Putin’s Rise Chalked Up to Close ‘Family’ Ties

Tycoon Boris A. Berezovsky likes to say that anyone can become president of Russia--as long as that person has the backing of the wealthy elite and the media.

The billionaire Kremlin insider is about to prove himself right.

As in previous palace intrigues, Berezovsky has emerged as a pivotal figure in events leading to President Boris N. Yeltsin’s resignation Friday and the appointment of acting President Vladimir V. Putin, a stern, little-known former spy who came to Moscow less than four years ago.

Berezovsky is a key member of “The Family,” the inner circle of Kremlin advisors revolving around Yeltsin’s younger daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko. With Yeltsin ill much of his second term, it’s widely believed The Family ruled Russia and engineered the rapid rise of Putin, who has been associated in recent years with key Family members.

“Boris Berezovsky said many times--there are many witnesses; I heard it myself--that he sincerely believes that in Russia anybody can be elected president with adequate financial support and control of TV,” said Igor Y. Malashenko, a television executive who served as Yeltsin’s media advisor in the 1996 reelection campaign. “Anybody.”

When Yeltsin abruptly named Putin in August as his sixth prime minister, it looked like another bizarre move by the unpredictable, ailing president. In fact, it now appears to have been the first step in a shrewd plan to turn Putin into Russia’s next president.

With Yeltsin’s resignation New Year’s Eve, Putin became acting president and is in an excellent position to win the job outright in an election tentatively set for the end of March. Just 47, he could maintain power for years to come, with the ability to bring about great changes in the lives of Russians.

On Monday, Putin signed a decree relieving Dyachenko of her post as advisor to the president, suggesting that Putin was distancing himself from the Yeltsin era. But few had expected Dyachenko to remain in that capacity anyway, and she is likely to play a behind-the-scenes role in a Putin administration.

Some suggest that, in Russia’s cutthroat world of politics, The Family must have retained some kind of leverage over Putin.

“The Family that has always feared to let the reins of power go all of a sudden entrusts their fate to a man whom they appear not to know at all. Isn’t that weird?” said Marina Y. Salye, a former Leningrad City Council member who headed an investigation into alleged improprieties by Putin a decade ago. “It is simply not their style--they have never acted so recklessly. So they must know something that . . . allows them to trust Putin fully.”

The making of Russia’s new leader began when he returned from more than a decade as a KGB spy in East Germany and took a post in the city government of Leningrad, now once again named St. Petersburg.

Known for his quiet, low-key style, the former KGB colonel soon rose to first deputy mayor under Mayor Anatoly A. Sobchak, who was regarded as a leader of Russia’s so-called reform movement. Putin’s influence behind the scenes was so great that he became known as Sobchak’s “gray cardinal.”

“He did not like to be conspicuous, but practically nothing at the mayor’s office was done without Putin’s approval,” wrote Alexei A. Mukhin in “The Federal Elite,” a book about Russia’s powerful figures. “Sobchak liked to joke that he would feel safe taking Putin on a reconnaissance mission”--one of the highest compliments one Russian can pay another.

While some cite Putin’s association with Sobchak as evidence that he will develop a liberal economic policy, his track record does not necessarily support that view.

In mid-1990, the city commission headed by Salye concluded that Putin had improperly issued licenses for the export of raw materials and nonferrous materials in exchange for food shipments that never arrived. The commission accused Putin of abuse of power and recommended that Sobchak fire him, according to Salye and Mukhin. Sobchak took no action.

Sobchak, who fled the country in the face of unrelated corruption charges in 1997, praised Putin’s loyalty in a recent TV interview.

“I saw that his inability to betray, his loyalty, reliability and honesty are the main traits of his character, which really make him a rare person in our times,” said Sobchak, who returned to Russia last summer after charges against him were dropped.

Plum Post at Kremlin

In 1996, Putin moved to Moscow, where he was in a position to meet close associates of Yeltsin, who aided his rise to power.

The Family’s members include Dyachenko and Yeltsin’s former chief of staff and ghostwriter Valentin B. Yumashev, as well as financiers Berezovsky and Roman A. Abramovich. The latter pair are among a handful of Russians who became wealthy through Yeltsin’s privatization of government assets. Dyachenko, the only one with unlimited access to Yeltsin, was widely regarded as the power behind the president.

Some say it was Anatoly B. Chubais, a longtime Yeltsin advisor close to The Family, who brought Putin to the Kremlin and arranged a post for him as deputy to Pavel P. Borodin, the head of the Kremlin’s property department.

