Washington, D.C., March 21, 2024 - Vladimir Putin’s first election as president of Russia 24 years ago was “reasonably free and fair,” according to a declassified U.S. Embassy message from Moscow, one of ten documents on Russia’s 2000 presidential race published today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Written by then-U.S. Ambassador James Collins and Embassy officers John Ordway and George Krol, among others, the cables report multiple conversations with Moscow experts, a roundtable with Russian pollsters two weeks before the elections, and eyewitness accounts from almost 70 Embassy and consulate personnel observing the elections in 19 different regions of Russia.
Putin drew nearly 53% of the vote in March 2000 against 29% for the second-place Communist candidate, thus winning without a runoff. The same Communist had amassed 40% in the 1996 presidential elections against Boris Yeltsin, who had appointed Putin prime minister in August 1999 and then acting president on New Year’s Eve 1999. The Embassy analysis concluded that Putin was genuinely popular, with “spectacular” increases in approval ratings in the fall of 1999, primarily because of his tough, militarized response to Chechen terrorists who had invaded neighboring Dagestan and allegedly bombed apartment buildings in Moscow and elsewhere. Putin also benefited, the Embassy reported, from his apparent youthfulness and vigor, compared to the ailing, failing Yeltsin, and the government’s well-timed increases in pension payments. The cables described an electoral process that, although contested, was tilted in favor of the acting president with methods that would become even more dominant over the next 24 years. These included “wall-to-wall” television coverage of Putin’s every activity while he avoided debates, state-controlled media attacking potential candidates to keep them out of the race, and the deployment of state employees to drive turnout and even stuff ballots. Still, the Embassy concluded that Putin’s support among the Russian people was genuine, even if his election seemed to indicate a return to authoritarianism. As journalist Steven Lee Myers wrote in 2015: “Putin was indisputably the peoples’ choice in what would be the last election in Russia that could still arguably be called democratic.” Looming over the March 2000 elections was the dramatic backstory from the previous August through December 1999, which had elevated Putin from second-tier roles in the presidential administration, the intelligence services, and the Security Council, to the presumptive presidential winner. First, in August, Yeltsin picked Putin as his fourth prime minister in 17 months. In his memoirs, Yeltsin called this “prime ministerial poker,” in which the worst sin was to become more popular than Yeltsin himself. Putin’s job approval ratings at that point were about 2%, according to the pollster roundtable described in an Embassy cable. But the Chechen incursion into Dagestan in August and the September rash of apartment building bombings drew a forceful response from the new prime minister, including massive air assaults on Chechnya and the deployment of tens of thousands of Russian troops in a scorched-earth campaign, together with a “rally around the flag” surge in public opinion support for Putin. One Embassy cable from March 2000 posed the question, “Why Putin?” with the answer: “Chechnya.” https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2024-03-21/putins-first-election-march-2000 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29589): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29589 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/105068143/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
