The Putin administration crossed a threshold in October 2003 with the arrest of billionaire businessman Mikhail Khodorkovskii. He was put on trial for fraud and tax evasion and sentenced in 2005 to nine years in a Siberian prison camp; his oil company, Yukos, was broken up and the pieces acquired by state-dominated firms. The affair was motivated in part by Khodorkovskii’s political independence. In September 2004 Putin took advantage of a horrific hostage-taking by Chechen and pro-Chechen guerrillas in the town of Beslan, North Ossetiya, to introduce legislation ending the popular election of oblast and republic leaders and authorizing him in effect to select them from above. The Beslan tragedy and the fall of a pro-Moscow government in neighboring Ukraine in December 2004 were also followed by the imposition of stiffer restrictions on opposition groups, human-rights activists, and nongovernmental organizations. Yeltsin disapproved of these retrograde changes and others. As Yegor Gaidar, who had several searching conversations with him, summarized it the week of Yeltsin’s death, Yeltsin “was very disconcerted by much of what was going on in Russian politics.”23
The Yeltsin-Putin relationship inevitably deteriorated under these strains. Their face-to-face meetings became less frequent in 2001, occurring only every second or third month. The first three years, the Yeltsin and Putin families had a social gathering on New Year’s Eve to mark the anniversary of the transfer of power; there was none in December 2003 or any subsequent year. From late 2002 on, the leaders visited only on Yeltsin’s birthday and for chats on protocol occasions. They did not talk substance until two confidential conversations they had in Yeltsin’s final months.24 When I had a chance to ask Putin in September 2007 how it had been between them, the first thing he volunteered was that they had seen little of one another in recent years. His attitude was courteous and correct but markedly cool. Yeltsin, he said, had been satisfied with the “general course”; they were at variance on “particular problems.”25
Yeltsin, although he was more displeased with the particulars than before, was also more discreet in passing judgment on them. One reason this was so was that Putin took care not to go at him ad hominem and even to praise him on occasion for liberating Russians from the dead hand of the communist past. Yeltsin continued to trust Putin’s good intentions. If the new president was acting in error, time would heal the wounds. But the key basis for Yeltsin’s acquiescence was situational realism. It derived from the weariness with politics that had led him to leave the Kremlin ahead of schedule, his candid acknowledgment in 1999 that he had let many Russians down, the recognition that it was he who put Putin on the throne and that he bore a certain moral responsibility for Putin’s behavior, and a practical awareness of the limits of his influence as ex-president. The economic boom and the perception that order had been restored made Putin, year in and year out, as popular as Yeltsin had been during his romance with the electorate in 1990–91. He swept the 2004 presidential election with 70 percent of the popular vote, double what Yeltsin took in the first round of his 1996 re-election bid. Putin was not an easy leader to challenge.
The constraints that kept Yeltsin on the sidelines came through in his interview with Kirill Dybskii of
DYBSKII: Does everything in current Russian politics suit you?
YELTSIN: I always have reproofs to make. It would be strange if I didn’t. But the main thing is the strategic course, and I support it and consider it the right one.
DYBSKII: But how about tactical differences?
YELTSIN: I don’t discuss these in the press. I can talk about them one on one with Vladimir Vladimirovich, but in public, as they say in the West, no comment. Don’t forget, I’m not a public politician any more.
DYBSKII: But knowledgeable people say it is impossible to get out of politics entirely.
YELTSIN: Perhaps [you can keep at it] if you have the force of will and the brains. But you need to figure out that there is a time to leave, to make way for the young, to stop interfering. Of course, in my inner thoughts I constantly analyze what is going on in the country and try to guess what I would have done in this or that context. But here’s where I have to stop myself and say, “Hold on! Today the president of the country is named Putin and not Yeltsin. . . .” I hope I had the intelligence and the selfmastery to depart the proper way. So you’re not going to hear any critical comments from me. Why sow discord? This is of no use to the country or its leader. I am the one who put Putin forward and I ought to support him. . . .
DYBSKII: But it used to be that you criticized openly. For example, you complained about the new Russian anthem and said it was just the old Soviet one dressed up.
