Prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Primakov was President Mikhail Gorbachev's special representative to Saddam. Gorbachev was out, Yeltsin was in and Primakov continued to prosper. He became Yeltsin's head of the KGB successor, the FSB, and remained there, a true hard-liner, until 1996 when he was made foreign minister. Two years later he was named prime minister, a job that, to the surprise of many, he kept for a whole year. Then, not retirement but the presidency of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry -- and the full trust of Vladimir Putin -- came Primakov's way. This...