Once Upon a Time in Russia (15 page)

“What if there was a way,” Tatiana suddenly asked, thinking along the same lines, “of accelerating the situation? Of pushing the opposition back on its heels?”

Berezovsky raised an eyebrow, looking at her.

“What do you mean?”

The year 2000 isn't simply a new beginning because of the election, she explained. It was the beginning of a new millennium. The whole world was preparing for the biggest celebration in recent history, for a brand-new century, to begin on midnight, New Year's Eve.

“My father's term ends next June,” she continued, “but the moment
of rebirth will not wait until June. The millennium begins in three months.”

Berezovsky began to understand what she was saying—and he felt that familiar electricity rising in his bones.

If she was really saying what he believed she was saying, if she was proposing a plan of action around the sentiment—it would be like an earthquake. It would take the country by surprise, knock the opposition not just back on their heels, but right out of the race.

Berezovsky's Unity Party was a stroke of genius, but what Tatiana was proposing—what she could no doubt achieve if she were able to convince her father to take one giant step—would be momentous.

“Ideas like this change history,” Berezovsky mused.

Tatiana looked at him, though she never stopped moving forward.

“You're wrong about that. Ideas float around, like the breeze swirling beneath the spruce trees that line Red Square. Ideas are little more than air. Men and women change history.”

Berezovsky smiled.

“And sometimes we do it even before history realizes it's time to change.”

December 31, 1999, 11:58 a.m.,

Logovaz Club

E
VEN THOUGH BEREZOVSKY HAD
suspected that something unusual was going to happen before the end of the year, when the moment finally came, sudden and without warning—it hit him like a hammer, as it had been designed to do. One minute he was sitting next to Badri in the club, chatting about various nonsense, glancing occasionally at the large-screen television on the wall—and then the screen suddenly froze and went black. Then bright, breaking-news banners appeared, casting red reflections off the Logovaz walls.

Boris Yeltsin's face appeared on the screen, his skin a winter night's shade of gray, his eyes sunken and tired, but still sparkling from an energy somewhere deep inside, still hinting at the charisma that had raised him so far and kept him in power for so long. Yeltsin remained silent for a moment, staring into the camera, as the audience took in the background of his roost in the Kremlin, the large holiday tree behind, flanked by the flags of his office. The president began to speak.

Dear Russians!

A very short time remains before a magical date in our history. The year 2000 is approaching. A new century, a new millennium.

We have all pondered this date. We have pondered, beginning in childhood, then having grown up, how old we would be in 2000, and how old our mothers would be, and how old our children would be. At some point, this unusual New Year seemed so far away. Now this day is upon us.

Dear friends! My dear ones!

Today I am turning to you for the last time with New Year's greetings. But that's not all. Today I am turning to you for the last time as president of Russia.

I have made a decision.

I thought long and hard over it. Today, on the last day of the departing century, I am resigning.

I have heard many times that “Yeltsin will hang onto power by any means, he won't give it to anyone.” That's a lie.

But that's not the point. I have always said that I would not depart one bit from the Constitution. That parliamentary elections should take place in the constitutionally established terms. That was done. And I also wanted presidential elections to take place on time
—in June 2000. This was very important for Russia. We are creating a very important precedent of a civilized, voluntary transfer of power, power from one president of Russia to another, newly elected one.

And still, I made a different decision. I am leaving. I am leaving earlier than the set term.

I have understood that it was necessary for me to do this. Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with new, smart, strong, energetic people.

And we who have been in power for many years already, we must go.

Seeing with what hope and faith people voted in the parliamentary elections for a new generation of politicians, I understood that I have completed the main thing of my life. Already, Russia will never return to the past. Now, Russia will always move only forward.

And I should not interfere with this natural march of history. To hold onto power for another half-year, when the country has a strong man who is worthy of being president and with whom practically every Russian today ties his hopes for the future? Why should I interfere with him? Why wait still another half-year? No, that's not for me. It's simply not in my character.

Today, on this day that is so extraordinarily important for me, I want to say just a few more personal words than usual.

I want to ask for your forgiveness.

For the fact that many of the dreams we shared did not come true. And for the fact that what seemed simple to us turned out to be tormentingly difficult. I ask forgiveness for not justifying some hopes of those people who believed that at one stroke, in one spurt, we could leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into the light, rich, civilized future. I myself believed in this, that we could overcome everything in one spurt.

I turned out to be too naive in something. In some places, problems seemed to be too complicated. We forced our way forward through mistakes, through failures. Many people in this hard time experienced shock.

But I want you to know. I have never said this. Today it's important for me to tell you. The pain of each of you has called forth pain in me, in my heart. Sleepless nights, tormenting worries—about
what needed to be done, so that people could live more easily and better. I did not have any more important task.

I am leaving. I did all I could—not according to my health, but on the basis of all the problems. A new generation is relieving me, a generation of those who can do more and better.

In accordance with the Constitution, as I resign, I have signed a decree placing the duties of the president of Russia on the head of government, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. For three months, again in accordance with the Constitution, he will be the head of state. And in three months, presidential elections will take place.

I have always been certain of the surprising wisdom of Russians. That's why I don't doubt what choice you will make at the end of March 2000.

Bidding farewell, I want to tell each of you: Be happy. You deserve happiness. You deserve happiness and calm.

