The Origins of United Russia and the Putin Presidency: The Role of Contingency in Party-System Development HENRY E. HALE S ocial science has generated an enormous amount of literature on the origins of political party systems. In explaining the particular constellation of parties present in a given country,almost all theoretical work stresses the importance of systemic,structural,or deeply-rooted historical factors.1While the development of social science theory certainly benefits from the focus on such enduring influ- ences,a smaller set of literature indicates that we must not lose sight of the crit- ical role that chance plays in politics.2The same is true for the origins of politi- cal party systems. This claim is illustrated by the case of the United Russia Party, which burst onto the political scene with a strong second-place showing in the late 1999 elec- tions to Russia’s parliament (Duma), and then won a stunning majority in the 2003 elections. Most accounts have treated United Russia as simply the next in a succession of Kremlin-based “parties of power,” including Russia’s Choice (1993) and Our Home is Russia (1995),both groomed from the start primarily to win large delegations that provide support for the president to pass legislation.3 The present analysis, focusing on United Russia’s origin as the Unity Bloc in 1999,casts the party in a somewhat different light. When we train our attention on the party’s beginnings rather than on what it wound up becoming,we find that Unity was a profoundly different animal from Our Home and Russia’s Choice. Unlike these parties of power, Unity’s chief aim was not to provide representa- tion for the president in parliament but to be a decoy in the war to defeat the vir- ulently anti-Kremlin Fatherland–All Russia Party,drawing away enough votes for the latter to finish below political expectations. That is,Unity was a presidential election tactic, not primarily a parliamentary party project. Its success in the Duma race,especially shocking to its creators,was a largely unintended,though Henry E. Hale is an assistant professor of political science at Indiana University. His research interests center around political party development and ethnic politics in post- communist Eurasia. He is the author of a book on Russian political party development that has been accepted for publication by Cambridge University Press. 169 170 DEMOKRATIZATSIYA certainly welcome, side effect. This side effect was itself the result of an extra- ordinary set of highly contingent events that all converged to bolster Unity’s for- tunes. In fact,only after the Kremlin realized that it had been quite lucky to defeat its presidential rivals in Fatherland–All Russia and that Unity had been key to its success in doing so,did Kremlin forces begin to turn Unity into what they hoped would be an enduring, well-developed political party to represent presidential interests across the land—United Russia. A highly contingent campaign tactic and a congeries of unusual events wound up unexpectedly producing one of the two major parties that defined Russia’s party system from 1999 into the next decade. The Challenger:Fatherland–All Russia Once Our Home is Russia leader Viktor Chernomyrdin was fired in early 1998 from his role as prime minister,Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov seized the initia- tive to try and build an opposition party based on the ruins of Chernomyrdin’s coalition of regional leaders (here called “governors” for simplicity’s sake) and other political notables known as the Our Home is Russia Party.4Among provin- cial leaders, Luzhkov was extraordinarily well positioned to initiate such an effort, possessing unparalleled stocks of administrative capital. Naturally, these began with his job as the leader of Russia’s political and economic capital, Moscow, a post that brought high visibility and national power to its occupant, even during Soviet times.5 Upon becoming mayor in 1992, Luzhkov wasted no time consolidating a wrestler’s grip on the city’s enormous economy. He proved to be a master of man- aging the post-Soviet transition, effectively turning Russia’s most diverse and complex economy into what Orttung has categorized as a “single-company town” dominated by the Sistema Group that his city of Moscow founded.6Through the privatization process and other maneuvers,Sistema acquired more than one hun- dred companies during the 1990s, including several banks, electronics firms, media outlets,the Moscow city telephone system,the Rosno insurance group,and ventures