Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [66]
After taking a hard look at the company and the market, the investor offered to join Boris in a deal to take Aeroflot private, adding a huge infusion of cash and talent. When the financial crisis erupted, he still was enthusiastic. He was prepared to go ahead, he said, because he took a long-term view.
A couple of weeks later, the investor was totally bewildered when Boris unexpectedly called off the deal. His reason was simple, but baffling to the American: the “Primakov factor.” With the new prime minister in the White House, not only was Boris convinced that there would be no Aeroflot privatization, but he also could not guarantee that the Glushkov team would survive in the company, or that he himself would be around for long.
The American went home disappointed. Once again I had just missed being in the right place at the right time.
August 19, 1998: Armed Islamic fundamentalists from the radical Wahhabi sect take over two villages in the southern Russian province of Dagestan, declare a “separate Islamic territory,” and impose Sharia law. The Maskhadov government expects Russia to crack down on the insurgents. Instead, Russian Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin negotiates a formula allowing the Wahhabi to remain in the villages indefinitely. In the meantime, the hostage situation in Chechnya deteriorates. More than one hundred people are held in captivity. Russian Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo, assisted by Boris Berezovsky, begins direct negotiations with the hostage-takers, bypassing Maskhadov’s officials. He secures release of more than fifty captives. On September 20, Berezovsky flies two Britons, Jon James and Camilla Carr, who have spent fourteen months in captivity, to freedom. Berezovsky denies paying any ransom.
The ascent of Primakov hurt Boris far beyond his plans for Aeroflot. His principal remaining avenues of influence were Chief of Staff Valentin Yumashev and Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana, but they too were weakened. Yeltsin himself went into an apparent depression after having been forced to appoint a government that he did not like. Before the crisis, the Kremlin exercised control of the cabinet through appointments and firings of its ministers. But the newly empowered prime minister did not owe his position to the president, and Yeltsin could not afford to dismiss him, at least for now. If anything, it was the prime minister who was able to pressure the president over high-level appointments. For the sake of restoring stability, Primus argued, it would be much better if there were people in the Kremlin with whom the White House was on the same wavelength.
Boris’s influence was visibly in decline. The crowds at The Club were gone. Its bar, with the stuffed crocodile in the corner, stood deserted. Worse, at the beginning of November, Boris found himself the focus of a vicious public debate about Jews and their alleged responsibility for Russia’s economic woes. It started with a Communist member of the Duma, Gen. Albert Makashev, who spoke at a rally in the southwestern industrial city of Samara. He claimed that zhidy—a Russian slur for Jews—in and around Yeltsin were responsible for the country’s mess. The crowd cheered and applauded. They “drink the blood of the indigenous peoples of the state; they are destroying industry and agriculture,” Makashev declared. Journalists immediately rushed to Boris for comment. Boris Berezovsky and his friends in the Kremlin personified a “Zionist conspiracy” to a major swath of the population.
As Boris was digging in his heels, expecting hostile action from the new prime minister, Sasha and his friends were on a collision course with the new FSB director.
After his meeting with Putin in July, Sasha became convinced that his crew of whistle-blowers was under surveillance. Their telephones,