On February 24 Saint Petersburg buried Anatoly Sobchak, a prominent post-Soviet politician who had become one of our television heroes, a man to whom we had long got used to precisely like we now get used to the characters of popular television shows. Sobchak was an out of the ordinary personality, one of those who turned the boring work of nomenklatura-type, but generally speaking, Deputies’ forum of the USSR, into a captivating spectacle. Sobchak was one of the few liberals, who managed to come to power and change not his convictions. Perhaps his losing power in Saint Petersburg was directly connected with this.
We knew that Sobchak headed Russia’s northern capital, but only few during Sobchak’s mayoralty noticed his deputy, Vladimir Putin. Now the obituaries specifically point out that Sobchak considered himself mentor to Russia’s acting President.
What irony of fate! In our memory, Anatoly Sobchak’s political career is almost in the first instance associated in our memory with his chairing the commission of deputies to investigate the events in Tbilisi. At that time Sobchak convincingly argued that police functions should not be entrusted to the army, and that when it is forced to fulfill such functions, the misadventure ends in tragedy for civilians and soldiers alike.
Vladimir Putin has returned these functions to the army. One cannot deny, however, that the generals had sought this as well. They could never forgive Sobchak’s condemnation of their wielding shovels (against demonstrators — Ed.). Grozny was taken using quite different weapons.
On February 24 Putin said many good words about Sobchak. And yet, we should understand: he is not his pupil.