like Intourist and the glistening underground Manezh Mall,which were geared largely to Moscow’s tourism industry. Its affiliated banks included the Bank of Moscow, the official municipal bank. This bank processed 30–40 per- cent of the municipality’s resources and conducted extensive business with other key banks handling city business,including Most Bank. Other important Sistema banks included Guta Bank, the Moscow Bank for Reconstruction and Develop- ment, Promradtechbank, and Sverdlovsky Gubernsky Bank.7 Luzhkov’s admin- istration kept a finger in a vast number of his city’s economic pies,giving him a great deal of political influence. Luzhkov creatively used his control over the capital’s economy to build ties and influence with the leaders of a large number of Russian provinces. Since the USSR had managed the country almost entirely out of Moscow,virtually all com- munications,transportation,and other economic infrastructure tended to radiate out from Moscow to Russia’s other regions. One of Luzhkov’s most powerful levers was his cozy relationship with many of the country’s most powerful banks, virtually all of which were headquartered in Moscow, and most of which had Party-System Development 171 important relationships, directly or indirectly, with other Russian regions. The Sistema banks led the way, having gained rapidly in national standing after the August 1998 financial crisis. Whereas some banks like Menatep and Inkombank were hit hard by these events,Sistema’s Guta bank,the Moscow Bank for Recon- struction and Development,Promradtechbank,and Sverdlovsky Gubernsky Bank had not been heavily invested in the GKO (state security) pyramid. Guta Bank CEO Artem Kuznetsov said that his bank had considered this market too risky.8 These resources enabled Luzhkov to become an important source of patronage for poorer Russian regions. Luzhkov’s post as the capital city’s mayor also endowed him with certain advantages in the sphere of mass media. For one thing, his alliance with Most Group had the benefit of extending positive news coverage of the mayor across many of Russia’s regions through Most’s NTV television network and publica- tions like the daily newspaper Segodnia.9Taking to heart the immense power of nationwide television in getting Yeltsin reelected in 1996, Luzhkov sought not only to influence other people’s broadcast resources but also to build up his own. In June 1997,a new television network hit the airwaves under the control of the Moscow city government. This network,known as TV Center,sought to expand into the regions, reaching many major cities by the time of the 1999 election. Headed by Luzhkov ally Sergei Yastrzhembsky,most analysts considered this sta- tion to serve little function other than as a vehicle for the mayor’s presidential ambitions. The capital’s boss simultaneously began expanding his influence over print media, ultimately winning the loyalty of the longstanding and popular Moskovskii Komsomolets,Rossiia (created March 1998),and Metro (founded in 1997 and distributed weekly,free of charge),as well as the intellectually orient- ed Literaturnaia Gazeta. He also gained control of the Moskovskaia Pravda print- ing press,which potentially gave him influence over papers printed there.10 In the late 1990s,Luzhkov began staking out platform territory,playing most prominently on nationalist themes. He railed against Russia’s recognition that Sevastopol,a key port for the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet,was part of Ukraine. He called for Russia to send arms to Serbian-led forces if NATO launched a ground war in Kosovo in early 1999.11He declared that reunification with Rus- sians and Russian-speakers (rossiiane) in the “near abroad”should be a national goal.12He advocated consolidating Russia’s eighty-nine regions into ten to thir- teen provinces,implying that there would no longer be federal regions designat- ed as homelands for particular ethnic minorities like the Tatars.13 Luzhkov reserved some of his most blistering words for the Yeltsin adminis- tration,however. Though he usually avoided attacking the president personally, he lambasted economic “shock therapy”and what he said was corrupt privatiza- tion that had transferred important state assets to the control of a criminal oli- garchy. Pro-Luzhkov media,notably NTV,popularized the now-common usage of the term “the Family” to refer to Yeltsin’s inner circle, thereby casting them as a mafia-like syndicate.14He went as far as to say that the state should actual- ly renationalize some of these