Russia Votes 2000: Transcripts of the March 13, 2000 Press Briefing

Russia Votes 2000

Sources on Putin, U.S.-Russian Relations

(transcripts)
Co-sponsored by the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project and
the Davis Center for Russian Studies
March 13, 2000

style="color: green;font-family: serif;font-weight: bold;">PANEL I: PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES ON PUTIN

Graham Allison: …part of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and specifically the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project that is the co-host of this with our colleague Tim Colton who is the Director of the Davis Center for Russian Studies.

We have a timely topic and an excellent group of colleagues to discuss the subjects for today. I think the questions we are asking through the course of the day are pretty obvious. But let me at least take one minute to suggest what the organizers have in mind, because each of these panels and the luncheon discussion actually are part of a theme, as you can notice from the program.

Basically there are three questions that pull together the various issues that we are addressing today. First, the democracy question. Will the year 2000 be remembered as the first peaceful democratic transition of power in a thousand years of Russian history? Or, alternatively, as the twilight of Russian freedom? More specifically, will the inauguration of President Putin issue in a period of stable, predictable reform pursued with deliberate determination, as the Putin campaign would have it? Or, alternatively, will a combination of internal failures and external fumbles mean a return to the old pattern of authoritarian control within, and isolation abroad? As, for example, Kovalev argues very eloquently in the piece that is in the Election Watch that was just handed out today?

The second question is "who is Putin?" I think that it would be hard to improve on the Economist''s good one-liner. "Putin the Great Unknown." Actually, what we hope to do in this panel this morning is to illuminate this area of darkness somewhat. And, to continue to do so through the discussion at lunch with former Prime Minister Stepashin, who is one of the few people who will say publicly, out loud, "I know Putin very well. I will tell you some things about him." Maybe that will be a spur to the members of our panel here.

Finally, what are the implications of these changes for the United States and the West? What are the implications for US and Western interests? And what are the implications for US and Western policies towards Russia?

We have an excellent panel for the discussion this morning. Marvin Kalb, our colleague who is the Director, sometimes from Washington, sometimes from Harvard, of the Shorenstein Center for Press Politics in Public Policy, will serve as the chair of this morning''s session. Jim Hoagland, who is the Associate Editor and Chief Foreign Correspondent for the Washington Post will serve as chair of the second session.

Let me turn to my colleague Tim Colton for another introductory comment and then we will turn it over to Marvin.

Tim Colton: Thank you so much Graham. Very briefly, the Davis Center for Russian Studies, which was known for decades as the Russian Research Center, and the SDI program have been working all year on a number of activities and ventures related to not just this election, but actually to the cycle of two elections. That gives us another context to think about what is going to occur in a couple of weeks in relation to the really quite defining political events in Russia beginning, I think we would have to say, with Putin''s elevation to the prime minister''s job in August, followed within hours almost, with the eruption of another crisis in the North Caucasus. This event is part of a sequence of things that we had been doing.

We had a rather similar briefing session in late November at Harvard, which my center largely organized. This has been very much the handiwork of Graham''s team and SDI. We have made a big effort to get journalists to come - holding it in this building and issuing a lot of invitations. We are really pleased that you have made the effort to give up a morning and know how precious your time is and what pressure you are under.

You will notice that Graham, in listing the questions that are before us today, did not mention who is going to win the election. Now, we are all grown-ups here. We are all just assuming, I suppose, that it is obvious that Putin is going to win the election. I think it is obvious that that is the case. We are not really going to bother much with polls and predicting the exact margin of victory. But, those of you who are interested in the subject will find some quite helpful information in your packets, including the latest Russian Election Watch from SDI. There is some guidance there to web sites where you can find polling information. A fair amount of this stuff is now available in English. The working journalists should realize that there is really a lot of hard information on the numbers so to speak. They all point in the same direction, that Putin is going to win this election: most likely in the first round, unless something amazing happens in the next thirteen days. The only amazing thing that I can imagine, and I think it is at the margin of possibility, is a boycott, which would depress turnout below 50%. The Putin people have been worried about this for months. They have done everything they can to dissuade the most likely boycotters, the Communists, from attempting any such thing. It doesn''t seem terribly likely to occur.

So without further ado, thank you for coming.

Marvin Kalb: For most of 30 years of my own life, I was a diplomatic correspondent for two networks, CBS and NBC. I remember very well the value that briefings of this sort had before major stories. Therefore, I would like to thank Graham Allison and Tim Colton on behalf of the all of the reporters who are going to be working on this story for setting up this briefing. It is indeed of tremendous value. It is something that a number of research institutions at Harvard have been trying to do and have done in fact over the last 10 or 15 years whenever there was a summit, a major story in Russia, or a major story in China. They have tried to provide some wonderful brainpower here and make that available to journalists to enrich the copy. So again, thanks to the two directors who put this all together.

The first panel here is going to be about Graham''s second question really. What about this man Putin? Who is he and what can we expect of him when he goes from being the acting president of Russia to being the president of Russia, the actual successor to the man who has dominated many headlines over the years, Mr. Yeltsin? What we have done here is divided this up into four parts. We have the four panelists. Each one will be addressing one part of the Putin puzzle.

The first concept is Putin the man. Then, Putin''s history as a foreign business gatekeeper in St. Petersburg. Then Putin as a partner for the west. Finally, Putin as prime minister and his record so far.

First: Vataniar Yagya who is Deputy to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. He worked with Putin on foreign economic relations as Senior International Relations Advisor to St. Petersburg Mayor Sobchak 1990-96.

Mr. Yagya: Thank you Mr. Chairman. Dear Colleagues. First of all I would like to thank the organizers of this conference for the opportunity to think about the problems that have to do with the destiny of Russia in the upcoming century and, after all, with the destiny of the whole world. What is happening in Russia will determine a lot of what is happening in the world.

The issue that was raised here was "who is Putin." I can only say one thing. He is a person. Especially taking into account that the topic of my presentation says "Putin the person." At the beginning of 1990 in St. Petersburg there was a very strong team of people who thought the same way and who supported democratic reform in Russia. They wanted the reforms, which would change the social and economic face of our country, to take place quickly. The main carrier of these ideas was Anatoly Sobchak.

All of us who were grouped around the mayor, one way or another, reflected these ideas. We tried to implement them into reality. Only two of us, Putin and I, went the whole way with Anatoly Sobchak, from the beginning when he was the deputy of the City Council in May 1990 until his defeat in June 1996.

Of course since Putin has become acting president and prime minister, suddenly he has many friends and everyone is thinking the same way he is. They are also trying to paint an icon. Even if he is not Jesus Christ, he is something close.

I would like to say that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, just like any person, has his mistakes and his own views. Most importantly, he has his own human image and personality. Here we mentioned him as a person several times. This is the most important thing. The most important things that I think about him is that he is modest, loyal and committed.

His loyalty did not have to do with loyalty to a person but it was also his commitment to ideas. This quality of his played a large role in why Mr. Yeltsin determined who would take his place. I do not want to determine now how democratic it is to appoint someone''s heir, but I want to explain what could cause Yeltsin to appoint Mr. Putin to replace him.

I think first, it is his personal humility and modesty. In addition, the fact that he is very honest and incorruptible. I could provide many examples during the election campaign of Sobchak. In 1996, there were many occasions when people tried to blame Putin for many things related to corruption. But, it was immediately forgotten. Immediately these things went away. He was really clean and a really clean leader in St. Petersburg.

He thought about ideas and issues on a very large scale. He also worked with Mr. Sobchak and advanced very quickly from a regular assistant to first deputy to the mayor. While the mayor was away, which was often, Putin performed the functions of the leader, of the manager. He gained a lot of managerial experience while he was running a city of five million citizens with a significant amount of international economic activity.

Once I was asked, and I have told everyone already, on the 22nd, I will be giving an interview. I have given several interviews since Putin is now running for president. People want to interview me now. Putin has never been a public politician. If you look through all the newspapers and journals that were published in St. Petersburg from 1990-1996 you will not find many of his presentations, talks or interviews. Even if he gave interviews, they were succinct and exact. He always used a principle. I could describe it the same way Disraeli once said it of himself: "I am a conservative when we talk about conserving everything the best that was achieved before me. I am a reformer when it is necessary to get rid of the evil."

Vladimir Vladimirovich position was about the same. I don''t want to say that Disraeli equals Putin. These are different time periods. Nevertheless, I think it is for a reason that in one of the interviews given by one of the major politicians of Russia, he said that he was a liberal conservative. I think this is when it was formed, during the first five years of 1990.

Sometimes I am asked, "what is he like as a person?" I can say one thing. There has not been one occasion over the course of the six years that I have been interacting with him and working with him that he spoke harshly to an underling who hadn''t performed well. Moreover, he always tried to give people a chance to improve. It was always difficult for him to fire people. It was difficult and painful for him to say to a person "I don''t want to work with you anymore. Please leave."

He was part of the intelligentsia. Recently he has been using some very harsh words. That he acquired in Moscow, not in St. Petersburg, which is the cultural capital of Russia. In St. Petersburg, he never used those words. We were both in various situations, and I never heard him curse.

As far as Putin as a person is concerned, and why is it that we are talking about his human qualities? Because we want to understand what his humanitarian views are. Everybody views him as a KGB agent. In this area, he represents the repressive agency in the Soviet times. People are fearful of that.

First of all, I would like to say that he was in the foreign intelligence, not in political intelligence. These were different services where different qualities were required. I would be happy to give you specific facts about the things that I told you about Mr. Putin.

In 1994 in St. Petersburg there was a special newspaper called Putin, the Politician of Russia''s Future. It had about 100,000 copies. These were not people who were his supporters, but these were democratic thinking people who forecasted how Putin would move ahead in the Russia''s hierarchy.

Also Putin had certain faults. One of them in my opinion is that he is always late. This has become pretty famous in Russia. It really is a fact. It was also reflected in his Moscow activities. The other point, it seems to me, is that sometimes he made mistakes in judging certain people. He trusted people too much. It turned out that the people were political opponents of the team of like-minded people in St. Petersburg. They were also introduced into the Moscow political scene.

Marvin Kalb: …One of the things I should have mentioned earlier is that in the US there is a presumption in the world of journalism that nobody is interested in foreign affairs. That may well be the case. Maybe a lot of people in this country are not, but they should be. I found out this morning that a number of prominent anchors, Ted Koppel and Dan Rather will be going to cover the elections. There will be coverage of the Russian elections in the US. That is a big plus.

Richard Torrence, who is Executive Director of Anchor International Foundation is the next speaker. He worked with Putin as Advisor to St. Petersburg Mayor Sobchak on international projects, 1992-96.

Mr. Torrence: I was an unpaid advisor to Mayor Sobchak for four years. I was assigned an office in Smolny, headquarters of the mayoralty. I supplied my own equipment, telephones and a staff of two or three assistants. I met with Mr. Sobchak frequently, and with First Deputy Vladimir Putin, especially when it pertained to international business. Technically I reported to Mr. Putin, chairman of the mayor''s External Relations Committee. For a nearly four year period, I probably had forty to fifty face-to-face meetings with him. Since I had no specific agenda, and I certainly did not have any power, I did represent the possibility of the world outside of Russia to him. He proved to be interested in anything large or small that I thought might be good for St. Petersburg.

