The Svyazinvest imbroglio turned into a loss maker for all, and not least of all for Boris Yeltsin. On business’s role in the new politics, he had to concede after the fact that he “did not immediately grasp the scale of this phenomenon and all the dangers it posed.”105 The winners of the auction did not make money from it, and George Soros sold his stake in 2004 at a loss. The oligarchs as a group also lost and were revealed, not as omnipotent, but as selfish and even rapacious and as politically inept—disunified, shortsighted, overplaying their hands. The scandal would have echo effects for years to come. After the 1996 election, it had been understood in all quarters that the cream of Russian business and the Yeltsin government, to quote Nemtsov, were “in the same boat.”106 The question was now not only about who had captured whom but about whether
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Endgame
The effective length of Yeltsin’s second presidential term was less than half of the first. Constitutionally limited to four years, it got off to a late start owing to the heart operation and was foreshortened by early retirement in December of 1999. Indeed, the nomination of Vladimir Putin as prime minister and heir apparent put him partway out the door that August. If the front half of term two was about taking power back, the back half was about letting go of power and, in so doing, not rubbing out everything he had tried to achieve. His behavior at the time, ridiculed by some contemporaries as impulsive and unserious, accomplished his short-term goals, against the odds. The long-term effects are still being acted out and debated today.
The Yeltsin endgame began in earnest with his government. He first gave thought to revamping it in November–December 1997. The brunt of his disaffection was borne by the man who had been his prime minister since 1992. While Viktor Chernomyrdin and his ever-changing roster of ministers had rendered faithful service, they, in Yeltsin’s estimation, were not up to the task of bringing about sustainable development in a marketized economy. The strength of Chernomyrdin, Yeltsin set down in
Testimony on all sides makes it plain how greatly Yeltsin at the conclusion of his career relied on personnel renewal within the executive branch as the key to presidential leadership. In the role of political impresario, he was to gloat in 2000, he and no one else had populated Russia’s blank public stage. “By giving a politician the chance to occupy the premier’s or a vice premier’s seat, I instantly made him famous, his actions significant, and his personage notable.” Yeltsin acknowledged that this role flourished out of necessity: “I sometimes think I had simply no other way to bring new people into politics,” and through them new ideas and approaches.2
There was no other way because Yeltsin’s energies were depleted and his charisma blotted, and because of his past choices. He had refused to create a political party that would furnish a Yeltsinist organizational framework for those seeking office and a Yeltsinist conceptual framework for those holding it. A last gasp at drawing him into partisanship occurred right after the 1996 election. Georgii Satarov sent him a memorandum in July about a new party of power that he would head and that would subsume Chernomyrdin’s Our Home Is Russia and a raft of centrist and liberal organizations. It would consolidate the new political system and “the pro-system political elite.” The sketch interested him, Yeltsin assured Satarov. But he was unfit and awaiting coronary surgery, and took no steps to implement after the operation.3
