In the spring of 1999 the Family had a sense of urgency that was bordering on panic. This time the situation was even more pressing than in 1994—before the start of the First Chechen War. Soon, in December 1999, there would be elections for the State Duma, followed by the presidential election in the spring of 2000. According to the constitution, Boris Yeltsin, having served two terms, would have to leave the Kremlin. This imminent change of the country’s leadership was extremely threatening. Yevgeny Primakov, who was appointed prime minister in September 1998 under the pressure of a hostile Duma, was working closely together with Yury Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow. Both men had a good chance of winning the parliamentary elections in December. And one of them could become the next president. Primakov had already threatened to sue all oligarchs who illegally had enriched themselves. This happened at the same time as the Swiss authorities had opened an investigation into the so-called Mabetex affair. Mabetex was a construction company that was said to have paid $15 million in kickbacks to Yeltsin, his two daughters, and senior Kremlin officials, in order to receive a renovation contract for the Kremlin buildings. At the same time US investigators alleged that $10 billion in funds from Russia had been illegally deposited in the Bank of New York. It was suspected that part of it came from a $20 billion loan the IMF had paid to Russia since 1992 to stabilize the economy. Members of the Family were not only afraid that the new leadership would strip them of their newly acquired wealth, but—even worse—they feared that they could end up in prison. There were ominous signs on the wall. Russia’s highest investigator, Procurator General Yury Skuratov, had already begun a series of investigations that included the Mabetex affair and irregularities at Aeroflot and the Russian Central Bank, which were all connected with the Family.[2] It was in this context of a regime in panic that felt itself increasingly cornered, that the search for a suitable successor to Yeltsin began.
In his memoirs Yeltsin wrote about his attempts to find a suitable successor, where
“suitable” meant a person who was capable and strong-willed, and at the same time
trustworthy enough to give the Family a guarantee that its members would not be persecuted
in the courts after Yeltsin would have left office. However, whether or not such a
successor could be found in time was very uncertain. Therefore Yeltsin and the Family
also prepared for a second option: to declare a state of emergency, disband the Duma,
ban the Communist Party, and postpone the elections. On May 16, 1999, however, the
option of such a Bonapartist coup d’état was dropped. On this day the Communist opposition
in the State Duma failed to muster enough votes to start an impeachment procedure
against Yeltsin. (One of the five charges against Yeltsin was, ironically, that he
had started the first war against Chechnya.)[3] Immediately after the vote Yeltsin sacked Primakov as prime minister and appointed
Sergey Stepashin, minister of the interior and former FSB chief, in his place. It
seemed at first that Stepashin was Yeltsin’s ultimate choice for “Operation Successor.”
But Yeltsin soon had doubts about the new man. “Stepashin was soft,” Yeltsin wrote
in his memoirs, “and he liked to pose a bit. He loved theatrical gestures. I wasn’t
certain he could hold out to the end or display that tremendous will and resolve needed
in a fierce political battle. I couldn’t imagine a president of Russia without these
tough character traits.”[4] Within three months Stepashin was sacked and, on August 9, 1999, he was replaced
by the reserved and uncharismatic
