actions of the NKVD after being ordered on Stalin’s command to shoot every Soviet soldier who deserted or fled the battlefield during the Great Patriotic War.
However, there is another conception of a cult of personality which can be applied to some political leaders in general. The Palgrave Macmillan dictionary of political thought gives, in addition to Khrushchev’s description, the following definition: ‘It [cult of personality] seems to refer to the concentration of political power and authority in a person, rather than in the office which he occupies, accompanied by an enforced adulation of that person on the part of ordinary citizens, and massive propaganda designed to display his superhuman virtues’7 A cult of personality, as it has been defined above, can be, and is often, connected to Max Weber’s theory of authority, and more specific to charismatic authority.
According to Max Weber there are three types of authority: legal-rational authority, which can be found in a democracy; traditional authority, upon which a monarchy is based; and charismatic authority which is often connected to dictatorial rule or totalitarianism. Weber believes charismatic authority is based on the idea that in time of revolution or transition there is a person who shows leadership and has extraordinary, supernatural capabilities and characteristics. Such a person can become a leader because there are people, so-called followers, who acknowledge this person’s (presumed) abilities and acknowledge this person as leader.8 These supernatural capabilities can be manufactured in order to turn someone, who lacks this natural sense of charisma, into a charismatic leader. Some scholars argue that the cult of personality is an example of how charisma can be manufactured: ‘The leader cult can be seen as an attempt to create an authority relationship in which the charismatic element is dominant, even if it is not spontaneous. Thus the cult of personality is better termed a legitimation tactic, and not a manifestation of charismatic authority, by the virtue of the fact 6 N.S. Khrushchev, ‘‘On the cult of personality and its consequences’ Report delivered to the 20th Congress of the CPSU on 25 February 1956’, in: T.H. Rigby, The Stalin dictatorship; Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ and other documents, Sydney (1968), pp. 28-32.
7 R. Scruton, The Palgrave Macmillan dictionary of political thought, Bastingstoke (2007), p. 157.
that it must be purposefully manufactured to fit the rapidly changing post-revolutionary environment, as it is not a natural occurrence within the newly transformational society.’9
In this way, the cult of personality - as a way to legitimise authority - can be applied to Putin’s situation. Within the transitional period from the Yeltsin era - which was characterised by chaos, corruption and a lack of legitimised leadership - to the years of Putin’s reign, when politics in Russia became more stable, the image of Putin as leader could become successful. Putin showed himself as the real leader of Russia at a moment of national crisis when the apartments exploded and the
subsequent Second Chechen war started. In addition to this, Yeltsin underlined the idea of Putin as the real and legitimate leader of Russia, during his resignation speech: ‘Why holding on to power for another six months, when the country has a strong person, fit to be president, with whom practically all Russians link their hopes for the future today?’10 Here Yeltsin almost used the complete definition of charismatic authority to describe his chosen heir: Putin as a strong person who gives the Russian people hope for the future, and who is because of this hope and belief in him, the legitimate
charismatic leader of Russia. This is a key reason for why we can apply Weber’s theory to analyse the development of Putin’s image (even though it is generally only applied to totalitarian regimes). It can serve as a way to provide a theoretical framework through which the image or cult of Putin can be deconstructed and by which certain aspects of his image can be explained. It is also worth noting that -while Putin’s Russia cannot be described as a totalitarian regime - there is proof that the country has become less democratic and more autocratic since Putin came to power.11 By deconstructing his image and showing the development of particular features of his image, the on-going shift from a democratic to a less democratic regime can be clarified. With this theoretical framework in which Putin’s image or cult of personality is seen as the legitimation strategy for his power and politics, this thesis provides an analysis of the development of Putin’s image.
The first chapter of this thesis sets out to analyse how Putin’s image has been constructed or indeed created jointly by the Kremlin and Putin himself. It also provides an overview of the political situation at the time of the start of Putin’s national political career, as well as during the Yeltsin years. The second, third and fourth chapters contain an analysis of how Putin’s image developed throughout the different terms of his time in office. In these chapters, the developing domestic and foreign politics are used to explain the changing features of Putin’s image throughout his reign, as well as the
influence of various individuals, such as journalists, human rights activists and the media on his image as instruments with which his image is kept in the public. It is often argued that such a personality cult
9 C. Strong and M. Killingsworth, ‘Stalin the charismatic leader?: Explaining the ‘cult of personality’ as a legitimation technique’, Politics, Religion and Ideology, vol. 12, no.4 (2011), p. 404.
10 Quote of Boris Yeltsin in: ‘Yeltsin's resignation speech’, BBC News, 31 December 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/584845.stm, accessed 30 November 2013. 11R.W. Orttung, ‘Nations in transit; Russia 2009’, Freedom House,
or image is not static: ‘a leader’s image can be multi-faceted, and techniques and themes can change through time.’12 This is certainly also applicable to Putin’s image.
Different sources have been used to examine and define Putin’s image. First of all, various primary sources have been used to define the development of the image of Putin, by way of example, the various essays of Putin and his official (auto) biography, Ot pervova litsa, which contains a selection of interviews of Putin by three journalists.13 Various other books and newspaper articles by, amongst others, Sergei Kovalev, Anna Politkovskaya and Anatoly Sobchak have also been regarded as a primary source as they show a strong opinion on Putin and his activities, as well as having
influenced the image of Putin. Secondly, articles from daily and weekly magazines or newspapers can also be regarded as a secondary source. For example, articles about the course of the Chechen war or about the measures taken against oligarchs can be regarded as secondary sources. Furthermore, a variety of internet sources have been used, as in Russia (and elsewhere) the internet has become an important place for Putin’s opponents to criticise the regime. Lastly, various secondary sources on the subject of this thesis, or which touch upon this subject, have been used, for the purpose of providing background information or show some historiography insights on the subject.
In view of all the above, the image of Vladimir Putin is a very relevant subject. Having a comprehensive understanding of his image may help to explain why he has been able to stay in power for the last fifteen years and it may also help to analyse his future years in power. On the other hand, the deconstruction of Putin’s created image may also lead to it being taken more seriously, as European observers and politicians have, all too often, ridiculed it. For example, according to European commentators, his background in the security services simply provides explanation for the way in which Putin acts. The approach of some of these analysts is almost psychological. They attempt to establish what Putin might have thought when he acted upon something. In particular the more “superficial parts” of Putin’s image has been given quite some attention, as not only scholars, but also some of the world leaders seem to have been focussing on this ostensible image, which may have been a distraction from assessing Putin in a more earnest way. For example, British prime minister David Cameron went for a swim in a Scottish lake during a G8 summit in June 2013 at Loch Erne. After his bathe he tweeted: 'no sign of the Russian president when I was swimming in a cold Lough Erne this morning’14. This clearly referred to Putin’s swim in 2009 which was caught on camera and which was shown extensively in the Western media, often accompanied with rather satirical remarks.15 Additionally, other state leaders have joked about Putin’s image as well. After one of Putin’s first 12 R. Eatwell, ‘The concept and theory of charismatic leadership’, Totalitarian movements and political religions, vol. 7, no. 2 (2006), p. 152.