I worked with him on a variety of projects to attract foreign investment. We often lost out to Moscow or we would waste or time with investors who wouldn''t do anything at all. But, two of the projects that I worked on with him did bear fruit. I would like to use them.

Always on the lookout for investment money, I made an appointment to meet with Graham Humes, the head of CARESBAC, a small company in St. Petersburg. He told me that the company had been set up by CARE with a humanitarian gift of butter from the USDA to be sold in Russia. The proceeds could never leave Russia and were to be used for administration and minority investment positions in small Russian businesses. Humes told me that after the first load of butter had been sold, CARESBAC had been informed by the Russian Humanitarian Aid Commission that it was against the laws of Russia to monetize humanitarian aid. So the Commission wanted for itself all proceeds from the sale of butter, plus a 10% penalty from CARESBAC. This was their only source of income. So, this was pretty serious.

CARESBAC in the US recommended that they offer half. Hume said that even at that, they would have no money to operate and there would be no point in being there. My assistant, Shcherbakov suggested that Sobchak might offer a solution. Sobchak told me to meet with Mr. Putin.

At that time Putin had studied the relatively new Russian humanitarian aid laws. He told us that what CARESBAC had done was illegal. But that possibly he had found an exception whereby St. Petersburg could benefit and so could CARESBAC. The law said that either Moscow or St. Petersburg could receive humanitarian aid directly, without going through the federal commission. Putin said that he would try to get permission from the federal government to accept the humanitarian aid on behalf of St. Petersburg. In fact it did come into St. Petersburg. He promised CARESBAC that the city would take only half of the money the US owners had recommended they settle for, which would have gone down to about ¼. He also promised to use the money for specific humanitarian project: new equipment for the city dental clinics.

CARESBAC agreed. Putin advised CARESBAC to move its money quickly from Moscow to a St. Petersburg bank where he could protect it.

Germany''s Siemens was bringing new American-made dental equipment into St. Petersburg for a medical tradeshow. Putin knew the equipment could be purchased at a considerable discount if it could be sold in Russia. He arranged for CARESBAC to help in negotiations with Siemens. I recently read that Mr. Putin, in his days in Dresden, had worked with Siemens. I realize now that he probably wanted to make sure that the transaction was transparent to everybody concerned. And, that was a major concern of CARESBAC.

Months went by. Sobchak and Putin had asked then Prime Minister Chernomyrdin for a ruling to keep the CARESBAC money in the city. Chernomyrdin requested an opinion from his ministers, and several of them objected. No action was taken. Finally, on a ceremonial visit to St. Petersburg, the Prime Minister magnanimously asked how he could help St. Petersburg. Sobchak pulled out the ruling the city had prepared and said, "sign this." Permission was granted.

Initially half a million dollars was given to the city based on the first tranche of butter When Dental Clinic #1 was supplied with the new equipment, Mr. Putin invited me and CARESBAC to the opening ceremony. At a dinner following, Graham Humes pledged that another half million dollars would be forthcoming. Several months later Putin asked my help in securing the final half million dollars for a total of $1.5 million for the dental clinics, based on approximately $6 million in proceeds from the butter. That investment company still operates in St. Petersburg.

Throughout the process Mr. Putin was clever, open and very legal in what he did. He also was loyal to the people who helped. I was impressed with the intelligence and character he showed to us, the Western community. Although he never made a big deal out of his own participation and gave all the credit to CARESBAC and the mayor.

The largest projects we worked on together involved hotel development. There were insurmountable legal obstacles. I was impressed with Putin''s regard for the laws of the Russian Federation. He was also unfailingly helpful and pleasant to the extent that he invited me to lunch in Smolny in August 1995 and toasted me as a "member of the family." Knowing of his background, and I am sure he knew everything there was to know about me, I was moved with his appreciation of my efforts and his gesture toward me.

The second project that worked was much larger in scope and rife with bureaucracy. It began in September 1995 in the fourth year of my work with the mayor. I tried to arrange a meeting for the William Wrigley Jr. Company of Chicago with Mayor Sobchak. By then the city had grown tired of unfulfilled Western promises of investment and so it was difficult to get an appointment. I persevered.

We met with Sobchak, who had Putin at his side. Wrigley''s said they had decided to build a factory in Russia, but had heard that it was impossible to get through the bureaucracy of St. Petersburg. We thought that was Moscow propaganda. They indicated that they were interested in land near Pulkovo airport next to Coca-Cola; land that was not easily available. Putin promised information and support and set up several key meetings for Wrigley''s that very day.

I became a consultant to Wrigley''s on the project. Putin assigned a subcommittee within his committee to support all of our needs. He personally opened closed doors and minds for us. At the very end of the eight month period, Putin got permission from the St. Petersburg Duma to sign legal documents approving the project under the conditions that he had to make sure that Wrigley''s met. Ground was broken on May 6, 1996 for a $70 million factory. Without Mr. Putin''s support of my role and his determination to keep all of Mr. Sobchak''s promises to Wrigley''s, and Wrigley''s promises to the city, the factory would have been built in the Moscow Oblast. It formally opened in St. Petersburg last June.

Over a four year period, I was most impressed with Mr. Vladimir Putin''s character. I can compare him to another first deputy mayor with whom Mr. Putin often disagreed. I had been sent by Sobchak to Vladimir A Yakovlev, who is now governor of St. Petersburg. The Good Will Games sponsorship team was trying to arrange for a $1 million gift of paint on behalf of the campaign I had dreamt up called "Paint Petersburg." Mr. Yakovlev dismissed the offer out of hand, saying that the city already had its paint deals.

Mr. Putin would have at least tried to make the offer work. He was not one to regard all deals as necessarily good deals for the city. Nor was he one to dismiss new ideas. From my personal experience with him in St. Petersburg, I think Putin is exactly the president Russia needs at this time: forward looking, a man of admirable character, composed of integrity and action.

Marvin Kalb: George Handy is the Director, International Action Commissions. He met Putin regularly while managing St. Petersburg Action Commission 1992-1997.

Mr. Handy: Thank you Mr. Kalb, thank you Harvard University and the various centers for their vision in putting on this program and for the privilege of being part of being part of this significant panel. I am going to follow from the first two speakers and address still a little bit more.

My association with St. Petersburg was through an international commission organized in 1992 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and led by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. This platform offered a series of snapshots from the business-government perspective of Deputy Mayor Putin in St. Petersburg.

My message is simply this: St. Petersburg provided Mr. Putin significant experience as a leader and also with the process of the change to democracy and the private enterprise system. Circumstances in St. Petersburg were sufficiently demanding to merit greater attention and positive valuing of Mr. Putin as a leader of Russia today and for the future.

The vantagepoint that I had was not quite as a matter of such frequent contacts as Richard Torrence had. My meetings took place roughly about every four to five months with Mr. Putin. Exchanges were always handled with an interpreter and focused on building cooperation among US and European businesses and Russian enterprises with the St. Petersburg government. The aim of this joint business-government endeavor was to share foreign expertise spanning a broad range of reforms-for example, arbitrating business disputes and improving government transparency. The content of these reforms ultimately would be decided upon by Russian leaders.

I have four observations I would like to make to you. First in the area of transformation to democracy and private enterprise system. Mayor Sobchak''s drive to bring St. Petersburg to the attention of the world as a business and cultural center created a pressure to accelerate transformation in St. Petersburg. In the face of these changes, Vladimir Putin was regarded, as previous speakers have noted from other perspectives, as a source of stability. His serious personality carried him through long hours of well-managed effort in this pressure cooker. Simply stated, he was the person who could get things done.

Second point. Diplomacy. Sobchak''s development and investment goals were supported by well over 30 relationships with cities and countries globally. Mr. Putin was responsible for managing that effort, and it significantly broadened his exposure. Constant visits by foreign dignitaries and business leaders of top global companies, along with the hosting of the 1994 Good Will Games, honed Putin''s diplomatic skills. Diplomacy seemed to come easy to him, as did his ability to speak effectively, and as Mr. Yagya mentioned, succinctly.

The business leaders involved in our commission, Proctor & Gamble, Gillette, American International Group and others, were impressed immediately by Mr. Putin in terms of the fact that he listened. He listened to what was being said and he responded in a fashion uncharacteristic of past communist habits, by speaking to the points and questions raised, as well as getting his message across. He is not a classic orator, but maybe that is in his favor.

Third point. Economic Development. As first vice mayor, moving from responsibility for external affairs to the number one position of leadership underneath Mayor Sobchak, Putin was involved in virtually all aspects of this city of five million people, including still unresolved problems such as attempts to modernize the seaport and convert excess defense research and manufacturing capacity to profitable private enterprises. His decisions on economic matters, illustrated very well by the two examples offered by Richard Torrence, were always reasonable. As a result, he was seldom the target of the constant and justified complaints of beleaguered foreign and Russia business leaders striving to succeed in Northwest Russia.

Putin understood what it takes to bring investors and new business to Russia. He seems no less realistic about the consequences for Russians who are displaced when inefficient state enterprises rightfully fall to open and healthy competition. These problems being the matters of lost jobs, inadequate social safety nets and scarce resources for retraining unemployed Russians.

My last point is building compromise and managing public opinion. Despite its openness, St. Petersburg and surrounding Leningrad Oblast had a significant number of sincere advocates for the traditional, more autocratic ways of government for both political approaches and economic management. Mr. Putin dealt skillfully with these dramatically different personalities and values and was extremely effective in building compromise. He always seemed to be interested in foreign experience in those aspects of the democratic process that represented a major departure from Russia''s recent history and traditions such as forming and shaping public opinion.

Let me conclude by recalling for you that in 1995 on a sunny day along the Gulf of Finland, I had a chance meeting with Vladimir Putin, his wife and two children. While this friendly setting did not alter his controlled business-like demeanor, his obvious closeness to his family and them to him, made it easier to believe that his words and gestures on other days were just as true as his words and gestures on this particular day. Vladimir Putin''s penchant for privacy leaves much for us to learn, whether we are speaking from the business or government perspective. Still, to borrow from Margaret Thatcher''s well use reference to Mikhail Gorbachev, "It seems that here is a man that we can work with."

Marvin Kalb: Sergei Markov is the Director of the Institute of Political Studies in Moscow.

Mr. Markov: Mr. Putin was invited to be prime minister for two reasons. First, Mr. Yeltsin needed a more loyal prime minister than Mr. Stepashin. We remember that Mr. Stepashin had expressed his good relations with major opposition forces involved in the Fatherland-All Russia coalition what was in the process of formation at that time.

Secondly: political will. When Mr. Stepashin visited the North Caucasus when Muslim extremists had already taken a few villages in Dagestan, he did not show any political will to solve this problem. He was ready to compromise. At that time, it was clear that a compromise could lead to a domino effect in the Northern Caucasus.

When Mr. Putin was appointed, he followed a certain direction. First of all, he directed his attention to the major problems of the time including the Islamic groups'' attacks on Dagestani territory. This posed a major problem because it was a security issue, and was much more important for the people than even economic issues. Secondly, at that time, it was clear that if Russian federal authorities were weak, it would lead to the aforementioned domino effect.

