The New Tsar (87 page)

4 
. Klebnikov, chapter 8. For the total campaign spending, he cites a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington:
Russian Organized Crime: Global Organized Crime Project
, 1997.

5 
. Yeltsin, p. 70.

6 
.
New York Times
, June 28, 1996.

7 
. Yeltsin, pp. 61–62, 70.

8 
. Ibid., p. 32.

9 
.
The New York Times
conducted an exit poll during the vote. July 4, 1996.

10 
. Tim McDaniel,
The Agony of the Russian Idea
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 163.

11 
. Hill and Gaddy, pp. 204–5.

12 
. Gevorkyan et al., pp. 192–94. In his interviews for the book Putin discussed Chubais at length. He acknowledged his skills as an administrator, but disparaged his privatization program and his decision to undo Putin’s first appointment in Moscow. “Of course, I can’t say I was overjoyed at the time,” he said, then added magnanimously, “but I didn’t feel angry at him.” He noted that Chubais held “a bad credit record. I mean his public credit—the public’s trust in him—is low.”

13 
. Ibid., p. 127.

14 
.
St. Petersburg Times
, April 12, 2002.

15 
.
Gevorkyan et al., p. 128.

16 
. Author interview with Dmitri S. Peskov, March 2014.

17 
. Gevorkyan et al., pp. 127–28.

18 
. Borodin news conference, March 11, 1997, transcript by Official Kremlin International Broadcast News; also Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, pp. 111–15.

19 
. Colton, p. 327.

20 
. Ibid., p. 255.

21 
. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser,
Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the End of Revolution
(New York: Scribner, 2005), p. 48; and also author interview with John Evans, the American consul general in St. Petersburg. Borodin later emphasized his close ties with Putin and claimed, perhaps out of hopes for self-preservation, that he was the one who brought Putin to Moscow.

22 
. Alena V. Ledeneva,
Can Russia Modernise? Sistema, Power Networks, and Informal Governance
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 7–9.

23 
. Putin was interviewed as he left St. Petersburg in 1996, literally in the Pulkova airport as he boarded a plane to Moscow. A tape of the interview was broadcast in December 2012 on the television channel Kalamari (Squid).
www.iarex.ru/news/32524.html
.

24 
. Felshstinsky and Pribylovsky, p. 113.

25 
. Kalamari interview.

26 
. Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, pp. 369–70.

27 
. Ibid., p. 397.

28 
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 128, and Blotsky,
Vladimir Putin: Doroga k Vlasti
, p. 368.

29 
. Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, p. 112.

30 
. Interview with
Novaya Gazeta
, Dec. 27, 1999.

31 
.
Moskovskiye Novosti
, Aug. 11, 1998.

32 
. Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, p. 115.

33 
.
Kommersant
, April 15, 1997.

34 
. Interfax, April 14, 1997.

35 
. Interfax, April 24, 1997; Rossiya TV, May 24, 1997, as monitored by the BBC; and Radio Rossiya, Sept. 17, 1997, as monitored by the BBC.

36 
. Hill and Gaddy, pp. 204–9.

37 
. The anecdote by Boris Nemtsov appeared posthumously, four days after his assassination in Moscow on Feb. 27, 2015, in an undated article,
http://glavpost.com/post/3mar2015/History/18080-boris-nemcov-kak-putin-stal-preemnikom.html
.

38 
. The United States government noted this aspect of Putin’s character when comparing him to Dmitri Medvedev, who had a more established and
accomplished academic career. The analysis was contained in one of the State Department cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010:
http://cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=07Moscow5800
.

39 
. Gustafson, p. 247.

40 
. Vladimir Litvinenko described the roots of Putin’s dissertation with the author’s colleague, Andrew E. Kramer, who shared the transcript. See also Harley Balzer, “Vladimir Putin’s Academic Writings and Russian Natural Resource Policy,”
Problems of Post-Communism
52, no. 1 (January–February 2006): 48.

41 
. The original of Putin’s thesis for years proved difficult for researchers to track down. An English translation of Putin’s dissertation appeared in
The Uppsala Yearbook of Eastern European Law
(London: Wildy, Simmonds & Hill Publishing, 2006). It was translated by Kaj Hober, a Swedish lawyer and arbitration expert who negotiated with Putin in Petersburg in the 1990s when Putin was deputy mayor. In 2005, Hober requested and received permission from Putin to publish the translation. The translation was reprinted in
The Journal of Eurasian Law
2, no. 1 (2008). In an interview, Hober described the text as boring. “It was not a delight to translate it,” he said.

42 
. Litvinenko’s estranged daughter, Olga, became embroiled in a custody dispute with her father over her daughter, see
http://ester-maria.com/olga
. Harley Balzer, in “The Putin Thesis and Russian Energy Policy,”
Post-Soviet Affairs
21, no. 3 (2005): 215, suggested that Aleksei Kudrin might have helped with the writing as well.