13 In this thesis the English version of the book has been used, V. Putin, First person: an astonishingly frank self-portrait by Russia’s President, New York (2000).
14 J. Chapman, ‘It's all going swimmingly: Cameron takes a break from G8 talks to have a dip in the lake’, The Daily Mail, 18 June 2013, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2343857/G8-summit-David-Cameron-goes-swimming-Lough-Erne.html#ixzz2uhMDEIDq, accessed 3 January 2014.
15 B. Ronay, ‘Vladimir Putin's tough-guy swimming technique’, The Guardian, 6 August 2009, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/aug/06/vladimir-putin-butterfly-stroke , accessed 1 April 2014.
meetings with the German chancellor Angela Merkel in 2002, Merkel noted that she managed to pass Putin’s ‘“KGB test” by staring straight into his eyes without averting her gaze’.16 It seems that these jokes are rather harmless, but does it not also show that Putin is not taken completely serious by his colleagues? Recent events in Ukraine and the particular relationship between Russia and Iran or Syria have shown that Putin (and Russia) is an important international player that cannot easily be dismissed in a comical manner. Various scholars have also pointed out that Europe should consider Russia as a very powerful neighbour that needs to be reckoned with.17 It seems to follow from the above that the image of Putin may have contributed to the fact that Putin is not always taken serious by his
international colleagues.
16 N. Barkin, ‘Cold War past shapes complex Merkel-Putin relationship’, Reuters, 7 March 2014,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/07/us-merkel-putin-insight-idUSBREA260E120140307, accessed 1 April 2014.
17 T. Snyder, ‘Ukraine: The Antidote to Europe’s Fascists?’, The New York Review of Books, 27 May 2014, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/may/27/ukraine-antidote-europes-fascists/?insrc=wbll, accessed 27 May 2014; J. Sherr, ‘Russia’s elusive search for soft power’, New Eastern Europe, no. 2 (2014), pp. 48-53.
Chapter 1 – The basics of Vladimir Putin’s image
The image of Putin was first of all developed by the Kremlin and the people surrounding Yeltsin in order to make Putin seem like a suitable candidate to succeed Yeltsin and therewith legitimating his authority. In order to understand how this image was built, it is important to establish what or who “the Kremlin” is and who the people are that built this image. Furthermore, the political situation in Russia before and during Putin’s presidency will be discussed as these external factors influenced the way in which Putin’s image developed during his presidency. Lastly, the emergence of basic building blocks of Putin’s image within the first year of Putin’s reign will be addressed.
1.1 The Kremlin as image maker
As mentioned above, the basis of Putin’s image was created by the Kremlin and Putin himself. Almost no-one knew anything about Putin and as a result the most important information about him came directly from the Kremlin. This fits within the definition of the cult of personality: in order to create or establish a cult of personality, use is made of ‘enforced adulation of that person on the part of ordinary citizens, and massive propaganda designed to display his superhuman virtues’18. Even though it would be an exaggeration to say that the reports on Putin in his first months in office could be considered as ‘massive propaganda’, some scholars underline the pressure and the influence of the Kremlin on the supply of information on Putin. Miguel Vázquez Liñan spoke of the Yeltsin camp within the Kremlin which ‘forges the image of the man who was to become the next president of Russia’ after he was announced to be the heir of Yeltsin.19 Others, like Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, take it even further by saying that information about Putin was ‘suppressed, distorted, got lost or was expunged’, which resulted in the fact that Putin was able to turn himself into ‘the ultimate political performance artist’.20 It is fair to say, insofar as this can be reconstructed, that in the first months of Putin’s premiership it were mainly the people within the Kremlin who created the image. Political strategists or parts of the presidential public relations team, often referred to as piarshchiki, took responsibility in this process.21 Putin himself, however, took part quite actively as well. According to Gleb Pavlovsky, one of Putin’s political technologists and strategists during the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, it was Putin who for the largest part created the main features of his own image. This was illustrated, for example when Putin, after the explosion of apartment blocks throughout Russia, responded on television in a way every ordinary person would most likely respond: he became angry. Although his political advisors strongly discouraged him to behave that way, Putin’s harsh words and use of slang on
18 R. Scruton, The Palgrave Macmillan dictionary of political thought, Bastingstoke (2007), p. 157. 19 M.V. Liñán, ‘Putin’s propaganda legacy’, Post-Soviet Affairs, vol.25, no.2 (2009), p. 139. 20 F. Hill and C.G. Gaddy, Mr. Putin; Operative in the Kremlin, Washington (2013), p. 3.
21 E. A. Wood, ‘Performing memory: Vladimir Putin and the celebration of World War II in Russia’, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, no. 38 (2011), p. 175.
national television seemed to appeal to the Russian people.22 After it turned out that behaving as an ordinary Russian was successful, the team of political strategists behind Putin encouraged him to keep acting this way. His public relations team even staged all sorts of occasions were Putin was able to show that he was just like everybody else.23 Hence, even though it was the Kremlin who had started to build this image in the first place, Putin certainly played an important role as well.
1.2 Why Putin as Yeltsin’s successor?
The image of Putin became important from the moment Yeltsin announced on 9 August 1999 that Putin would not only become the new prime minister, but also his appointed successor.24 An
interesting question is why Putin was chosen to become Yeltsin’s successor. Why were there people within the Kremlin bothered turning someone, who they perceived as uninteresting and perhaps even uncharismatic, into the new leader of Russia?
The answer to this question can be found in the political situation in the years before Putin entered the national political stage. Yeltsin was the first president of the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the last years of the Soviet Union he presented himself as a liberal antagonist fighting against the established order. As party chief of Moscow and as appointed member of the Politburo, Yeltsin dealt with the corruption within the state.25 He presented himself as the opponent of Mikhail Gorbachev, by stating that Gorbachev’s democratisation did not go far enough. After the failed putsch of 18 and 19 August 1991, in which the KGB chief at that time, Vladimir Kryuchkov, and other conservative state officials had tried to restore the old regime by imprisoning Gorbachev, Yeltsin ended up being the victor. After the dissolvent of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin became the first president of the new Russian Federation.
