[A-List] Russia: Yeltsin-era figures sink into obscurity

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Yeltsin generation prepares to meet its doom
By Arkady Ostrovsky
Financial Times: March 12 2004

The telephones do not ring in the offices of the Union of Right Forces,
formerlyRussia's leading democratic party. Once a week Boris Nemtsov, its
charismatic leader and a one-time favourite of former president Boris
Yeltsin, comes here to give interviews, mostly to foreign journalists.

"Russian journalists don't ring us any more. I have a problem: there is no
public face who would speak on behalf of the party," says a press secretary
in the party's offices.

After parliamentary elections last December in which the democratic parties
suffered defeat, three leaders of the party went their own way. Mr Nemtsov
is working for a bank; Anatoly Chubais, a pivotal figure in post-communist
history responsible for mid-1990s privatisation, returned to his job as head
of Unified Energy Systems, the electricity monopoly; and Irina Khakamada is
standing in this Sunday's Russian presidential elections, which the
incumbent, Vladimir Putin, is almost certain to win.

However, the party's press secretary is not the only one with a problem. The
entire generation of Yeltsin democrats who spearheaded post-communist reform
has found itself forced to the margins of the political process, working for
think-tanks or the private sector.

A victory for Mr Putin this Sunday will draw a line under the Yeltsin era
that brought them to political life. Trying to sum up the results of that
era, Mr Chubais says: "We managed to build a functioning market economy but
we found that to build a properly functioning democracy was much more
difficult."

Sergei Filatov, Mr Yeltsin's long-serving chief of staff, says: "Democrats
in Russia have suffered a crushing defeat. They are exhausted, disillusioned
and feeling guilty.

"We initiated the democratic process and pushed through economic reforms in
Russia but we did not manage to preserve ourselves as a political force. We
are dispersed, divided and have no political leader."

Mr Yeltsin himself does not give interviews but is said to be seething with
anger at the autocratic tendencies of the successor he himself nominated as
Russia's president on December 31 1999.

Mr Putin's critics complain that after his four years in power Russia has no
political opposition or independent parliament, a government steamrolled by
the Kremlin, businessmen scared of reprisals following the crackdown on
Yukos, the oil group, and television channels that give the president
blanket coverage.

The irony, however, is that this has come about in the name of liberal
reform and modernisation. But while under Mr Yeltsin liberal economic
reforms were synonymous with democracy, Mr Putin has separated the two, says
Mr Filatov.

Georgy Satarov, another key member of Mr Yelstin's team and his political
adviser, says Mr Putin's programme is the continuation of liberal economic
policies initiated in the mid 1990s.

"Putin has tried to modernise Russia by using old tools. He wants to erect a
new building by using the bricks left from the collapse of the Soviet
system. But the means he uses contradict the aims he is trying to achieve.

"The Soviet Union collapsed because it was too rigid a system. Putin is
trying to recreate the rigidity of the system, which is equally doomed."
After 70 years of Bolshevik rule that sacrificed human life for a better
future most Russian liberals doubt whether the end justifies the means.

Mr Chubais argues that the danger is not that Mr Putin will abuse his
absolute power but that in a country with a strong memory of Soviet
traditions and weak civil institutions, a system that has no checks and
balances will become the norm.

Yet responsibility for the failures of the democratic movement in Russia and
the weakness of civil society rests as much with democratic leaders as it
does with Mr Putin.

"Liberal politicians have failed to explain the virtues of democracy to the
Russian people. They have reduced the democratic movement to the chattering
clubs for the elite," says Mr Satarov.

"Winning Yeltsin's blessing or striking a deal with Putin was more important
than winning the support of voters at grassroots level."

But Mr Nemtsov says: "As long as the Russian economy continues to grow by 7
per cent a year and living standards are improving, you can't convince
people that they would be better off without Putin."

"Unfortunately, the popular demand for democracy in Russia is very weak at
the moment. Perhaps we need time to go through this period of
authoritarianism to appreciate the value of freedom."

Meanwhile Mr Nemtsov is taking things easy while working for the bank. A few
weeks ago he went scuba-diving in the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean. "One
time I had a problem with a regulator and lost oxygen. That is when I
appreciated how important air is."

Mr Nemtsov says it took him eight seconds to come up from the bottom of the
sea. It may take him significantly longer to emerge from the political
darkness.