After the Soviet Union crumbled, the foundation of the Russian Federation that replaced it
was constantly trembling on the unsettled fault line of history.
Constitutions were written, then thrown aside.
At one point, Russian tanks even fired on the parliament building after it was taken
over by demonstrators.
The Russian people were bewildered.
And they were desperate for consistent leadership to rise from the burning embers of their former
empire.
They needed someone they could take pride in--a hero who could return the country to
its glory days.
Afterall, these were the people who defeated Hitler and the Nazis, became a superpower;
and then went toe-to-toe with the Americans for the better part of four decades.
There was a lot that in their history that made them think, “we’re better than all
of this chaos.”
On New Year’s Eve, 1999, as the rest of the world rang in a new millenium, Boris Yeltsin,
Russia’s politically wounded President, resigned.
Vladimir Putin was chosen as his successor.
Putin’s career had skyrocketed.
Just four months before, he went from being a -- pretty much -- anonymous bureaucrat,
to being Prime Minister.
And in three years, he had transformed himself from an unemployed deputy city mayor, to the
President of the entire Federation.
But now, the real work began: he had to make sure he kept the job for good.
The first thing Putin did was pay his debts: he dropped all corruption charges against
Yeltsin and his relatives.
Next, an election was scheduled so the voters could decide whether to give him a full term
as President.
But, Putin and his backers made sure the voters didn’t really have of a choice.
First, Putin announced he wasn’t going to campaign...like, at all.
He wouldn’t even debate his opponents.
He still needed to fundraise, but the money would be used to buy the election, not political
advertisements.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were gathered in extremely shady ways.
A secret audio recording captured the Ukrainian President telling a colleague that Putin had
hit him up for cash and that he transferred $50 million to Putin from Ukrainian government
accounts.
Putin eventually paid back back an amount five times greater -- that’s $250 million
-- using money from the Russian state company Gazprom.
Because Putin was the acting President, Putin’s team used this untouchability to influence
the courts to systematically target and eliminate some of the most competitive opponents from
the race.
They found small technicalities, like not registering an apartment with the Central
Election Commission--even though that apartment was owned by a family member, not even the
candidate himself--that was enough to get someone taken off the ballot.
This worked so well that at the start of the campaign there were 53 declared candidates,
but by election day, the field had been trimmed to just eleven (pg 241 end of paragraph 1).
But of course, when anyone tried to hold Putin to the same standards, he would wriggle free
from being held legally accountable.
The next step in making sure Putin won, was putting heavy, top-down pressure on the regional
governors to get in line and support him.
If they refused, the Kremlin threatened to defund projects and services in their districts.
On election day, virtually every trick in the book was used to rig the result to guarantee
a Putin victory.
Extra ballots were simply printed, filled out for hundreds of thousands of “phantom”
voters, and cast for Putin.
When these violations were reported, agents from the Federal Security Bureau showed up,
but didn’t even ask about the charges.
They wanted to know the names of the honest citizens who had reported the fraud.
A widespread campaign of intimidation and threats kept many of the supporters of Putin’s
opponents away from the polls.
In a lot of villages, those who still showed up literally had their ballots taken from
their hands by a pro-Putin thug, who would then fill it out as a vote for Putin.
Another technique, called “caterpillaring” went like this: a voter approaching the polling
place, was offered a bribe of 50 or 100 rubles - less than $5 - by a Putin loyalist to take
a pre-filled out ballot inside and drop it in the box.
They would then take the blank ballot they were supposed to vote with back outside, and
trade it for the money.
The Putin man would then fill out the blank ballot as a vote for Putin, and repeat the
process over and over again.
If all this wasn’t enough, once the results of an individual precinct were reported, if
it was determined that Putin didn’t get enough votes, the numbers were simply adjusted.
In regions where the governor was a supporter, Putin received 15 percent more of the vote
than his overall nationwide average.
Putin finished with a staggering 53.4% of the total vote, despite going up against 10
other opponents.
And because he received more than half the vote, Putin won outright, avoiding a runoff.
But millions of votes were manufactured for Putin, meaning he clearly stole the election.
More than 400 lawsuits were filed across the nation documenting all kinds of these abuses,
but after Putin took office, the Central Elections Commission stifled efforts to investigate
them by completely removing the election data from its website.
It’s not like Putin didn’t have a chance without cheating.
He was a charismatic candidate.
And he was the sitting President.
Plus, he said all the right things.
In an open letter to the voters before the election, Putin declared, “Modern Russian
society has come to value the benefits of democracy, a law-based state, and personal
and political freedom...a key goal of our economic policy should be to make honest work
more rewarding than stealing.”
It seemed Putin was that man that the Russian people were craving, a man they could trust
to return their country to glory.
He was the clear favorite.
But being the favorite wasn’t good enough.
His victory needed to be guaranteed; airtight; locked-down.
In the days following this rigged victory, report after report came from Moscow sounding
alarm bells about the authoritarian direction the country was on the verge of heading in
under Putin.
Six weeks later, Putin was inaugurated and would immediately begin proving that these
reports drastically underestimated the power he would seize for himself.
Thanks for watching the fifth report in our examination of Putin’s dictatorship.
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Until next time, I’m Bryce Plank.
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