Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (27 page)

Aug. 1992.

26 Dated 25 Aug. 1991, in Stepankov and Lisov,
Kremlevskii
zagovor
, 258–9. Sergei Akhromeev, former chief of the General Staff and then the top military adviser to Gorbachev, committed suicide right after the failed putsch, leaving a note for the Soviet president: ‘Beginning in 1990, I was convinced, as I am today, that our country is heading for ruin’ (ibid. 214). The last KGB chief to have been arrested was Beria, who was executed in 1953. Kryuchkov would survive not only to write his memoirs and to enjoy retirement in freedom, but also to meet in 2000 with one of his successors as head of the KGB, Vladimir Putin, who by then had became Russia’s President.

27 Viktor Baranets,
El’tsin i ego generaly: Zapiski polkovnika Gensh-taba
(Moscow, 1997), 132–3.

28 On Gorbachev’s unwillingness to relinquish his vision of reforming the party see Jack F. Matlock, Jr.,
Autopsy on an
Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the
Soviet Union
(New York, 1995), 596. See also Palazchenko,
My Years
, 142; and Iakovlev,
Omut
, 460–62.

29 Kryuchkov wrote: ‘After every discussion of the situation in the country, Gorbachev as a rule gave instructions to continue the analysis and, just to be sure, to prepare recommendations. He did not exclude the possibility of enacting presidential or emergency rule in the country or in specific regions. All these materials were then returned for further 211

notes

work, or with the command to “wait for the appropriate time” ’ (Kriuchkov,
Lichnoe delo
, ii. 146–7).

30 In mid-1990, the new prime minister of Russia’s new government had gone on television to announce a telephone number for anyone interested in applying to become a minister. John Morrison,
Boris Yeltsin: From Bolshevik to Democrat
(New York, 1991), 154.

31 Roman Solchanyk, ‘Ukraine’, in Vera Tolz and Iain Elliot (eds.),
The Demise of the USSR: From Communism to Independence
(London, 1995), 119–29 (at 120).

32 Martha Brill Olcott,
Central Asia’s New States: Independence,
Foreign Policy, and Regional Security
(Washington, 1996), 9, 40. See also Nursultan Nazarbaev,
Bez pravykh i levykh
(Moscow, 1991), 178–81.

33 Jerry Hough,
Democratization and Revolution in the USSR

1985–1991
(Washington, 1997), 252.

34 Gorbachev, who writes that Yeltsin did not give up the idea of retaining some form of the Union until mid-October 1991, believed that he could get an agreement with Yeltsin one on one, but complains that Yeltsin would abandon it as soon as he returned to his entourage. Gorbachev,
Memoirs
, 347, 654; Grachev,
Kremlevskaia khronika
, 198–201.

35 David Remnick,
Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia
(New York, 1996), 27. The Russian official was evidently Andrei Kozyrev. Kozyrev, Gennadi Burbulis, and Sergei Shakhrai were the main CIS protagonists in the Yeltsin inner circle. Gaidar claims to have drafted the documents.

Korzhakov,
Boris Yeltsin
, 129; Gaidar,
Days of Defeat
, 125.

36 Palazchenko,
My Years
, 347. ‘Strategically, Gorbachev was completely oriented on Bush,’ writes Kryuchkov. ‘Attempts to caution him were met with a grin and objections. “Bush 212

notes

won’t let me down. Anyway, you can’t trick me” ’

(Kriuchkov,
Lichnoe delo
, ii. 45).

37 John Dunlop,
The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Union
(Princeton, 1993), 186–255; Amy Knight,
Spies without
Cloaks: The KGB’s Successors
(Princeton, 1996), 12–37.

5. Survival and cannibalism in the rust belt
1 Steven L. Solnick,
Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in
Soviet Institutions
(Cambridge, MA, 1998), 6–7, 251.

2 Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski,
The Tragedy of Russia’s
Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy
(Washington, 2001). One critic of shock therapy noted that, ‘after six years of Gorbachev’s economic mismanagement, it was probably too late, and conditions were too serious for Yeltsin to attempt gradual reform’ (Marshal Goldman,
Lost
Opportunity: What has Made Economic Reform in Russia so
Difficult
(New York, 1994), 156).

3 Hysteria over Russia’s ‘oligarchs’ became widespread in the US, but it contained no small element of hypocrisy.

Whereas, in 1999, executive pay was 13 times the average worker’s salary in Sweden, 15 times in Germany, and 24

times in the UK (the highest multiple in Europe), in the US

corporate executives took home 475 times more salary than their average workers. Furthermore, American executives’

pay was increasing even though their companies’ value was declining. Here, perhaps, was the true meaning, for rank-and-file shareholders, of corporate board ‘oversight’.

‘Executive Pay: A Special Report’,
New York Times
, 1 Apr.

2001. See also Chrisopher Howard,
The Hidden Welfare
State: Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United States
(Princeton, 1997).

213

notes

4 Gaidar,
Days of Defeat
, 14–18, 79.

5 Soviet claims on Third World countries amounted to perhaps $150 billion, but in many cases these loans had been denominated in roubles, which after 1991 were undergoing steep devaluation. Also, many of the debtors were insolvent. Anders Aslund,
How Russia Became a Market
Economy
(Washington, 1995), 105.

6 Kostikov,
Roman s prezidentom
, 42–3. Kostikov, Yeltsin’s first-term press secretary, worked in the Kremlin office of the Stalin-era USSR President Mikhail Kalinin. Others who had used it included Voroshilov, Brezhnev, Podgorny, and, most immediately, Alexander Yakovlev (p. 37).

7 P. J. O’Rourke, ‘Deep in the Heart of Siberia’,
Rolling Stone
, 14 Nov. 1996, 95.

8 Vladimir Mau,
The Political History of Economic Reform in
Russia, 1985–1994
(London, 1996), 72.

9 Gaidar,
Days of Defeat
, 203.

10 Boris Fedorov,
Desiat’ bezumnykh let: Pochemu v Rossii ne sos-toialis’ reformy
(Moscow, 1999), 91–110.

11 David Woodruff,
Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian
Capitalism
(Ithaca, NY, 1999), 99–102.

12 Jean Farneth Boone, ‘Trading in Power: The Politics of Soviet Foreign Economic Relations, 1986–1991’, Ph.D.

dissertation, Georgetown University, 1998.

13 Gaidar,
Days of Defeat
, 97, 103.

14 Vladimir Shlapentokh, ‘Russia: Privatization and Illegalization of Social and Political Life’,
Washington Quarterly
, 19/1

(1996), 65–85 (at 73).

15 Remnick,
Resurrection
, 356.

16 Paul Klebnikov,
Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and
the Looting of Russia
(New York, 2000), 98.

214

notes

17 Stephen Handleman,
Comrade Criminal: Russia’s New Mafiya
(New Haven, 1995).

18 Anatolii Chubais (ed.),
Privatizatsiia po-rossiiski
(Moscow, 1999).

19 Chrystia Freeland,
Sale of the Century: Russia’s Wild Ride from
Communism to Capitalism
(New York, 2000), 67–8.

20 Joseph R. Blasi, Maya Kroumova, and Douglas Krause,
Kremlin Capitalism: Privatizing the Russian Economy
(Ithaca, NY, and London, 1997), 42. In Moscow, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov pulled strings in the Kremlin to exempt valuable city properties from the voucher scheme. