Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [106]
In the end, we wore him down. He dictated a statement: “They force me to choose between becoming a political prisoner or political émigré, and I am choosing the latter.”
The day after we kept him from leaving for Moscow, Boris seemed deeply depressed, the longest period of gloom I have ever observed in his manic personality. At the time I thought that he was coming to grips with the reality of being an exile, something I had had to live with for twenty-five years. But as I learned later, the reason was quite specific: he had left a hostage in Russia, Nikolai (Kolya) Glushkov, his loyal manager of Aeroflot.
Boris was consumed with guilt. Kolya stubbornly refused to leave the country, insisting that he had done nothing wrong and that he looked forward to clearing his name in court should the Aeroflot case go to trial. By refusing to answer the summons, Boris might be forcing the prosecutors to crack down on Kolya. Indeed, three weeks later he was arrested. Then word came from the Kremlin that the price of Kolya’s freedom was Boris’s 49 percent ownership of ORT.
By then, the battle for control of ORT was already in full swing. According to its bylaws, major decisions in the company, such as appointments and firings of senior editorial staff, required approval by 75 percent of the board of directors. At the time of the Kursk incident, Boris’s loyalists controlled the network. Among them were Konstantin Ernst, the executive producer; Sergei Dorenko, the anchorman; and Badri Patarkatsishvili, Boris’s long-time business partner and ORT’s COO. All three were on the board. Because of the 75 percent rule, gaining editorial control entailed turning either Dorenko or Ernst, or both.
If there was any journalist to whom Putin owed a debt, it was Dorenko. During the Duma campaign of 1999, week after week, his Saturday night show mocked and berated Primakov and Luzhkov in the blandest of styles, which earned him the scorn of many members of the journalistic community. Yet his programs were popular, and they did the job for Putin, making him appear to be a stark contrast to his much-ridiculed and degraded opponents. For Putin, Dorenko was unquestionably one of “us,” so it was only natural that he would start with him.
“He called me into his office, with a huge double-headed Russian eagle hanging behind his desk, to make me an offer that I could not refuse,” recalled Dorenko years later. “‘You are either a member of our team or not. If you are with us, we will pay you well. If you go against us, you cannot continue. As simple as that.’”
Dorenko was in shock. Style is everything, he told me. When Boris wanted something, he would always discuss the substance and ask for objections. If there was a difference of opinion, Boris’s would likely prevail, but at least the discussion was civilized. If compromises were to be made, Boris would argue that they were a necessary evil in the context of larger strategies. Dorenko was no purist, but there are limits to everything. What he was facing now pushed him beyond those limits.
“It was the eagle,” Dorenko explained. “He was sitting under the eagle, the fucking head of state. I just could not take that. My dad was an officer, you know, I grew up in military towns, and I thought of all those poor bastards for whom the eagle means something. This kind of talk could come from anybody, but I just could not take it from the president.”
Dorenko did not take the offer. Later that week, Konstantin Ernst, the long-haired Moscow intellectual whom five years earlier Boris had made the most influential TV executive in the country, called Badri.
“I know that I am a piece of shit, but I will go with the winning side,” he said. “It’s pointless to resist. Sorry.” He hung up.
A few days later, Ernst pulled Dorenko’s program off the air and purged senior news editors from ORT. Dorenko was the most handsome face on Russian TV, the Peter Jennings of Russia. He knew that he was finished, but he was determined to have the last word. In an act of unbelievable defiance that brought