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Foreign Policy
The Powers That Be
Some of the most important rival power centers that any incoming Russian president must face include:
The Regional Governors. Since 1997, almost all the chief executives of Russia’s 89 regions have been popularly elected, making it extremely hard for the president to dismiss them. Governors also serve in the national upper house of parliament, the Council of Federation, which can hold up or block most legislation. Since the early 1990s, governors have been co-opting the local directors of federal bureaucracies-tax collectors, police chiefs, even army commanders-by offering them wage bonuses, housing, and other perks. As a result, most governors can impede implementation of central decrees or laws that they dislike. Some of the most powerful include Mintimer Shaimiev of Tatarstan and Eduard Rossel of Sverdlovsk.
Big Business. Russian tycoons such as the controversial media magnate Boris Berezovsky are rarely out of the headlines, but their power pales beside that of Rem Vyakhirev, the head of the country’s natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, or even Vagit Alekperov, the director of the largest oil company, Lukoil. The latter do not just influence the state, in one sense they are the state-providing subsidies to decrepit parts of the economy in the form of free or cheap oil and gas, in return for tax breaks.
In the summer of 1998, the Kiriyenko government tried to seize Gazprom’s assets to force it to pay overdue taxes. Within hours, a call to the Duma had prompted a mutiny. The deputies voted 307 to 0 to demand that the government drop its attack. Even Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist leader and an advocate of renationalizing much of the energy sector, came out in the company’s defense, declaring that “splitting up Gazprom is tantamount to splitting up Russia.” The fuel barons also can affect presidential election campaigns with sudden cutoffs of energy, not to mention their large foreign currency export earnings.
The Duma. The 1993 Constitution reduced the Soviet-era powers of Russia’s lower house of parliament, but Yeltsin has generally bargained with parliamentary factions more often than seeking a test of wills. The annual budget law must get through the Duma, as must other legislation. Although the president can rule by decree on some matters, the Duma can overrule such decrees by passing laws that supersede them. Since 1996, Zyuganov’s Communists have been the largest faction in the Duma; its speaker has been an ambitious moderate Communist, Gennady Seleznev.
–D.T.