55 If anyone doubts the downward spiral in Chechnya, read as follows: “There was violation of human rights on a mass scale. . . . A slave market openly operated in the center of Grozny, with hundreds of people (mainly Chechens) held captive as hostages and subjected to violence. Kidnapping people for exchange acquired epidemic proportions, with more than 3,500 Chechens ransomed between 1996 and 1999. Bandits and terrorists killed thousands. . . . Not only did Chechnya become the criminal cesspool of the CIS countries; it also became a base for international terrorism. Terrorists from many different countries became active on its territory, with their activities financed by foreign extremist centers.” Dzhabrail Gakaev, “Chechnya in Russia and Russia in Chechnya,” in Richard Sakwa, ed., Chechnya from Past to Future (London: Anthem, 2005), 32.
56 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 253.
57 Yelena Dikun, “Bol’shaya kremlëvskaya rodnya: anatomiya i fiziologiya Sem’i” (The great Kremlin clan: anatomy and physiology of the Family), Obshchaya gazeta, July 22, 1999.
58 A hypercritical treatment of Russian politics in the 1990s, for example, writes of Berezovskii both buying the favors of the Yeltsins and blackmailing them. The former assertion rests largely on the testimony of Aleksandr Korzhakov, which is unreliable on the question of Berezovskii’s personal favors and presents. The latter assertion is not backed up by hard evidence and does not square with the impression in the book that Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana respected Berezovskii’s advice and sought it out. Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2001).
59 Leonid Dyachenko first came to public attention when an American investigation into money laundering discovered that he had two sizable bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. No charges were laid. Yurii Skuratov, the procurator general whom Yeltsin forced out of office in the spring of 1999, doubted that the president was informed about Dyachenko’s actions. Robert O’Harrow, Jr., and Sharon LaFraniere, “Yeltsin’s Son-in-Law Kept Offshore Accounts, Hill Told,” The Washington Post, September 23, 1999.
60 It was widely reported, for example, that Berezovskii favored the removal of Chernomyrdin in March 1998. But as replacement he advocated Ivan Rybkin, the former Duma speaker, and not Kiriyenko. Berezovskii, no more consistent in this regard than Yeltsin, was all for the reinstatement of Chernomyrdin in August 1998, and one American journalist wrote at the time that, “More than anyone else, Berezovskii brought back Chernomyrdin to power” (David Hoffman, “Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia,” The Washington Post, August 28, 1998). As we know, though, Chernomyrdin never came back to power because the Duma refused to confirm him. Primakov, who was confirmed, viewed Berezovskii as a schemer.
61 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 109–10. Yeltsin grumbled openly about Berezovskii’s pushiness at a ceremony for Russian cosmonauts in April 1998 (Hoffman, Oligarchs, 409–10).
62 Yeltsin says in his memoir that he had “several” meetings with Berezovskii. Berezovskii told me (interview, March 8, 2002) there were two conversations during the 1996 campaign and “very few” after that, three or four at most, plus a handful of larger gatherings at which both he and Yeltsin were present.
63 Berezovskii interview.
64 This statement is in Boris Berezovskii, Iskusstvo nevozmozhnogo (The art of the impossible), 3 vols. (Moscow: Nezavisimaya gazeta, 2004), 2:250.
65 “Berezovskii said to me that he had a program for psychological influence on Tanya. He could tell her for hours at a time how I, for example, was a scoundrel . . . and, since she was impressionable . . . she in the end had come to hate me fiercely.” Second Nemtsov interview. Berezovskii made the claim about meeting Dyachenko every two or three months in a press interview in 1999 (Berezovskii, Iskusstvo nevozmozhnogo, 1:142). It is possible that he was exaggerating.
66 Quotations from Berezovskii interview and third interview with Tatyana Yumasheva (January 25, 2007).
67 Valentin Yumashev, fourth interview with the author (January 22, 2007), and third Yumasheva interview; Reddaway and Glinski, Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms, 606. Dikun, “Bol’shaya kremlëvskaya rodnya,” reports yet another example tending in this direction: that Yumashev as Kremlin chief of staff led the opposition to the Sibneft-Yukos merger in 1998. But Yumashev has assured me there is not an ounce of truth to this story.
68 “Pravo pobedilo emotsii” (Law has beaten emotions), Rossiiskaya gazeta, November 6, 1998. The Duma brief was not as clear-cut as one might think. In neighboring Ukraine, where the constitutional wording and the status of the incumbent were almost identical, the court ruled in December 2003 in favor of President Leonid Kuchma. He chose not to seek re-election in 2004.
69 Naina Yeltsina, second interview with the author (September 18, 2007).
70 Grigor’eva, “Vladimir Shevchenko.” An alternative explanation was that Yeltsin disguised his intentions until the very end, even from close aides.
71 Michael Wines, “Impeachment Also Is Proceeding, in a Convoluted Way, in Russia,” New York Times, December 19, 1998. The proceedings are described in detail in Kaj Hobér, The Impeachment of President Yeltsin (Huntington, N.Y.: Juris, 2004). Some deputies favored a sixth charge blaming Yeltsin for the financial collapse of 1998.
72 Sergei Kovalëv, “Ne zhelayu igrat’ v beznravstennyye igry” (I do not wish to play immoral games), Nezavisimaya gazeta, May 15, 1999.
73 Strobe Talbott, interview with the author (January 9, 2006).
74 “Confrontation over Pristina Airport,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/671495.stm.
75 By this time the affair had entered the sphere of theater of the absurd. The government claimed that Skuratov was being blackmailed by the prostitutes and this left him unable to serve.
76 This historical parallel is drawn in Yel’tsin, Marafon, 302. Yeltsin was most alarmed by a comment Primakov made in February emphasizing the need to free up cells in Russian prisons for persons who would soon be arrested for economic crimes. He thought it reflected Soviet-era stereotypes.
77 Ibid., 303.
78 The main indicator of favor was seen on the nightly television news on May 5. At a Kremlin meeting that day on preparations for the millennium celebrations, Yeltsin made a show of asking Stepashin to leave his seat at the table and take the chair between him and Patriarch Aleksii II.
79 Natal’ya Konstantinova, “Boris Yel’tsin poshël na politicheskoye obostreniye i otpravil Yevgeniya Primakova v otstavku” (Boris Yeltsin has gone for a sharpening of political tensions and sent Yevgenii Primakov into retirement), Nezavisimaya gazeta, May 13, 1999.
80 These maneuvers are analyzed in Aleksandr Sadchikov, “Partiinaya distsiplina ne vyderzhala ispytaniya impichmenta” (Party discipline failed the test of impeachment), Izvestiya, May 18, 1999; and Ivan Rodin, “Kak Boris Yel’tsin obygral Zyuganova i Yavlinskogo” (How Boris Yeltsin beat Zyuganov and Yavlinskii), Nezavisimaya gazeta, May 18, 1999.
81 Valentin Yumashev, first interview with the author (February 4, 2002). A number of press accounts described Aksënenko as a flunky of Berezovskii’s, but I never found any evidence that this was so. He was appointed minister in April 1997 at the initiative of Boris Nemtsov, who was as hostile to Berezovskii as any governmental leader in 1997–98.