Death of a Dissident (12 page)

Sometime in late February Yeltsin met with the Davos group in the
Kremlin. It was Boris’s first serious meeting with the president. He wasn’t sure how to conduct himself with this enigmatic man, who combined seemingly incompatible traits: decisiveness in times of crisis with inertia bordering on stupor in the periods in between, an autocrat who protected free speech and civil liberties, a former Communist Party boss who hated the Communists, a Soviet through and through who had single-handedly disbanded the USSR.

Yeltsin looked ill. Right before New Year’s Eve, he had suffered yet another heart attack, which his staff managed to hide from the press. His bloated face and big ex-athlete’s body, wasted by alcohol and heart disease, exuded fatigue. Berezovsky knew that Yeltsin’s wife was trying to talk him out of running for a second term. He also knew that his closest confidant, Korzhakov, was now pushing the president to replace the moderate prime minister Chernomyrdin with the hawk Oleg Soskovets, which would make him the official successor should the president be incapacitated (perhaps by a final heart attack).

“Boris Nikolaevich, we’d like to raise the issue of the coming elections,” Berezovsky began. “We have the feeling you’re headed toward catastrophe.”

“But I’m told that the situation is improving, that the polls are skewed, and for the most part, people will vote for me,” the president said, frowning.

From Yeltsin’s neutral tone, Boris couldn’t make out whether he was completely out of touch with reality or just teasing them.

“Boris Nikolaevich, you’re being deceived!” Berezovsky retorted. The members of the group chimed in: “What’s going on around you is a disaster. People see it, so many in the business community are trying to cut a deal with the Communists and the rest are packing their bags to flee abroad. If we don’t reverse this situation now, in a month it will be too late. And our motivation is pure: if you lose, the Communists will hang us from the lampposts.”

“Well, what are you proposing?” Yeltsin inquired, again in a neutral tone, displaying neither consent nor objection.

“Give us an opportunity to help your campaign,” Boris pleaded. “We have the media, money, people, contacts in the regions, and the main thing: determination. We just need a word from you.”

“I already have a campaign staff,” said Yeltsin. “Are you suggesting that I fire Soskovets and put you in charge?”

“No, of course not. Create another entity—say, an analytical group. Let it work alongside your staff. And we propose Anatoly Borisovich Chubais as its leader.”

“Chubais? Chubais … Chubais is to blame for everything,” the president said, quoting himself. He paused, still revealing little behind his impassive mask. But then he flashed a hint of a smile. “Well, okay, since he’s to blame, let him clean up the mess. All right, give it a try,” he said.

After the meeting Boris stayed behind for fifteen minutes to discuss details. He worried that the president was not completely sold on the plan. He mentioned that he had heard of Korzhakov’s idea to suspend the elections.

“We will win, democratically, Boris Nikolaevich. Any other way would lead to massive bloodshed,” Berezovsky argued. But as he left he was still not sure whether he had carried the day. Yeltsin held his cards close to his chest.

The very next day, people began working feverishly at “Shadow HQ,” as the endeavor became known in its narrow circle. It was kept secret from the press and the public. Within days, Boris and Goose managed to pull together a team of the best brains in Moscow, from pollsters to speechwriters. They worked out strategies to reach out to the young, pensioners, and the military; they scheduled rallies and concerts; they enlisted performers and pop stars; they courted regional power brokers; in short, they used every trick they could find in the Western book of campaigns, previously unknown in Russia. Their sluggish opponents never responded but just hoped to win by making speeches in the archaic style of the Soviet Politbureau.

Work at Shadow HQ continued 24÷7 in total secrecy. Chubais managed finances and logistics, Boris determined general strategy, and Goose brought in his star creative genius, NTV president Igor Malashenko, to coordinate the media campaign. Yeltsin’s ratings in the polls began to climb almost immediately.

Years later, as an exile in America, Malashenko recalled the drama and the irony of those days.

“I first was taken to see Yeltsin on March 6, under a veil of total secrecy. I told him straightaway that I will make him win. He did not seem to believe me. My impression was that he agreed to work with us only to be able to say to himself that he had exhausted all options. I said that I needed his help with aggressive news management on a daily basis.

“‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

“I told him how Ronald Reagan would go to an automobile plant to make a speech about the economy, or to a flag factory to generate patriotic images. He was amused by the flag factory idea. My people rushed to look for a flag factory in Moscow. But when we found one, I dumped the idea: it was a miserable hole, filled with embittered workers, hungry and dressed in rags, who hadn’t gotten their wages in months, one of those sinking places. There was no demand for Russian flags in those days.”