Mr. Putin totally concentrated on this issue. He demonstrated the political will to do the real job of politicians: to make decisions and to take responsibility for them. This was exactly what many Russian politicians had avoided. You may remember that Mr. Yeltsin began the first Chechen War, he entered hospital with the very strange explanation that he had some problem with his nose. No one had heard of this nose problem either before or after the Chechen War. But, it appeared just at the moment when he sent troops to Chechnya, many of whom were killed.

Such is absolutely not the case with Mr. Putin. He spoke directly to the Russian media explaining that it was "my decision , I have support from our president, but I take all responsibility." He was expressing his political will to solve this problem as he understood he could solve it, and the Russian military gave thousands of interviews saying that they were supported by political authorities. They said they had much more support than in previous wars, it is not even comparable.

In addition, Mr. Putin showed himself to be a very good manager of the war. From the beginning of the war, the Russian military was not so sure about political support. But, Mr. Putin ordered all top Russian military generals to provide him with reports each morning and evening about the fighting.

What does this demonstrate? First, it shows that he identifies the main problem and puts all resources toward solving it. Second, he has demonstrated that he is a good manager. Third, he showed the political will to follow through on his decisions.

Another criticism of the man is his loyalty to the Kremlin. As already mentioned, Mr. Putin expressed many times his loyalty to his previous chief, Mr. Sobchak, and Mr. Sobchak many times repeated these things in his numerous interviews. When Mr. Putin was appointed prime minister, he never had any conflicts with the so-called "Family." The term refers to circles of politicians and businessmen who are very close to the decision-making in smoky back rooms.

Mr. Putin helped them to follow the course that they had already begun at that time of concentrating all financial and information resources in the hands of the people who are close to the Kremlin. One of the better known cases was when Mr. Putin supported the dismissal and replacement of the executive director of Transneft, a very influential company which controls a lot of financial resources. It has led to the fact that at the beginning of parliament elections, most of the financial and information resources were concentrated behind the Kremlin. Then, these resources were used in a very cruel election campaign to destroy the electoral base of the major political rivals of the Kremlin, including the Fatherland-All Russia coalition and this connection between Yuri Luzhkov and Mr. Primakov.

There is no evidence that Mr. Putin asked his political allies to make their election campaigns against Mr. Primakov and Mr. Luzhkov less cruel. It was really a very cruel campaign. It was the first stage of presidential elections. By the way, the reason the presidential campaign runs so smoothly and less cruelly now is that the first stage of the presidential campaign occurred during the parliamentary election when Mr. Primakov was destroyed as a prospective candidate for the presidency.

His position as prime minister has also had an ideological result. Mr. Putin was one of the first politicians…who was ready to stop the war between the so-called Russian liberals and the Russian patriots. He tried to combine the idea of patriotism and the ideas of liberal institutions from Western experiences. Many Russian voters cheered this idea, and through these combinations, Mr. Putin created his ideological basis.

Mr. Putin shows that his style of political leadership is not the style of a Russian or Byzantine tsar as Mr. Yeltsin expressed. Rather, it is the style of a Western manager who identifies the major problems and puts resources toward solving them. This means that Mr. Putin''s policies will be shaped by the problems that Russia faces now.

A small list of these problems, which Mr. Putin already expressed, includes the following. First: anarchy and lack of common "rules of the game."

Second: institutional weakness, particularly governmental institutions.
Third: lack of credibility. One of the expressions regarding the Russian economy is that it is an economy of no trust. Citizens do not trust their government and political leadership.

Fourth: there is no strategy for reforms. Mr. Putin has already created the Center for Strategic Research. We do not know how it is working, but we know that Mr. Putin is paying a lot of attention to strategy for the coming decade.

Fifth: lack of moral principles. The Russian elite, including businessmen and politicians, have lost the idea of responsibility for the country. Mr. Putin has mentioned many times that moral principles should be put back into politics and business.

Sixth: regional problems. There has been a shift from a Russian federation to a Russian confederation. In some regions there are regional authoritarian regimes. These are the so-called national republics like Kalmykia, Bashkortostan, and others, which openly violate the Russian constitution.

The final problem is to create an environment where international business can be more certain of legal conditions. I believe a land code with property rights will almost surely be implemented. I also think that the tax code will be changed to make it more relevant and stable.

Mr. Kalb: I would like to open it up for questions and answers. I will ask the first question. Mr. Putin''s life as we have heard seems to be divided into three parts. The first is his professional life, the part having to do with his experience in the KGB. There is a middle part having to do with his service to Mayor Sobchak, and now the relatively new part as prime minister and budding president of Russia.

In all of our presentations, although it was mentioned briefly, his experience with the KGB seems to be lost in all of the essentially positive descriptions that we have heard. I would like to ask a question that is based on Putin''s experience in the KGB and how that seems to affect his capacities in Petersburg and now in Moscow. And, the war in Chechnya, while it may be an act of political will, but political will in the direction of pursuing a bad policy is not necessarily the best thing in the world. My question really has to do with where in all of these descriptions of Putin do you find political will, which could be stubbornness, and also the KGB background?

Mr. Yagya: Putin''s political will was expressed at the very beginning of his activities as prime minister with the anti-terrorist measures in the Northern Caucasus and Chechnya. Having once said the first thing he would always continue, persevere and always achieve success in establishing order in the country and maintaining the territorial integrity of the Russian state.

The Chechnya situation has been very difficult throughout the 1990s. Had there not been the actions by Putin, we could have faced the breakup of the Russian Federation and Chechnya could become the beginning of a chain reaction. Mr. Markov was right when he said that because of excessive ambition and because a lot of power was taken by leaders of the regions, managing the Russian country has become very difficult. Even in that regard, Putin has started to show very strict and tough political will. Now there are proposals from the various governors of the Russian Federation to see that the governors be appointed by the president rather than be democratically elected as they are now. I do not want to assess it, I don''t want to say whether it is democratic or not. I am just giving you the fact.

As far as Putin''s political will in the past is concerned, especially during his St. Petersburg period, he always made it a policy to broaden and attract foreign capital into the St. Petersburg economy. As Mr. Torrence said, he was very principled and committed. It is because of Putin''s efforts that the privatization that was done in St. Petersburg was done according to Russian law. Maybe the law wasn''t perfect, but the privatization was done exactly according to the law, unlike how it was done Moscow.

Mr. Allison: I think, Marvin, that is an intriguing question. I will offer at least from an outsider''s perspective a provocative answer, but nonetheless, one that I notice. It seems to me that Putin''s skills acquired in his first profession have actually served him rather well in his current persona. If you look at our February Election Watch, we give a clear answer to the question, "Who is Putin today?" The answer is that Putin is a political candidate with a single objective in mind, which is winning massively on the 26th of March. In that effort, professional skills learned first at the KGB in deception, disinformation, cover, are not all that distant from skills of a great political campaigner. Indeed, if our Russian colleagues were being more provocative, I think that they might take the movie "Wag the Dog." I am waiting for the Russian edition.

But you have all the components of a pretty fantastic management of a campaign which is consistent with the picture we see of a manager who identifies an objective, mobilizes resources to that end, is ruthless in the pursuit of it and uses all the skills that he can assemble. I think that the remarkable part, watching from a distance, is the extent to which a person who had previously demonstrated no public political persona, and who had even spoken rather harshly about the business of politics, as he said, "I can never run for politics, my tongue is not slick enough" has managed to morph into a political candidate who for every important constituency succeeds in presenting them a mirror in which each sees its own aspirations for the new Russian leader. So, reformers see a closet reformer. Oligarchs see somebody they can count on. The KGB sees their guy under the roof.

What I would like the other panelists to say a word to is that I notice quite a striking difference between my conversations with Russian colleagues in public settings or even on the telephone, and when walking around where I hear a lot more worry. So, I would be interested in hearing what the "worry" is about.

Mr. Handy: Stepping back to St. Petersburg for a moment, and hopefully not speaking on too superficial a level, with regards to the first two questions and then the third. We had a network of probably close to seven hundred businessmen and policy leaders from about seven different countries. We had over the five-year period probably close to six hundred fifty or seven hundred working meetings. Most of them were relatively small. All were practical and agenda-driven. At no time during that long period of many exchanges was the factor of Mr. Putin''s prior KGB experience ever even intimated let alone discussed or treated as a factor in the way he did business, or his presence or support in St. Petersburg.

Secondly, in all of those discussions and exchanges, there was never any doubt where Mr. Putin stood in principle on the path of reform that Mr. Sobchak had set in motion for the city towards democracy and private enterprise system. Exactly what that democratic product was going to be and what the final private enterprise system would look like was up to Russians and a factor of Russian tradition and history.

Mr. Kalb: George, let me interrupt. This thought just popped into mind. Was the idea that he would be for reform a result of his loyalty, the word that was used to describe one of his qualities earlier, to Sobchak or his loyalty to the concept of reform as a good thing for Russia.

Mr. Handy: He didn''t strike anybody, I think, as mechanic. He struck people as someone who was extremely bright and thoughtful. In the long series of exchanges that all the people at this table either had or are associated with, the fact that he was superficially just following Sobchak would have come out long ago. It would have been evident in inconsistent decisions and confusion and would have been evident in the lack of trust and confidence that people placed in Mr. Putin.

Mr. Yagya: I would like to confirm once more a thought that was already voiced: Putin was loyal and committed to ideas. The personality was then the addition to these ideas. That was the first and most important thing. And this is where his many thoughts and ideas of the future of Russia and the international community were created.

As far as his KGB past is concerned, in St. Petersburg, over the course of six years when he was at the government, this was never an issue with the people, especially people who worked with him. It did not have a negative impact on their relationship with Mr. Putin or his ideas.

Regarding his past affecting his present, there is a very well known proverb, "those who are not paying enough attention to the past are killing the future." Of course his past had an effect on his organization, self discipline and on how he organized the committee for foreign relations.

The action commission mentioned by Mr. Handy was called the Commission of Kissinger-Sobchak. This commission mostly worked on the side of St. Petersburg under the direction of Mr. Putin.

Tim Colton: On the media presence, we had Yeltsin''s press secretary, Dmitri Yakushkin, visiting the Davis Center in January. You know he had been eased out in a nice sort of way. But, he clearly was not going to be a leading figure in the Putin Administration. I had asked him at one time what he supposed his press secretary would be like, because we knew what Yeltsin''s were like. He said that in a way, Putin does not need a press secretary because he himself has warmed to this role of communicating, and in a very different way from Yeltsin, not to mention Gorbachev. Gorbachev was very condescending with reporters, somewhat pompous, with all the majesty of the office he felt that he had. With Yeltsin, I mean it was years since he ever met with journalists in open forum, but it seems that he was always engaged in an elaborate cat and mouse game where it wasn''t clear if he was kidding half of the time. It was hard to take some of them seriously.

Putin clearly behaves differently. In fact what he has managed to do in only a few months is to define a style that strikes me as really rather intimate. That is, he speaks very softly, very sweetly. The conversations are generally in an informal setting. He more or less levels with the reporter. He is not telling everything he knows, but there is a kind of candor to it that is really very unusual by Russian standards.