Yeltsin and his team of reformists encountered fierce opposition within the Parliament from some of the conservatives, including the leader of the newly formed Russian Communist Party, Genady Zyuganov. In April 1993, Yeltsin tried to establish a new constitution by organising a referendum. The results of the referendum were in favour of Yeltsin, but the new constitution was nevertheless stopped by the opposition. As a result of the ongoing struggle between Yeltsin and his opponents, the president – illegally – dissolved the parliament in September 1993. Yeltin’s opponents did not accept this and occupied the White House in Moscow. In response to this, Yeltsin brought in the army and ordered a storming of the White House, which resulted in approximately 160 deaths.26
Following this, Yeltsin’s constitution was ratified in December 1993, which amongst other things allocated more powers to the President. Despite the fact that the measures Yeltsin had to take in 22 Quote of Gleb Pavlovsky in: J. Carré, The Putin System, Paris (2009), http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=m5Rkom1RpKA, accessed 1 December 2013.
23 Ibidem.
24 ‘Yeltsin redraws political map’, BBC News, 10 August 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/415087.stm, accessed 11 December 2013.
25 C. Evtuhov and R. Stites, A history of Russia since 1800, Boston (2004), p. 482. 26 Ibidem, pp. 493-494.
order to get this constitution ratified were not democratic, the constitution itself provided the Russian people with more liberties than ever before. Even though basic freedom of speech was already
protected in the Law on the Mass Media, which came into force in December 1991, the constitution of 1993 went further in securing other basic freedoms, such as further press freedom, the prohibition of censorship and the guarantee of the freedom of thought.27
Yeltsin’s image became tarnished from meddling with democracy in 1993 as well as from some embarrassing performances abroad in which he behaved quite inappropriately.28 The polls for the presidential elections became a concern for Yeltsin. It seemed more and more likely that the
Communists would be able to defeat him as a result of his poor image. In the months preceding the 1996 elections, the Russian press (owned by wealthy oligarchs) decided to support Yeltsin which eventually – against all expectations – made him win the elections. The outcome of these elections changed the role of the media in Russia permanently: it became clear that a strong position in the media branch could lead to significant influence within Russian politics as well.29
As a result, the media turned, according to Rick Simon, into ‘the tools of their owners in the pursuit of their owner’s narrow interests.’30 Oligarchs as owners of media companies started meddling with the business of journalists, ignoring a law which had entered into force in 1992, which had explicitly forbidden any interference of the owner or founder of a media company. In the late 1990s, the independence of the press was clearly threatened by the fact that – according to Laura Belin – ‘almost every media outlet depended on outside financing and consequently had its own favourite targets and forbidden subjects.’31 During the reign of Putin, the situation with respect to the media got even worse than during the Yeltsin period. The Russian business elite as well as the political elite competed in the misuse of the media as a weapon in their efforts to expand their political power and economic wealth. In that competition, the Russian political elite in the guise of Putin emerged victorious in the end.32
During the Yeltsin years, the aforementioned oligarchs had thus become an increasingly powerful group of individuals. In the early 1990s, during the privatisation of various state companies – in particular gas, oil and media companies – this group of oligarchs managed to acquire most of these key businesses. In this same period, the power of the state diminished as it was unable to get people to pay their taxes, prevent corruption from flourishing or to put a hold to the increasing difference in wealth within society. As a result, oligarchs, such as Boris Berezovksy or Roman Abramovich, 27 R. Simon, ‘Media, myth and reality in Russia’s state-managed democracy’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 57, no. 1 (2004), p. 178; L. Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, Washington (2003), p. 171.
28 ‘Boris Yeltsin: Master of surprise’, BBC News, 31 December 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/341959.stm, accessed 11 December 2013.
29 L. Belin, ‘The Russian media in the 1990s’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, vol. 18, no. 1 (2002), p. 144.
30 R. Simon, ‘Media, myth and reality in Russia’s state-managed democracy’, p. 178. 31 L. Belin, ‘The Russian media in the 1990s’, p. 146.
32 O. Koltsova, ‘News production in contemporary Russia: Practices of power’, European Journal of Communication, vol. 16, no. 3 (2001), p. 322.
benefited not only from the absence of the government but also from their contacts within the presidential administration.33 Yeltsin owed his second presidential term to them: they were the ones that had provided the media coverage on him which led to his victory. However, Yeltsin did not depend solely on these oligarchs. In particular, the inner circle of Yeltsin – which are often referred to as “the Family” – was quite influential. This group consisted of actual family members of Yeltsin and other close acquaintances. For example, Yeltsin’s daughter, the boyfriend of Yeltsin’s daughter (Valentin Dumashev), Alexander Voloshin and Boris Berezovsky all managed to occupy high positions within the presidential administration. It is often said that, primarily during Yeltsin’s last presidential term, Yeltsin was almost completely dependent on them and became ‘a hostage of his own court’34. One of the reasons why it was possible for the ‘Family’ to continue to gain power was Yeltsin’s failing health. In his autobiography, Yeltsin writes that at the moment he got re-elected in 1996, his health was diminishing due to a heart attack. During a televised debate with one of his opponents, Alexander Lebed, Yeltsin’s heart monitoring machine was covered up with a rug. This was done to make sure that the public would not worry and to prevent that the people would not vote for him.35 Even though Yeltsin often claimed that he liked to make decisions on his own36, it seems somewhat unlikely that someone who was recovering from heart surgery would be able to run the largest country in the world on his own.
It follows from the aforementioned examples that it was in particular the ‘Family’ on whom Putin depended in order to become prime minister and later, president. The answer to the question why Putin seemed to be a suitable candidate is that he was seen as not having a strong personality. In order for the ‘Family’ to stay in power, they needed someone to succeed Yeltsin who would allow them to play the same role as they did during Yeltsin’s presidencies. Someone who was lacking personality could be moulded into someone the Family desired. Already during Yeltsin’s presidency some of the members of the Family had been incriminated for corruption or other legal offences. The Family therefore needed someone they would be able to trust to prevent them from being prosecuted after Yeltsin resigned and who would ensure that their privileges remained. The choice fell on Putin because he had already proven several times that he was extremely loyal to his superiors. Furthermore, during the Skuratov-affair, it allegedly also became clear that Putin did not mind getting his hands dirty. Yuri Skuratov was a prosecutor general who started an investigation into some high ranking officials within the Yeltsin administration (including Yeltsin’s daughter and Boris Berezovsky). Shortly after Skuratov received a vote of confidence from the Russian parliament, a video appeared showing someone looking like Skuratov in bed with two prostitutes. As a result, Skuratov resigned and the investigation was put on hold.37 According to some, it was Putin who personally arranged for 33 M. I. Goldman, ‘Putin and the oligarchs’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 83, no. 6 (2004), p. 36.
