Word: yeltsin
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Everyone agrees on some other things about Putin. He is polite, meticulous, efficient. He is focused, intense, decisive. He likes systems; he loves order. The universal applied adjective is pragmatic. He is very smart and very, very disciplined. Russian citizens have embraced him as the anti-Yeltsin: tough, sober, sensible. Being an unknown gave him an advantage; he has tailored his appeal to be all things to all people. The Russian longing for a strong hand is perfectly matched by Putin's willingness to wield...
...near authoritarian power invested in Russia's President by its constitution? He has always been the competent staff officer, the universal soldier supremely faithful to his bosses at the time--whether they were Soviet hard boys at the KGB, reforming zealots in St. Petersburg or the corrupt and failing Yeltsin regime. Now he will be giving the orders. "We do not know enough of him, and he does not know enough of himself," says Dimitri Simes, president of Washington's Nixon Center, "to know how he will evolve on the job." That's what makes some people so hopeful...
...elevated to head of the FSB, the Yeltsin-era successor to the KGB. On the day he walked into the headquarters on Dzerzinsky Square, he said, "I'm home at last." But Moscow's top boys regarded the mere lieutenant colonel with disdain, says a former agent: "We considered Putin a little bit too short in stature." He went to work replacing top echelons with St. Petersburg friends and launching an unpopular campaign to cut jobs. Meantime, citizens were troubled by the way Putin's FSB continued to persecute environmental activists and initiated official monitoring of the Internet...
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...
...world was astonished last Aug. 9 when Yeltsin abruptly fired his fourth Prime Minister in 17 months and named Putin to the job. And, Yeltsin added, Putin was his chosen successor as the man best equipped "to renew the great country, Russia, in the 21st century." Vladimir who? the public laughed...