The other thing I want to mention in terms of the presidential and Duma campaigns: Putin very quickly convinced tens of millions of Russians that he was able to do something with the office he held in the fall and the office that he is soon going to hold in his own right as president of Russia. One of the ways he did that was indeed as Graham said, finding ways to be all things to all people. To convince people of different points of view that he was with them. But of course this can create problems when you govern. If reformers think you are with them and conservatives think you are with them, sooner or later, governing, unlike running a campaign is about choice. So, there may be some negative implications there.

I have been involved since last summer in a major research project on the elections where we polled the Russian electorate twice and we are going to do it a third time. I can only say from the fall that it was striking how many Russians seemed to think the party that he was associated with, Unity, could solve the country''s problems including the Chechnya problem.

But when you looked beneath the surface, did the people who said Unity and who now are saying that Putin can do the job, actually agree among themselves on what should be done? The answer often is "No." In fact people who preferred a liberal response to the Chechnya problem were often as supportive of Putin or Unity as people who preferred a hard line. So it is possible that this will come back to haunt him once he actually starts governing the place.

John Evans: I was Counsel General in St. Petersburg from 1994-97. Mr. Putin was really one of my main contacts there. Let me offer a quick fifth perspective. The first thing Putin ever said to me when I met him, and he was just about the first official of the St. Petersburg administration that I did meet because he ran the Committee on Intentional Relations. I asked him what his background was. He said "Ya yurist"-I am trained in the law. This is the kind of answer one might get from KGB people.

I see a thread. And coming back to your question, Mr. Kalb, about the three stages of Mr. Putin''s career so far, I see the law, and concern about law and order. There is a question about which one stresses, but in Russia it seems tome it may be necessary to stress both. That is a unifying theme. He did study law under Sobchak.

I remember an incident in St. Petersburg when an American investor, Subway Sandwiches, which had a shop on the Nevsky Prospect, ran into big difficulties with the local mafia. I immediately went to Putin. He heard us out and was very concerned about what seemed to be a clear case of an American investor getting into trouble with local crime figures. He promised immediate action. In fact, by the end of the day, he had sent the tax inspectors to this particular concern to try to see whether there was any violation of the law. That was his first question, "what is the law here? Is there a law here which protects this investor?" Concern with the law was key.

I want to ask one little question to everyone. The question of how Putin dealt with the St. Petersburg legislature may be key. Mr. Yagya may know something about this. Because one of the key questions coming up is how will Putin, as the president, deal with the Duma? We have already seen some signs that that is a key question for us all to watch.Mr. Yagya: Yes Mr. Evans, I know that you worked there at the time. We were all working actively with you. You know the situation with the legislature. Unfortunately the Mayor Anatoly Sobchak did not have a good relationship with the legislature. It was a very tense relationship.

Sobchak sent Mr. Putin to deal with the legislature. He was able to convince the lawmakers on many laws that were very important to the city. He was able to convince them to accept them and not to decline them. We unfortunately have to admit that many of the lawmakers had a very negative view of the executive branch of the mayor.

When I observed Mr. Putin in September of last year when he was appointed prime minister and how he interacted with the members of the federal Duma internally, I was happy that he repeated the same skills that he acquired when he interacted with the St. Petersburg legislature. This is the constant interaction with the lawmakers, not only with the leaders of the factions and groups, but also with the individuals in the legislature to find out what his views were and to try to convince them of his views. I think this is a positive in the relationship between the executive and the lawmakers. I don''t think that the conflict that Mr. Yeltsin had with the Duma will be repeated with Mr. Putin. Kevin Whitelaw from US News and World Report: …Mr. Yagya, in your presentation you mentioned that one of the faults of Mr. Putin might be the occasional misjudgment of people. I wondered if you could give an example or two and talk about how that might affect his role as president.
Mr. Yagya: I talked about this earlier today that sometimes, as I thought, he trusted people too much and felt that these people were worth a lot more trust than they really were. I don''t want to tell you who they were right now because I do not want to throw stones at this point. But I can say that in the Sobchak administration these were people who were there. They were working on two fronts. There are people here who mentioned Mr. Yakovlev who is now the governor and who came to power by betraying Sobchak. There were some people who were in Sobchak''s administration who should not have been trusted as much as he trusted them.
David Kramer with the Project for the New American Century: My question is for Sergei Markov, my former colleague. I would like, Sergei, for you to bridge the gap between the time when he was in St. Petersburg and the time he became prime minister. Putin, in an interview with Kommersant on Friday said that it was Pavel Borodin who brought him to Moscow to be his deputy. Borodin is someone who has been steeped in controversy with allegations of corruption swirling about him. What can you tell us about his time there, his time as head of the FSB when there were a number of investigations launched against people like Nikitin that were very questionable, and about his time as the head of the Security Council.
Mr. Markov: …I think Mr. Putin at that time passed through different tests which the Kremlin Family demanded of him. Most of these cases have been not so easy for them. One of the most sensitive, as I understand, was the affair with Yuri Skuratov in which Mr. Putin played an important role. He showed his total loyalty to the Kremlin at that time.

The attack on Mr. Skuratov was not so pleasant. In fact it was dirty. Mr. Putin played a pretty active role in this attack. He didn''t take the initiative, but he followed all the orders which were expressed from the Kremlin. I think it moves us to the questions which Graham Allison asked about our worries about Putin. Really, those who like Mr. Putin, like mostly some hopes they have about him. Different people have different hopes. But also we should figure out that there are some worries from this time.

The major worry for me is something like this. Mr. Putin can solve problems if he decides to do so. Also understand that Mr. Putin wants to create some mechanism for solving problems. But to do so throughout the whole country, he needs to create some functioning institutions including government institutions. This mechanism will be some combination of authoritarian and democratic measures - not just democratic institutions. It''s what I called manipulated democracy, and the chief editor from Nezavisimaya Gazeta called "guided democracy."

It is clear that this guided democracy includes a two-party system - not two parties as in the US where the two parties replace each other. But, the two-party system that existed in Italy or Japan from the 1950s to the 1980s with one right wing ruling party, which I think will be based on Unity, and another left wing opposition party with no chance of coming to power. The struggle for control of the government will be not between parties but between factions inside these parties.

Then there is concentration of all information resources. I am absolutely sure that the major media holdings will be more or less controlled by the Kremlin. Then, there will be the limitation of power of regional leaders. Or maybe just surrounding them with regional representatives of federal agencies. Then there is governmental support to the big corporations which was already expressed by Mr. Putin many times.

My concerns. What will he pay attention to? Now he will pay attention to creating this mechanism. But to what problem will he pay attention one year from now? Either to some problem using this mechanism. Or just to keep strengthening the mechanism he created. I think it depends not only on Mr. Putin but also on civic society. Mr. Putin, as a very strong political leader needs to have a strong partner. This strong partner should be civic society. I think that now Russian society will face a big challenge. What to do in this situation? If society is strong enough, it could be a good partner for Mr. Putin and they can build this situation and the regime of personal power which I think is already established in Russia will be more familiar with the style of Mr. de Gaulle. It could be good for the country. But, if society will be weak, the situation can move more to the style of Central Asia - not entirely of course - but some oriental kind of personal power. From my point of view, this is very dangerous. This is my concern.Paul Saunders with the Nixon Center: I wanted to make one comment about Graham Allison''s and Mr. Colton''s point about Vladimir Putin''s KGB past which I completely endorse. I read recently a Russian commentator in a Russian paper who had gone and found a former KGB colleague of Putin''s who told him in an interview what an exceptional agent Mr. Putin was and how great his skills were in recruiting people given how difficult it was to recruit Germans. This commentator then essentially argued that what Mr. Putin is trying to do in effect is to recruit the entire country of Russia to become his agents, if you will. I think that is a useful way to look at some of what he is doing.

My question, though, gets to the St. Petersburg experience. We have heard a lot of positive things this morning about what Mr. Putin did in St. Petersburg. But I think that we should remember also that there have been a number of questions raised. Mr. Yagya alluded to some of the political conflict in St. Petersburg at the time.

But there were also some very serious allegations against Mr. Putin, that he himself had engaged in impropriety. The City Legislature recommended to Sobchak that Putin be removed from his post as a result of that. Sobchak protected Putin and did not allow him to be removed from the position. Later we find that when Sobchak flees Russia because of the charges against him, he comes back only after Putin is prime minister of Russia and is in the position to protect him.

I was hoping we could discuss that a little bit and try to get beyond the level of "well this was just a nasty political fight," or "the Communists," or whatever.

Mr. Torrence: I think that I saw that Mr. Putin was often so open that there were people who sneaked in and did things that shouldn''t be done. But, he always seemed to catch them eventually. As a person there, I was not terribly aware of all of the accusations that were being made. I heard accusations of Mr. Putin being in on deals from Westerners from about 1992-93. Those people said, "our project is going to work because we have Mr. Putin all lined up here." And usually those projects, I think without exception, went sour. They never took place. After about 1993, I never really heard of people talking like that. I know there were some moves against him. But, I think that Mr. Putin was a very straight shooter. I think that part of problem is that we are not used to a politician who speaks so succinctly and so straightforward. I don''t think I have answered the question.
Mr. Yagya: I would like to make one comment. Mr. Sobchak returned to St. Petersburg from France when Mr. Stepashin was prime minister, not when Mr. Putin was prime minister. As for some nuances that were said here about some conflicts involving Mr. Putin, and some legislative and economic conflicts, they were resolved very well and actually in a win-win type of situation. If fact there might have been some ideas and accusations about these situations, about non-ferrous metallurgy in St. Petersburg, but this issue was solved in a good way and the conflict was resolved.
Michelle Sachs: I am from a project on the role of American military power in preventing violent conflict. I am interested in knowing if you can tell me a little bit about Putin''s relationship to the military. In light of his policies in Chechnya, please talk a little bit about whether or not the military has changed the way it does business in Russia.
Mr. Markov: First of all, I should say that I think that the concerns about the big role of the military in Russian politics are overestimated. There are strong differences between the role of the military in Russia generally and in countries in South America and Southern Europe. In those places, during the process of democratization, the armies were very consolidated and they had experience of being involved in politics in the past.

The Russian army is not so consolidated. Secondly, it has a very bad record of being involved in politics. In fact, Russian officers and generals are afraid of politics. Every time they have been involved in politics, the politicians use them then give them up.

That is why what the Russian military wants to see from the politicians is order. The best is in writing. You may remember the conflict between Pavel Grachev and Mr. Yeltsin in October 1993 when Mr. Yeltsin asked Mr. Grachev to send troops to the Parliamentary Building. Mr. Grachev said, "Please, give me the order in writing." This is exactly what the Russian military expects from the politicians to give direct orders and to take political responsibility for them.

This is exactly what Mr. Putin can give them. He already gave that to them. That is why Mr. Putin is absolutely their leader. They love him and are ready to support him under any circumstances.

