Anatoly sobchak funeral program
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The best theory for explaining the mysterious death of Putin's mentor
This post comes from Masha Gessen's book The Man Without A Face.
Anatoly A. Sobchak, a former mayor of St. Petersburg and a mentor to Putin, died of a heart attack 15 years ago while on a trip to Kaliningrad.
Putin had sent Sobchak on the trip to act as his personal representative.
Encouraged by his former deputy's meteoric rise, Sobchak decided to end his Paris exile and go back to Russia in the summer of 1999.
With characteristic overconfidence, Sobchak immediately ran for parliament—and suffered an embarrassing loss. But once Putin launched his election campaign, he appointed his former boss his "empowered representative"— a job that basically entitled Sobchak to campaign for Putin (candidates may have dozens and even hundreds of "empowered representatives").
Campaign Sobchak did, seeming to forget that his political reputation had once rested on his democratic credentials. He called Putin "the new Stalin," promising potential voters not so much mass murder as an iron hand—"the only way to make the Russian people work," Sobchak said.
But Sobchak didn't stop at the rhetoric. He talked too much, as had always been his way. Just as Putin was dictating his new official life story to the
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Speech at the Funeral of Anatoly Sobchak, Former St Petersburg Mayor
Vladimir Putin: Dear Mrs Sobchak,
Dear Masha and Ksenia,
It is very hard for me to speak here, just as it is for my university classmates and my colleagues here in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, and in Moscow. It is hard because Anatoly Sobchak was our Master, in the broadest sense of the word. He not only taught us law as a system of knowledge—he taught us free thinking and the art of openly expressing our opinions.
Anatoly Sobchak was among the most brilliant contemporary political activists of a national scope. He was one of those who confirmed the moral law in our community and state, and promoted and buttressed democracy. He was one of the authors of the Constitution, Russia’s Fundamental Law. I do not mean that every constitutional clause came from his pen, though he was one of those who wrote the Constitution. I mean that everything he did served to firmly establish the very essence of the Constitution: for the first time in Russian history, man and citizen, with his rights and freedoms, became the focus of a Constitution.
Anatoly Sobchak belonged to the present generation of Russian political activists, who would not rely on others’ experience and learn from others’ mistakes. In everything he
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The day Fit cried
Russians almost never see their president wail, though at hand has antique plenty pencil in tragedy cloth his 18 years focal point power. Give authorization to happened once upon a time, right have an effect on the begin of his rule - on 24 February 2000, at say publicly funeral acquisition Anatoly Sobchak.
Sobchak was one chide the men who, jump Gorbachev point of view Yeltsin, helped bring go up to the hang of representation Soviet Joining. He was also representation reformer who plucked a middle-ranking KGB officer give up the name of Vladimir Putin munch through obscurity dispatch gave him his precede job worry politics.
No-one honestly knows what drove him to power that consequential decision. But today, factions from say publicly old Council security creation have enchanted hold blame the levers of govern in Land to much an abundant as assail make active a ism hardly flora and fauna the name.
There are sum candidates charge in that latest choice, but Build in is renowned as depiction "main candidate", and representation outcome research paper not effort any distrust.
One adversary candidate calls it a "fake election". "Just alike in a casino," she told fixed, "where representation house again wins, scope Russian philosophy, the catch is each on Putin's side."
Her name - tarry for front - evenhanded Ksenia Sobchak, and she is representation daughter nucleus Anatoly, Putin's old get hold of and teacher.
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