The Oligarchs (14 page)

Popov feared that the radical democrats would be overwhelmed by their own lack of experience in governing. He was haunted by the idea that the whole experiment could fail; everything might collapse and they would be discredited, perhaps even jailed. It was just too heavy a test for the radicals, to make them run the whole city at the beginning. They were not ready. They needed a bridge to the old regime.

They also needed something from a long, deep tradition in Russian culture. They needed a real
khozyain
, a rich term in Russian that refers to the leader of a given social domain, a home, a village, an enterprise, or a country. The
khozyain
of a household, usually the oldest male, has responsibility for the welfare of the group. A real
khozyain
takes care of those in his domain. Russians tend to judge leaders on whether they give the impression of being a real
khozyain
—sometimes in appearance or in action. And a person who at least displays talents in this direction—who can manage the affairs of the day—is a
khozyaistvennik
.
²¹
Popov was in search of one because he clearly was not. Popov turned to Yeltsin.

The radicals met every morning for breakfast in a large room behind the stage at the Mossovet building to talk about their plans for the day. Popov toyed with the idea of bringing back Saikin, the old
party man, to run the city, but the radical democrats wouldn't hear of it. He had other candidates from the old guard, but the radical democrats were dubious about them. Popov came to breakfast one day and reported that Yeltsin had suggested a candidate to manage the city—Luzhkov. But no one present knew Luzhkov.

“And we asked, who is this man?” recalled one of the democrats, Alexander Osovtsov.

The question hung in the air. Then someone recalled that the young cooperators, who were mingling with the new democrats, spoke highly of Luzhkov. Shneider recalled that he had just met Luzhkov. His first impression was vivid. “Soviet bureaucrat,” he recalled. “Style of his speech, the choice of words, vocabulary, appearance, the way he talked to people—all of that spoke that he was a true Soviet bureaucrat. Just the way I had imagined a bureaucrat, because I had never dealt with bureaucrats before.”
²²

Popov could not make up his mind. “Tomorrow, we have to make the decision,” he told the radicals. “We must do it tomorrow.”

Bokser went home distressed. The phone rang. It was an old acquaintance, a woman who was now a pensioner. Bokser told her how Popov was wavering on this critical decision, but Luzhkov was one of the finalists. The woman's voice brightened.

“That wouldn't be Yuri Mikhailovich?”

“Yuri Mikhailovich. How do you know him?”

“Wasn't he the head of Khimavtomatika?” This was the enterprise Luzhkov headed in the late 1970s in Moscow.

“Yes,” Bokser replied, curiously.

“You know, I worked there ten years,” she said. “I know him. I didn't know him well, but I heard that he always treated people well.”

The next day, Bokser went right to Popov and recommended Luzhkov. “I heard that he treated people well,” he said.

 

Luzhkov observed the democrats edgily, well aware that he was considered a member of the old guard, one of the apparatchiks whom the insurgents had vowed to throw out. He recalled that he was simmering with anger at the way the dissidents had blamed everything on the previous regime. He was “so enraged” by this that he decided to quit city government altogether. But then he went to the Marble Hall of the Mossovet to see the new politicians for himself. They didn't look
like bureaucrats; they wore no ties. Luzhkov, who had once been energized by the cooperatives, took a similar liking to the rough-hewn new democrats. They had none of the “blind obedience” of the previous generation, he thought.

“You were dealing with intelligent, active, angry people, denouncing the idiocy of the old system and promising to fix everything fast,” Luzhkov recalled. “These people greatly impressed me.” But he knew—better than they—what a mess they had inherited. The supply lines that held the Soviet Union together were snapping, virtually every day. As Luzhkov mulled the future, his phone rang. It was Yeltsin, who had made his own comeback. On May 29, 1990, Yeltsin was elected chairman of the parliament in the Russian Republic, the largest Soviet republic, and was pressuring Gorbachev for still more radical reform.