In the period when Mr. Putin will be elected in the great majority, it is very good. If Mr. Putin can lose his power during the general elections, it could lead us to a more dangerous situation. But now there will political stability and loyalty to him.
Trudy Rubin from the Philadelphia Inquirer: I would like to ask Mr. Markov if he could say a little more about the authoritarian side of Putin as he sees it. In the Kommersant interview, Mr. Putin is scathing about Babitsky, makes it clear that he thinks he should be in jail, says the Chechen''s should be crushed like dogs. What I am wondering is: does this give him any leeway if this is the way he has to treat a rebel republic, is this the way he has to treat Tatarstan? Does it mean he will never be a negotiator? What does it mean for freedom of the press or for dealing with the oligarchs?
Mr. Markov: Mr. Putin thinks that Babitsky is a "soldier in the information war against Russia." Also, when he was taken he has some plans of the way around the Russian troops and blah blah blah.

Talking more about authoritarian tendencies, I would say of course it is the control of the Russian media. It was not created by Mr. Putin. I think there is already a two-level mechanism of how it will be controlled. On the first level, the owners of the media holding will control the behavior of the journalists using economic and administrative means. Then the Kremlin will control the owners using economic mechanisms. Because to my regret, the Russian economy is too weak and Russian customers have little money to pay for the media and to support advertising - which would be the economic grounds for the independence of the media. There are major media groups that cannot be economically independent because of the weakness of the Russian economy. I think the situation will be used.

The best exception could be Mr. Gusinsky''s media holding, not because he will be totally independent but because he may be able to create an image as a symbol of the independence of the Russian media. I suppose that he will pay a lot for this image.

There is also the authoritarian control of the regional leaders. I think Russian government will try to limit the influence of regional leaders. It is absolutely, by the way, necessary to have some regional economic reforms. But how it will be done? It is very important. Because it could be done by law, or by some violation of the law. It is most important. We hope that Mr. Putin will do everything legally, but we are not sure about this because maybe his need to create this mechanism will be too strong and he will try to do it quickly.

Another is the preferences to different economic groups. I am absolutely sure about such oligarchs as Boris Berezovsky. I think they will never be punished. They will maintain their freedom and position in the economic system. But, they will be pushed a little bit farther from the decision-making process. This aluminum deal from my point of view is exchange between the Kremlin and Mr. Berezovsky''s group: "Take the aluminum industry and leave us the ORT TV station," which is the basis for political influence. I think it will be exactly the model of relations.

The Russian oligarchs will be allowed to take control of a big part of the Russian economy and Russian government will help them a lot. But they will be pushed far from decision-making mechanism.Mr. Handy: Very quickly, as you think about the excellent question you posed, please also keep in perspective that there is a record for Mr. Putin as someone who focuses on building compromise, who understands the democratic process in his country to include the media as evolving, but thirdly is somebody who is expected to act and do.
Mr. Torrence: I think that we shouldn''t only look at the three periods in Mr. Putin''s life, but that we might also look a little earlier to his university days. I was recently involved with Mr. Sobchak in bringing him over here at this time, which of course is not now going to happen. But, I asked about what the university was really like in those days. Apparently it was exciting and was a bit of a hot bed of liberalism and reform. It was an exciting place and he graduated from that in 1975, and that was before the KGB,
Mr. Yagya: I would like to repeat that I am on the team of like-minded people that was created at the beginning of the 1990s in St. Petersburg. Therefore, I support Mr. Putin but I would like to point out that thankfully there is not one line of thinking in Russia that opposes the acting president. There is a journal that is called New Times, Obshchaya Gazeta, or Common Newspaper, and I think the democratic features of Putin were formed in St. Petersburg, at that time it was Leningrad State University. Even at that time it was famous for free thinking. There were some repressive measures against that university at this time.
Mr. Markov: ...regarding this university and high school…I would say that Mr. Putin was growing up and socialized in a time comparable with mine. At that time, especially in St. Petersburg, the most popular music among the students was not revolutionary singers but the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. You know how it works with students in high school. You must love the singers whom everyone loves. So, I think it is not bad to have a representative of the new generation of Russian politicians and not bad to have a Pink Floyd fan as the new Russian President.

style="color: green;font-family: serif;font-weight: bold;">PANEL 2: THE ELECTION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

Graham Allison: We are very pleased that Jim Hoagland is the chair of the session. As everyone here knows, Jim is the foreign correspondent for the Washington Post. In my judgement (and I think it is also his general reputation), he is one of the most thoughtful Americans to cover international politics and who keeps us mindful of why it matters. We are very glad that Jim is here.

Jim Hoagland: Thank you Graham. It is a pleasure to be able to sit here and drink in the wisdom of the assembled experts that Graham and Tim have invited here. We gained a lot from the initial panel. Graham said that we were trying to illuminate the darkness. I must say that dealing with Putin''s Russia so far has been equivalent to looking for a black hat in the middle of a dark room on a very stormy night, if you take into account the Chechnya campaign.

I will introduce the whole panel and then come back and start at the top. First we will hear from Vyacheslav Nikonov, who is the Director of Polity Foundation in Moscow. Those of us who have had occasion to visit Moscow from time to time know that he is one of the most astute observers of Russian public opinion and politics. He has really pioneered in many ways the art of figuring it out what it is that people think.

Second will be Vladimir Boxer, who is a fellow at the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project at Harvard. He has a lot of practical experience in Russian politics. He started off as a medical doctor actually and then switched to taking the temperature of Russian politics, both as part of the Democratic Russia Party and Russia''s Choice when he served with Yegor Gaidar.

Then we will hear from Tim Colton who we have already heard from. I will not reintroduce him, but will extend a word of thanks to him as co-host of this very interesting panel session.

Then, implications of the elections for US-Russian economic relations will be addressed by Sergei Karaganov, who is Chairman of the Council of Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow. He is also something of a battle-scarred veteran of Russian politics and can perhaps give us some insights on what produced the results that we saw in the last Duma election. Sergei was very close to Mr. Primakov. He is well positioned to speak on the nexus of domestic and foreign affairs.

Finally, as our clean-up hitter, Graham Allison will talk about the implications of the elections for US-Russian security relations.

Vyacheslav Nikonov: Thank you Mr. Chairman. It is a great pleasure and opportunity for me to address such a distinguished audience and to see so many good friends here. How did Putin reach the top? Well the question is easy to answer. He was appointed Prime Minister by Boris Yeltsin, then became popular, then Yeltsin resigned which made the AP or acting president even more popular and enabled him to enjoy all the pleasures and natural advantages of being an incumbent. That is, free media coverage around the clock, support of the bureaucracy and regional authorities, and the automatic addition of at least ten percent of the electorate who vote for whoever is the boss.

It is more difficult to answer why this all happened. Putin''s unexpected appointment in August can correctly be described within the framework of the politics of the "Family", or within this school of thought. Surely Sergei Stepashin has more to say about what happened in August. But the Putin phenomenon is not just a function of the Kremlin''s bureaucratic manipulation. It has to do with public admiration for that person which makes him as loved by Russians as Bill Clinton is loved by Americans. Their approval ratings are surprisingly similar.

You know love is hard to explain. Love is all, and that is all we know about it, as Emily Dickinson once said. In the case of Russian''s admiration of Putin, we know a little bit more due to public opinion research. Chechnya is not the only reason, though of course that enormously popular military operation was important for Putin''s initial political acceleration of Putin and provided him with an image, not so much as a tough guy but rather as a defender, capable of protecting people definitely from "damn Chechen terrorists" and probably from something else like poverty, crime, unemployment and so on.

First and foremost, Putin was perceived as a clear contrast to Mr. Yeltsin, who managed to become the most unpopular person in the country by the end of his term. Yeltsin was disliked for being weak, old, sick and incompetent. Putin is liked for being young, strong, energetic and smart.

The AP''s success story can also be attributed to very good stuff: work. Its essence is not to put him in situations he can not [control] completely, at least from the point of view of media coverage. Putin doesn''t improvise and definitely won''t be engaged in any public debate with any other candidate [during the run-up to the elections].

Absence of clear ideology is presented as, and probably is, a strength, rather than a liability. Several years ago, we celebrated the end of history with Fukiyama and the destruction of the Soviet Union. Now Russia has even more reason to celebrate the end of ideology. While the elections of 1991 and 1996 were dominated by code words like communism, liberalism, social democracy, capitalism, and so on. Now we don''t even hear those words from the candidates. This is understandable since for the electorate all those code words sound like four letter words now.

A pragmatic, with no established ideology can this time appeal to much broader segments of the electorate than any ideologically committed candidate. The fact that Putin is not a well-known politician is also perceived as, and probably is, a strength. All the previously famous politicians are too well-known. The Russian political elite of the 1990s, democratic, undemocratic, quasi-democratic, has been burned by Yeltsin, by itself, by political opponents and by media wars. Unknown in such a context does not mean inexperienced, it means not one of those old faces responsible for people''s troubles.

Destruction or self-destruction of the previous political class made it possible for political wizards in the Kremlin to easily eliminate potential contenders. One after another. Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov and former Prime Minister Primakov were discredited in the dirtiest of campaigns during the Duma election which was rightly regarded as sort of a presidential primary— as Sergei Markov stressed. Governor of Krasnoyarsk Alexander Lebed was disciplined through federal subsidies and through his best hope in Moscow, Boris Berezovsky. The Kremlin broke a deal with the Communists which enabled them to obtain the speakership in the Duma. In exchange, Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist leader, pretends he is running a serious presidential campaign, having a hard time explaining to his electorate why the proletarian party is in alliance with the corrupt, capitalist bloodsuckers from the Kremlin.

The one-man shows of Zhirinovsky and Yavlinsky never attracted more than 5-10% of the sympathizers who can easily be ignored and neglected. With Luzhkov, Primakov and Lebed not running and Zyuganov and Yavlinsky being at a distant second or third with like 18 and 7% respectively, Putin looks like a definite winner. And, nothing succeeds like success. Citizens are not inclined to waste their votes supporting clear losers.

By far the only real opponent to Mr. Putin and his victory on March 26th is voters'' apathy. If we have less than 50% turnout, the election will be invalid. But my guess is that Putin''s staff will handle that problem. He will be elected. After the inauguration, he''ll start answering the question, "Who is Mr. Putin." Maybe even for himself.

Jim Hoagland: Thank you. Your own experience as a Duma deputy of course provides a certain authenticity to your views. I should have mentioned also that you were chairman of the Duma''s Subcommittee on International Security. So that will perhaps, in the question and answer period, give us a chance to hone in on your thoughts of where we go from here in terms of Russian-US relations.

Now, Vladimir Boxer.

Vladimir Boxer: Thank you Mr. Chairman. It is a great pleasure to speak to such a great audience although I am not sure if it is a great pleasure for the audience to hear such imperfect English as mine.
The topic is, "Who is competing to control Putin? Will they succeed?" I don''t think any part of the ruling Russian elite still labors under the illusion that it will control Putin. He has achieved a level of independence sufficient to prevent such attempts. This level is based on broad electoral support, on the strong presidential powers that are provided by the Russian constitution, and, what is particularly important on the compatibility of both Putin''s image and Putin''s message with the predominant needs of Russian society for order and stability.

The only way for special interests to secure even a bit of the influence is to prove their own necessity in the implementation of the policies of the Russian president. Yet this necessity depends on the way Putin will choose to lead the country. That is why this problem of competing clans is not as much about personalities as about directions.

