Moscow News October 915, 2002 "Putin is interesting, Yeltsin is not" Yuri Vasilyev Roy Medvedev - on our leaders' anniversaries and the place of Russia's present head of state in its history
An internationally recognized master of historical assessment of Soviet and Russian leaders, Roy Medvedev has written comprehensive monographs on nearly all of them. His latest book, Vladimir Putin - deistvuyushchy prezident (Vladimir Putin - a Can-Do President), came out just in time for the hero's 50th birthday.
You have written three books about Putin within three years. This kind of interest is rather unusual for a historian, especially considering that the person in question is associated with a very small part of our history.
There is nothing unusual about this: Two years as head of such a state as Russia have made Putin part and parcel of our history. Andropov spent even less at the top - 15 months, and he also came from intelligence services. Yet interest in his abrupt turnaround, away from the Brezhnev course, was tremendous, with 15 books about him published during his lifetime. Gorbachev, in his first year in office, aroused an even greater interest - also because he was so different from other leaders: Twenty books were published about him at the time.
Were not all of our leaders, in their first year in office, interesting to the West?
Not necessarily. Brezhnev's first biography did not appear until 10 years later: He seemed a dull bureaucrat to the West. Khrushchev did not generate interest until after the 20th Congress and the launch of the world's first sputnik: He had sat quietly for four years. Neither did Stalin interest the world for the first five years in power. As for Lenin, he stirred up intense interest from the outset: After all, it was a revolution - What sort of person was he? What was his background?
What about Yeltsin?
There was not so much interest as aversion. His first visits abroad, from 1989 to 1991, were closely analyzed, and his boorishness and lack of culture gloated over. To date there is not one historical biography of Yeltsin published either here or in the West. Obviously, there are books about him and his time. I myself wrote one: It was published in the United States under the title Post-Soviet Russia: A Journey through the Yeltsin Era.
Doesn't "era" suggest that a person is interesting to historians?
The Yeltsin era, not Yeltsin himself: Having carried out a revolution in Russia, he failed to follow through on it. He did not create either a coherent concept or style of leadership: In short, he is not interesting to a historian. Take Chechnya: He would make an appointment and shift the entire responsibility onto the appointee. By contrast, Putin assumed personal responsibility for it: The very first night after he became president, on New Year's day, he flew to Chechnya.
You are not forgetting that he was facing an election in three months?
That's irrelevant. He was aware of his responsibility before the military and the people.
Responsibility - given that the war is into its fourth year now, as compared to two years under Yeltsin, and is ready to spill over into Georgia?
These are current problems. As for history, Yeltsin's two-year war was lost while this war, when all is said and done, has been won although some problems do remain. Imperial Russia fought a war in the Caucasus for 100 years, and won - but did not resolve all problems. We should not, of course, be thinking in terms of such long periods, but it is impossible to settle the Chechen problem within two or three years. Neither can the Georgian problem be resolved, even within 10 years.
How many books are there about Putin, apart from your three?
In Russia, five or six. As for books published abroad, I know there are two in Chinese and as many in French and German.
Is Putin the leader that you personally would have liked to see running the country at the height of the perestroika era?
I did not think about that at the time: Like many other people, I was overwhelmed by perestroika, getting involved in it quite by chance. As a historian, I was writing what was on my mind and did not pursue a personal agenda. During the perestroika era, I was quite happy with Gorbachev. True, in late 1990, when Yeltsin had popped up on the radar screen, I realized that he was not the kind of leader that Russia wanted. Yet neither was Gorbachev what he had been. I liked Primakov: I even wrote an article in support of him and his movement, Fatherland/All Russia. As for Putin's nomination, it came as a complete surprise to me.
In your book, you praise Putin as a proponent of order that came to replace "chaos and confusion." Further on, however, you write: "Maybe Putin will succeed in combining law and order in Russia with genuine liberalism and reasonable democracy." Are you not worried by this "maybe" yourself?
Who can tell? However, there can be order without democracy, but no democracy without order. It is a harmony of the two that is of the utmost importance to me.
And still, you are not sure that Putin's order is compatible with democracy?
Hard to say. After all, Putin still does not have a real party or team of his own. I understand that our democratic institutions are to a very large extent purely formal, and this alone is cause for concern. But I do not expect authoritarianism from him.
Putin combines two characteristics that neither Yeltsin nor Gorbachev possessed: intelligence - that is to say, an ability to quickly find the best possible solution in a complex situation, and an ability to keep his word. Yeltsin was looking for a person who would pledge not to touch him and his people: Putin gave his word, and he keeps it.
Do you think that Yeltsin is the only restraining factor for Putin in this respect?
Rather, he must be simply waiting for a second term in office. He got his first term as Yeltsin's successor - both in the eyes of historians and in the public's mind. Yet he will enter his second term as Putin's successor - with entirely different powers and credibility. After elections all officials tender their resignations, and I am not sure that Putin will not grant at least some of them.
What did leaders' jubilees mean in this country?
In the recent period, they have passed almost inconspicuously. Both Yeltsin and Gorbachev turned 60 in 1991, at the peak of their confrontation: It was no time for jubilees. Lenin celebrated his 50th birthday, in 1920, in a very modest way: He left a grand meeting in his honor before it was over, asking that "this disgrace end as soon as possible." Stalin marked his 50th birthday very quietly; his 60th birthday anniversary was a high-profile affair while his 70th was celebrated worldwide.
Brezhnev marked his 75th birthday most ostentatiously: A film was made about him with presents coming in from all over the country. It must be said that every Soviet leader sought to build a personality cult, jubilee or no jubilee - consciously or subconsciously. Thus, Khrushchev, in the early 1960s, raised no objections to that. Perhaps only Andropov was genuinely modest.
Stalin did not approve of his personality cult, either. Nor does President Putin - in a recent comment on those who show off their photos with the president in their offices.
True, but Putin does not write adulation into his own biography, as did Stalin. Thus far the president has been acting in a very modest manner in public, but I do not know just how indifferent the president is to adulation. Talking of a photo with Putin, as you can see, I also have one, sitting on this shelf. Next to a photo with Gorbachev.
As far as the president's jubilee is concerned, to me, this is yet another Putin enigma. So far there are very few clippings in my Putin Jubilee folder, showing there has not been an unhealthy fuss about it.
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