Why yeltsin choose putin

The message was important. That's why I wrote the famous line 'Forgive me'. Yeltsin had to speak about this. Except me, who'd written the speech. People burst into tears. It was an emotional moment. There were still four hours before the official announcement. So, all the people in the room were locked in.

They weren't allowed to leave. I took the tape and drove to the TV station. The speech was broadcast at midday. Vladimir Putin became acting president. Three months later, he won the election. Valentin Yumashev is often referred to as a member of "The Family": Boris Yeltsin's inner circle that, allegedly, exerted influence over him towards the end of the s.

Mr Yumashev dismisses "The Family" as "a myth, an invention". But there's little doubt that during the s, with President Yeltsin in failing health, the Kremlin leader placed his trust, increasingly, in a narrow circle of relatives, friends and business figures.

Yeltsin trusted members of his family. Putin trusts no-one. Mr Putin has remained in power, as president or prime minister, for 20 years. In that time, he has built a system of power that revolves around him. Under his watch, Russia has become an increasingly authoritarian state, with fewer democratic rights and freedoms.

He wants to avenge what he calls 'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century', the fall of the USSR.

He and his entourage, former KGB officers, believe the destruction of the Soviet Union was the work of Western intelligence services. Peter Baker and Susan B. Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries , p. It is also too complicated. Thomas M. Nichols There are no affiliations available. Personalised recommendations.

Cite chapter How to cite? Russian President Vladimir Putin has always embraced the idea that he rules Russia not with an iron fist but with a light touch and that he is the unchallenged leader of his country because the public puts its trust in him. Now, by declaring his intention to stay in power almost indefinitely, Putin has broken that unwritten pact with the Russian public. But it is hard to know exactly what is driving Putin.

After all, it has been nearly six months since the launch of a constitutional reform process that even Kremlin loyalists had interpreted as the start of a search for a successor in — and that turned out to be a giant facade. It was about holding on to power themselves. So, he rejected the complicated constitutional maneuvers suggested by his advisers for and chose the simplest and crudest solution — to stay on as president.

Why did Putin reverse the decision he apparently made in January? He is afraid of ushering in a perestroika 2. Even though he makes approving remarks about the achievements of the Soviet epoch, Putin is not a nostalgist seeking a restoration. Putin is more calculating. Like many former Soviet bureaucrats, he knows from bitter firsthand experience how and why a superpower like the Soviet Union met such a quick demise between and Putin is not a hard-line conspiracy theorist who believes that Gorbachev personally and deliberately made a fateful pact with the West to bring the country crashing down.

Rather, he appears to share the view that Gorbachev is culpable because he did not properly protect the core institutions of the country as crisis overtook it. The failure is seen as a broader one — of the collective leadership in the later Soviet period. And, this line of thinking goes, the disastrous consequences are still very much being felt today.

In , the perestroika issue is salient again. Putin and many of his advisers are aware that some kind of reform is needed, just like it was in But what exactly can be done to lift Russia from its current economic slump and overdependence on hydrocarbons? The language the ruling regime uses to discuss this is very cautious to avoid the appearance that Putin has any fault.

This slogan originally emphasized the security and prosperity that Putin was said to have delivered after the volatile s. The public is increasingly hungry for change. This does not entirely solve the problem, however. The limiting factor now is that Putin and his inner circle fear change could get out of hand.