Hereditary disease

15 years ago, on August 9, 1999, President Boris Yeltsin appointed almost no one unknown to anyone, director of the Federal Security Service of Vladimir Putin, the new prime minister of the country and announced the desire to see him as his successor.

The statement of Yeltsin, who then changed the premieres as gloves, reacted incredulously. Observers could still believe that the successor of the president would be the veteran of the Soviet special services Yevgeny Primakov, who unexpectedly became a favorite of the Russian nomenclature or at least a well -known prime minister Sergei Stepashin. But Juzymisterputin? Why is he? And can it happen that the new president of Russia will be a person who has never been engaged in public policy, had no experience of state activity, and did not even enter the close circle of Yeltsin?

Now we know for sure - maybe. Yeltsin, who lost confidence among the nomenclature and desperately afraid of resignation against the backdrop of anti -corruption investigations of Karl del Ponte and Yuri Skuratov, had not such a large choice. Only a person’s personally devoted him could become the new president, but at the same time the Russian intelligence agencies, which firmly overlap the Yeltsin environment and finally became real power after the start of wars in the Caucasus. The last three premieres of Boris Yeltsin were immigrants from the special services, and Putin’s advantage was in one thing: he was weaker than Primakov and more inconspicuous Stepashin. It was such a successor that Yeltsin needed.

So a person who came to power against the backdrop of grandiose transformations in Russia and used the desire of society for changes to perform a rapid, unprecedented in Russian history of a political career, voluntarily gave the throne to the second age, who provided him with a calm old age, and his relatives - the preservation of capital. At the moment when a decision was made, which determined not even the nearest future of the country, but its very existence, in the Kremlin there was no person who thought about Russia - and therefore the Yeltsin words “take care of Russia”, spoken by the successor on the steps of the presidential residence, sound so false today.

This is not to say that Putin did not save Yeltsin Russia. It can only be stated that he had gigantically inflated that which seemed to be the soil and temporary many romantics of the 90s: nomenclature and oligarchic impunity, subordination of the economy to the interests of several families, lack of common sense in foreign policy, amicoshionism in relation to neighbors, the dependence of the media on the state and owners, and finally contempt for the people. Yes, Yeltsin had to maneuver much more than Putin, but within the framework of the price of oil and memory of society on the collapse of the Soviet Union, which existed under him. And Putin needed almost a decade for the final transformation of the Russian Federation into an authoritarian dictatorship of the Latin American type - and the features of the aggressor, ready to fight in their hands against those who are not obeying its rules of the game, Russia acquired only at the beginning of Medvedev’s reign.

But which is the deepest in the worship of Yeltsin, and Putin, and Medvedev is a reluctance to work as president of Russia. For each of these politicians, the Russian Federation was just an absurd stump of a real empire, which should be expanded due to rebellious provinces. Yes, Yeltsin did not occupy Crimea and did not introduce saboteurs into Donetsk. But he supported all the separatists who remained inherited from the Soviet Union, did everything possible so that Moldova and Georgia could not restore their territorial integrity, and Azerbaijan and Armenia were tightly driven into the Karabakh dead end. The adoption by the Russian society of this policy - how, we helped our own - allowed to carry out two bloody wars in Chechnya, which practically destroyed Russian democracy, and gave Putin the opportunity to transfer Russia to military rails in just a few weeks after the collapse of the Yanukovych regime.

Many people think that in 1999, Russian history could take a different path, choose the Yeltsin of another heir. But in this phrase - "Choose Yeltsin" - lies the lack of historical choice. Yeltsin - since the Russians were ready to agree with any decision - simply could not choose anyone else but a person who could provide him with personal guarantees - and such people are never reformers, but always perceive the most disgusting from the heritage of the predecessor.

The collapse of Russian statehood was actually predetermined by the collapse of the responsibility of Russian society and its stubborn, almost paranoid unwillingness to be responsible for the future of his own country.