34 L. Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, p. 17.
35 B. Jeltsin, Rusland, mijn verhaal, Utrecht (2000), p. 40. 36 Ibidem, p. 10.
37‘Russian prosecutor in sex video scandal’, BBC News, 19 March 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/299354.stm, accessed 3 January 2014.
this video in order to stop the investigation.38 Putin’s ways of handling those sorts of situations seemed promising to the Family. He seemed to warrant for their individual freedom and in inviolability of the wealth they had amassed.
Hence, it was in particular Putin’s plain personality that was interesting to the Family as this would enable them to retain their powers they already had during Yeltsin’s presidential terms. Even if it would turn out that Putin’s personality would not be influenced as easily as it seemed, his loyalty could nevertheless help the Family to secure and maintain their power and privileges.
1.3 The basics components of Putin’s image
Ultimately for their own security, the family in the Kremlin thus heavily depended on the fact that Putin needed to become Yeltsin’s successor. However, it was not entirely their decision whether Putin would become president. For this reason they had to make sure that the Russian electorate would vote for him and this required a positive image. It was not possible to build his image completely from scratch, since Putin’s own personality could not be completely erased and thus needed to be taken into account. Therefore, Putin’s past and character had to be brought in line with his image. Particularly Putin’s past turned out to become quite crucial in the early stage of his reign. Indeed, Putin was able to appeal to many different groups of people within the Russian society even though, or perhaps
precisely because, of his very multifaceted past.
As much as it is known, Putin grew up in a communal apartment in Leningrad. He was not particularly interested in school and preferred to play outside. During high school he developed the idea that he wanted to be a KGB officer, being strongly influenced by Soviet movies on espionage. At the age of sixteen, Putin went to a KGB office in order to apply there for a job. The reply he got was that people could not apply for a job there. He first needed to join the army or study law. In Putin’s third year of law school, the security agency approached him with the question whether he wanted to become a spy. He gladly accepted this offer. After his training, Putin became a KGB-officer in the German Democratic Republic from 1985 until 1990, supposedly in Dresden. In 1990, Putin returned to Leningrad, the city he was born in on 7 October 1952, and he started working there at the University of Leningrad where he once studied law. Putin officially worked there ‘undercover’ for the KGB but he was – according to himself – pleased to do so because of the opportunity he got to write his
dissertation at the university.39 He had worked there for only three months when Anatoly Sobchak, the liberal leader of the city council of Leningrad at that time, asked Putin to work for him. On 18 August 1991, when various conservative state officials including the head of the KGB committed a coup to dismiss Gorbachev, Putin was officially still on the payroll of the KGB. However, in his biography
38 A. Knight, ‘The enduring legacy of the KGB in Russian politics’, Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 47, no. 4 (2000), p. 9.
Putin claims that he already had resigned but that his resignation letter got lost somewhere.40 Therefore, he resigned again on 20 August 1991, after the putsch had collapsed.
Putin worked for Sobchak for almost six years. During these years, Sobchak became the mayor of St. Petersburg and Putin was promoted to the position of deputy mayor of St. Petersburg as well as the head of external relations of this city. In 1996, Sobchak was defeated by Vladimir Yakovlev in his attempt to be re-elected as mayor of St. Petersburg. Putin decided not to stay in St. Petersburg after this defeat. He was invited to work in Moscow and from that point on his career gained momentum. Putin started there as a deputy to the head of the president’s General Affairs Department. In 1997, he became head of the Main Control Directorate. The following year, Putin became first deputy head of the presidential administration where he maintained contacts with the regions and governors. In 1998, he was promoted to the directorship of the FSB41 and in that same year he became the secretary of the Security Council. On 9 August 1999, Putin was appointed prime minister.
Putin’s biography is thus fairly multifaceted, including collaboration with the KGB and, at the same time, with the liberals in the Russian Federation. He escaped from the backyards of a communal apartment to graduate from university. The contradictions within his past allowed diverse groups in Russian society to identify with him. This became clear during the presidential elections in March 2000. Putin’s supporters came from all walks of life, from all levels of education and from all levels of income: women, men, liberals, communists, ex –KGB employees: they all voted for Putin.42 Even though it seemed that his background was the main reason for attracting different types of people, some scholars say it was not only his past but also his own ability ‘to get people to see him as what they want him to be, not what he really is’.43 Putin’s diversity was fairly important to allow the Russian citizens to get to know and to like him. However, it was not Putin’s past alone that made him the leader of Russia. For this to happen, a crisis situation was necessary, as also the theory of the charismatic authority points out. In this case the start of the Chechen war was the crisis situation in which Putin could emerge as the undisputed leader of Russia.
1.4 The transformational/crisis period
The theory of Max Weber on charismatic leadership prescribes that a crisis situation or a
transformational period gives a person the opportunity to become a charismatic leader. This was also the case with Putin who stepped up as a strong leader at the moment that Russia got involved in the 40 V. Putin, First Person, p. 92.
41 In 1991, the KGB was reorganised, into the Ministry of Security, then into the Federal Service of Counter-Intelligence (FSK) and eventually the Federal Security Service (FSB). The FSB is responsible for
counterintelligence, as well as counterterrorism. The tax police, which was created in 1993 in order to increase the number of people who actually paid taxes, is also part of the FSB. The FSB is based in the Lyubyanka Headquarters in Moscow, where the KGB used to reside as well.
42 S. White and I. McAllister, ‘Putin and his supporters’, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 55, no. 3 (2003), p. 384. 43 F. Hill and C.G. Gaddy, Mr. Putin, p. 5.