43 
. Hill and Gaddy, p. 22; and
New York Times
, March 1, 2012.

44 
. The plagiarism was not widely publicized until 2006. Two researchers at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Igor Danchenko and Clifford Gaddy, found and scanned an original in a Moscow library and compared it to the Russian version of the King and Cleland textbook cited in the bibliography. Neither they nor other scholars have determined with certainty who wrote the thesis, but the general consensus is that it was ghostwritten, though with Putin’s input and ultimate approval. See the Brookings presentation at
http://www.brookings.edu/events/2006/03/30putin-dissertation
. Gaddy shared a copy with the author.

45 
. Lynch, p. 36.

46 
. Harley Balzer, “Vladimir Putin on Russian Energy Policy,”
The National Interest
, Dec. 1, 2005.

47 
. John Helmer, “US Law Firm Mines Legal Prospects in Russia Gold Project,”
Journal of Commerce
, Nov. 18, 1997.

48 
. “Zapiski—Gorny Institut [Notes of the Mining Institute],” January 1999, reprinted and translated by Harley Balzer in “Vladimir Putin’s Academic Writings and Russian Natural Resource Policy,”
Problems of Post-Communism
52, no. 1 (January–February 2006): 52. This essay has been widely confused
with Putin’s thesis. Its themes are far broader than the narrow focus of his thesis and more representative of the policies he pursued.

49 
.
Literaturnaya Gazeta
, Nov. 26, 1997.

50 
.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
, May 21, 1997.

51 
. Sobchak interviewed by Interfax, Jan. 18, 1997.

52 
.
Moscow Times
, Oct. 3, 1997.

53 
. Itar-Tass, Oct. 4, 1997.

54 
. Yeltsin, p. 234.

55 
. Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky, p. 232.

56 
. Gevorkyan et al., 118–19.

57 
. Yeltsin, pp. 234, 329.

CHAPTER 8: SWIMMING IN THE SAME RIVER TWICE

1 
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 128.

2 
. Roy Medvedev,
Post-Soviet Russia: A Journey Through the Yeltsin Era
, translated by George Shriver (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 288.

3 
. Yeltsin,
Midnight Diaries
, p. 88.

4 
. Medvedev, p. 285.

5 
. Yeltsin, p. 110.

6 
. Ibid., p. 113.

7 
. Klebnikov, p. 242.

8 
. Ibid., p. 278.

9 
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 129.

10 
. Interfax, June 4, 1998.

11 
. Medvedev, p. 294.

12 
. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan,
The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2010), pp. 12–13.

13 
. Yeltsin, p. 327.

14 
. Soldatov and Borogan, p. 25.

15 
. Alex Goldfarb with Marina Litvinenko,
Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB
(New York: Free Press, 2007), pp. 135–36.

16 
. Berezovsky interviewed in Gessen,
Man Without a Face
, p. 15.

17 
. Yeltsin, p. 326.

18 
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 130.

19 
. NTV, Sept. 3, 1997, as transcribed and translated by the BBC. The FSB’s spokesman, Aleksandr Zdanovich, called the rumors “a canard” intended to “instill insecurity and create an element of instability.” Within six weeks of Putin’s appointment as FSB chief, he had to deny rumors that Putin was about to be sacked.

20 
.
Gevorkyan et al., p. 130.

21 
. Lyudmila recounted the conversation in Gevorkyan et al., p. 132.

22 
. Itar-Tass, July 27, 1998.

23 
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 132.

24 
.
Kommersant
, July 30, 1998.

25 
. Yeltsin, p. 328. Putin, in his interview with
Kommersant
three days earlier, offered a slightly different account of the question of rank, saying it was up to Yeltsin to decide. He went on to add, however, “Honestly, rank doesn’t bother me. The president showed confidence in me; that’s obvious. After getting my degree 23 years ago, I joined the KGB in 1975 as a junior operative. And now I have risen to the top of the whole system. If the president tells me to be the first civilian director of the security service, I will accept the offer.”

26 
. As of this writing, only two men have held the post after Putin, Nikolai Patrushev and Aleksander Bortnikov, both friends of Putin’s who held the military rank of army general.

27 
. Goldfarb and Litvinenko, p. 163.

28 
. Yeltsin, p. 329.

29 
. Gevorkyan et al., p. 131.

30 
. Yelena Tregubova,
Baiky Kremlovskovo Diggera
[Tales of a Kremlin Digger] (Moscow: Marginem, 2003), p. 161.

31 
.
Segodnya
, Aug. 26, 1998; and
Moscow Times
, Aug. 28, 1998.

32 
. The case was discussed at a UNESCO conference held on May 3, 1999, in Bogota, Colombia, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day. See
archives-trim.un.org/webdrawer/rec/504045/view/item-in-KAAPressmatters—General1999.pdf
.

33 
. Colton, p. 416.

34 
. Interfax, Sept. 1, 1998.

35 
. Associated Press, Nov. 13, 1998.

36 
. Yeltsin, p. 328.