Unity’s logo was a stylized drawing of a forest bear, the universal symbol of Russia. It is also the animal to which Boris Yeltsin had often been compared, but that was as close as Unity got to linking itself to the president. Yeltsin cool-headedly accepted the need for a firewall between them. After the initial discussions, “I very quickly ceased to have anything to do with this work. It was clear to me . . . that the party of social optimism should not be associated in the consciousness of the voters with my name. . . . It did not bother me that Unity distanced itself from me.”97 The movement was eager to associate itself with the Russian leader whose political coattails were now the longest—Putin. On November 24 Putin stated that “as a citizen” he was going to vote for the Unity bloc. “Our goal is to create a pro-Putin majority in the State Duma,” Unity blared the next week. “Unity supports Putin, and Putin relies on Unity.” Although Unity did not win a majority outright, it routed Fatherland–All Russia, with the Putin sound bite counting for as much as half of its vote share, and came a close second to the KPRF in the national vote. It was soon able to build a working parliamentary majority, something Yeltsin never had as president.
Yeltsin had one more trick up his sleeve. In black and white, Article 92 of the 1993 constitution gave a mechanism that permitted him to control the timing and atmospherics of his exit and to smooth the handover of power. It stipulated that, in the event of a presidential resignation, the prime minister automatically became “acting president” and there was to be a national election of a permanent head of state within ninety days. Anticipating a favorable outcome in the scheduled Duma election, Yeltsin came to the decision to invoke Article 92 the week before it. He brought Putin up to date on his plans at Gorki-9 on December 14, and Putin gave his assent, although Putin thought Yeltsin had in mind retirement in the spring of 2000, not before the end of the year. Putin expressed reluctance about his readiness for the job, to which Yeltsin answered that he, too, came to Moscow with “other plans,” and learned about national leadership only by doing it. On December 28 Yeltsin instructed Aleksandr Voloshin, the head of his executive office, to work out a resignation decree and other administrative arrangements and asked former head Yumashev to draft a retirement speech, so as to keep it secret from the regular speech writers. Yeltsin broke the news to his daughter Tatyana the evening of December 28 and to his wife the morning of his resignation.98
December 31, the final date of the millennium, was chosen as the leave-taking date for its symbolic value, as the end of one unit of history and the start of another. Yeltsin’s grim-faced address, a classic of ceremonial rhetoric, had as its centerpiece a poignant apology. He had told Yumashev to include in the speech a passage about the sufferings of the population in the 1990s and his regrets for them. The speech as delivered requested the Russian people’s forgiveness “for not making many of your and my dreams come true,” faulting the speaker’s performance and the naïveté of the dreams in whose name he attempted his anti-revolutionary revolution. “I did all I could,” Yeltsin said.
Decree No. 1761, his last, took effect at twelve noon sharp. Around one P.M., citizen Yeltsin returned to the president’s office from the farewell lunch and toasts. An adjutant slipped on his overcoat. As they waited for the private elevator of Building No. 1, he presented Putin with the fat fountain pen with which he had signed decrees and laws. He put on his sable hat at the front door. “Take care of Russia,” he said to Putin as the flashbulbs popped. He walked to the car in a light snowfall and was gone out the Kremlin gates.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Aftermath
Boris Yeltsin’s expectations for life after power were uneven. He looked forward to the peace and quiet but “had no illusions.” “People were not going to love or worship me. I even had some doubts. If . . . I made a public appearance or went to the theater, would they jeer at me?” What would become of him “when the old Russian tradition requires that all misfortunes and sins are heaped upon the departed chief”?1
The remaining stages of the handover of power went by without a hitch. Vladimir Putin, acting president since December 31, was elected president on March 26, 2000, in the first round of voting, without really campaigning for the job. He was sworn in on May 7. Yeltsin, standing beside him in the renovated Grand Kremlin Palace, gave remarks in which he repeated the injunction to take good care of Russia. He delivered them “slowly and with one pause so long that a handful in the audience applauded, thinking the speech was over.”2 When he was done, Putin spoke as president and the shift from one leader to the next was complete.
