Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [29]
Goose was an essential ally for Yeltsin on two accounts. First, his pal, Mayor Luzhkov, a stocky, bald man in a proletarian cap with the demeanor of Mussolini, was in control of Moscow, where 10 percent of the electorate lived. Without Luzhkov, no victory at the city’s polls was possible. Second, Gusinsky’s NTV was particularly popular among Russia’s educated class, which made up about 15 percent of the vote.
When Boris sat down with Goose for a drink, he went straight to the point: “Volodya, do you know what the Communists will do when they get to power? They will put you in jail for being a rich Jew.”
Goose agreed. Boris then launched into his pitch. The situation was salvageable only if they joined forces. Goose had to discard Yavlinsky and get Mayor Luzhkov to endorse Yeltsin’s candidacy. Boris even wanted to bring Chubais back into the game. Boris never did anything halfway.
Gusinsky had good reasons to refuse. He had a number of long-standing grudges against the Kremlin crowd, from Korzhakov’s thugs holding his men facedown in the snow to Chubais cutting his bank out of the loans-for-shares bonanza. As for the mayor, it would be quite a challenge to make him work with Chubais: they were in perpetual conflict over privatizing Moscow-based enterprises, arguing whether they were municipal or federal.
“If the Communists come to power …,” Boris started again, but Goose interrupted him by reciting Boris’s own arguments: the Communists aren’t going to care whether the privatizations were for Moscow or for the Kremlin, they would rescind them all; Yavlinsky was a nonstarter—being a Jew, he would never get more than 12 percent of the vote. By default Yeltsin appeared to be the lesser of all evils. Goose was already ready to say yes.
But, Goose added, Yeltsin’s secret services and the military were no less a threat than the Communists. And the war in Chechnya should be stopped at any cost. Boris could not have agreed more. They shook hands on a deal. Common enemies have united stranger bedfellows, but nobody in Moscow predicted this pairing.
Boris began calling fellow Davos oligarchs who had fallen into various states of dejection, inviting them for a strategy meeting. Chubais was invited, too. Upon seeing the archenemies Berezovsky and Gusinsky chatting like old friends, a spark was lit, and the “Davos group” was born. Boris was authorized to seek a meeting with the president for the group.
To get to the president over the head of Korzhakov, Boris used his connection with Tanya-Valya, as the inseparable duo of Tatyana, the president’s daughter, and Valentin Yumashev, the journalist, was known. He had no doubt that the all-powerful FSO director would learn of his role, and their relationship would be finished. Korzhakov blacklisted anybody who bypassed him to see the president, even on a completely innocent errand. And this was no innocent errand: Boris was plotting to reverse Korzhakov’s coup.
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