Brokers of a Skin-Deep Democracy

The recent resignation of President Boris N. Yeltsin and his replacement asacting president by his latest prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, represents the culmination of a subterranean political struggle that has been raging behind the scenes for some time. In his first address to the Russian people after becoming acting president, Putin himself admitted that, for the foreseeable future, Russian politics will be shaped by that country's authoritarian traditions. "Russia is never going to be another U.S.A. or England, where liberal values have deep historic roots," he stated.

Putin's meteoric rise to power is the strongest proof of that. His ascent has been engineered by powerful press oligarchs and financiers who have enriched themselves off the pickings of the Soviet economic carcass and therefore have a strong stake in ensuring political continuity. The most important such figure, the shadowy Boris A. Berezovsky, recently boasted that his press empire created Putin and could virtually anoint him as Yeltsin's successor. Arrogant as this may seem, right now it appears as though he could be right.

The current dramatic political shift has its roots in the events of last summer and fall. At the time, Yeltsin's government appeared to be reaching a terminal crisis. The president's health and mental acuity were failing visibly; the Russian economy had never recovered from the collapse of the ruble in August 1998; Yeltsin and his men seemed unable to find a prime minister who could reestablish order in the economy and country; non-Russian ethnic groups, most notably the Chechens, ignored the dictates of the central government with seeming impunity. The government registered less than 5% approval.

Yeltsin's political rivals were circling. Two of his more prominent contenders for power, Yevgeny M. Primakov and Yuri M. Luzhkov, joined forces to create Fatherland-All Russia, a new political alliance capable of supplanting Yeltsin and his men in the December parliamentary elections, especially since the Yeltsin camp lacked a political party to rally its forces. Fatherland-All Russia received the strong backing of one of Berezovsky's chief rivals, Vladimir A. Gusinsky, founder and chairman of Media Most Holding Co. According to a recent study of the new Russian media oligarchs by Radio Free Europe, Gusinsky's company controls the Seven Days publishing corporation, which, in turn, issues several key periodicals, notably the daily newspaper Segodnya. That paper has criticized Yeltsin for failing to defend Russian national interests, both against the Western powers and against non-Russian ethnic groups within the country.

Even more important than Gusinsky's newspapers and magazines, however, is his stake in the television network NTV, which reaches 60% of Russian households and has been augmented by his recent launching of Russia's first private television satellite. NTV is the only television voice in Russia independent of state control, giving it the capacity to criticize the sitting president and his government. With his publishing and broadcasting empire, Gusinsky was able to amplify the voice of Fatherland-All Russia.