Despite growing protests, Putin may well return as Russia's president. But what kind of president will he be, asks El-Sayed Amin Shalabi On 8 December 1991, an unusual announcement came from the relatively unknown city of Brest in Belarus. The Soviet Union, leader of the communist world and the sole rival of the US for 40 years, was no more. Since then, the US has become a lone superpower, the uncontested leader of the Western world, and a main arbitrator of all sorts of international crises. The Russian Federation, which replaced the Soviet Union, was no match for the growing power of the US. The Russian Federation inherited 50 per cent of the population of the USSR, and 76 per cent of the land, but it lacked the zeal and purpose of its predecessor. The first president of the Russian Federation was Boris Yeltsin, the politician who won international recognition when he climbed on top a tank to defy Communist hardliners who wanted to bring down Mikhail Gorbachev. Turning his back on the one party system and planned economy, Yeltsin opened up the economy and allowed a multiple party system to emerge. Despite his efforts, the 1990s were hard for most Russians. The country was caught in a tidal wave of corruption and crime and the instability was such that the country's population shrank by six million or so within a decade. Internationally, Yeltsin courted the US and the West, signing Salt II, fostering closer ties, and even refraining from vetoing UN Security Council resolutions. Andrey Kozyrev, the man who carried out Yeltsin's foreign policy, would often cite Aleksandr Pushkin's words: "To hate the West is to hate human advancement in general." But by the mid-1990s, Russian foreign policy came under massive criticism by hardline Russians, who accused the government of pandering to the West and sacrificing Russian interests, as well as betraying its friends abroad. The criticism led to a change in tack. In 1996, Kozyrev was replaced by Yevgeny Primakov, a former apparatchik who was keen on asserting Russian identity and putting the West in its place. Russia's newfound assertiveness was not without a price. Moscow locked horns with the US over Kosovo, Bosnia, and Iraq, and tension replaced harmony in its relation with the West in general. Primakov became a prime minister briefly, before the job went to former spy master Vladimir Putin. A diligent, determined man, Putin offered the Russians what some of them at least had wanted: a firm hand on the wheel. He started out by fighting corruption, enforcing the law, and stamping out crime. He also continued to distance the Russian Federation from the West in a select number of international issues. But even with Putin in power, the country lacked the cohesion it had in Soviet hands. Chechnya was getting out of hand. And regional leaders were often ignoring or contradicting the central government, even in matters of security and foreign relations. With more than 98 provinces and 21 republics to keep in line, Putin had his hands full. But no one posed a greater threat to Putin than the oligarchs, the name given to a clique of businessmen who controlled a big chunk of the economy and often bought the loyalties of top government officials. People like Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich and Mikhail Khodorkovsky had risen fast, and often through dubious means, and were not above using bribery and threats to get what they want, and keep it. Some of them controlled the oil sector, still a major source of revenue in Russia. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's production of oil was slashed by one half, but it is still the world's third largest producer of oil, after the US and Saudi Arabia. The oligarchs were not only a threat to law and order in Russia; their extra-legal activities, including money laundering, were a constant source of irritation for other nations. Determined to defend the authority of central government, Putin began a campaign to put both the oligarchs and regional leaders in their place. He was quoted as promising to end "the political life" of any regional leader who defies central policies. And he investigated and threw in prison some of the country's best-known oligarchs. Internationally, Putin walked a thin line. While making it clear that the Cold War was over, he reminded the West that Russia expects to be consulted before major decisions are taken. He criticised the unilateral tendencies of the US and said that the world could use a multipolar system. He also renewed old friendships across the Middle East. Domestically, Putin got lucky. A surge in oil prices helped him increase salaries and thus bought him the much-needed loyalty of government employees. Despite his efforts to enforce law and order, Russia remains one of the world's most corrupt nations, sharing the same ranking -- 154 in a recent survey -- as the Central African Republic. Putin's party, Unified Russia, is not exactly the soul of democracy. Currently, the party is in control of much of the media, the banks, and the energy and car industries. When Putin's second presidential term ended in 2008, he named Dmitri Medvedev as his successor. The latter opted for modernisation, improving the business climate and offering incentives to foreign investors. When his presidential term drew to a close, Medvedev said that he wishes to swap places with Putin in March 2012. This statement, coming on the heels of widespread irregularities in the November 2011 parliamentary elections, was too much for the public to take. As protests in Moscow and other Russian cities picked up pace, it became clear that the next Putin presidency, if his deal with Medvedev holds, may not be as easy as he had hoped. Nevertheless, Russian observers believe that Putin enjoys support among a substantial section of the Russian public; people who want to see the country in firm hands. Putin is likely to be Russia's next president, but we don't know what kind of president he would be. Is he going to be the clear-headed man he was in his first presidential term? Is he going to act hawkish, as he did in 2007 when he drew parallels between the US and the Third Reich? Or is he going to act dovish, as when he knelt humbly before the grave of 20,000 Polish officers killed by the Soviet secret police? The writer is managing director of the Egyptian Council for foreign Affairs.