Second Chechen War. At the time Putin became prime minister in August 1999, Chechen militants invaded Dagestan. The Russian army was send to Dagestan in order to protect this republic. The Russians managed to force the Chechen militants back across the Chechen border. Shortly after this, between 4 and 17 September 1999, a number of buildings in the suburbs of Moscow were blown up, causing a large number of casualties. Eventually, these explosions led to the start of the Second Chechen war, as Chechen militants were supposedly the perpetrators of these explosions. The Russian troops, which were still at the border of Chechnya, invaded the republic. A few months later, Putin stated in his autobiography that the bombings were the real incentive for the decision to continue the Russian actions in Chechnya and Dagestan.44 This was a rather controversial statement because there are a lot of uncertainties attached to these explosions and the question of who was behind them.45
The Chechen war and the bombings of the buildings in Russia gave Putin an opportunity to display his concern and his love for Russia in a way everyone could understand. The camera footage of a furious Putin who did not fear to show his emotions went global. His language was clear: ‘We must stamp out this vermin [Chechen terrorists]’46 or ‘We shall hunt the terrorists down wherever they are and wherever we catch them - be it at the airport or in the loo, pardon the expression.’47 According to Gleb Pavlovsky, it was at that moment that Putin became the Putin as everybody knows him nowadays. The people apparently liked the way Putin responded to the events and therefore it needed to become part of his image.48 Yeltsin agrees to this in his autobiography. Yeltsin deemed it important for the Russian people, and for state officials, to get used to Putin and to start to consider him as a head of state.49 The activities in Chechnya and Putin’s public appearances in that respect contributed to the idea of Putin as a strong leader. Because of the chaos during the Yeltsin years, the wish for
political stability and a strong person at the top was widespread. In a poll held around the time of the presidential elections in May 2000, the desire of the Russian people was clearly displayed. At the question ‘what does Russia need?’, 71% of the respondents answered ‘a strong leader’ and 59% wanted ‘a strong state’.50 Putin’s way of acting in reaction to the Chechen war made people believe that he was suitable to take on that job. According to Putin’s biography, that was exactly what he 44V. Putin, First Person, p. 143.
45 There is some suspicion that the explosions in the apartment blocks were caused by the FSB. After a number of explosions, a new bomb was found in an apartment block in the province of Ryazan. Residents had seen some Slavic looking men acting suspicious in the basement of the building. The head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, made an announcement the next day stating that men of the FSB had tested the residents by placing some bags of sugar in the basement. However, the local police had found a working bomb. Many Russian journalists believe that the FSB and the Kremlin were behind the bombings and had supplied their own need to legitimize the war in Chechnya. In: B. Judah, Fragile Empire: How Russia fell in and out of love with Vladimir Putin, New Haven (2013), pp. 31-32., M. Gessen, De man zonder gezicht, de macht van Vladimir Poetin, Amsterdam (2012), p. 46. 46 ‘Explosives find follows Russian bomb’, BBC News, 17 September 1999,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/449401.stm, 20 August 2013. 47‘Media gung-ho over Grozny’, BBC News, 24 September 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/456851.stm , 20 August 2013. 48 Quote of Gleb Pavlovsky in: J. Carré, J., The Putin System, Paris (2009). 49B. Jeltsin, Rusland, mijn verhaal, p. 304.
wanted to be (or be considered as), a loyal and selfless leader who could redeem the Russians from again losing their pride in Chechnya:
All of this [that Putin became prime minister and Yeltsin’s announcement that Putin would be his heir in the next presidential elections] took place as tension was mounting in Dagestan. I had already decided that my career might be over, but that it was my mission, my historical mission – and this will sound lofty, but it’s true – consisted of resolving the situation in the Northern Caucasus. [...] I said to myself, “Never mind, I have a little time – two, three, maybe four months – to bang the hell out of those bandits. Then they can get rid of me.”51
Putin’s use of the word ‘mission’ quite interesting because it is a much used characteristic of charismatic leadership. Charismatic leaders have, or often attribute to themselves, a type of mission. The function of the mission of the leader is ‘arousing in supporters the belief that a leader holds a special status’52. Putin’s biography was published in March 2000, just before the presidential election. Hence, these types of statements seemed to be aimed at the public, in making them believe that Putin as well had such a ‘special status’ and was thus suitable to become president of Russia.
Within Weber’s theory on the generation of authority, it has been said that this transitional period can be appropriated by the new leaders to their advantages, and that the leaders would use these situations to present themselves as natural candidates to lead the people.53 In the case at hand it should be noted that the start of the Second Chechen war provided Putin with the opportunity to show his abilities as a real leader. The fact that Putin reacted in a very distinctive way to terrorist attacks – decisively like a military leader and, at the same time, cursing like a normal human being – can be understood as a display of these abilities. Although it seems contradictory that Putin’s supernatural characteristics consists of his ability to act as a normal person, it is according to some scholars, one of the main traits of a charismatic leader.54 Through this behaviour the leader can make the followers identify themselves with him. This proved to be the case with Putin’s behaviour during the second Chechen war: he continued to deliver statements that everyone wanted to hear, i.e. that the people who acted against the Russian state needed to be punished.
1.5 The components of Putin’s image
One could wonder why an entire image had to be created to legitimise Putin’s authority. After all, the Chechen war had already provided him with enough arguments to claim legitimacy to become the president of Russia. However, because Putin’s authority among the Russian population was at this point - aside from the fact that he was appointed prime minister – solely based on the fact that he appeared to be a strong leader. The theory of charismatic leadership says that after a while, when the crisis situation fades away, the support for this charismatic leader can also dissolve. In order to 51 V. Putin, First Person, p. 139.
52 R. Eatwell, ‘The concept and theory of charismatic leadership’, p. 145. 53 C. Strong and M. Killingsworth, ‘Stalin the charismatic leader?’, p. 395. 54 R. Eatwell, ‘The concept and theory of charismatic leadership’, p. 146.
establish a rule that is also legitimised in the period after this transition, the charismatic authority of the leader needs to be routinized. Weber puts it as follows: ‘Thus the pure type of charismatic
rulership is in a very specific sense unstable, and all its modifications have basically one and the same cause: The desire to transform charisma and charismatic blessing from a unique, transitory gift of grace of extraordinary times and people into a permanent possession of everyday life.’55 By using Putin’s image as a way to legitimise Putin’s power, the Kremlin tried to establish a more stable bond with the Russian electorate. According to Putin’s political technologist, Gleb Pavlovsky, this is exactly what the Kremlin did: the public relations team started to put an image together after it became apparent that Putin’s statements on the Chechen war were received successfully among the Russian public.
The image they had created has been built upon a number of building blocks which together form Putin’s image. A wide range of subjects have been used to create his image. This is partly reflected by Putin himself, in his essay on what changes should be made in Russia in order to put the country back on its feet again. This essay, Russia at the turn of the millennium, is often considered liberal, despite the fact that it includes some conservative remarks too. It can also be regarded as a guideline for Putin’s image construction, however. In the following section I will show that it highlights almost every component which is apparent in Putin’s image. In so doing, I distinguish three main building blocks.
