ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2 we explored some of the thinking about the problems facing
Russia on Putin’s accession and the choices facing him. Here we shall look
more closely at Putin as a politician, examining the opportunities and risks
that he confronted. He was constrained by the legacy of the past and the
political and social order that he inherited, but as an active political agent
he was able to shape agendas and build a political machine of his own. The development of Putin’s power base reflected his broader political agenda.
While Yeltsin’s rule can be understood as a period of ‘permanent revolu-
tion’, Putin now assumed the role of consolidator, the Napoleon (not
necessarily on horseback) to Yeltsin’s Robespierre, the leader of a Thermi-
dor in political relations. During the presidential campaign in 2000 Zyuga-
nov had already called Putin a ‘little Napoleon’, and as Pavlovsky stressed,
a Napoleon does not emerge out of nowhere, and not everyone could
become a Napoleon.2 Like Napoleon, Putin sought to rebuild the state and incorporate into the new order the progressive elements of the revolutionary
epoch necessary for social development while discarding the excesses and
the revolutionary froth. Putin adopted the key test of such a consolidating
role, the so-called ‘zero option’: the prohibition on the redistribution of
property and the legal persecution of those involved in the privatisation
excesses of the past. Putin also favoured the larger zero option: the crimes
and repression of the Soviet period were to be put to one side for the sake
of social harmony. The Soviet and Yeltsin revolutionary periods now gave
way to one of post-revolutionary consolidation.
