Vodka Politics (61 page)

“This is terrible! Who’s ruling Russia?” growled a scornful Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrossian to one of Yeltsin’s aides. “How are you Russians going to live? We don’t envy you.”
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And so independent Russia was born.

Role Reversal

The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union were largely peaceful, yet the political chaos, economic collapse, and demographic crisis that Russia suffered thereafter were similar to what happens in countries vanquished in war. Amid the disorder, Boris Yeltsin confronted the virtually insurmountable tasks of simultaneously transitioning not only from dictatorship to democracy, and from a command economy to the market, but also from an antiquated empire
to a modern nation-state, complete with new borders and fourteen brand new international neighbors. Yet perhaps the greatest Soviet legacy that Yeltsin had to confront was vodka politics.

Democratic theatrics aside, Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin was a product of the Soviet autocratic system, and it showed through his temperament. Raised in the austere Urals countryside, young Boris was an adventurer—he lost his left thumb and index finger cracking open a hand grenade stolen from a local army depot. Still, his adventurism was tempered by parents and teachers who sternly condemned alcohol. Even as a teen, Yeltsin had no patience for drunkards: he was known to snatch vodka from the hands of classmates and dump it on the ground.
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Yeltsin’s steadfast temperance weakened as he rose through the Communist Party, where no banquet, celebration, or transaction was complete without liquor. By 1976 he had been promoted to first secretary of the Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) district—effectively the governor of one of the country’s most important regions. The following year the Kremlin entrusted Yeltsin with the midnight demolition of a persistent symbol of anti-Soviet activism: the Ipatiev House in Sverdlovsk, where Tsar Nicholas II and his family met their gruesome ends at the hands of a Bolshevik firing squad back in 1918.
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Within the party Yeltsin became an acclaimed toastmaster. He would take guests and subordinates on vodka-fueled hunting trips in the Siberian wilderness. A small-scale carbon copy of the courtly dynamics of Stalin, Ivan the Terrible, or (Yeltsin’s professed hero) Peter the Great, these drunken escapades had the usual ulterior benefits. “Keeping everyone under control at work, during vacation, and even during their spare time allowed Boris Nikolaevich to know even the most intimate things about all his colleagues,” recalled one of those colleagues, Viktor Manyukhin. “Most importantly, it allowed him to see with his own eyes that there were no groupings against him. On the contrary—everyone was giving him their full support on everything.”
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Yeltsin’s drinking rarely interfered with his work, and he had little patience for those who let vodka inhibit theirs—even firing factory directors for drunkenness.
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His energetic party work was noticed by Yegor Ligachev, the teetotaler from nearby Tomsk, who became Yeltsin’s political patron. Ligachev visited Sverdlovsk in 1984 and later noted that Yeltsin did not touch a drop of liquor. If he had, it is questionable whether the notoriously dry Ligachev and Gorbachev would have brought Yeltsin to Moscow, entrusted him as first secretary (de facto mayor) of Moscow, or promoted him as candidate member of the Politburo.
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It wasn’t long before the outspoken Yeltsin ran afoul of Gorbachev. At a 1987 party plenum Yeltsin scathingly criticized the slow pace of
perestroika
reforms, warning that a destructive cult of personality was forming around Gorbachev, before requesting that he be able to resign his Politburo post. This was sensational: no one had voluntarily stepped down from the Politburo—
ever
. Such
audacity galvanized Yeltsin’s popularity as a hero among Russian liberals, who attributed his stand to his unwavering principles. “Unwavering” was just the opposite adjective used by those Communist Party leaders who were present in the hall that day. They described Yeltsin as “not in total control of his thoughts”; his speech, “incoherent.” One Yeltsin supporter claimed “I could smell the alcohol on his breath. He was probably drinking all night.”
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Yeltsin was ritually denounced by Gorbachev and the communist leadership. The barrage of beratements sent Yeltsin—complaining of chest pains—to the hospital, where later it was revealed that he had suffered a nervous breakdown. Physical and psychological withdrawal would become a defining pattern of Yeltsin’s political career.
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The general secretary had effectively ended Yeltsin’s career, just as Gorbachev’s democratization reforms began to offer the possibility of political redemption. In 1989, competitive, multi-candidate elections were held for a new nationwide parliament: the Congress of People’s Deputies (CPD). Yeltsin was elected as a representative from Moscow with a decisive ninety-two percent of the vote, and soon assumed a leadership role. In March 1990 Yeltsin was again elected, this time to the parliament of the Russian Republic, which quickly appointed him to its highest post: chairman of the Presidium. In June 1991—two months before the August coup—Yeltsin won another landslide election to become the first democratically elected president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the USSR. With fifty-seven percent of the vote, he defeated the Gorbachev-backed Nikolai Ryzhkov, who garnered only sixteen percent. Yeltsin’s dramatic political rise, then fall, then rise again were accompanied by moderation in alcohol. The accounts of foreign dignitaries, close associates, and even fierce political opponents affirm that during these years he rarely drank to excess like he did in later years.
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Yeltsin’s steady hand in the roisterous August putsch can be seen as part of that.

