Word: kremlins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...general in the Kremlin as President of "democratic Russia" is not an "unhappy accident." Putin's election crowns a shift in Russia's mass consciousness from romantic, yet real, pro-democratic expectations toward demand for a "strong hand...
Pavlovsky dismisses the vote-fixing charges and plays down his reputation as the Kremlin's electoral wizard, describing his role as that of a modest analyst. But it is a sign of the times that Putin's election is not credited to a business tycoon or Kremlin staff member but to a professional political organizer--a former dissident and political exile who scorns the "intellectual poverty" of the Gorbachev years and is bullish on the Internet. His consulting firm, the Fund for Effective Politics, avoids the limelight but enjoys a reputation for achieving the impossible. One would-be client...
...President of all Russia. He is about to inherit constitutional powers akin to a Czar's in what is called an election but amounts to a coronation. But make no mistake: this was not a fair fight. Putin was handpicked for this handover by a tiny cabal in the Kremlin, little different from the ways of the old Soviet Central Committee. Boris Yeltsin and his cronies needed a successor loyal enough to give them the guarantee they craved of immunity from prosecution and strong enough to make it stick. It could have been anyone. Putin happened to have the right...
...East Germany. Few concrete facts have emerged about his career there, and observers disagree about the quality of his service, from brilliant James Bond to third-rate flop. The known outlines--and the way his career ended--suggest something unremarkable. "He was no superspy," admits one of his young Kremlin aides. "His line was political intelligence" aimed at recruiting Western agents. Putin says his work involved ferreting out information on the U.S.S.R.'s political enemies: pressuring East Germans into collecting information in the West, suborning visiting Western scientists and businessmen...
More important to his rise, though, was Putin's unprecedented display of support for his Kremlin boss. When Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov began investigating alleged Yeltsin-administration corruption, a videotape showing the investigator cavorting in bed with two prostitutes aired on TV. FSB Director Putin declared it to be authentic. Skuratov was suspended and his investigation shelved. Later on, when Yeltsin was facing impeachment, Putin issued an FSB warning that the articles of impeachment contained "significant mistakes of a legal nature...