Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [82]
Unlike American pundits, the political class in Moscow was very much aware that Putin was being groomed as Yeltsin’s successor. I remember talking to Masha Slonim, an old friend from my Soviet dissident past who had become a doyenne of Moscow political journalism.
“Tell Boris,” she said, “that he is making a big mistake. Putin is KGB, and you don’t dance with the KGB—they will outdance you. Surely Primus is also KGB. But at least Primus is old. He won’t last long. This one will be with us for a very long time.”
Masha and I belong to a class of people who are automatically biased against the KGB. We are not inclined to grant Kontora members the presumption of innocence.
I did speak of this to Boris, but he told me that he trusted Putin. When they disagreed, Putin was straight with him, for example when he called Sasha Litvinenko a traitor. Putin shared Boris’s politics. Most important, Putin displayed genuine loyalty. Boris gave me an example.
“I told him, ‘Volodya, there is a sure way for you to win the elections. Put me in jail for the duration of the campaign. It will knock Primus’s feet out from under him. After the elections, you can let me out.’”
“So what was his response?”
“He agreed with my analysis, but was sure that I would find a better way to win.”
A year later, after President Putin had chased Boris out of Russia, I reminded him of this conversation.
“Well, I guess he was saying what I wanted to hear.”
“Looking back, was there anything that you noticed, any sign that the man was pulling the wool over your eyes?” I wondered.
“Well, there was a moment when I had second thoughts about him.”
It was late August 1999. Boris was on his way to his dacha when Putin called and asked him to come see him right away. Boris made a U-turn and went straight to the White House. Putin received him in Primakov’s old study. Everything was much the same, but Boris noted that the bronze statuette of Dzerzhinsky, the KGB founder, which he had seen in Putin’s office at the FSB, was now standing on the prime minister’s desk.
Putin was white with rage.
“Your friend was here. Goose. He threatened me.”
“What with?”
“He said that when Primus becomes president, which is inevitable, all of you will go to jail. Tanya, Valya, you—and I will go too, for covering up for you.”
“Volodya, I don’t know about Tanya-Valya, but I can assure you that the Aeroflot case is nothing but Primus’s grudge …”
“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “Our service was greatly hurt by you guys, wasn’t it? That’s not the point. He threatened me.”
“Well, Goose is a son of a bitch. He was testing you, that’s his style.”
“Nobody threatens me. He will live to regret it. I just wanted you to know.”
Boris left, not really having understood why Putin wanted to see him.
“That was the second time I saw that emotion in him,” Boris recalled later. “It was the same expression as when he talked about Sasha’s betrayal. This, and also the Dzerzhinsky statuette, made me wonder.”
Boris vacillated for nearly a month. Should he support Yeltsin’s chosen successor? Yeltsin’s premise was that Putin had left the service eight years earlier once and for all and had joined the reformist brotherhood. But was he a true reformer? Or was he fundamentally a KGB man? Perhaps it was not too late to find a different heir apparent? Boris discussed his doubts with Roma Abramovich and asked him to go to St. Petersburg on October 7 to attend Putin’s birthday party. If Kontora still maintained a hold on him, it would surely manifest itself in the spirit of the celebration.
Roma came back reassured.
“You sent me to spy on spies,” he said, “but I found no spies there. Normal crowd, his age, wearing denim, someone playing