Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [93]
“I am flying to Moscow tomorrow,” said Boris. “Please get me some background info on federalism. I need to explain that to him.”
By the time he landed in Moscow, I had compiled a short history of democracy and federalism, from the Magna Carta to the Federalist Papers to the desegregation battles of John F. Kennedy.
For the next several days a hastily assembled team drafted a memorandum to Putin in the back room of The Club. Boris’s passionate call for freedom gradually merged with political theory and legalistic arguments. The end result was a six-page document blasting the regional reform for historical, spiritual, economic, legal, and political reasons.
The letter extolled the role of federalism as a safeguard of democracy. It warned that the proposed legislation would “consolidate the powers of the central government, but weaken the feedback” from below, because local authorities would no longer be accountable to the people. It would make the government less, not more efficient. The measures would throw the system back to the old Soviet model.
The memo began, “Dear Volodya.” To set the right tone Boris added two epigraphs. One was from Aristotle: “Amicus Plato, sed amica veritas” (Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth). The other was from the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, who had been killed in Stalin’s Gulag: “I am lawfully wed to Liberty and will never discard this crown.”
As we were laboring over the final draft of the letter, the evening news carried reports of another high drama unfolding in the shadows of the Kremlin. On May 11 masked police toting machine guns raided the offices of Gusinsky’s Media-MOST, the parent of NTV. Federal prosecutors were investigating Goose’s finances. It appeared that the Kremlin’s threat to destroy NTV for airing the program on Ryazan had not been an idle one.
“Boris, shall we add a section on free speech to the letter?” someone asked.
“No, no, God forbid, let us not mix apples with oranges. That would antagonize Volodya. You see, for him, I am ‘us’ and Goose is ‘them.’ It is important to keep our polemics as an in-house discussion. Let us leave Goose aside.”
Some days later Boris called: “We are going public.” Earlier that day he had had a meeting with Putin. The president read the letter, he said, but his own advisers were of a totally different opinion.
“Volodya, browbeating is not an argument,” Boris said. “Your plan amounts to a major change in the Constitution. This should be explained and discussed not with me, but with the public at large. Instead we hear empty phrases about the ‘vertical axis of power.’ These are not explanations. There should be a national debate and a referendum, like we had in 1993 when we adopted the Constitution.”
“The proposals will be put up for a vote in the Duma.”
“Come on, Volodya, I know how things are in the Duma. It’s $5,000 per vote. I can go out and start paying $7,000. This would not be a debate on substance.”
“Boris, I don’t understand you. We are vlast”—the right of power—“and you are supposed to be one of us. But if you go against us, then whom would you represent? Yourself?”
There was a pause. Finally Boris said, “Well, the problem is, I am convinced that you are making a mistake. I have no other option than to start a public discussion. Let us see what other people think.”
“You have every right to do so,” said Putin coldly.
When he repeated the conversation to me, Boris looked excited. He was gearing up for a new campaign. “Once we’ve published the letter, we’ll sponsor a debate,” he said. “An all-Russia conference on federalism. With experts. On prime-time TV. Will you help me?”
“Boris, if you go down this road, I predict in a year from now you will be an exile in your château, or worse, sitting in jail. I must tell you that. This is not politics, this is mafia war, or class struggle, whichever you like to call it. For Putin the substance does not matter—as long as he sees you as one of his gang. But