Major political events in 2004 included a presidential election and a series of terrorist atrocities that provoked proposals for a sweeping consolidation of presidential power. In March, Vladimir Putin was elected to a second presidential term. The outcome of the election was never in doubt, since none of the other five candidates represented serious opposition. Putin won handsomely in the first round with more than 70% of the votes cast (compared with 53% in 2000). International observers praised the professionalism with which the election had been organized but criticized the state-controlled media for their pro-Putin bias. Such criticisms aside, no one doubted that the election outcome accurately reflected the will of the majority of the Russian population.
In a surprise move three weeks before the election, Putin sacked the entire government. He appointed as prime minister a little-known technocrat, Mikhail Fradkov, who was associated with no political party. Commentators explained the move in terms of Putin’s determination to conduct his second term in office standing on his own legs. Putin had come to power in 2000 as the anointed successor of Pres. Boris Yeltsin, and during his first term in office he had worked with members of the so-called Yeltsin “family,” notably the outgoing prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, and the head of the Presidential Administration, Aleksandr Voloshin. Now Putin was his own man and no longer owed his position to Yeltsin. The policies he began to implement in his second term indicated that he was indeed a very different leader from his predecessor.
Putin’s landslide victory put him in an extremely powerful position. The victory of the pro-presidential United Russia party in the December 2003 elections to the State Duma had already given his supporters a two-thirds majority in the lower house of the parliament and assured Putin of parliamentary approval for his legislative initiatives. Opposition parties were virtually eliminated. Liberals lamented the emasculation of the parliament and government and warned that while it might make it easier for the Kremlin to enact reforms, it would make it harder to ensure that the policies adopted were the right ones and, if they were not, to correct them after they had been adopted. The Kremlin’s tightening grip on power, these observers argued, was incompatible with political pluralism and mature democracy. Other commentators pointed the finger not at Putin’s centralizing policies but at the continuing weakness of civil society and the political indifference of the Russian population; in these circumstances, it was argued, strong central government was both inevitable and desirable. When Fradkov unveiled his new government, however, it turned out that many members of the former government had changed their titles but kept their jobs. In particular, the teams running the economic ministries and the security agencies remained in place. The stage was accordingly set for continuing clashes of opinion between liberal reformers, who advocated the lowest-possible level of state intervention in society and the economy, and the so-called siloviki (“men of power”), who favoured the reassertion of state control over the “commanding heights” of the economy.
In his annual address to the parliament on May 26, Putin laid out his priorities for his second term. These included consolidating the political stability established during his first four-year term and boosting economic growth to ensure that all members of the population would begin to benefit. Putin called on the government to raise the living standards of the poorest sections of society, modernize education and health care, create an affordable housing market, and establish an effective mortgage-finance system. Putin spoke of the importance of democracy but at the same time accused human rights groups that had been critical of his record of “receiving funding from influential foreign and domestic foundations” and “serving dubious groups and commercial interests.”
Human rights activists and liberal journalists were particularly critical of what they saw as the Kremlin’s efforts to control the mass media, which led during the summer to the cancellation of Russian TV’s last live discussion program. Following a terrorist attack on a Russian school in September, the editor of one of Russia’s leading newspapers was forced to resign on the grounds that his paper had published information that could have aided the terrorists. In another blow to media freedom—though there was no suggestion of Kremlin involvement in this event—Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, was gunned down in Moscow in July; Klebnikov was the first Western journalist to have been killed in Russia since 1996.
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There was no letup in the separatist conflict in the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya. Moscow continued its policy of “Chechenization”—that is, the gradual transfer of responsibility for public administration to Moscow-approved members of the Chechen community. February saw the assassination in Qatar of exiled Chechen separatist Zelimkhan Yanderbiyev; two Russian intelligence officers were tried and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder. In May, Chechnya’s pro-Moscow president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was assassinated by a bomb in the republic’s capital, Grozny. An election for a new president was held on August 29 and was won by a landslide by Moscow’s preferred candidate, former interior minister Alu Alkhanov.
The summer saw an escalation of terrorist attacks on Russian targets. In each case Chechen separatists claimed responsibility. These included the nearly simultaneous midair explosions in August of two Russian commercial aircraft that killed all 90 people aboard, an August suicide bombing outside a Moscow subway station, and in September a siege at a provincial school in Beslan, North Ossetia, in which over 1,000 people were held hostage and more than 330 died, nearly half of them children. The scale of the violence at Beslan, and, in particular, the fact that the terrorists deliberately targeted young children, traumatized public opinion and horrified the outside world. The failure of the law-enforcement agencies to prevent these atrocities shook public confidence, and there was even some muted criticism of Putin himself.
In September, following the Beslan massacre, Putin proposed a set of measures that would, he said, strengthen the Russian state against the terrorist threat. These included a proposal that regional governors no longer be popularly elected but instead be appointed by the president, subject to endorsement by regional legislatures, which the president would be empowered to dissolve if they rejected his nominations on two occasions. The legislation, which was approved by overwhelming majorities in both houses of the parliament, returned Russia to the unitary system of government that had existed prior to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991. It was therefore seen as a sign that Putin was abandoning the attempts made by Yeltsin to turn Russia into a federation in substance as well as in name. Putin also proposed that candidates standing on party lists only, and not independents, in the future be allowed to run for the parliament. These proposals were met with dismay by many both inside and outside Russia. Liberals warned that they would remove the last checks on presidential power, that Russia was too large and ethnically diverse to be ruled from a single centre, and that in a country where parties were weakly developed, confining elections to party lists could weaken democracy.
In July 17-year-old Mariya Sharapova became the first Russian woman to win the singles All-England (Wimbledon) tennis championships, while in September 19-year-old Svetlana Kuznetsova became the first Russian tennis player to win the U.S. Open women’s championship.
The economy recorded its sixth consecutive year of growth since the prolonged output collapse of 1989–98. For 2004 as a whole, GDP was projected to grow at a rate of 6.6%, compared with the 7.3% achieved in 2003. Growth was boosted by record world oil prices, which generated big export revenues for Russia. High energy prices were the result partly of growing demand, partly of uncertainty over supplies from the conflict-ridden Middle East, and partly, ironically enough, of nervousness over the fate of Russian oil giant Yukos. As a result, Russia maintained a high trade surplus and was able to meet its external-debt repayments ahead of schedule. Inflation continued to decline, albeit slowly, and was projected at somewhat over 11% over the year. The state budget recorded its fifth successive surplus. For much of the year, Russia continued to accumulate foreign-currency reserves, which exceeded a year’s supply of merchandise imports. At the same time, sovereign foreign debt fell relative to GDP and was below a quarter of the national income. Thus, the economy not only was growing robustly but also had high international liquidity, which made it sounder than at any other time since 1991.
Behind the impressive macroeconomic headlines, however, there was growing concern about the Putin leadership’s turn toward a more interventionist economic policy. Dominating the year was the trial, on charges of fraud and tax evasion, of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former CEO of Yukos. Liberals criticized the trial as politically motivated and legally unsound. They accused the Kremlin of seeking to bankrupt or break up the oil company in order to reestablish control over the “commanding heights” of the Russian economy—that is, the key natural resource-exporting branches: oil, gas, and metals. This raised as-yet-unanswered questions about the Kremlin’s attitude toward big business as a whole. During the summer there were indeed signs that the Kremlin was tightening rather than loosening its control as officials from the presidential administration replaced government officials in leading posts in the energy and other sectors, and the end of the year saw the state effectively renationalize Yukos’s core assets. Concern was also raised by moves to weaken the power of the regions by stripping them of the right to issue licenses to exploit subsoil resources, particularly oil, gas, and ores. Liberals saw this too as an indication that the Putin administration intended to centralize economic management, and some analysts detected signs of an increase in capital flight. A sustained increase in capital flight would tend to reduce the growth of investment and ultimately of output.