Borodin, who also has strong ties to The Family, oversees the Kremlin’s huge real estate holdings and has been at the center of a scandal involving the Swiss company Mabetex, which won Kremlin construction contracts worth $300 million and allegedly gave credit cards to Yeltsin and his two daughters.

Putin has not been tarnished by the Mabetex scandal, but he and Borodin were accused by a small St. Petersburg newspaper of illegally selling billions of dollars’ worth of Russian real estate abroad. The two officials sued for libel and won a court order putting the paper out of business, Borodin said last year.

It was in the fall of 1996, soon after Yeltsin won reelection, that the paths of Putin and Berezovsky most likely crossed. Both were members of Yeltsin’s administration. Soon after Putin moved to Moscow, Berezovsky was rewarded for his campaign support with a post as the deputy secretary of Yeltsin’s Security Council.

Within the Kremlin, Putin’s rise was rapid.

In March 1997, he was appointed head of the Kremlin’s Audits Directorate, a post likely to have given him great insight into the workings of the Kremlin. Yeltsin also named him a deputy chief of staff.

In 1998, Yeltsin appointed him to head the FSB, the main successor agency to the KGB. In an unusual move in March, Yeltsin gave him the additional important post of Security Council secretary.

As Putin moved up, the Kremlin inner circle was holding auditions for a presidential successor. A string of prime ministers tried, and failed, to win Yeltsin’s blessing: Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, Sergei V. Kiriyenko, Yevgeny M. Primakov and Sergei V. Stepashin were all fired over a period of 18 months.

With Yeltsin scheduled to step down in August, the inner circle was anxious to pass on power to a successor who would protect its interests.

When Yeltsin named Putin prime minister in August, it was clear something was different: Yeltsin declared Putin his preferred successor, a designation no one else had won.

By then, Russian forces had begun fighting separatist Chechen rebels who had invaded the neighboring republic of Dagestan in an attempt to expand their territory.

Chechens Blamed for Bombing Wave

In September, a wave of bombings destroyed four apartment buildings in Moscow and two southern Russian cities, killing 300 people. The government was quick to blame the attacks on Chechen terrorists, and the Russian public demanded revenge.

It has been widely speculated that the bombings were carried out by the FSB to fuel public hatred of Chechnya and rally support for the war. The government bulldozed the bomb sites within days, destroying any remaining evidence, and has never proved that the attacks were staged by Chechen terrorists.

In early October, Putin sent troops into the rebel republic and began winning back territory surrendered during the first Chechen war of 1994-96. His popularity soared, exceeding that of any politician since Yeltsin in the early 1990s.

Berezovsky, meanwhile, began building the Unity bloc, a loose coalition of Kremlin allies headed by Emergency Situations Minister Sergei K. Shoigu. After Putin endorsed the party, it scored a major upset in Dec. 19 parliamentary elections, coming from nowhere to finish just behind the Communist Party with 23% of the vote.

Vyacheslav A. Nikonov, who worked for Primakov’s rival Fatherland-All Russia movement, said Berezovsky was inspired to take a renewed interest in Russian politics in October when he was denied a visa to enter Switzerland, where his business dealings are under investigation.

“It used to be, whatever happened in Russia, they could say, ‘We have our airplane ready, we have our castles, etc.,’ ” said Nikonov, who worked in Yeltsin’s 1996 campaign. “Now, the bank accounts may be in trouble; the castles as well. They realized it was cheaper to buy new power.”

In a December interview in the weekly Novaya Gazeta, Berezovsky took credit for masterminding the naming of Putin as prime minister and designated presidential successor. He also took credit for coming up with the idea to create the Unity bloc. “I am happy that I persuaded not only my close circle but also the society to believe that the new construction was feasible,” he said.

In his new role, Putin’s first sign of loyalty to The Family was a decree he signed Friday granting Yeltsin immunity from prosecution.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev is among those who believe Dyachenko pushed aside her father.

In an interview published Monday in the Italian newspaper La Stampa, Gorbachev said he thought that Dyachenko, Berezovsky and presidential chief of staff Alexander S. Voloshin actually forced Yeltsin out of office.

“Yeltsin did not want to resign,” Gorbachev said. “He resisted it with all his remaining strength. In fact, he was deposed. It was this trio who masterminded ‘Operation Putin.’ There is no change of the regime, there will be no fight against corruption. The interests and the privileges of the oligarchy will be completely preserved.”

“Very few people in Russia should feel enthusiastic about Putin’s accession to power,” Salye, the former councilwoman, said. “They should worry about their own future, not to mention the future of the country. Putin is a tough person, and his toughness often borders on cruelty. He is extremely secretive. In general, he possesses all the qualities that have made it possible for The Family to trust him.”