1.5.1 Not being Yeltsin
The first and most important building block of Putin’s image was the contrast with Yeltsin’s image and with the past. In the first part of Russia at the turn of the millennium, Putin criticises the Soviet Union’s legacy: ‘The current dramatic economic and social situation in the country is the price, which we have to pay for the economy we inherited from the Soviet Union. [...] We are paying for the Soviet neglect of such key sectors as information science, electronics and communication.’56
According to Putin, the post–Soviet period was, however, not really an improvement compared to the Soviet past. ‘We could have avoided certain problems in this renewal process. They are the result of our own mistakes, miscalculation and lack of experience.’57 Putin argued that the revival of Russia could be guaranteed if it is ‘carried out in a situation of political stability’58. With these statements, Putin specifically distanced himself from Yeltsin and the situation during the Yeltsin years which were quite chaotic with several economic and political breakdowns. Putin underlined here as well the transitional period in which the Russian state seemed to be. He also suggested an alternative for this
55 M. Weber, Economy and society, p. 1121.
56 V. Putin, Russia at the turn of the millennium (1999), obtained from
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/library/primary-sources/russia-turn-millennium, accessed 1 April 2014, p. 2. 57 Ibidem, p. 2.
chaos of the Soviet and post-Soviet past - political stability. The message was, of course fairly clear: Putin posed as the guarantor of this stability.
In addition to distancing himself from Yeltsin’s economic and political identity, Putin’s persona also strongly emphasized the differences in the physical and psychological health of Putin and Yeltsin. The emphasis on the superior physical image of Putin, in particular in contrast with Yeltsin, is more often seen when there is a charismatic leader involved: ‘Charismatic leaders typically have great personal presence, or ‘magnetism’. In some cases this involves physical traits.’59 In contrast to Yeltsin, Putin looked young, fit and strong, just 47 years of age. Furthermore, Putin did not drink and he was healthy and good looking. In a short period of time, a real hype emerged around Putin’s physical appearance. Especially during the Duma elections of December 1999, the number of
appearances of Putin in the media increased significantly. Even though Putin was not connected to any political party and was therefore in theory not important for the Duma elections, most of the media coverage was nevertheless about him. This coverage consisted mostly of images of Putin. These images of Putin ‘visiting factories, co-piloting a MiG fighter jet or addressing the Duma’ were all meant to portray Putin as a strong and effective leader. After Putin became president in March 2000, this image of the strong and fit leader was further expanded. According to Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, the Kremlin’s public relations department (or as they call it ‘the Kremlin’s inexhaustible wardrobe and special props department’) made sure that Putin was portrayed in the media as all sorts of physical types: Putin the scuba diver, Putin the hunter, Putin the biker, Putin the pilot and even Putin the party animal. So Putin is not just about renewal – or better put, improvement – of policies, but also about a renewal of personality.
1.5.2 Patriotism/traditionalism
The second building block of Putin’s image consists of patriotism and traditionalism. According to Putin, patriotism is part of the Russian national identity. ‘For the majority of the Russians it [patriotism] has its own and only original and positive meaning. It is a feeling of pride in one’s country, its history and accomplishments. It is the striving to make one’s country better, richer, stronger and happier.’60 Patriotism captures various characteristics of Putin’s image, for example the Second Chechen war. During a Kremlin ceremony on 30 December 1999, Putin asserts that the Chechen war is not just a matter of safety: ‘We will not tolerate any humiliation to the national pride of Russians or any threat to the integrity of the country.’61 Putin took it a step further by visiting the Russian troops in Chechnya, on New Year’s Eve 1999, as the first act as president. Even though patriotism and particularly traditionalism seem to conflict with the first building block of Putin’s 59 R. Eatwell, ‘The concept and theory of charismatic leadership’, p. 147.
60 V. Putin, Russia at the turn of the millennium, p. 5.
61 C. Bohlen, ‘Putin asserts national pride is at stake in Chechnya War’, New York Times, 31 December 1999. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/31/world/putin-asserts-national-pride-is-at-stake-in-chechnya-war.html, 29 August 2013.
persona, the image builders of Putin (and Putin himself) have nevertheless managed to almost fully merge both blocks. According to Putin, patriotism and traditionalism are connected with a strong and increasing powerful Russia. A strong and powerful Russia could also be accomplished by choosing a path different from the one that Yeltsin took. In this way, the first building block – Putin as the opposite of Yeltsin – strengthens the second building block, to make Russia powerful and to be taken seriously again.
Putin also emphasised this patriotism and a strong Russia on the international stage and he displayed his strength there as well. In November 1999, Putin wrote an open letter to the New York Times titled Why we must act, in which he explained the situation in Chechnya to the American public. This letter could at the same time also be considered as an attack on the Clinton administration. Clinton had urged the Russians to civilise the battle in Chechnya, among others due to the many civilian casualties62. Putin responded to this in his open letter as follows:
Exactly the same tactics were deployed during Operation Desert Storm, in the bombing of the former Yugoslavia and in the various Unites States attempts to strike back at the world's most wanted terrorist - Osama bin Laden. Yet in the midst of war, even the most carefully planned military operations occasionally cause civilian casualties, and we deeply regret that.63
This letter and some other remarks of Putin on this subject were strong signals to the West that Russia would not be their puppet. At the same moment, the letter could also be considered as a letter to the Russian citizens in which Putin showed exactly the same to them: Russia, as a strong country, needs to be taken seriously and will not be a puppet of the West. Putin showed this strength not just in this encounter with Clinton, but he underlined a number of other matters in his as well. For example, one of the reforms Putin wanted to pursue was to ‘integrate the Russian economy into world economic structures’64. This was, however, not an end to itself. Putin suggested that it would help to ‘combat the discrimination of Russia on the world markets of commodities, services and investments’65.
1.5.3. Being human
The third and final building block has already been briefly mentioned above. It is the part of Putin’s image emphasising that Putin is a common man. Putin’s political potential became apparent thanks to his ability to act as’ just a commoner in the street’ and this is also something which the Kremlin has continued to emphasize and build upon. For a charismatic leader, it is indeed more effective to portray himself as an ordinary man rather than a technocrat.66 From the beginning of his time in office Putin was very capable of doing this. He had proven that he was able to combine the function of prime 62 J. Perlez, ‘Clinton tells Russian of concern over Chechnya bombing’, The New York Times, 3 November 1999, accessed 9 December 2013.
63 V. Putin, ‘Why we must act’, The New York Times, 14 November 1999,
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/14/opinion/why-we-must-act.html, accessed 10 December 2013. 64 V. Putin, Russia at the turn of the millennium, p. 9.