Happy New Year! Happy new century, my dear ones!
^I

As Yeltsin finished with his resignation speech, Berezovsky managed to tear his eyes from the television screen. There were more than a handful of men and women in the club at that time—the middle of the day, on the eve of the new millennium—and yet every one of them seemed rooted to the floor. The expressions on each face ranged from confusion to total shock. Not only was this event unexpected—it was entirely unheard of: a seated president, one who had held on to power through every means possible, resigning on New Year's Eve, six months before the presidential election. Handing over the presidency to his prime minister—Vladimir Putin, a man who
had really seemed to come from nowhere, a former KGB officer and recent head of the FSB, a prime minister who had thrilled the country by his use of force in Chechnya, but who otherwise had a fairly blank résumé, a shadow for a history.

Yeltsin's exit had come without warning. As he had said in his own resignation speech, the expectations had been for him to try to hold onto power no matter what the cost—eventually, the assumption was, he'd have to be dragged out of office by his hands and feet. After all, this was a man who had survived multiple coup attempts, multiple heart attacks, the fall of an economy, and two wars in Chechnya. And yet he had just handed the presidency over without a single shot fired.

“Our hippie writer has certainly outdone himself this time,” Badri commented, when he'd found his voice. “That was a hell of a speech.”

Whether Yumashev had written the words or Yeltsin had been involved in the writing himself, it really had been a perfect speech for the most shocking and brilliant turn of events. Putin had been riding high on his popularity as a strong, decisive prime minister—and now suddenly he was acting president. Yeltsin had said there would still be an election in three months—but in three months, with Putin running the country from a position of strength, with the new Unity Party behind him—hell, he would now be going into the elections as the front-runner, when yesterday he had been going in as a distant second.

“Winning by resigning,” Berezovsky said. “I wouldn't have thought it was possible.”

Tomorrow, Vladimir Putin would be sworn in as acting president. And then, with much fanfare, Vladimir Putin would take over as the new president of Russia.

And it was also clear—the young president would owe a debt
to Boris Berezovsky. This time, Berezovsky might not have bought and paid for the government, as in 1996—but this president still owed his ascendancy, in part, to the onetime car salesman and current Kremlin power broker.

Berezovsky exhaled, speaking mostly under his breath.

“But still, business as usual,” he said, and he could see from the Georgian's face that his friend was hoping it was true.

Boris Yeltsin had made history. Vladimir Putin was now president. But for Boris Berezovsky, this was really about the business of Boris Berezovsky. And all indications pointed to the notion that, as usual, business was good.

I
. Used with permission of The Associated Press Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved.

June 15, 2000,

Alexandrovka Dacha

B
EREZOVSKY'S WORLD HAD FLIPPED
upside down many times over the past decade, so he shouldn't have been surprised when once again it spun out from beneath his feet. This time, though, it happened in the course of a mere six months—a lifetime in modern Russia, where it took no longer than a five-minute speech for an unknown man to become president.

Still, Berezovsky had found himself floundering when this new existential challenge blindsided him. Maybe it was fitting that this new threat came from the same nowhere man they had just installed as president. It wasn't just those in the outside world who had little information about Putin's past, before his days at the Kremlin. Berezovsky and the Family had been impressed by his service in the mayor's office of St. Petersburg, but much of his work at the KGB before that was barely documented. How well did any of them really know the man?

Even after the imprisonment of Litvinenko, Berezovsky had believed they had chosen someone who could be controlled from
behind the scenes. But a few weeks before the official election, with Putin already ahead in the polls, the acting president suddenly revealed a side he hadn't shown before.

On March 26, he had called a television press conference and had spoken about the chaotic business environment gripping the country, and the role of businessmen going forward. Berezovsky had been sitting exactly where he was now, at his breakfast table in his dacha, watching the conference before he headed to the Logovaz Club. Putin had looked impressive on the television screen—exactly as he had been designed to appear, young, handsome, brimming with confidence and strength, exactly the man depicted in all the feature stories they had played on ORT over the months of the campaign—often showing Putting in judo gear, riding horses, or swimming. A very different leader from the aging, sick Yeltsin, Putin was a symbol of the new generation, of youth. And then he began to speak.

“Those who combine power and capital—in the future, these Oligarchs will cease to exist as a class.”

Berezovsky had been shocked by the sweep and ferocity of the statement. As different news programs analyzed the conference, the consensus was that Putin was calling for the elimination of Berezovsky and his colleagues as a power bloc. These were frightening words—and to Berezovsky, who had been funding Putin's rise in the polls, they'd come out of nowhere.

As he'd watched the fallout on TV, he'd realized that Putin's statement only made the president more popular. The public, most of whom lived at or near poverty, had grown increasingly frustrated watching men like Berezovsky living like royalty, right in their midst. The people didn't know, or care, that Berezovsky and his colleagues believed they had saved capitalism and democracy from the communists. In Berezovsky's view, the Oligarchs had benefited only because
they had been smart enough and quick enough to do so. Yet all the people cared about was that Putin was now presenting himself as the man who would clean up the chaos and drive the Oligarchs out of politics.

It was as if the man had awakened one morning with a brand-new morality, intending to clean up the business world that had propped him up, that had invented the very party he was leading. He was suddenly hungry for the hand that fed him.

And it hadn't ended there. Putin easily won the election, and his inauguration was an event befitting a new kind of royalty, conducted with all the pomp and circumstance of the Kremlin of old. Putin regally strode down an extensive red carpet to take his seat, applauded from all sides by his supporters. Shortly thereafter, he had summoned all of the Oligarchs to appear at the Kremlin right next to him, in front of the cameras, and had given another speech explaining that, from that moment on, there would be a separation of business and politics—that businessmen were to pay their taxes and run their companies, while he would run the government. No more just a matter of campaign, no more simply pandering to popular sentiment—this was going to be policy.