There are three major orientations within the federal elite: oligarchic, liberal and that aimed at state capitalism. And they were all derived from the Yeltsin epoch. Basically the concept of all of Yeltsin''s reign was based on the mixture of all three directions taken in different proportions at different times.

The results are predictible. However, even taken separately, each of those directions cannot provide consolidation of elites necessary for stable economic growth, which is Putin''s main goal. That is why another group of important players proposes its service. These are the governors.

Of course the governors may differ in their view about Russia''s direction. But they are ready to sacrifice their differences and even their independence from the president in exchange for preservation of the existing regional elites, which they control or by which they are controlled.

However, what is good for obtaining and even retaining power is not as good for conducting reforms. Paradoxically, the very stability of the existing regional elites is the main obstacle to stable Russian development. The level of corruption and economic ….. are just unbelievable.

Thus, in order to achieve his goals, Putin has to choose a course for the systemic renovation of the entire Russian elite. And in doing that, by the way, he will repeat the strategy of his favorite hero, Peter the Great, and the major ……. of his generation.

Mr. Hoagland: Thank you. Tim Colton is Director of the Davis Center for Russian Studies and the Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies at Harvard University. I first became aware of his work through an excellent book that he wrote on the Russian economy, then the Soviet economy, toward the end of the Soviet Union. Tim.
Tim Colton: Thank you. My assignment is to deal in five minutes or less with the question, "Is all of this good for democracy in Russia?" There are many Russians in the room and most of them have long since become sick and tired of being lectured to about democracy by American professors. So, I don''t think we have to do it in quite that way. But, I think it is perfectly legitimate to ask if this transfer of power is good from the point of view of the long-term development and the evolution of the Russian Federation as a democratic society.

My answer in a nutshell is that we see a very mixed picture. We should not lose sight of the good things that have happened. For years we speculated on whether Yeltsin could ever give up power. Could he ever relinquish control of the throne? We wondered whether his passing would be marked by intense conflict at the top, whether he would attempt to impose his own successor in an unlawful way; whether he would contrive some ridiculous title for himself like President of the Russian-Belarussian Union and use that to extend his stay in office.

None of those things happened in the end. Yeltsin went out on December 31st with his head high. He really did it with class. I think it is one of the best things he ever did with power was giving it up in that way. So that, I think, we ought to mention right at the outset.

Now, there are questions, and several of our panelists before the break eluded to this briefly, about whether through this particular mode of transferring power— although it is certainly good from the point of view of stability and continuity of the institutions— whether it was "democratic. " Is this the way it ought to have been done? It was not what Yeltsin proposed to do. He always said he would keep power until the end of his second term and then he would swear in his successor, the man who won a competitive election for his office. That did not happen. Again, we should not expect Russia or any other country to conform perfectly to some theoretical abstraction of how things must happen.

But, I have always found the rule that my colleague Sam Huntington devised some years ago to be a useful one. He said in talking about the consolidation of a democratic political order, that a good test to use is what he called a "two turnover test." That is, you can''t really consider a democratic system to have taken root and to be immune to challenge until those people or groups who took power after the collapse of the old regime, the authoritarian regime, have surrendered power to another group, and that group in turn has surrendered power. A second time. Two transfers of power.

As far as I can see, and judgment is required here, I don''t think that this transfer of power would really fully satisfy even the condition of a first transfer of power. So, in terms of the long-term settling down and settling in of this new political order, there may be some minuses to the way that Yeltsin did it, particularly his refusal to really alienate power or leave very much to chance.

Just another couple of points very briefly. We touched before the break on what people expect of Putin. There is a danger, it seems to me, of exaggerated expectations. Almost everybody by now is on the bandwagon. Almost everybody sees him as responding to his or her needs. In fact, as I think he knows, governing is going to be about making choices. He may find it very difficult to do that and to carry his coalition along with him because to some extent this has been a coalition based on the illusion of common interests or of universal, society-wide interests. Governing is not really going to be like that.

His rhetoric emphasizes one theme more than any other: the theme of the strong state. From the point of view of democratic values, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I think one of the lessons of Russia in the 1990s is that for a weak state, a state that can barely get through the minimal functions of governing a territory, it is very hard for it to operate in a democratic manner. It may be attempting to respond to what society wants. Even that is probably a stretch for a lot of the 1990s. But, when it cannot really do anything to realize its own priorities, then the chain of responsibility is really interrupted. Putin, I think, understands that. From the very first interviews that he gave and statements that he made, he harkened to this theme of the strong state.

The problem is though of course that a strong state, if not also a democratic or a responsive state can just be a code word for dictatorship. Russians have seen all of that before. I don''t believe that it is possible to tell from Putin''s words what he really means by a strong state. We can wish things into it and say, "what he really means is a strong liberal state." I certainly hope that is what he means. And my Russian friends mostly hope that is what he means. But I don''t think you can really make that out from the words themselves.

When it comes to concrete institutions, Putin has been, on the whole, pretty vague. He supports Russia''s presidential system and the 1993 Constitution. He is opposed to amendments to that constitution. That being the case, it is hard to see what he is going to do with respect to relations with the Duma that will make it a more effectively functioning parliament for Russia, because it is so weak. He favors a strong executive, but Russia has a dual executive. It has a president and a prime minister. These two offices have been joined since December 31st but that is not going to last much longer. The real question is about how a directly elected president governs when he has a prime minister and a cabinet which is responsible in limited ways to parliament. There are all kinds of international responses to this dilemma. The French have done it a certain way. How Putin intends to work it and to make that an effective mechanism for governing is totally unclear from his statements.

The other issue— I don''t want to be overly negative here, but these are questions and concerns that I have— would have to do with another kind of institution, namely political parties. In terms of the development of a democratic political system, the model the world over has been to place a good deal of reliance on parties as the kind of articulator of the interests of social groups. Parties wage election campaigns. They get elected. They organize legislative assemblies. They do a lot of positive things. It is very hard, as it has been said, to imagine a democracy without an effective party system.

Yeltsin never really had much to do with parties in his eight years in power. He was in favor of them in principle, but he didn''t really want to associate himself with one of them. Therefore it was widely hoped at least that his successor would actually be affiliated with a party and would be a party builder.

That may eventually happen with Putin. This Unity group may eventually develop into a real political party. But, if that happens, it will occur after he has been elected, and not as part of the process of getting him elected president.

In sum, I think that we see here a mixed picture at best. There are some positive things have developed. There are some things that are not so encouraging. I just close with one note about apprehension and anxiety. I don''t know whether the Russians who are here would agree with this. I have been to Russia three times since September. I have found that somehow every time I go back to my friends and ask them, "so what do you think," that the anxiety level increases each time. Anxiety, a certain sense of foreboding, not necessarily just fear, as if they know what Putin is going to do, but a sense of unease about not knowing what he is going to do. His mandate is so broad and he has presented so little that is concrete for people to go on.

So my reaction is a little bit like my reaction when I flew into Reagan airport yesterday afternoon. I was surprised to see the cherry blossoms on the trees. Sergei Karaganov was sitting next to me and told me to expect them, but I was a bit skeptical. So there they were. Yet, I kind of thought to myself, you know, this is spring. The blossoms are on the trees. But if that is the case, why is it so cold outside? Why is it so chilly? I think I have somewhat of the same feeling about Russia today.

Mr. Hoagland: Thank you Tim. Of course Washington is known for its notorious false springs which bring the buds out then suddenly clamp down on them very quickly. I am not drawing any parallels here. I hope I am not. Sergei Karaganov is one of the 100 or so people who most influenced the way journalists and officials from the rest of the world view their country. I think the journalists here know what I mean. He has become a person, who, when you go to Moscow you must go to see, because of his command of ideas, language, and his analysis of where things are going. Sergei.
Sergei Karaganov: Thank you very much. First of all I would like to add something to what Tim Colton said. I think that in terms of future Russian development, including the development of the Russian political system, what is called here the development of democracy, it might be that Putin is more important than even Yeltsin was. Yeltsin was brought to power by a political movement. He had strong opposition and was working with certain very obvious limits.

Putin is coming to quite a different situation. The Duma has lost, at least for the time being, any power as an opposition body. The Communists have been disgraced, even among themselves. There is no political opposition any more. The liberal right, unfortunately has been disgraced by the fact that the reforms which they allegedly have been pursuing have failed. So civil society is as weak as it used to be or even weaker for the time being. The elite is demoralized and largely corrupted.

With this kind of a combination, I must say, Putin might be called the last hope for Russian democracy. I would like to stress that it is not for quotation because I have been close to Primakov and I do not want to jump to the other wagon. What I am saying is not for quotation.

Tim Colton: But you are on TV.
Mr. Karaganov: (Laughter) Oh, I didn''t know that. Now, it is really very important where the man will lead the country because a lot, too much for my tastes or to anyone''s taste is dependent on his personality and his views.

Second, now I am going to the economy. First of all, Putin coming to power is good news for the economy. Second, it is good news. Third it is good news. Fourth, there are question marks. Why is it three pieces of good news? One is that anybody who comes to power after Yeltsin is good news. Second, now there will be, at least for some time, a lot more predictability. Third, the main problem in the Russian economy is not lack of legal tax codes or some laws or even their implementation. The main problem is absolute lack of trust in the government by the Russian people, Russian investors and foreign investors.

That is the key problem of the Russian economy. The rest could be dealt with. Here I am speaking with some knowledge. I am also involved in consulting with many Russian businesses. Nobody has any trust. And, any person who invested in Russia in the last year is looked at as a lunatic.

By bringing in probably a group of more energetic, more predictable people and by the fact that people are inclined to trust him, Putin will bring at least for the time being a different climate into the Russian economy. Short term, one year or so, I think we are in much better shape than we used to be.

Now as to the medium term, there are questions. First of all regarding what he and people around him say. He is a liberal. He is an…… liberal. That means that he understands that Russia needs a strong state which does not necessarily interfere into the economy but which regulates the economy and which creates, first of all, law and order, which is needed for the economy. Because, as you know, Russian investors are completely, or at least almost completely— unless they are part of one of the oligarchy groups or a major foreign investor— completely defenseless vis-à-vis certain criminal groups or else bureaucracies.

So, Putin is law and order, which is good. And, he doesn''t want direct state interference into the economy. But rather to creating structural reforms. That is what he says. That is exactly what Russia has been lacking during the last nine years of reforms when people have been talking but no structural reform has been achieved. No banking reform, no judicial reform, nothing was achieved. In principle what he says is good for the potential investor both Russian and foreign.

Second, he sees as he says his main goal to be the concentration on revitalization of the Russian state and economy. That means that if he delivers on his word, it means a less activist foreign policy and more concentration of the government on the real business of Russia. This business is getting Russia out of its crisis, which could become its last crisis. Everybody understands that we are on the brink of disintegration if we fail with reforms this time. He says that he knows that.

Fourth, he understands very well that Russia could not survive without being open to the outside world, and without inviting foreign investors, be they Russian or not. He has said this repeatedly. Again, if he delivers on that, that is good.

Now there are some question marks. First, what will his new economic team be? It has to be fairly new because the previous economic teams have disgraced themselves by incompetence and corruption. They are of course fighting to become his new economic team.

