In One Year, Popular Putin Proves That He’s No Yeltsin

A year ago, a Russian public thoroughly sick and tired of Boris N. Yeltsin got his opposite as its new leader.

In place of Yeltsin’s bearlike physique, palpable humanity, boozy work habits, flashes of vision, embrace of pluralism and rejection of the country’s Soviet past, Russians now have as their president Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the anti-Yeltsin.

Whereas Yeltsin had long been ailing and rarely strayed from his suburban Moscow dacha, Putin is vigorous and gads about the globe. Just 48, slightly built, cool, pragmatic and tactical, he comes across as a disciplinarian with a nostalgic affection for the efforts of Yuri V. Andropov, the ex-KGB chief who tried to bring order to the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

In his first presidential New Year’s Eve address, televised just before midnight across Russia, Putin called 2000 a year of “difficult decisions” but suggested that he already has begun restoring Russia’s dignity--even if many problems remain.

“What just recently seemed almost impossible is becoming a fact of life,” he said. “Elements of stability have appeared in the country, and that is very precious--for politics, the economy and each of us.”

Putin is distrusted by some Russians who worry about democracy and human rights. But almost everyone else--that is, about two-thirds of the country’s 145 million people--is satisfied with his performance after his first 12 months in office, according to opinion surveys.

Except for his slow response to the sinking of the Kursk submarine in August, analysts give him high marks on image and public relations. Putin receives less enthusiastic but still respectable rankings for his substantive work as president.

Putin’s guiding aim has been to build a strong central government. He quickly endorsed a no-holds-barred war against separatists in the republic of Chechnya. Next, he turned on the powerful provincial and regional governors, pushing through a law that made them answerable to Kremlin appointees and forcing them to relinquish their seats in the upper house of parliament.

The oligarchs--business tycoons who made huge fortunes by securing formerly state assets when the Soviet Union collapsed--were warned to keep out of politics and start paying taxes. In general, tax police were given a broad mandate to seek out evaders so that the state will have the revenues it needs.

When Putin assumed the acting presidency last New Year’s Day after Yeltsin’s surprise decision to cut short his term, most observers expected a brief honeymoon. They reasoned that any leader would quickly become mired in Russia’s economic, political and social problems.

‘They Give Him the Benefit of the Doubt’

The analysts were right about the problems but wrong about Putin’s staying power, said Andrei V. Kortunov, president of the Russian Science Foundation, a private think tank.

“Not much was accomplished in terms of economic reform. The war in Chechnya has no evident solution,” he said. “A chain of unfortunate accidents and clear public relations blunders occurred--and still we can see that there is no visible opposition to Putin.

“People still like him, and so they give him the benefit of the doubt.”

There is no secret to his popularity, said Boris Gryzlov, who leads the pro-Putin Unity faction in parliament.

“For a long time,” he said, “our citizens were longing for an energetic president whom they could see on TV every day. He meets with people. He is very democratic. He can talk to people in their own language.”

After one year, it’s clear that the former KGB agent and his team are putting a new stamp on Russia.

In his drive to strengthen Kremlin authority, Putin has been aided by advisors who include senior military and security officers. But he also has fervent economic reformers with him, led by strategist German O. Gref. Unlike Yeltsin, who perennially struggled with parliament, Putin enjoys a de facto working majority in the Duma, the lower house.

While some welcomed Putin’s moves as a needed dollop of order for a country that they believed had become too anarchic under Yeltsin, there are others who detect a dangerous turn back to authoritarianism and repression.

These critics cite his moves to reduce provincial autonomy, his warnings to oligarchs such as Boris A. Berezovsky not to meddle in politics, show trials against alleged spies such as U.S. businessman Edmond D. Pope, and his prosecutorial zeal to topple the business empire of Vladimir A. Gusinsky, who controls the only independent television network. Meanwhile, investigations into alleged corruption by Kremlin insiders have been dropped.

And though it was only a symbolic move, Putin’s decision to ignore Yeltsin’s advice and bring back the old Stalin-inspired national anthem--albeit with new, de-Communized lyrics--is worrying liberals.