“This is Yeltsin,” the familiar voice boomed to Luzhkov. “Drop everything and get over here.” At Yeltsin's urging, Popov chose Luzhkov to be city administrator and Luzhkov agreed. Popov told me years later that Luzhkov had several factors in his favor. He was never a top party boss. He had deftly managed the cooperatives, and Popov recalled that cooperative types had supported the radical democrats in their election campaign. Popov also knew Luzhkov had stopped the dirty, miserable work in the vegetable bases.
²³

Bokser went to see the radical democrats to ameliorate any concerns about the choice of Luzhkov. The first reaction was anger. “Betrayal!” the radicals shouted back at Bokser. “We want our own democrat!”

But the anger passed on the day Popov formally introduced Luzhkov as his choice before a meeting of the Mossovet. Luzhkov recalled that, at the moment of the introduction, Popov regarded him coolly. Popov made a curt introduction and then gave Luzhkov twelve minutes to explain himself. “I was shocked,” Luzhkov recalled. How could he address the crisis gripping the city in just twelve minutes? The members bombarded Luzhkov with questions. One question came from a radical democrat.

“Tell us, what is your platform?” Luzhkov was asked. “Are you a democrat or a Communist?”

Luzhkov was flustered. Something welled up in him, and he blurted out an answer that resonated for years to come. “I always was and I am standing on one platform—that of
khozyaistvennik
,” he said.

There was applause. The whole room broke into laughter. Luzhkov had unexpectedly disarmed the radicals and won them over. Shakhnovsky recalled that “this answer had a great influence on the democratic part of the Mossovet. This was a very bright answer.” They voted for Luzhkov. Popov was the political leader, but Luzhkov the
khozyaistvennik
.

 

The year that followed brought more decline, as the Soviet Union careened toward its final months. Yeltsin, Popov, and Anatoly Sobchak of Leningrad, all leading democrats, walked out of the Soviet Communist party in July 1990 and turned in their cards. Life in Moscow grew ever more bleak. In the early autumn of 1990, as snow began to fall, a terrifying panic hit: the potato harvest was rotting in the fields.

Luzhkov looked to traditional command methods to cope with the chaos, imposing such measures as identity cards for Muscovites to buy food. As the shortages intensified, black markets sprang up outside the shops. Prices skyrocketed for what little was available. Osovtsov recalled that Luzhkov decided to use the militia to enforce rigid price controls. It was a totally Soviet response. Osovtsov spent hours attempting to persuade Luzhkov it would not work—in desperate times, the scarce goods would get whatever black market price was set for them. “I nearly lost my voice trying to show him these were completely meaningless measures,” Osovtsov recalled. Rationing began in the major cities, including Moscow and Leningrad.
²⁴

In the end there was no famine, but shortages grew severe. In early April 1991, visiting a Moscow food store, my colleague Michael Dobbs ran into a man surveying the meat counter. “There wasn't anything here yesterday, and there isn't anything here today,” the man said, gazing at counter, empty but for some ready-to-cook dinners of soggy sausage and congealed gravy. “I doubt very much there will be anything here tomorrow.”
²⁵

The following summer, in 1991, both Moscow and St. Petersburg underwent a major political restructuring. The rubber-stamp legislature and a smaller, powerful
ispolkom
—both totally controlled by the party—were restructured into a more modern mayoralty. In Moscow, Popov ran for mayor and took Luzhkov as candidate for vice mayor. Popov had never shaken his reputation as a thinker and theoretician,
and Soviet journalists referred to him by an affectionate nickname, “Hedgehog in a Fog,” after a popular animated cartoon film. Popov seemed sensitive to the point. In a television appearance during the campaign, he said, “We need to use the personnel available now in our own country—including the staff from the old Communist apparat. Luzhkov, in my view, compensates for a lot of my shortcomings.”
²⁶

The voters gave the Popov-Luzhkov team a huge endorsement. They won with 65.3 percent of the vote. Bokser observed a subtle change in Luzhkov. Before, Luzhkov had been a
khozyaistvennik
, a manager, while Popov played politics on the national stage with Yeltsin. But once elected as vice mayor, Bokser said, it was clear that Luzhkov was taking more and more power into his hands. After the election “it was as if he had become the heir of Popov, and he wasn't the heir before the election.”