Second, how far can he distance himself from the oligarchs? Would he be tempted or wouldn''t people around him be tempted to create new oligarchic groups which in the end will start to ruin the Russian economy as effectively as the previous oligarchic groups were ruining it? And ruin trust toward the government?

Whether he will be really tough in fighting corruption, at least at the top. Because that is needed to recreate trust in the government and in the economy. And, again, how hard will he fight to create a proper investment climate? That is the key issue. That is law and order, legal frameworks, but above all, delivering on the promises. That is the big issue he has to deal with and of course he can''t answer that at this juncture.

What he is saying, and I am saying, and this is the voice of the former opposition. What he says, I like more than anybody has ever said about the Russian state and economy. I know also that he has to start almost a new round of reforms and that task is again insurmountable. This time however, he has a better chance than anybody else because of the reasons that were mentioned.

What the outside world could do: press for the rights of foreign investors because we will need outside pressure, by the way, to defend the rights of investors. That is one of the things where we would appreciate outside interference. Second, do not try to give us advice on the economy. I mean the advice from the US is dead on arrival. If you advise us to make money, we will throw it into the toilet. There is no question about that. Of course some will not be thrown away, it will be stolen, if you give this advice. The last thing is: do not give the government a lot of money. Restructuring is one thing. But, one of the worst things which has been done to Russia was of course that we were credited for so long. That preserved the completely ineffective and corrupt system which we have had over these last nine years. We have to start real reform.Jim Hoagland: Thank you. That brings us to the question of the implications of the elections for US-Russian security relations. Our co-host Graham Allison, who is Director of the Belfer Center at Harvard, will bring to bear on this question his experience at running Russian policy at the Pentagon in the first Clinton term. And, he will give us his sense of the importance of these elections for those two great fortresses of American policy: the Pentagon and Harvard University.
Graham Allison: Thank you Jim. I don''t know which may have done more damage. As for the implications for security-there are basically two questions. One for US interests. And secondly, for US policy. Let me make four points quickly.

First point. For the wider American public and perhaps even for some of the journalists gathered here for the briefing today, the first question that arises when the topic of Russia comes up is "why do we care?" If you raise the topic of Russia in most circles, most Americans'' dominant reaction is fatigue and then disgust. So, why does Russia matter?

There is a new conventional wisdom even that now says Russia is either too weak or too corrupt or too confused or too distracted to matter, and we should just forget it. Take a breather.

In one line, why Russia matters - it is an old fashioned line but it remains true. Russia remains a nuclear superpower. It is a hard, old, Cold War fact. But, the physical fact has not changed. When I teach undergraduates at Harvard, I say to them, "Remember, a single nuclear weapon would spoil your whole afternoon." It is a terrible idea, but it is a physical fact.

Indeed, the fact about the Russian arsenal today is that it is more threatening than it was during the Cold War. Why can that be the case? Because now there are two problems. One: it is too big, so that if it were used, we would disappear. And two: it is too weak, in the sense of the controls over the weapons and the weapons-usable materials - now this makes it credible that somebody could steal weapons or weapons-usable material. And, sell them to terrorists or a rogue state. And those weapons could be used against us. So it is a matter of both being too strong and too weak.

There are a dozen good reasons why Russia matters, but if we can''t remember but one, the answer is that it could cause us to disappear. That is sufficient.

Second. On Putin. I think the first panel illuminated the subject very well. As for Putin today, we see a political candidate who has proved remarkably adept. Very fast learner. Very successful in all of the manipulations of modern politics and some others. But, someone who is wearing electoral masks. It is only after those masks come off, when he has consolidated power, that we will find out who the real Putin is. For a person whose KGB colleagues in the old days regarded as secretive, it is not clear who knows the answer to this question.

But what we do know is that once elected and inaugurated, he will have become the democratically elected tsar according to the constitution that Yeltsin created with almost no serious checks and balances. Almost no serious checks and balances. So particularly for journalists who have not been covering this topic, I think that looking back at what the powers of the presidency are relative to any competing power helps you understand why there is such a brooding, even a foreboding, among Russian colleagues as they think about what Putin might do. The answer is - almost anything he decides to do. Almost anything.

The third question. What does Putin say? American journalists especially don''t take seriously what political candidates say. Or what they write. But if we imagine that Putin meant some substantial part of what he writes and what he says, I would say, "go read what he says." If you look at the Russian Election Watches in your package, we give you both the web-sites where you can see the texts themselves, and we give a simple summary of them. In the March issue, just looking at what he says and taking it seriously, there are three points.

First: philosophically, who is this guy if you believe what he writes and says? He is patriotically and realistically pragmatic. I think patriotism in old fashioned terms. Territorial integrity and Russia''s well-being are things he cares about deeply. But without any great romanticism about old empire or any great recent or current or future crusades. Realistic to the point of being cruel, but I think as Sergei Karaganov has said, you cannot find a Russian political leader ever to speak so harshly about Russia''s current conditions as this guy. Thirdly, pragmatic, which he has demonstrated himself to be over a whole period of time. But, pragmatism that shows no evidence of constraint by principle or ideology.

Second point. His diagnosis, if we believe what he says, of Russia''s problem today. He says the problem is survival. First problem is whether Russia is going to survive as a state. Just as Sergei said. And secondly, its problem is whether it is going to become a third order power. With respect to survival, that is how Putin sees the threat of Chechnya as was discussed in the earlier panel.

In terms of the power of Russia today, in Putin''s New Year''s Eve address, it is a statesmen that I still find almost breathtaking. In his New Year''s Eve address to Russians, which is supposed to be a time that says Happy New Year, be happy. He offered them a cold shower in which he compares Russia unfavorably, not to the US, not to Germany, not to any European countries of the major powers. But to whom? To Portugal!

Here is the quote: "To reach the production levels of Portugal or Spain, two countries not known as leaders of the world economy, it will take Russia approximately 15 years if the GDP grows by 8% per year." Have a happy New Year!

What therefore about Putin in terms of threats and opportunities for American policy? Long subject. But I would say very briefly, that if Putin has concluded, as he writes and says, that Russia''s integration into the world economy is essential for Russia''s success and to prevent it from becoming a third-rate power and falling off the screen, or alternatively disintegrating. And if he believes what he says about the proposition, again which he speaks very clearly to, "there is no third way." There is no enthusiasm for a special Russian way. He says, "there is one highway. All the countries that succeed are traveling on it. We need to be on that highway." That is a virtual quote.

If he believes that integration as he says, through the IMF and the World Bank, throughthe international capital markets is an essential precondition for Russia''s success, this will indeed prove to be, as President Clinton quoted Margaret Thatcher, "a man with whom the West can do business."

To conclude, the optimists would say, "Putin is going to turn out to be some Russian version of (now analogies are always terrible) Deng Xiaoping." Or, maybe Pinochet. That is a person who has one problem or two. One, hold Russia together. Chechnya is the answer to that, he thinks, in strengthening the state. But the main problem is recovery of Russia''s economy over 15 years if it grows at 8% in order to reach the level of Portugal.

This is a long, multi-generational project. A necessary condition of which is the integration with the world economies. In which case the US, as one of the chief gatekeepers of that highway that he wants to travel down, has a great opportunity to dobusiness on the things that matter most to us. For me it would be loose nukes and securing and the safety of the Russian nuclear arsenal. But it seems to me that it goes more broadly than that to even some actions that have to do with the character of the Russian society and the degree to which freedom is exercised.

The pessimists - and for a good pessimistic analysis, I would recommend the Election Watch''s summary of the article by Kovalyev who is the most eloquent and effective human rights advocate in Russia today. He has a much more pessimistic analysis in which basically the combination of reversion to natural patterns, particularly the reliance on KGB and military in order to establish more authority in the state plus external behaviors that end up exacerbating this, lead you back to a point where, as he concludes, the year 2000 will be regarded historically as the twilight of Russian freedom.

Jim Hoagland: Graham thank you. All of those presentations were really quite on point. I thought Graham really helped sharpen the focus there at the end. I want to use the basis of something that he said as a question for our Russian participants on the panel.

You have just heard Graham talk about how there are in effect, no checks and balances on Putin once he has received a democratic mandate in these elections. Slava, starting with you, then going to Vladimir then Sergei: I wonder if you would agree with that assessment, and secondly, if you could describe from what you have seen of Putin in his time in government and as a politician, how is he likely to go about forming his government once he has won this election? Who will he want as his prime minister? We have heard analysis from all you that suggests the economy is the number one problem. Will he go to a kind of conventional economic professor, or somebody currently in his cabinet to take care of the economy? Or, will he be looking for somebody who can also deal with the serious problems of public confidence, law and order? How is he going to go about assembling the cabinet that will help him govern and help him govern and perhaps be something of a check on him? Slava?Vyacheslav Nikonov: As for the checks and balances system, of course constitutionally, there are no checks and balances. In the Russian constitutional system, the president is not part of the executive branch. But at the same time, the president has some executive powers as well as some legislative powers through the power to decree. And, even some judicial powers as the president, constitutionally, is the arbiter between the regional authorities and the federal center.

So, yes, Putin is constitutionally quite free to do whatever he wants, really. Besides, his governing style is to eliminate, if it is possible, all other strong alternative centers of power. The Duma has already been eliminated as an alternative center of power. It looks like the governors will be disciplined, though of course it will be very hard to really discipline the governors. The Moscow grouping of Yuri Luzhkov is still under pressure and this will be continuing. And, I do not expect the cabinet to become an alternative center of power.

That brings me to the second half of your question regarding possible staffing policies. In my view, Putin will prefer a technocratic cabinet. He wouldn''t like to see some strong politician with established ideology, with some constituency ties in the elite to become the prime minister. So, I would expect that probably that Kasyanov, who is a technocrat would stay as prime minister. Or, there are some other possibilities and some people, for example German Gref who is now in charge of this Strategic Research Institute, or even Alexander Zhukov, the chairman of the Budget Committee of the Duma or even Mikhail Zadornov the former minister of finance, the former deputy prime minister.

In my view, it will never be people like Primakov, Yavlinsky or even Chubais who is always a center of power on his own, if he is part of some government administration.

But there is one very strong constraint, I think, on what Putin can do. I would call it "the Russian mess." It is really very hard to control everything in such a messy place as Russia. The orders may go somewhere. You may press some button in the Kremlin expecting that the lights will go on somewhere else, but you will find out that the lamps have already been stolen, that the wires are not there, and so on.

In my view of course, this is a great guarantee of any authoritarian regime. It will never happen. Even such an efficient politician as Mr. Stalin spent15 years of hard work establishing a sort of authoritarian rule in Russia. I don''t think that is Putin''s aim, and I don''t think he will be able to establish a sort of authoritarian regime even in 14 years, if he manages to increase the term of his presidency from four to seven.Mr. Hoagland: Vladimir, how does that sound to you?
Vladimir Boxer: Actually, I couldn''t agree more with my colleague, generally. I think the power of any Russian president is based not as much on the institutions as on his electoral support and public opinion. That will be very important. Actually, Yeltsin enjoyed the same level of power on the paper in 1993, 1996, and 1999, but his authority was very different during those times.