Rather than providing continuity as Yeltsin’s handpicked successor, Putin turned himself into “The Terminator” of the Yeltsin legacy, said Liliya F. Shevtsova, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.

“Putin has crossed from the principle of mutual agreement and mutual tolerance in effect under Yeltsin to a new principle--subordination and compliance,” she said. He “dropped the Yeltsin-era principle of a ‘cobweb’ that included everybody--oligarchs, pragmatists, technocrats, power-wielding ministers, etc.--and created a foundation that rests solely on the bureaucracy and the military and security services.”

She and other observers say Putin has been skilled at amassing control but that so far he has been much less clear about what he wants to do with it.

“Putin is at a crossroads,” she said. “Having managed to consolidate all levers of power in his hands--having gotten hold of all the strings--what is to be done with all this power next?”

For Kortunov of the Science Foundation, the answer is obvious.

“Putin will not be judged by how he does in Chechnya or how he deals with the United States. . . . It is the economy, stupid,” he said. “The question is whether the current, really good economic situation can be maintained and used to initiate serious structural reforms.”

The Russian economy expanded significantly in 2000, with gross domestic product growth estimated at 7.6% and a trade surplus of $70 billion. According to the government, industrial production, investment and budget revenues all were up sharply.

There is a general consensus that Putin has been lucky, blessed with high prices for Russia’s oil exports and an economy that was poised for a comeback. The 1998 ruble collapse invigorated industry by forcing Russians to buy domestic products.

Whether or not he did anything to create the boom, Putin is reaping the political windfall for “the best year in the Russian economy in 30 years,” said Vyacheslav A. Nikonov, Yeltsin’s former campaign image-maker.

“Attacks on freedom of the press worry only 2% of the people. For the intellectuals, it is important. But for nonintellectuals, they don’t see it,” Nikonov said. “When there are no longer any delays in pension payments, that is the most important thing.”

Kortunov said the real test for Putin will be whether he uses his breathing room to push forward aggressively with plans to liberalize the economy.

Oleg T. Bogomolov, senior economic advisor to the Russian Academy of Sciences, said he is worried that Putin won’t move fast enough.

“The level of poverty is very high in the country,” he warned. “In some regions, people are freezing. In many regions, wage arrears are becoming an acute problem again.

“Millions of people are getting more and more desperate, and their patience will come to an end one day.”

For all his talk of strong government in a political and security sense, Putin has spoken as a champion of free markets in economic policy, perhaps even more than Yeltsin did.

He managed to pass one important piece of economic legislation: a simplified tax code with a flat 13% income tax.

What analysts are waiting to see is how aggressively Putin will move in 2001 on such issues as land reform and passing a more pro-management labor code, which would make it easier to allow layoffs and dismissals.

Critics Say Putin Is All About Image

Pavel I. Voshchanov, former spokesman for Yeltsin, said he remains skeptical of the whole Putin phenomenon.

“He traveled all over the country and the world. He flew combat jets, sailed cruisers and submarines, rode a tank and skied down a snow slope like not a single president before him,” Voshchanov said. “He is bristling with energy and magnetism, and people think that he is doing something for them.

“But in reality, it appears that he is working solely for his own image. He was not really doing anything for the country.”

The sentiment is echoed by Shevtsova. “Putin’s rating is so high not because Russian people like what he does,” she said, “but because they still pin lots of their hopes on him.”

To Viktor A. Kremenyuk, deputy director of Moscow’s USA-Canada Institute, Putin is an accidental president who is still feeling his way. He faults Putin for traveling and focusing on the ceremonial rather than addressing pressing needs, such as the collapse of morale in the army, or making sure that cities have heat and that the annual grain harvest is carried out efficiently.

“I think simply he didn’t know what to do” when he became president, Kremenyuk said. “Now what I see, after a year of rule, is that he cannot [separate] the real problems from the imaginary ones.”

Sergei L. Loiko and Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.