The victorious Mr. Putin

AFTER A DECADE under the stewardship of the mercurial but impulsive Mr. Boris Yeltsin, post-Soviet Russia gets a President who, from the little that is known of him, could not be more different from the man he is succeeding. Four years ago, the basic choice before the Russian electorate was described as one between the apostate and the acolyte, between Mr. Yeltsin who had given up communism after holding high office during the Soviet period and Mr. Gennady Zyuganov, the steadfast communist who has remained with the party undeterred by the collapse of the empire and the presumed defeat of the communist ideology. In Sunday's election, this clear line was perhaps somewhat blurred, with the persistent Mr. Zyuganov pitted against a relatively unknown candidate, a former secret service operative anointed as his political heir by Mr. Yeltsin before his bombshell resignation on new year's eve. The Presidential election, third since the introduction of democracy in Russia, thus turned out in the main to be between an avowed communist and a former apparatchik. The consequence of this strange battle will be that the victory of Mr. Vladimir Putin, the diminutive, self-effacing former colonel of the dreaded spy agency of Soviet vintage, the KGB, is bound to herald a break with the last few years of drift under Mr. Yeltsin.

When Mr. Putin appeared on the world stage six months ago, first in the dummy post of Prime Minister and then as Acting President, little was known about him. There were as many unanswered questions about Mr. Putin's past as about the course he would follow if entrusted with power. In the three months he has acted as President there was one acid test of the quality of his leadership, provided by the renewed war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, and he scored high marks. The unqualified success of that military campaign was one of the key factors for his victory, with the population ready to reward him for his commitment and determination once he set himself the goal. ``If we don't stop the extremists, we will have a second Yugoslavia, the Islamisation of Russia,'' he declared at the start of the military campaign and went on to erase the national humiliation suffered by the Russian army in two earlier wars against the separatists in the region. The victory in Chechnya has propelled him to the top at the Kremlin.

The vote is an appeal in desperation from the Russian people for a halt to the all-round slide that the former superpower has seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is a measure of Russia's falling global influence that a national election for President has provoked little notice outside the country and even less interest. A lacklustre campaign in a country in the midst of one of its worst socio-economic crises and a veritable non- contest combined to dampen interest. It was nevertheless a crucial election since the verdict will set the course that Russia takes in the next decade and more. The successive defeats of Mr. Zyuganov will come as a blow to the communists, the former ruling class. But questions remain about the road that Mr. Putin will take and the future political landscape of Russia. The last few months have witnessed efforts by the U.S. and a Putin-led Russia to reshape their relationship. Under Mr. Yeltsin, Moscow's foreign policy remained Washington-centred, surrendering to the U.S. and accentuating the imbalances of the unipolar world. Only in later years did Mr. Yeltsin see the benefit of sustaining Russia's relations with other countries. Neighbours like India with a stake in the evolution of a multipolar world will watch for signals from the Putin Presidency.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Opinion
Previous : An expanding interface
Next     : Violence in J&K and democratic rights