65 Ibidem, p. 9.
minister with his tough and plain language, which made him even more popular. There were also other aspects which contributed to this third building block. For example, in his autobiography Putin elaborates on his childhood. He portrays himself as a ‘bad boy’ who liked adventures. By doing this he had effectively portrayed himself as an ordinary youngster to which many Russians can relate, in particular Russian men.67
However, he also managed to be appealing to Russian women. Many women saw in the new Russian politician a role model for men whom they would like to marry.68 Women have also claimed that they found Putin attractive. The image of the fit, young and to some degree even sexy Putin is firmly underlined in his own autobiography. In an anecdote in his autobiography, the Putin family spent time in their self-build dacha. One evening the dacha goes up in flames because of a flaw in the stove of the dacha’s sauna. Putin saves his two daughters first and then thinks of the family’s savings which are left behind in a briefcase in the room. According to the book, Putin went back to retrieve their savings from the first floor as a result of which he eventually needed to escape via the balcony.
I stopped looking for the stash. I ran out on the balcony. Flames were shooting upward. I clambered over the railing, grabbing the sheets and began to lower myself down. And here’s an interesting detail: I was stark naked from the banya. I had only just managed to wrap a sheet around myself. So you can imagine the scene: the house is burning, there’s a naked man wrapped in a sheet, crawling down from the balcony, and the wind is blowing the sheet out like a sail.69
This rather suggestive anecdote seems to accentuate the bodily aspect of Putin’s image. It furthermore suggested that Putin does not mind the commotion about his physical appearances and he even seemed to instigate this particular image.
But it was not just the physical aspect of Putin’s image that the Russian people liked. Also the vulnerability that Putin was able to show at certain moments, made a great impression. The first time that Putin showed himself to be vulnerable in public was during the funeral of Anatoly Sobchak. Sobchak had once been Putin’s professor at the University of Leningrad. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Putin returned to Russia, they worked together from 1990 until 1996. Some even say that Putin, while being head of the FSB, protected Sobchak by getting him safely to Paris because he was suspected of abuse of power and corruption in Russia. In February 2000, Sobchak died unexpectedly and Putin attended the funeral where he did not conceal his grieve for his old mentor. According to some scholars, it was exactly that moment when Putin won the hearts of the Russian people, the moment that he showed his humanity.70
To conclude, within the first months of Putin’s time as prime minister and acting president, he and Kremlin officials managed to create a particular image around him. This image was conceived to 67 V. Putin, First Person, p.16.
68 S. White and I. Mcallister, ‘The Putin Phenomenon’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, vol. 24, no. 4 (2008), p. 608.
69V. Putin, First Person, p.120. 70 L. Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, p. 33.
legitimise Putin’s authority. After all, so far only Yeltsin had chosen Putin as his leader and made Putin prime minister and four months later acting president. By only doing this, the Russian people would hardly ever acknowledged or recognised Putin as their leader and Putin lacked legitimation to be their prime minister or president. It was the cleverly manufactured, multifaceted image of Putin which offered opportunities for the Russian people to identify with Putin as the new Russian leader and as the obvious choice for the presidential elections of March 2000.
Chapter 2 – The first presidential term, 2000 – 2004
The Kremlin succeeded in making Putin the most popular politician of Russia; he got elected president at the presidential elections of 28 March 2000 with 52, 9% of the votes. In that same year, the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) wrote in a report on the elections that: ‘the presidential election was conducted under a constitutional and legislative framework that is consistent with internationally recognized democratic standards, including those formulated in the OSCE Copenhagen Document of 1990. This election also demonstrated Russia’s continuing commitment to strengthen its democratic electoral institutions, which appear to have the public’s confidence and acceptance as demonstrated by the 69% turnout.’71 The democratic standards and electoral institutions turned out to become a key element in the changing political landscape throughout Putin’s first presidential term. During the presidential elections of 2004, where Putin would be elected for a second term as president, the OSCE reported that ‘State authorities should refrain from interfering in the activities of journalists and other media personnel with a view to influencing elections. There should not be any intimidation, threats, closures, or pressure on the media by any member of the State or local administration.’72 Furthermore, the report provided that ‘essential elements of the OSCE commitments for democratic elections, such as a vibrant political discourse and meaningful pluralism, were lacking’73. These conclusions seemed quite different from the outcome of the report in 2000 and it therefore showed what had actually changed within Russian society. The first presidential term of Putin was characterised by a strengthening of power at the centre of the state and diminishing freedom of press and room for criticism on the Russian president and government.74 This changing environment was also reflected in the image of Putin. In this chapter the first presidential term of Putin and the development of Putin’s image throughout this period will be discussed. 2.1. Strengthening of power
As mentioned before, Putin had stated in the context of the Chechen War that it was his historical mission to solve the problem in the Northern Caucasus. Reference to these types of missions has been often used by people who can be regarded as charismatic leaders. They do this in order to make people view them as extraordinary figures who are portrayed as the only ones capable to lead the country. In addition to saving Chechnya, Putin also focused on a second mission. In his 1999 political manifesto, Russia at the turn of the millennium, Putin had set clear ideas for Russia’s future. He stated: ‘Russia needs a strong state power and must have it. I am not calling for totalitarianism. [...] A strong state
71 ‘Russia, Presidential Election, 26 March 2000: Final Report’, OSCE, 19 May 2000,
http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/russia/16275?download=true, accessed 5 August 2014, p.3. 72 ‘Russia, Presidential Election, 14 March 2004: Final Report’, OSCE, 2 June 2004,
http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/russia/33101?download=true, accessed 5 August 2014, p. 29. 73 Ibidem, p. 1.
power in Russia is a democratic, law-based, workable federative state.’75 In this same pamphlet he indirectly blamed Yeltsin for leaving the country behind in such chaos. Immediately after becoming president, Putin started centralising the country, which suggested that he created order after the chaos of the Yeltsin-era. In his essay, Putin did not make it clear how he envisaged accomplishing such a state. However, his ‘game plan’ eventually became apparent in May 2000. Putin issued a decree by which the Kremlin would gain more control over the regions of Russia and their leaders and the elite. Seven federal districts with leaders to be appointed and dismissed by Putin were created. This allowed Putin to gain more control over the regions.