But everything changed once the Soviet Union dissolved and Yeltsin replaced Gorbachev in the Kremlin. Yeltsin’s loyal drinking buddy/bodyguard Aleksandr Korzhakov—who stood alongside Yeltsin atop the tank—became Yeltsin’s closest confidant. As gatekeeper to Yeltsin’s inner circle where major political decisions were made, Korzhakov became a powerful political player in his own right. Equally important, Korzhakov also became the keymaster of Yeltsin’s alcoholism. He was an enabler—ensuring that the trunk of the presidential limousine was stocked with Yeltsin’s favorite vodkas, champagne laced with cognac, shot glasses, and appetizers. However, Korzhakov was the only one “who could put his hand over Boris Nikolayevich’s glass and say, ‘Enough’,” according to Kremlin sources. There is little evidence that he did this very often. The two were inseparable—whether on the tennis court, the sauna, or late night at the dacha, Korzhakov and Yeltsin were almost always drinking. Yeltsin’s wife Naina and their daughters repeatedly tried to intervene, but in vain. They openly derided Korzhakov for
plying Yeltsin with alcohol just to maintain his own political status. Meanwhile, Yeltsin’s alcohol intake skyrocketed through the first half of the 1990s.
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There could not have been a worse time for the president to hit the bottle: guiding Russia from the Soviet administrative-command system to a functioning market economy would take a steady hand. On January 2, 1992, Yeltsin announced a “shock therapy” program of macroeconomic stabilization that included the immediate liberalization of prices, currency, and trade. It was thought that, like ripping off a band-aid, the suffering caused by this dramatic leap to the market would be short-lived. It wasn’t. Ending price restrictions meant that hoarded goods soon reappeared on store shelves—but reflecting their demand, the prices were too high for many to afford. The credit crunch made it impossible for old, uncompetitive Soviet firms to stay in business, which led to a spike in unemployment. Hyperinflation wiped out people’s life savings, forcing tens of millions into abject poverty while sending Russia into a decade-long economic depression. The economic disaster was reflected in social and demographic statistics: alcoholism skyrocketed, as did suicides. Average life expectancy for men—sixty-five at the height of the anti-alcohol campaign in 1987—plummeted to sixty-two in 1992. Two years later it dipped below fifty-eight: indicative of a demographic catastrophe without parallel in peacetime human history, so dramatic was Russia’s fall.
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The most vocal opponents of Yeltsin’s painful economic reforms included his closest allies just months before: his nationalist running mate, Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi, denounced them as “economic genocide.”
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Head of the Russian legislature Ruslan Khasbulatov, who once stood with Yeltsin against the coup, now called for his impeachment. According to the constitution, Khasbulatov’s legislature—the CPD—held more power than the presidency, but recognizing the need to be able to make quick decisions in a time of crisis, the legislators had allowed the president to temporarily rule by decree. Now the Congress wanted their power back from Yeltsin, whom they saw as increasingly drunk with power… and vodka.

In March 1993 Yeltsin “created a strange impression” with legislators at the CPD as he slurred through a rambling defense of his policies. His opponents loudly denounced their president as a drunk. As Yeltsin left the chamber a
Kuranty
journalist asked him point-blank whether he had been drinking. Yeltsin stopped.

“Smell my breath!” Yeltsin proclaimed.

