Ring the bell any time this story starts to feel familiar, or prescient.
On the last day of the last millennium, Boris Yeltsin suddenly announced his resignation from the office of President of Russia, which had not long before emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union as a separate country.
While it was apparently a surprise to the world, since Yeltsin had six months to go in his term, the handwriting had been on the wall for some time. Yeltsin’s administration was widely known as corrupt, chaotic, and ineffectual.
Yeltsin and his family were suspected of accepting massive bribes including villas from influential businessmen. One investigation, by Russia's prosecutor general Yuri I. Skuratov, was stopped by a handy bit of Kompromat that just happened to be laying around, which was very convenient for Yeltsin and family, but the overall picture was bleak.
[By the way, since that time the Russians have learned the error of their ways, and have sworn to never, ever, collect Kompromat on anyone, because it’s so mean. So this can’t happen these days.]
In his December 31, 1999 resignation speech and thereafter, Yeltsin explicitly handed power to his Prime Minister, a former city mayor named Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin endorsed Putin to lead the country in very strong terms, as reported by the Guardian on that day.
"I shouldn't be in the way of the natural course of history. To cling to power for another six months when the country has a strong person worthy of becoming president - why should I stand in his way? Why should I wait? It's not in my character," Mr Yeltsin said.
In a step that was definitely not planned in advance, and absolutely wasn’t a quid pro quo of any kind, Putin then immediately pardoned Yeltsin. But the pardon went farther than that.
Acting Russian President Putin has pardoned Mr. Yeltsin for any possible misdeeds and granted him total immunity from being prosecuted (or even from being searched and questioned) for any and all actions committed while in office. Mr. Yeltsin also received a life pension and a state dacha. An orderly transition of power? Maybe. A demonstration that you can get away with a lot while in public office. Certainly.
That’s right. Not just the absence of prosecutions. The end of all investigations and suppression of all fact-finding relating to the corrupt top levels of the administration.
And then a funny thing happened. Everyone seemed to forget that Putin had been the number two guy in that prior administration. That corrupt, chaotic, failed administration. The new guy, less flamboyant and having tidier hair, got to work and took control.
Total control. The chaos abated. People stopped worrying their pretty little heads about little things like corruption at the top, and went back to whatever they were doing. The “new” administration consolidated its hold in political power, and — most especially — on political communication of all kinds.
[BTW We’re really fortunate over here in the USA that we’re protected by the First Amendment, which nobody would dream of curtailing]
It’s more than a little ironic that Putin appeared to benefit from the dysfunction of the very same administration he had been a very high ranking member of. The contrast to that extremely low bar helped him appear to “save” the country.
This is just for historical interest, about events in a far away country several years ago. Really, that’s all it’s about. For history buffs, you know.
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James R. Wells is the author of The Great Symmetry, a science fiction adventure celebrating the freedom of ideas. The story is set 300 years in the future, but that future world appears to be arriving about 299 years sooner than expected.