Besides, I think Putin will just behave as any rational politician. He will try to strengthen his power as much as he can. Any politician, including any Western politician would behave exactly the same way if he were in Putin''s place.

Considering the government, I agree that probably he will try to introduce a pragmatic technocratic government. This is exactly what I was talking about. That he will try to create a new elite. Because the time for the old elite regardless of its ideological view is over. It is just over. Maybe some politicians or statesmen like Chubais or others will survive, but only if they themselves will limit their ambitions. Jim Hoagland: Before we have Sergei tell us whether we should be cheered up or depressed by the prediction that Putin will be a rational politician, let me just say that we will go next to questions from the audience. Sergei:
Sergei Karaganov: Basically I think both my friends and compatriots said exactly what I wanted. I would add only one thing. That is that the consolidation of the regime will take about a year or a year and a half. So it will be a prolonged period. That is why I believe the first prime minister most likely will be a provisional one. Only in the case when the first prime minister would become an outsider, I mean a loyal outsider, and the only person I know is Mikhail Prusak, the governor or Nizhny Novgorod, who carries a lot of weight but is usually very loyal. Then, in that case, it could be a prime minister for many years.

Second, I would say that what Putin really needs is a change of elites. That is why I think that maybe even a year would be too short a period to speak about the eventual composition of the Russian government and the eventual composition of the ruling elite. Arnold Harlick from Carnegie Endowment: In addition to the question of "will the real Putin stand up and what is it that he wants to do?" There has been a lot of discussion here about constraints on Putin. I think frankly that is at least as important and maybe more important. Graham Allison made the point that he thought Putin could do almost anything he wanted both because of the way the constitution is structured and the absence of competition. Slava Nikonov added, however that the traditional Russian disorder is going to interfere with anything that he might try to do, or that it would take a long time.

I think that the panel so far has underestimated the extent to which any Russian president including Putin, is going to be constrained by the existing system of elites, oligarchs, regional barons, and the connection between power and property in the country, which has created very strong, not united, networks of special interests. In order to be able to deal with those networks of special interests in the way that panel members have suggested he could do, there would have to be a period of enormous instability, destabilization of the system in order to shake up the clans and existing system to give him the freedom of action that they think he will enjoy.

I would like to get back to those panel members who would care to reply. Is it a fact that the clan system, the power and property connections that have been created by 8-9 years of post-Soviet rule are all that easy for a more authoritarian president so inclined simply to disregard and brush away?

Sergei Karaganov: Of course, I mean, Arnold is absolutely right. There are many constraints within the society and within the power elites. However, I would tend to say that the most powerful oligarchies are almost totally dependent on the state. That is a unique Russian feature. They also dictate the policy of the state. Putin has a much greater possibility than otherwise because he could change the oligarchs, or just simply push them away. That would immediately grossly undermine the structure of their power relationship that has existed. Russia is softer than Arnold predicts.
Jim Hoagland: Sergei, what would that cost him if he pushed away or destroyed the oligarchs or networks?
Sergei Karaganov: Let''s put it this way. Oligarchs have been made up, have been pushed away, I mean for the last five or six years there was the history of oligarch groups coming too close and being pushed away. He will have to distance himself from some of the groups, obviously. I don''t think that as a cautious man, he will do that immediately. But everybody suspects that in order to maximize his power and to get credibility with the country, he needs to distance himself from all the groups. Maybe new groups will be created and that would be another replay of a sad story. However, there is this possibility that, while I don''t think he will rush into it, but that he might be doing that.
Vladimir Boxer: I think first and foremost that the power of oligarchs and the danger for Putin is based or was based on the fact that oligarchs controlled and are still controlling the media. I think this time is over. It is quite easy for Putin after the elections to change the situation, and he has already made some cautious steps. He changed the government presenters in the board of ORT - the Berezovsky-owned the major Russian TV network. He, not he directly, but his Minister of Information Mikhail Lesin announced the bid for the frequency on which ORT broadcasts. So I think for him it will be just a matter of a couple of months or maybe five or six months to take the whole situation under his control. The greater part of oligarchic power was just the ability to blackmail any government. This is actually why they were the owners of the major Russian TV networks.
Vyacheslav Nikonov: Well, in my view, all of our Russian oligarchs have been appointed and they can easily be dismissed. For example, if two days before the election, Putin finds out he needs to get two additional percentage points to win in the first round, Berezovsky will definitely be in jail. That is easy.

As for constraints. I would completely agree with Arnold. I was exaggerating saying that there are no serious constraints. Of course there are some. They are not in the constitution. There are not institutional constraints. But there are certain economic constraints. Putin cannot do certain things because they can ruin the economy and that is something he cannot afford to do. Of course he should take into account what the army thinks. For example if today Putin decides that he is going to sign a peace treaty with Maskhadov, he will be in very big trouble with the military, who would never forgive him.

Of course he is constrained by the governors. I do not believe that he will be able to change the system of selecting the governors - having appointments instead of elections. For some governors that would be a great idea, of course: in order not to face reelection or just face the president, break a deal with the president rather than face your electorate. But in general, I don''t see how that can be done.

And of course there are some media constraints. Though, recently Gleb Pavlovsky who is one of the top political advisors to the administration said that "now, since we are going to do some unpopular things and we expect some media attacks at the administration, we probably recommend the president and the administration not to read newspapers and watch TV." Graham Allison: Let me just do a 30 second comment. I think that we have gotten a good description of the character of the constraints internally, which are thinner than one would imagine in a normal check and balance system. The main point. The objective external constraints that come from Russia''s condition and weakness as Putin analyzes it, if we believe what he says, are much more powerful. And, I think that is really the main point that Arnold was making.
Jim Hoagland: If they are used. There is some evidence that they aren''t being used as effectively as they could. Question from the distinguished colleague from Philadelphia.
Trudy Rubin, the Philadelphia Inquirer: I wanted to ask the panel, especially Sergei Karaganov a couple of foreign policy issues. One of them is more domestic: Chechnya. Do you see any way in which Chechnya could be become a constraint? If things dragged there, if casualties mounted, and if finances were consumed, would this begin to hurt Putin? And, on the foreign policy side, if Putin''s focus is going to be domestic, how does that affect dealings on issues of concern to the United States like ballistic missile defense? Do you think there will be a compromise there because Putin does not want that to become a big issue that distracts him? Or, is that, on the other hand, possibly a nationalist issue that could gain him points at home?
Sergei Karaganov: First, Chechnya. I think most of the analysts have overestimated the fact of casualties in Chechnya. The population would support the Chechen War even if the casualties went on much longer. Most probably one could come to the conclusion that maybe the Chechen War, no matter how awful it is, saved Russia because it provided it a window through which some of the inner hatreds and humiliation disappeared. It healed, to a large extent, the Russian national psyche.

First of all let me remind you as to the future facts. Chechnya will be a big problem for the foreseeable future. First. Second, let me remind you that there is a victory there. A very bloody one, but a victory. And the victors are usually judged in a different sense than those who have lost the battle.

Second, nobody expected to have a victory there, including myself. I think there will be a special status for Chechnya— not a special status within the Russian Federation, but something like a military dictatorship for this special area, which is provided by the way by Russian [military personnel] if necessary. I don''t think that would be that big a problem. Especially if we solve the main problem. If the outside world which is pressuring Russia on Chechnya now will see that Russia is developing into a healthy direction, I think of course Chechnya will be less of an itching problem between Russia and the outside world. As we all understand, I mean Chechnya has been used as a vehicle to distance from a very ugly and corrupted regime, which was reigning in Russia a few months ago.

As for the foreign policy, Slava and I and others have written a foreign policy concept for Putin. It will be published soon. Whether Putin will accept it or not, we will see. But basically, I think that any reasonable Russian president will take a policy of economizing on foreign policy. That is, choose a few interests and defend them hard, but do not get over-involved in too many issues. And, get out of confrontation as far as possible. So avoiding confrontation would be probably the policy of Russia. That does not mean that every issue will be yielded.

As for the ABM treaty, we are in a very delicate game of chicken. I don''t even want to comment on that. But I would say that the policy of Russia, under Putin, from what he is says, would be to get out of confrontation, economize, try to concentrate on the integration of Russia into the world economy and informational sphere rather than playing with Sadaam, which is a 100% uneconomical way of wasting your resources.Tim Colton: I just wanted to say something about checks and balances. Several people raised that point and about whether Arnold was asking whether he is constrained by forces in his environment. I think we have to be careful here that we don''t lose sight of the fact that institutions can be enabling as well as constraining.

I think that the very fact that he is not constrained by checks and balances is far from giving him only freedom to act. It actually limits, I think, what he can do with his power. It is better to have institutions than not to have them.

When you want to do something, to go back to that image of pressing the button to turn on the light. The problem with Russia has often been that the people at the top, especially when they thought they had to light every corner of this vast country themselves, thought they could press a button and suddenly lights would go on. When they didn''t go on in those remote rooms, well then they would send a separate wire. They would dispatch a crew to rewire this room and that room. Then they would appoint people to check the rewires. Then they would try another approach. Of course all the circuits were overloaded and when the Soviet power collapsed, a lot of those switches weren''t connected to the lights anymore. So, Yeltsin often kind of took the attitude, "well if the state can''t turn on the lights, then you worry about it. Light a candle yourself. It is not our problem anymore."

But I think when governments want to do something, and Putin does have this kind of visionary side to him, "I want to get some things done," that institutions, with all their wires and switches and gauges, are really essential. I think a lot of the problem is he is not constrained enough. Think of how he has said, come on rhetorically, "they tell us to negotiate with the Chechens, but there is nobody to negotiate with." On this particular score he is probably right by now. There is no one and nothing left to negotiate with. But I think that for Russia generally this is a kind of systemic problem. There is nobody to interact with. Civil society is weak, the institutions are still kind of half-baked. So the people at the top, whatever their intentions, even if they have freedom to announce anything they want, have had trouble over and over again in getting things done. I think that dilemma is going to be revisited under this new president. John Evans, Department of State. One of the key institutions in Russia clearly is the military. There has been some discussion in the Russian press about one of the most important appointments that stands ahead for Putin to make, that is of a defense minister. Minister Sergeyev, General Sergeyev is 61. There are several contenders who have been mentioned. My question is what might any of these appointments mean for the future of reform of the Russian military? And would, for example, General Nikolaev, General Yakovlev, Chief of Staff Kvashnin, maybe General Kazantsev, or one of the generals who has been engaged in Chechnya. Will we be able to tell anything from that ultimate appointment?
Sergei Karaganov: First of all, I think that while of course people here are obviously preoccupied with the minister of defense, the main thing with the Ministry of Defense is not the figure of the minister of defense, but whether the defense sector of the economy and the armed forces of the Russian Federation will start to be modernized and reformed at last. At the Council of Foreign Defense Policy we are publishing an agenda for the president with a blueprint also on military reform. I think at this juncture, Putin will have to think about a civilian minister……

However, I don''t think that could be done immediately. That is why I think that Minister Sergeyev, who is widely respected by most in the military and especially outside the military, will keep his position for the time being. But then, much more important decisions will have to be made rather than personnel decisions.

Jim Hoagland: I want to thank the panel and the audience.