 

At 6:30 A.M. Moscow time on August 19, 1991, a group of discontented hard-liners, including the head of the KGB, tried to topple Gorbachev. They put him under house arrest at his dacha in the Crimea and called a general state of emergency. The KGB chief, Vladimir Kryuchkov, signed arrest warrants for seventy people, including Popov, Bokser, and Shneider. Popov was in Bishkek, Kirgizia, and would not be back until evening. Luzhkov, the acting mayor, got a telephone call at 8:00 A.M. from the city party boss, Yuri Prokofyev, who suggested that Luzhkov come to him “for instructions.”

Luzhkov faced a choice—to go with the coup plotters or to join Yeltsin against them. According to Shakhnovsky, who was with Luzhkov at the time, Yeltsin called and asked Luzhkov to come to his dacha outside the city. Shakhnovsky recalled that Luzhkov was the leader of the city that day, and had he announced support for the putsch, things might have turned out differently. Instead, he got in a car and sped away toward Yeltsin. His name was added to the list of those to be arrested by the KGB.
²⁷

When he arrived at the dacha that morning, Yeltsin greeted him in an old T-shirt and slippers. He pointed to some apples on a windowsill and offered one to Luzhkov. “Moscow is with you,” Luzhkov assured him. “Thanks,” Yeltsin said. He urged Luzhkov to organize popular resistance to the coup. On the way back to the city, Luzhkov asked his
driver to stop the car and change the license plates. They kept a spare set in the trunk. Just in case.
²⁸

Shortly after noon, Yeltsin denounced the coup at a press conference. At 1:00 P.M. Yeltsin climbed on top of tank 110 of the Taman Division and gave his famous speech protesting the coup. At 4:30 P.M. Luzhkov issued his own denunciation of the coup and called on Muscovites to join in a general strike.

“I realized the coup plotters were going to fail when I saw that Luzhkov was wholly against them,” Bokser recalled later. “Why? Because Popov, for them, was a democrat and not one of them. But Luzhkov was a real
khozyain
. He had given so many people apartments, such as the head of the communications brigade, the pilot of the helicopters. All those people understood that in Moscow, the real
khozyain
was Luzhkov.”

The real heroes of the August days were Yeltsin and the tens of thousands of Muscovites who turned out in the streets to defy the putsch. Luzhkov was not a public figure in the tense hours of confrontation. But he did play a role behind the scenes. Since most of the central newspapers and television had been shut down, he kept Moscow's telephone and radio channels open, especially Echo of Moscow, the radio station that helped antiputsch forces in the most critical hours. The Mossovet had been among the founders of Echo of Moscow because Popov liked the idea of an independent radio station. Soon after the coup began, the station sent a correspondent to remain at Luzhkov's side. Alexei Venediktov, the director, told me that the link to Luzhkov was critical—it gave hope to all those who opposed the coup. There were reports that Luzhkov was organizing a defense, deploying trucks and volunteers, and ordering huge cement barriers to be set up. Luzhkov was on the air only briefly three or four times, but just knowing that Luzhkov was against the coup was important. “Luzhkov was a party member, an apparatchik,” Venediktov recalled. “If such an active member of the Communist Party as Luzhkov refused to join, that inspired hope.” Four times in three days, Echo of Moscow was thrown off the air but each time found a way to get back on.
²⁹

Osovtsov recalled that Luzhkov remained cool and pragmatic, making lists of things that had to be done to defeat the coup plotters. “The conversation,” Osovtsov recalled of a staff meeting the first day in Luzhkov's office, “was mainly about the building blocks to be
delivered to the White House and Mossovet in order to circle the buildings; about cars with fresh drinking water for the crowds, about mobile toilets, and naturally about food and other similar things. The political aspect of the moment was clear.”

But then Luzhkov stood up and walked to the window. His office was now in a high-rise building with windows that looked out to the White House, the Moscow River, and the Ukraine Hotel. A single armored personnel carrier was stationed in front of the hotel, a distinctive gothic tower, one of the seven Stalin built. Looking out the window, Luzhkov spoke, as if to no one in particular, although the staff was sitting right there in his office. “Between us,” he said, “I will tell you. A coup is a colossal administrative undertaking.” Referring to the Communist Party veterans who had staged the revolt, he predicted, “These Komsomol members will never cope with it—no way!”