Another example of Putin’s determination to centralise the state and to attack the corruption, which Yeltsin failed to do, is how Putin handled the oligarchs. During the elections Putin had made a promise ‘to take on a hard line with terrorists, separatists, and any other destabilizing element, as well as with the monopolists, the so-called oligarchs.’76 Hence, after the elections, the two owners of the most prominent television networks, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinksy, were forced to ultimately sell their stakes in their own companies. Berezovsky had owned ORT and various newspapers, and Vladimir Gusinsky had owned NTV, the first independent television network in Russia, the radio station Ekho Moskvy as well as a paper and a weekly news magazine. Berezovsky was forced to emigrate to Britain after selling his shares in ORT. Gusinksy was forced to sell his shares in his companies to Gazprom, one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, after which he, too, fled the country.77 These two cases are just two examples of the many cases in which oligarchs got prosecuted. In an interview about these measures against oligarchs Putin said that ‘he wanted to build a market economy in which no one remained above the law’ and that these types of people were not acceptable for the Russia people. 78
In the abovementioned examples, Putin showed his abilities as a strong leader. In his capacity as such a leader, Putin tried to show that he acted in the interest of and on behalf of the Russian people. In the abovementioned example of Gusinky and Berezvosky, he made this explicit by stating that he did not consider the behaviour of the oligarchs to be acceptable, just as the Russians thought. By saying this Putin placed himself amidst the ordinary Russians, just as he often did before he became president. So, the two given examples, the centralisation of the state and the weakening of the positions of the oligarchs showed the continuance of two aspects of his image; Putin posing as a strong leader and Putin as an ordinary Russian.
2.2 Legitimation through traditionalism and patriotism 75 V. Putin, Russia at the turn of the millennium, p. 6.
76 M.V. Liñán, ‘Putin’s propaganda legacy’, p. 139. 77 L. Belin, ‘The Russian media in the 1990s’, pp. 149-151. 78 G. Feifer, ‘Who pulls the prosecutor’s strings?’, 14 July 2000,
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/who-pulls-the-prosecutors-strings/260777.html, accessed 6 June 2014.
The centralisation of the Russian state was portrayed to the public as a mission to restore Russia’s strength. In his essay, Russia at the turn of the millennium, Putin stated:
Our state and its institutes and structures have always played an exceptionally important role in the life of the country and its people. For Russians a strong state is not an anomaly which should be got rid of. [sic.] Quite the contrary, they see it as a source and guarantor of order and the initiator and main driving force of any change. Modern Russian society does not identify a strong and effective state with a
totalitarian state. We have come to value the benefits of democracy, a law-based state, and personal and political freedom. At the same time, people are alarmed by the obvious weakening of state power. The public looks forward to the restoration of the guiding and regulating role of the state to a degree which is necessary,
proceeding from the traditions and present state of the country.79
The above passage contains some interesting statements. First of all, Putin placed the strong state within the Russian history. By this, he used the omnipresent discomfort of the Russians with the rejection of Soviet and tsarist Russian history during the Soviet and Yeltsin eras. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in conjunction with the Yeltsin’s democratic agenda, the Soviet history had fallen into discredit because of its undemocratic and repressive nature. However, for everyone who lived in the Soviet Union and in the Russian Federation, this past was part of their own - as well as of their collective - history, memory and identity. Putin acknowledged the important positive aspect of this shared history: the strong state as guarantor of order. Secondly, as did most of the public, Putin rejected the relatively weak Russian state that had developed under Yeltsin’s rule. Finally, he managed to combine the democratic values of the post-Soviet times with the historically strong state. By doing this, he managed to integrate the abovementioned shared history and identity of the past within the post-Soviet situation.
What Putin did in this example, he did a lot more often in his first presidency. It can be argued that he legitimised his power on the basis of institutions which were firmly embedded in the Russian (and Soviet) history, as well as on the basis of historical figures and history itself. Legitimacy through history is of course not a new phenomenon. Max Weber’s idea of traditional leadership, for example a monarchy, is also based upon this principle. However, historical legitimation is also a characteristic of charismatic leadership. The difference between the two phenomena might be described as that
traditional leadership is part of the history, for example the monarchical family ruled already for centuries and have thus showed that they are capable leaders, while charismatic leadership searches for features in the nation’s history to legitimise their rule although the leader himself or his ancestors were not officially part of it. For example, one of the most famous charismatic leaders, Hitler, often referred to Tacitus’s Germania as a historical claim of what the German race would look like, through which he legitimised his racial laws. Similarly, Putin has also made use of history and tradition, albeit of course for less drastic purposes and reasons than Hitler did. Three examples in which Putin has used history and tradition are described below.
2.2.1 The church as sacred and cultural legitimation
From the very first moment of Putin’s presidency, the church played a public role in Putin’s image. Orthodoxy is by no means the official state religion but the Russian Orthodox Church is certainly the unauthorized state church, counting more believers that any other religion in Russia today. The Church therefore was and still is an important partner for a Russian president. Not only does it represent many Russians, but it also represents Russian history, since in 988 the Eastern Slavic Rus’, which
contemporary Russians see as the ancestor of their state, was Christianised. The orthodox religion also played an important role during the Soviet era, even though it was officially banned. Putin is proud of the fact that he was baptised in the midst of the communist times. Putin described his path to
Christianity in his biography: his mother arranged for Putin to be baptised as a baby and gave him his baptisms cross years later. Subsequently, Putin had it blessed in the Lord’s tomb in Israel and
according to him, he had ‘never taken it off since.’80
But the Church not only represents the people and Russian history, more importantly, it represents God. Emperors from Charles the Great onwards could only be made emperor by the pope, because of a divine approval that came from God but was represented by the pope. Napoleon showed that he understood this very well: He invited the Pope to be present when he crowned himself Emperor in 1804. It goes too far to claim that Putin would want to become the new tsar or emperor of Russia, but sacred approval of a president is still worth something for Christian followers and for the idea of the Russian nation. Although this was not as present during Yeltsin’s reign, for Yeltsin was Patriarch Aleksei II an important figure. In his autobiography, Yeltsin spoke about his last day in office and the official introduction of Putin as his heir. He and Putin had a short conversation about this with Patriarch Aleksei II. Yeltsin said the following: ‘I’m glad that it seems that Putin has a personal and good relationship with His Holiness. He shall need the help of this wise man.’81 This appears to show that Yeltsin used the help of this Patriarch quite often. Putin relied not necessarily on the actual help of the Patriarch and the Church but used the church more on a figurative level: Putin and the Church shared a similar view on the idea of the greatness of Russia, traditions and the country’s history and heritage.82 For example, the Church backed the State during the Chechen war. A high church official, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, criticised the Western commentators on Russian human rights in the Chechen war because they did not see the casualties that were caused by the Chechen side of the conflict.83
Putin showed his connection to the Orthodox Church quite openly from the first moment of his presidency. During his inauguration as president on 7 March 2000, Patriarch Aleksei II was often shown and after the official ceremony Putin went to the Cathedral of the Annunciation for a
80 V. Putin, First Person, p. 12.
81 B. Jeltsin, Rusland, mijn verhaal, p. 17.
82 J. Anderson, ‘Putin and the Russian orthodox church: asymmetric symphonia?’, Journal of International Affairs, vol. 61, no. 1 (2007), p. 198.
