Yeltsin Keeps It All in `the Family'

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 6, 1999 | by J. Michael Waller

Putin's tenure as FSB director was marred last year by allegations from within the agency that it was involved in extortion and murder rackets. Putin personally took charge of the investigation of the November 1998 assassination of democratic opposition lawmaker Galina Starovoitova in her St. Petersburg apartment building, but allowed the probe to fizzle. Starovoitova, a prominent human-rights worker and anticorruption crusader, was investigating the contract killing of a St. Petersburg privatization chief at the time of her death. She had frequently directed her ire at the FSB. She even introduced legislation in the Duma, or parliament, that would have banned former KGB officers who engaged in political repression from holding any public office, a law that would have kept the likes of Putin and Cherkesov out of government.

Putin handed the Starovoitova case -- considered post-Soviet Russia's highest profile political assassination -- to former dissident-hunter Cherkesov. That action, human-rights leaders argue, ensured that the killers would never be found. Sergei Alexeyev, a local leader of Starovoitova's Democratic Russia Party, told reporters at the time, "If Cherkesov's been brought into the case, you can consider it buried." And so it appears to be.

A month after the Starovoitova murder, Putin showed his nostalgia for the golden days of the Soviet police state. He gave a televised address on Dec. 20, 1998, to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the founding of the Bolshevik Cheka secret police, praising the Cheka but saying nothing about its systematic executions of political opponents. He then hosted a gala at KGB headquarters to honor the Cheka.

When he rose to lead the day-to-day operations of the presidential security council last March, Putin placed dissident-hunter Cherkesov in de facto control of the FSB. He used his extraordinary Kremlin powers to shut down investigations into financial crimes and corruption. "Over the past three months, Putin has carried out a pogrom of sorts in the Russian judicial system," according to Yasmann. "One of the main results was to practically paralyze all federal-prosecutor offices around the country. He cashiered federal investigators, including general officers, involved in criminal investigations in state-prosecutor offices probing economic crimes."

By naming Putin as premier, Yeltsin "has elevated his intelligence chief to meet the challenge of manipulating the upcoming Duma elections" in December, according to Baker.

That's just part of the suspected reason. Yeltsin has been careful never to anoint a successor. Yet he immediately announced Putin as his choice in next year's presidential election. "I'm convinced he will serve the nation well while working in this high post, and Russians will be able to appraise Putin's human and business qualifies," Yeltsin said in a nationally televised address. "I trust him. I also want everyone who goes to the polls in July 2000 to make their choice to trust him, too."