The Boris Yeltsin era ended 10 years ago. The era of his successor, Vladimir Putin, has also ended, regardless of whether he returns to power in 2012.
On December 31, 1999, a new era of economic recovery and social consolidation emerged around the head of state, and this power hierarchy began with the resignation of Boris Yeltsin and the appointment of Vladimir Putin.
We want to ask what was really determined by the personalities of the two Russian presidents and what was linked to inevitable stages of our system's development, as well as what is these two personalities have come to symbolise.
Yeltsin played a colossal role in our history. He was instrumental in demolishing the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party and laid the foundations for our democratic system based on the power of unchallenged presidents. His personal qualities, including a tremendous vitality and a lust for power, matched his role.
Yeltsin made a difficult decision to resign as president. But his health had deteriorated to a point at which he faced the dilemma of staying in power and passing away or transferring power to his successor and living quietly for a while.
Yeltsin and his team chose Putin by sheer coincidence, which, nonetheless, highlights a predictable trend. Yeltsin wanted to find a person to play an entirely different role and to stabilise the system he had created. Consequently, he was looking for a man who would not resemble him. In effect, that man was supposed to fulfill orders, to remain loyal to his patrons, to control his feelings and to be well-organised. It is hardly surprising that a KGB operative became Yeltsin's successor. Control and management in his system largely implied "special operations." Yeltsin's criteria for choosing a successor, however, matched the requirements of a system that was entering a stage of maturity and, presumably, its heyday.
Putin has played a far more modest role in our development. He inherited a full-fledged system that was successfully fostered by Yeltsin through the traumas of childhood and youth. Putin did not facilitate the economic recovery and stabilisation of 2000 that subsequently escalated into stagnation. These factors shaped up naturally because society had become adapted to new conditions and was itself craving tranquility and "strongman rule." But he matched public requirements and became a symbol of the new era.
A stronger system develops in accordance with its inner logic, while the personalities of leaders largely symbolise its inevitable stages. Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and other Soviet leaders highlighted various stages of the Soviet era, while their different personalities were less important. Indeed, their personal differences reflected these stages.
The Putin era, or the high tide of the post-Soviet system, is now history. It does not matter whether Putin quits completely or whether he calls upon Dmitry Medvedev to cede power in 2012.
The Putin era has ended objectively because society's subordination to the government has peaked, because post-transformation economic growth was facilitated by a favourable economic situation that has now ended, and because a feeling of impasse, the comprehension of the need for radical changes and the fear of such changes, is emerging just like it did at the end of the Soviet era.
Putin's resignation as president, Putin's selection of Medvedev and Medvedev's liberal dreams highlight the system's inevitable evolution, rather than the personalities of Putin and his successor.
We are living through a Soviet-style historical cycle in an extremely mild form. This is also happening more quickly than before. A person born in 1900 could help assert Soviet rule, experience its heyday and lengthy decay and could even live long enough to witness its collapse. There is no doubting the fact that young people born in 1991 will live long enough to witness the collapse of the post-Soviet imitation democracy. Hopefully, this system will be replaced by a system of real democracy, still dreamed of by many people, including our third president.
By Dmitry Furman