properties,reallocating their shares to those who suffered losses in the process of the original privatization scheme.15 His own 172 DEMOKRATIZATSIYA movement,he declared,would stake out a popular middle ground,what analysts sometimes called the “left-center”between the far-left Communists and the polit- ical “right”occupied by the Yeltsin administration and parties like Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces. His opposition to Yeltsin led him to promise that he would eventually take power away from the institution of the presidency,trans- forming Russia into a parliamentary state.16In 1998,he began converting these investments into a political party that he called Fatherland. At first,Kremlin officials saw little reason to worry,since most governors were reluctant to cede leadership to a person they saw as a chief rival for revenues and investment. The critical turning point came on August 17,1999,when Luzhkov cemented an alliance with two other major players. The most important was for- mer Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov who,at the time,was widely regarded as Russia’s most popular politician since he had been premier while Russia’s econ- omy weathered the financial storm of 1998 and began to recover by 1999. Fired suddenly by Yeltsin in the spring of 1999,he had also been wooed by the Com- munists. With Primakov on board,other Russian governors were more willing to join the Luzhkov bandwagon. This meant the “All Russia” alliance of some of the country’s most powerful (and often most autocratic) governors, including Tatarstan’s Shaimiev and Bashkortostan’s Rakhimov,who were sure bets to deliv- er large shares of the vote for their collaborators. Instantly,most pundits project- ed an outright victory for this “Fatherland–All Russia,” with some fearing the advent of a newly one-party state in Russia. The Kremlin Strikes Back The fact that all of these disparate and ambitious politicians had managed to come together so forcefully sounded alarm bells throughout many Kremlin structures. Despite the Communist Party’s failure to bring Primakov into their fold,even its leadership began suggesting that it could back Primakov in the presidential race should he perform sufficiently well in the Duma race and promise to give more power to the parliament,where the Communists were counting on a strong dele- gation.17Most worrying to Yeltsin’s coterie,however,were suggestions and even outright declarations that even the president himself could be prosecuted for wrongdoings committed during his tenure.18This Yeltsin “court”was usually said to include powerful insiders who had effectively run the country during Yeltsin’s long bouts with debilitating illness, alcoholism, and depression. Chief among these figures were Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko; oil magnate Roman Abramovich; “oligarch” Boris Berezovsky; presidential administration chief Aleksandr Voloshin; powerful railroads minister and erstwhile first deputy prime minister Nikolai Aksenenko; and other senior administration officials,including Igor Shabdurasulov and Valentin Yumashev.19 Each of these figures owed their massive opportunities for wealth or power largely to Yeltsin and stood to lose everything and to face possible criminal prosecution should the Primakov- Luzhkov team capture power. Luzhkov sensed the danger in pushing the Kremlin to desperation,but he also saw the electoral benefit to be gained from continuing to attack its corruption. Party-System Development 173 Thus, while roundly criticizing the administration generally, he proposed vari- ous ways of providing Yeltsin, although Yeltsin alone, with future security. For example,in June 1999,he suggested that all retiring presidents should become members for life of the Federation Council,a status that would grant them immu- nity from criminal prosecution.20 Themselves unprotected, many of Yeltsin’s closest circle of advisors and officials began devising ways to bring down the Fatherland–All Russia juggernaut. Their first set of attempts, trying to under- mine gubernatorial cooperation by proposing multiple counter-coalitions for governors, had failed as of August 1999. Their more aggressive efforts in fall 1999 proved much more effective. These efforts are elaborated in what follows. The Mass Media Assault During summer 1999,Kremlin “The ultimate target was Primakov, officials began a series of but the Kremlin’s strategy was first to moves to prepare for a media blast Luzhkov so as to turn him into a war. The aim was not simply a