That job, in 1997, kicked off a rise in Kremlin politics which, by any definition, has been meteoric.
From the start, the war has been inextricably bound to Kremlin politics.
But that doesn't mean the murder doesn't figure in Kremlin politics.
All the machinations may seem hard to follow from afar, and much about Kremlin politics remains obscure.
It shows that with or without glasnost, we still know very little about Kremlin politics.
In Kremlin politics he was considered a liberal - and from its temporal distance his thinking pointed forward to perestroika.
Mr. Burlatsky thought that "irrational reasons" might have moved Khrushchev to install the missiles, but not internal Kremlin politics.
On top of everything else, Kremlin politics have also altered the outlook for United States-Russia energy cooperation.
"In terms of Kremlin politics, I think Gorbachev may be as strong as anybody's been in recent memory," a senior official said.
But Kremlin politics wasn't the only force at work.
