The history of Russia, and of humanity, was set on its current course 30 years ago, when then-St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak’s unexpected narrow electoral defeat propelled Vladimir Putin to Moscow. 

Sobchak’s defeat was not a given. Anyone can easily find online, according to their taste, a suitable version of the story of the passions surrounding those fateful two-round elections in May and June 1996.

At the start of 1996, Sobchak, St. Petersburg’s first democratically elected mayor, did not realize how unpopular he had become and was certain that victory in the upcoming election was his by right. 

But some of his subordinates were not so sure. One of his three first deputies, Vladimir Yakovlev, was already busy thinking about his own future in the Kremlin and had taken to flirting with Sobchak’s critics by decrying the state of the city. Another first deputy, Alexei Kudrin, saw this as a personal attack and, as it appeared to journalists at the time, was confused about what to do next. And then there was Putin, who avoided publicity as he had always done and appeared to act as though the election was none of his concern.

The 1996 mayoral vote was not Putin’s first encounter with electoral defeat. The previous year, as the regional boss of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin’s Our Home — Russia party, he nominally led the party’s State Duma campaign in St. Petersburg. There, the party won 13% of the vote — less than in Moscow, but a nationwide failure by any measure. Judging by all appearances, Putin treated that first electoral setback as a formality that had no bearing on his political future. He made no effort to actually campaign, instead hiring others who could do his job for him and ultimately take responsibility.

At first, he also did not see the gubernatorial election as........

© The Moscow Times