“And with that,” as David Remnick described it, “the leader of the largest landmass on the globe exhaled into the face of the Fourth Estate.”

“Well?”

The reporter admitted that he did not noticeably reek of alcohol.
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By the early 1990s Yeltsin’s inebriety had become the stuff of legend. While all legends are fed by exaggeration, they also rely on the willingness of the audience
to believe it. Certainly Yeltsin did little to dispel the image, as his drinking and the enormous burdens of leadership took a noticeable toll on his health. His CPD opponents seized every opportunity to make Yeltsin the butt of political jokes, highlighting his resemblance to the drunken dinosaurs of the old Brezhnevite gerontocracy. Khasbulatov himself “regularly told reporters that the president was nothing more than an erratic drunk who could not be trusted with the nuclear button.”
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At loggerheads with the president, the Congress let the people decide: a nationwide referendum of April 1993 would ask the disillusioned electorate whether they still had confidence in Yeltsin and his policies. Just three days before the critical vote Yeltsin appeared at a massive rally behind St. Basil’s Cathedral, alongside famed human rights advocate Elena Bonner, widow of the fastidiously dry Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov. Horrified by Yeltsin’s drunken state, Bonner snatched the microphone away from the Russian president.
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Yeltsin was lucky to escape the referendum with only fifty-three percent of voters supporting his reforms.

Accusations, proclamations, and legal investigations flew furiously as both sides vied for political power while economic reforms ground to a halt. His ally just months before, Khasbulatov now scoffed at every Yeltsin move, claiming that “after he’s had a few” drinks, Yeltsin would sign anything.
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On September 21, 1993, Yeltsin took to the airwaves to cut the gordian knot. While the constitution empowered the parliament, Yeltsin believed that his narrow victory in the referendum gave him greater legitimacy. He would violate his constitutional authority and dissolve the Congress—effectively overthrowing his own government. With the cameras rolling and his message beaming across the country and around the globe, Yeltsin noticeably reached off camera to his right and calmly sipped from a white cup of tea. The signal was loud and clear: no, Yeltsin was not drunk. He was deadly serious.
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Ironically, Khasbulatov, Vice President Rutskoi, and their supporters did what Yeltsin himself had done just two years earlier: barricaded themselves in the White House to denounce the Kremlin’s coup. Despite having their electricity, hot water, and phones cut, the Congress voted to impeach Yeltsin, replacing him with Rutskoi. The threat of civil war loomed, as Russia had two men both claiming to be president. Asked whether he thought Yeltsin would dare storm the building, Rutskoi said only half in jest: “That depends on how much the president drinks.”
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After days of tense standoff—including the deadly attempt to storm the national media center at the Ostankino TV tower by White House paramilitaries—on October 4 Yeltsin did what the State Committee on the State of Emergency could not do two years before: he opened fire on his own parliament. Relying on the begrudging support of his drinking buddy and now Minister of
Defense Pavel Grachev, Yeltsin ordered tanks to shell the upper floors of the White House, setting it ablaze; at the same time, an intense firefight raged outside, catching civilians in the crossfire.

Rutskoi’s mocking insinuations turned prophetic: high-level figures within Yeltsin’s Kremlin later told how the decision to attack was made at Grachev’s defense ministry, where Yeltsin was “in an incapacitated state.” According to these sources, “His drunken retinue… propped him up against a wall in one of the ministry’s lounges and gave practically no one access to him.” While his top officials planned the operation, Yeltsin was kept in seclusion, with only Korzhakov acting as go-between.
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In the end, Korzhakov and Defense Minister Grachev cobbled together the necessary equipment and reluctant personnel to storm the White House, jail the parliamentary leaders, and stop the descent into civil war. Korzhakov recalled that in apprehending the conspirators at the White House, “Not one of the Deputies reeked of alcohol, and their outward appearance struck me as quite orderly [
akkuratnyi
].” The same could not be said of Yeltsin: upon returning from his historic mission, Korzhakov found him drinking in the banquet hall. “I was astonished to discover that the victory celebrations had been going on long before the victory had been won.” When the latecomers presented the president with a trophy of sorts—the rebel Khasbulatov’s personal smoking pipe—a drunken Yeltsin smashed it in the corner of the room and laughed. More rounds were poured.
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