burdensome, malodorous albatross negative campaign to reduce the around the former prime minister’s popularity of Fatherland–All neck.” Russia in the electorate but to destroy the focal point that had allowed Russia’s powerful gov- ernors to agree on a coalition to capture the Kremlin. The ultimate target was Primakov,but the Kremlin’s strategy was first to blast Luzhkov so as to turn him into a burdensome,malodorous alba- tross around the former prime minister’s neck. Primakov was the more elusive tar- get given his longstanding reputation for honesty and his status as “national savior” in the wake of the August 1998 financial crisis. The key was first to brutalize his close party associate,the mayor of Moscow,and then more subtly undermine the authority of Primakov himself. By turning these two figures into centers of politi- cal antigravity,Yeltsin loyalists would re-create the collective action problems faced by governors, which in turn would facilitate other Kremlin strategies to prevent them from uniting to seize control of the Russian parliament and presidency. The centerpiece of the Kremlin assault proved to be the creation of what could be translated loosely as the “Sergei Dorenko Show”on the state-controlled ORT network and the decision to pit it directly against the NTV network’s famous news analysis program, Itogi (“Final Analyses”). To understand how remarkable the success of the Dorenko Show was,one has to understand the dominant hold that Itogihad previously enjoyed on Russian audiences. Every Sunday evening in the late 1990s, television sets turned to this program almost religiously for expert commentary on the news, policymaker interviews, and a biting satirical puppet show (Kukly) featuring caricatures of Russia’s best-known politicians. Itogi’s iconic status was so great that,even though ORT’s other news programs had high- er ratings and reached more Russian territories than NTV did, few paid much attention when ORT announced it was scheduling the Dorenko Show to go head- to-head against Itogi.21 Since NTV and Itogi had been relentlessly reporting on 174 DEMOKRATIZATSIYA corruption in Kremlin circles, and since NTV owner Vladimir Gusinsky was a longtime associate of Luzhkov as the head of the Most Group, observers saw ORT’s move as a vain attempt by the hopelessly unpopular Yeltsin “Family” to counter the news analysis hegemony of Itogi. The Dorenko Show, however, immediately made waves with its blistering attacks on Luzhkov and,on the basis of this political spectacle,actually managed to win the ratings battle when Itogirefused to respond with equally riveting mate- rial. During the weeks of the campaign,Dorenko,in his trademark smirking bari- tone, lambasted Luzhkov for alleged misdeeds ranging from the plausible, that there is corruption in Luzhkov’s Moscow bureaucracy, to the outrageous, that Luzhkov was an accomplice to the murder of U.S. businessman Paul Tatum, to the just plain ridiculous,that he had ties to the deadly Japanese Aum Shrinrikyo cult. For example,in just one typical episode,aired on November 21,1999,the Dorenko Show “reported”the following stories:22 A Fatherland–All Russia member, former Federal Security Service [FSB] chief Nikolai Kovalev, blocked the prosecution of a group of Chechens, the ethnic group widely blamed for the Moscow apartment bombings. “Luzhkov people”had threatened American businessman Paul Tatum to get him to sell his ownership stake in the Slavianskaia Hotel,which Tatum refused to do. Tatum was then murdered. The person shown defending Luzhkov was Kovalev,discredited in the previous story. Luzhkov broke his promise to build a hospital in the town of Budennovsk, vic- tim to a highly publicized hostage-taking by Chechen terrorists in 1995. Footage was aired in which Luzhkov stated that Moscow City did not spend a penny on the hospital. Bashkortostan’s President Rakhimov,another Fatherland–All Russia leader,was behaving “wildly”by suspending local broadcast of the Dorenko Show,an act that constituted nothing less than separatism and a lack of faith in his own people. Primakov revealed his own anti-Semitism by criticizing Boris Berezovsky’s run for the Duma in the Karachaevo-Cherkessiia single-member district.23 Merely pronouncing the word “Luzhkov” makes this election campaign dirty. “Luzhkov himself is kompromat.”24 Luzhkov controls all Moscow courts by paying them. He now claims that he will win his lawsuit against the Dorenko Show. Luzhkov’s lawyer in the case filed against the Dorenko Show is a representative of the totalitarian sect Aum Shrinrikyo. This