Korzhakov flew into a white rage when he learned about the Shadow HQ. The triumvirate of Chubais-Boris-Goose, backed by cash from the loans-for-shares oligarchs, was as much a challenge to him as were the Communists. He wanted Yeltsin to be the president, but on his terms, whereby the dominance of the secret services would be guaranteed. When he learned Berezovsky had made an impression on Yeltsin with his frank depiction of the president’s bleak prospects in the polls, he changed tactics: his entire team began to whisper to the president that the situation was so bad that no smart campaigning could save him from a humiliating defeat. He even brought over a team of American consultants and tasked them with producing an independent assessment that the elections were not winnable.

The only solution, he argued—and no doubt believed—was to postpone the elections and impose a state of emergency.

By mid-March, two irreconcilable political centers had formed around the president: one strove to solve the Communist problem by throwing money at it, the other, by crushing it with tanks.

March 6, 1996: Hundreds of Chechen fighters infiltrate Grozny, override Russian units, and hold the city for three days before escaping back to the mountains with large amounts of captured weapons and ammunition. The surprise assault is the first rebel effort to retake Grozny since it fell to Russian forces in February 1995.

George Soros arrived in Moscow on March 15, 1996, to meet with Prime Minister Chernomyrdin and get his blessing for a new project: connecting Russia to the Internet. At that time, few people in Russia had even heard of the Net, but to George it was clear: if there was something that could drag this country out of its eternal provincial swamp, it was integration into the worldwide information network. The plan called for thirty hubs at main university campuses throughout the country, with links to the surrounding urban communities. It would connect broad progressive circles across the country: journalists, nongovernmental organizations, liberal local politicians, and the educated class at large.

When I first came to George with the idea, I didn’t particularly expect that he would fund it. After all, he was still predicting that Russia was about to undergo a “catastrophe of cosmic dimensions.” But to my surprise he agreed, saying, “Even so, there is life after death.” He allocated $100 million over five years, with the caveat that the Russian government match the funds with contributions in the form of free telecommunication channels to link the hubs with each other and the rest of the World Wide Web. For that, we needed to see the prime minister.

The problem, however, was that Chernomyrdin didn’t want to see George. Someone had told him that Soros had fraternized in Davos with Zyuganov and was helping Zyuganov reconstruct himself as a moderate social democrat. I had to use all my personal chits with Berezovsky, and he, in turn, with the prime minister, to secure an appointment.

On the day of the meeting, the Communists sponsored a resolution in the Duma denouncing the Belovezh Agreement. This was the famous pact that Yeltsin had signed in 1991 with the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus, officially terminating the USSR. The news of the Duma’s maneuver exploded across the entire former empire, from the Baltics to Central Asia, provoking panic in the former republics of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin denounced it as election-year posturing. Even the former head of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, who had lost his job as a result of the Belovezh Agreement, told Reuters news service, “I am the one who is expected to applaud this because my presidential post would now become real again. But to talk about the revival of the Soviet Union now … means to ignore the new realities.”

Chernomyrdin received us at the White House, the seat of the government on the banks of the Moscow River. Aside from Yeltsin and Primakov, he was the last major Soviet-era holdover in the Russian government. Those roots were evident in his large, solid figure, his big head with the heavy, square jaw, his deep-set eyes, and the bass voice of a man used to giving orders. But that was evidently their limit, because he immediately fell upon us with a very un-Soviet, angry invective against Zyuganov, the leader of the Communists, calling him a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“Some Western figures, as we hear from Davos,” said Chernomyrdin, looking pointedly at Soros, “see in him a moderate leftist. This is Western naïveté, Mr. Soros, the kind Comrade Lenin understood best of all, when he said that the capitalists would sell him the rope with which he would hang them. But I know these people well, Mr. Soros, I was yoked with them for thirty years, I can see right through them. Did you hear what they got up to today? They want to restore the Soviet Union! And they will restore it, if they have their way. So don’t deceive yourself, Mr. Soros, nothing good will come of them, and we will not let them back into power, whatever the cost.”

After listening to a ten-minute lecture about the horrors of Communism, Soros finally got a chance to assure the prime minister that he was far from supporting Zyuganov, especially after the resolution
in the Duma. He shared the universal concern of the West about the outcome of the presidential elections.

“Yes,” sighed Chernomyrdin. “That’s our main concern, I can assure you, Mr. Soros.”

By the end of the conversation the prime minister’s feelings toward the West appeared to improve. In any case, the university Internet centers obtained free government connectivity.

George was happy with his new acquaintance.

“Do you know that this man controls Gazprom?” he asked as we drove away from the White House. “Maybe he is even richer than me!” Briefly, I saw the face not of a philanthropist, but of an investor. Possibly a very hungry investor.