Thus, in Lubyanka Putin’s name is linked with the downsizing hated by the agents, with two enormous “dirty” scandals (one of them discrediting the FSB), but also with a positive change. In fact Putin managed to obtain that the officers from Lubyanka receive their paychecks on time. A real manager! Before paychecks to Lubyanka were sent irregularly, like to the rest of the country. “I must say that anywhere Putin worked, his employees started to receive their paychecks regularly,” notes Alexey Mukhin from the Center of political information. Well, he is the manager.
During his service as FSB director, lasting one year and fifteen days, Putin was continuously appointed to all sorts of other posts: he was joined to the commission on the optimization of the State defense order and included in the international fund of protection against discrimination. He was even the secretary of the RF Security Council. There is no information available as to what he had achieved on these posts or did he achieve anything at all.
As Putin started to occupy bigger posts in the hierarchy of the RF functionaries, obviously he made himself a lot of enemies among the big functionaries or even entire clans of functionaries competing with him. In spring 1999, right after Putin’s appointment as the secretary of the RF Security Council, rumors appeared in the press that there is a videotape showing Putin, similar to Skuratov’s. However nothing concrete was presented. Also at that time appeared information that the Stasi archives still keep compromising information about Putin. (Many FSB officers were of the opinion that this blow was made from Primakov’s side, since Putin was one of the few in the special services, on whom Primakov did not have an influence.) In April 1999 Moskovsky Komsomoletz published the information that Putin was discharged from the post of FSB director. Nezavisimaya Gazeta of 30th March 1999 published a testimony of a CIA officer in Brussels (he was serving in NATO’s headquarters) that the American special services tried to gather a compromising file on Putin but supposedly they did not succeed. According to the newspaper that testimony proves the contrary – that such a file does exist.
In issue 31 of 1999 the Versia newspaper published a “Reference about V. V. Putin”. The origin of the reference is unknown. In the reference Putin is characterized very negatively.
In 1999, right after Putin became prime minister (after august 16th 1999) Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service checked a certain SPAG company headed by the lawyer Rudolph Ritter. I will explain in the next chapter what is the link between Putin and SPAG, now I will only decipher the company’s full name: Sankt Peterburg Immobilien und Beteilgungen Aktiengesellshaft, i.e. Saint Petersburg’s real estate.
In these years Edward Limonov was writing hundreds of letters to the regions, articles in the Limonka, painstakingly creating National-Bolshevik Party’s organizations in the regions. In April 1998 the Party split. Alexander Dugin left with twelve supporters. For some time he tried to fight for the NBP brand, and then he abandoned the fight. As a result of Dugin’s departure the Party shifted to the left. In these years I was meeting a lot of people with the goal of party building. On October 1st and 2nd these efforts were rewarded with the First All-Russian Congress of the National-Bolshevik Party. It took place in the Almaz Movie Theater near the Shabolovka subway station. About 600 delegates from 47 RF regions were present on the Congress. After the Congress we sent documents to the Justice Ministry for our registration as the National-Bolshevik Party. Just before November 7th the Justice Ministry refused to register us. Mr. Krashennikov, a puffy blond looking like a plumper Nicolas II, has put his hand to that decision. At that time he was a member of the Union of Rightist Forces, later conjectural considerations forced him to join United Russia, the party in power. On November 14th we have called a special congress in Saint Petersburg in order to modify the official documents (this is what the Justice Ministry formally required from us, although the reasons for the refusal were different – fear of the young growing Party uncontrolled by the Kremlin) and we have modified them according to the requirements. Why were we in such a hurry? The State Duma has adopted a law, according to which only those political parties could be allowed to run for the elections that have been registered as all-Russian a year before the elections. And the elections were supposed to be held in December 1999. The ministry headed by Krashennikov refused to register the NBP the second time as well. Then we sued the Ministry but the Taganski Court took its side.
The position of the Justice ministry was justified in an original way by an old alcoholic functionary, gray-headed and red-faced: “They are over five thousand, they are all young, we don’t know what to expect from them”. Already there State violence was used against us. The lies of the official people who have blocked the young Party’s access to the elector was obvious.
Already in 1999 the Party switched to direct actions. Since we were not given access to the elector and into State Duma’s political space we started to make political space for ourselves wherever we wanted. In February and March 1999 the NBP confronted Nikita Mikhalkov. We learned that this apology for a nationalist has campaigned for the reelection of president Nazarbaev in Kazakhstan in January 1999. This is why the NBP published the leaflet “A butcher’s friend”, in which all Nazarbaev’s crimes were listed and our leaflet was scattered on a presentation of a Mikhalkov’s movie. Our activists were then beaten by the police and almost on the same day somebody tried to throw a box of bottles with an explosive mix into our headquarters. A police and FSB team burst into the headquarters twenty minutes later and although they did not find anything illegal (the guys had already transported the box to the local police station), the headquarters were sealed. Actually two days later we obtained its reopening. And in March the nazbols Bakhur and Gorshkov took vengeance on Mikhalkov for the raid. On Mikhalkov’s master-course in the Kino House they threw eggs at the phony nationalist. For which they were beaten and thrown in jail. This is how gradually the relationship of the authorities and the National-Bolshevik Party were worsening by the fault of the power.
THE PREMIER-HEIR TO THE THRONE
I knew that there was a book by Korzhakov called “Boris Yeltsin: from dusk till dawn”, but I have not read it until lately. Only recently I fell upon it, living in a secret apartment, where I was hiding from repressions. The cover and the pictures first shocked me. The cover shows a probably sunbathing Yeltsin with the angry face of a criminal. And the pictures are so revealing that they could serve as evidence against Yeltsin and his people in a trial over them. Meaty, angry, drunken, baggy, looking like tramps and thugs, Yeltsin and the members of his government are odious. Visibly supposing to write an apology of himself, Korzhakov has in fact made an exposing book. Among others exposing himself, a dull-witted, unpleasant, simple half-police, half-FSB officer, and a man of violence, understanding only violence. Korzhakov is in such rapture when he describes the bloody events of October 1993, how glad he is at the proposition of a certain 1st rank captain Zakharov to shoot down the White House from tanks! As for Yeltsin he just appears like a boor, the regular of some foul cheburek-house. These are the kind of people who were governing us in 1991-1999. There is picture that is particularly impressive. There are three persons on it: a visibly frozen Yeltsin in a coat with hands under his armpits and wearing an ugly, shit-colored huge beret pushed on his front. He sits at a table with the rests of loathsome appetizers on it. Beside him sits Chernomirdin in a leather cap, with a beer and on the other side an anonymous alcoholic hiding his face with his hand. The leaders of Russia!