lawyer is a friend of Luzhkov. When sick,Luzhkov is treated in Austria and Primakov is treated in Switzerland. This is unpatriotic. When Yeltsin is sick,he gets treated in Russia. Nightly news programs on the state-owned ORT and RTR echoed these themes,only slightly toning down the vitriol.25RTR network commentator Niko- lai Svanidze even reported that Luzhkov had failed to protect Muscovites from terrorism in the wake of the September 1999 apartment bombings.26 While the assault on Luzhkov was a multibarreled barrage,attacks on Primakov Party-System Development 175 started later in the campaign and tended to focus attention on the former prime minister’s age or to suggest that he was a clandestine and ruthless spymaster. In late October,a billboard appeared on a busy Moscow street with the words:“Con- gratulations! Dear Yevgeny Maksimovich is 70.”27This might not have been seen by all as a slight had not the words appeared next to a picture of a wheelchair.28 One ORT report even claimed that Primakov was terminally ill.29To bolster the spymaster image, Dorenko reported accusations coming from the Georgian spe- cial services—no friends of Primakov—that Primakov was linked to an attempt to assassinate Georgia’s President Eduard Shevardnadze.30 Dorenko’s show was devastatingly successful,quickly and easily outcompet- ing Itogiin the battle for viewers in the traditional Sunday evening “news analy- sis” slot. Remarkably, people watched the Dorenko Show not only as an enter- taining spectacle, but as a reliable source of information. The highly respected polling agency ROMIR found that the Dorenko Show was the most trusted ana- lytical program on Russian TV, believed by 34 percent of those surveyed. Only 23 percent felt that Itogi’s commentators were the most reliable.31Itogihad long decried corruption in the Kremlin “Family,”though not with nearly the panache displayed by ORT. In some sense Itogi was getting a taste of its own medicine, but a much deadlier dose. Nonetheless,NTV’s flagship program refused to esca- late its own level of hyperbole in response to the anti-Fatherland–All Russia cam- paign. In the end, mass opinion surveys designed by Colton and McFaul reveal that of people who believed that the Dorenko Show treated all candidates equal- ly,only 4.9 percent voted for Fatherland–All Russia,far below its overall show- ing at the polls. Similarly, among those who reported that they fully trusted or simply trusted the Dorenko Show,only 5.6 percent and 8.5 percent respectively voted for Fatherland–All Russia, whereas among those who mistrusted or com- pletely mistrusted it,the party received 14.9 percent and 29.8 percent of the vote.32 The Grooming of Putin To take full advantage of the renewed collective action problems facing Russian governors who might want to band together to capture Kremlin spoils,Yeltsin loyalists concentrated on finding a new political figure who could potentially serve as a “counter focal point”to Primakov and Luzhkov. After Yeltsin fired Pri- makov as prime minister in May 1999 and installed Sergei Stepashin in his place, many observers speculated that Stepashin might be the “counter-focal” candi- date. While in office, Stepashin did make an effort to coordinate a governors’ bloc that he could lead. Stepashin claims that the Kremlin deliberately under- mined these efforts,but Yeltsin wrote in his memoirs that he had seen Stepashin as a transitional figure even as he was being appointed,considering him too soft for the job. Yeltsin had only been paying the prime minister lip service, so Stepashin never had a chance.33On August 9,1999,Yeltsin fired Stepashin and replaced him with Putin. At the time,the vast majority of observers saw Putin as a sure loser,especially after he received the apparent “kiss of political death”in the form of an endorsement by the unpopular Yeltsin.34 Few people even knew who Putin was upon his appointment. His standing in the presidential polls was 176 DEMOKRATIZATSIYA a paltry 2 percent in August,having not even been included on the main polling agencies’questionnaires earlier.35 Then why did Yeltsin’s backers take what,at the time,appeared to be a mon- umental gamble on this public nobody? Putin’s personality appears to have played a significant role,enabling him to win the trust of powerful administration insid- ers,including Yeltsin himself. Yeltsin claims to have decided on Putin as his suc- cessor as early as spring 1999, waiting only for the right timing to tap him as prime minister.36 During his tenure in presidential structures and then