Putin put his main focus on the economy when he delivered his annual address to the parliament in May. He repeated the pledge, which he had first made in 2003, to double Russia’s GDP within 10 years (though the precise target date was never specified) and to improve the living conditions of the many Russians who had yet to feel the benefit of the market reforms of the 1990s. Meeting Putin’s target would require an average annual growth rate of 7.5%. (Doubling GDP by 2010 would bring Russia within striking distance of current living standards in European countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovenia, but it would have to double its GDP once again before it would catch up with current levels in leading industrialized nations such as Denmark, Switzerland, or The Netherlands.) Putin also called on the government to ensure that the ruble would become fully convertible by 2006, average annual incomes would grow by 150% by 2008, and at least one-third of Russians would have the opportunity to purchase affordable housing by 2010. He urged the government to work harder to push inflation to 3%—well below its target of 10% for 2004. He promised to maintain low rates of taxation but called for further reform of the tax system to prevent the abuse of so-called tax-optimization schemes.
Significant progress was made in 2004 toward Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). In May Moscow secured the approval of the EU; this was expected to facilitate negotiations with leading WTO members, including the United States. Following the agreement with the EU, Russia ratified the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement intended to control the emission of greenhouse gases believed to cause global warming. Putin also announced that in exchange for an EU undertaking to minimize the negative consequences of EU enlargement for the Russian economy, Russia would reduce import duties, open its banking, insurance, and telecommunications markets to European companies, and gradually increase domestic gas prices. Meanwhile, Moscow secured China’s provisional agreement to Russia’s WTO accession in a deal reported to include promises of a pipeline to China and low oil prices.
July saw the parliament approve controversial legislation to replace social benefits dispensed in kind, such as free transportation and prescription drugs, with monetary payments. The legislation was unpopular with many sections of the population, especially pensioners, veterans, and the disabled. It was also unwelcome for regional governments, because it put most of the burden of financing such payments onto them. The changes in the way social benefits were awarded provoked angry demonstrations in many parts of the country. Eventually a compromise was reached in which the monetary value of the benefits was increased and recipients were given the choice of taking the benefits, as of 2006, in money or kind.
Foreign, Military, and Security Policy
On the whole, Russia’s relations with the outside world remained good. President Putin continued to place the greatest emphasis on rebuilding close relations with the other 11 members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)—that is, the other former Soviet states on or close to Russia’s borders (the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania excepted). He did so, however, not through the unwieldy mechanism of the CIS itself but through the pursuit of smaller bilateral or multilateral alliances within the CIS framework, such as the Single Economic Space consisting of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Relations with neighbouring Georgia remained volatile.
Moscow responded calmly in the spring when the three Baltic states, which had until 1991 been part of the U.S.S.R., joined the EU and NATO. Under the impact of the Chechen terrorist atrocities, Russia’s relations with several leading Western states came under strain. Following the Beslan siege, Russia announced that it reserved the right to take preemptive action—the use of nuclear weapons alone excepted—against terrorists inside or outside Russia; commentators pointed out that this was not a new departure. Despite Putin’s emotional reaction immediately following the Beslan siege, when he accused foreign states of encouraging terrorism in order to dismantle the Russian Federation, he enthusiastically endorsed the reelection of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush in November. At the end of the year, however, Russia’s relations with both the U.S. and the EU were strained by mutual accusations of interference in Ukraine’s fiercely contested presidential election.
Russia’s security and intelligence services preserved their dominant position in the Kremlin corridors of power. Amendments to the Law on Defense seemed set to change the structure of the military high command by significantly reducing the role of the General Staff in controlling the armed forces; until then, the General Staff had been effectively coequal with the Ministry of Defense, and infighting between the two had hindered efforts at military reform. At the beginning of the year, a law on alternative service came into effect that allowed conscripts for the first time to choose civilian instead of military service.
|Area: ||17,075,400 sq km (6,592,800 sq mi)|
|Population ||(2004 est.): 144,315,000 |
|Capital: ||Moscow |
|Chief of state: ||President Vladimir Putin|
|Head of government: ||Prime Ministers Mikhail Kasyanov, Viktor Khristenko (acting) from February 24, and, from March 5, Mikhail Fradkov|