the gov- ernment (as FSB chief),Putin cultivated a reputation as a fair,competent admin- istrator. Among those who could influence Yeltsin’s perceptions, “Oligarch” Boris Berezovsky reports that he himself was impressed by Putin during Pri- makov’s term as prime minister. While Primakov appeared to have Berezovsky on the political ropes under the pressure of a criminal investigation, Putin took the daring step of attending a birthday party for Berezovsky’s wife,making him one of only a few high-ranking officials to show up. This, Berezovsky declared in a later interview,demonstrated to him that Putin put loyalty and respect before public opinion.37Putin’s experience as the first deputy head of the Yeltsin admin- istration in charge of dealing with the provinces gave him a chance to demon- strate his willingness to put pressure on Russian governors disliked by the Krem- lin.38Even after he became head of the FSB and secretary of the security council, he made clear that he saw Russia’s top security problems to be internal rather than external, citing in particular Russia’s difficulties in the North Caucasus.39As of summer 1999,one of his greatest assets was not having any significant negative baggage by virtue of his being a virtual political unknown. Berezovsky later claimed to have played the main role in getting key Kremlin officials to see these assets,although Yeltsin takes all the credit for himself.40 But even after he was installed as prime minister and anointed Yeltsin’s “heir” by the president himself, Kremlin insiders were still hedging their bets when speaking to outsiders. As late as October 13, 1999, Igor Shabdurasulov, first deputy head of the presidential administration, publicly stated that the adminis- tration was not ready to back Putin or any other candidate at that time.41It took a new crisis in Chechnya and Putin’s decisive reaction to turn Kremlin cadres into true believers. The September 1999 Apartment Bombings and the New Invasion of Chechnya In August 1999, a wild set of events started to unfold that soon transformed an apparent Yeltsinite nebbish into a presidential juggernaut. First,in early August, rogue Chechen warlords invaded the neighboring Russian province of Dagestan, declaring their aim to carve out an “Islamic state” in the region. After Russian forces repelled this incursion,terrorist bombs,clearly timed to maximize casual- ties, decimated two large, working-class apartment buildings in Moscow in the middle of the nights of September 9 and 13. Two other apartment bombs were detonated in smaller Russian cities,leaving more than three hundred innocent res- idents dead. The terror that then engulfed Russian society was not unlike that Party-System Development 177 which seized the United States after the attacks of September 11,2001. Given the USSR’s cookie-cutter approach to housing design, the apartment buildings that had been obliterated,shown over and over on Russian television,looked just like the kinds of apartment complexes in which millions of Russians lived. Anyone’s residence could be next. Putin stepped up to the challenge by publicly blaming the rebellious republic of Chechnya for the bombings and ordering a large-scale military operation to gradually seize control of Chechen territory. Average Russian citizens, tired of inaction in the face of seemingly relentless national decline, rallied enthusiasti- cally around their new and decisive leader. When Putin invoked modern gangland slang to aver that he would “whack”Chechen terrorists “in the john”if he found them there,much of the public took comfort in someone they saw as finally tak- ing action to restore security and order. In fact,the Russian government had planned an invasion of Chechnya months before the apartment bombings, before Putin assumed the Russian premiership, and even before the rogue Chechen rebels’invasion of Dagestan. Stepashin,min- ister of internal affairs when the plan was initiated,brought this to light in a post- election interview. According to Stepashin,he,Putin (then FSB chief),and other government officials in March 1999 began preparing for a military incursion into Chechnya as a response to the ongoing disorder that had predominated there since the previous Chechen war had ended with the 1996 Khasaviurt Accord. Yeltsin later revealed in his memoirs that the precipitant was the March 5, 1999, kid- napping of a Russian deputy minister of internal affairs (General Shpigun),an act for which Moscow blamed Chechens.42The plan was to capture the northern part of the republic,stopping at the Terek River,which could serve as a natural bound- ary between the flatter Russian-controlled region and what, essentially, would become a rebellious zone in the southern, more mountainous part. Stepashin reported that he continued this planning during his own prime ministership and that Putin, upon assuming the reins of the Russian government, inherited this operation.43 Some observers have claimed that Kremlin insiders actually organized the apartment bombings as part of a sinister plot to make a new war in Chechnya pop- ular and,thereby,transform Putin into a leader of irreproachable stature. Since a post-election falling-out with Putin, Berezovsky has championed the “FSB did it” interpretation, publicizing the account of a former FSB officer (Aleksandr Litvinenko) and a historian (Yury Felshtinsky). According to this story, the “smoking gun” was a strange false alarm in the city of Ryazan. On September 22, shortly after the Moscow bombings, three people later identified as FSB agents were seen placing a large sugar sack,the kind that had actually contained an explosive in the Moscow blasts, into the basement of an apartment complex in Ryazan. After the bomb was found and defused, FSB spokesmen announced that this had merely been a “test”and that the sack actually contained sugar. The Ryazan authorities who had seized the material,however,reported that the explo- sives and detonating device had been real.44One thing remains unclear about the “FSB did it”interpretation:If the motive was to get an FSB-friendly man installed 178 DEMOKRATIZATSIYA as president, why would the FSB have preferred Putin, a little-known “upstart” who had leapt to the post of FSB director through outside political channels, to Primakov, who was certainly senior in stature and pedigree and who was also widely reputed to have a KGB past? Another version,even more circumstantial, tries to link former “Privatization Tsar”Anatoly Chubais to both military intelli- gence and the explosions.45 Government officials have sought to pin at least indirect responsibility on Bere- zovsky himself. FSB director Nikolai Patrushev claimed to have evidence that Berezovsky had extensive economic dealings in Chechnya and the North Cauca- sus more generally,including the financing of Chechen separatists.46A senior offi- cial in the office of the general prosecutor reported that his “In the initial aftermath of the organization was investigating attacks, few publicly questioned the a possible role for Berezovsky official version that the Chechens in financing the August 1999 invasion of Dagestan by were responsible. By spring 2002, Chechen rebels as well as the however, the vast majority of Rus- kidnappings of Russian offi- sians appear to have been uncertain.” cials in Chechnya.47 Financier George Soros, based on his personal interpretation of Berezovsky’s operating style, even speculated that Berezovsky might have been behind the terrorist attacks themselves.48 Prosecutors, without making public any evidence of guilt, quietly secured the convictions of five men from the republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessiia for the bombings and closed investigations into the Ryazan incident,saying “noth- ing unusual”happened there.49 One other plausible scenario was advanced by Reddaway and Glinski, who argued that the most likely explanation pointed to the Dagestan Liberation Army, a tiny militant Islamic organization claiming to represent several small villages in Dagestan. Warnings reportedly had been issued prior to September 1999 that this group would resort to the use of explosives in Russia were anyone to encroach on their communities, which were occupied when the Russians repelled the Chechen warlords from Dagestan in early August 1999.50 At this point,there is simply too little evidence and there are too many theo- ries to know for sure what really happened. For the purposes of our interpretive analysis, what may be more important is whom the Russian people blamed for the bombings. In the initial aftermath of the attacks,few publicly questioned the official version that Chechens were responsible. By spring 2002, however, the vast majority of Russians appear to have been uncertain. Just 16 percent were sure that Chechen rebels did it, but even fewer, 6 percent, were convinced of FSB involvement.51 All of this is quite consistent with the interpretation that Putin was popular not because the Chechen War was popular in and of itself but because of what Putin’s move into Chechnya communicated about Putin as a leader.52 Indeed,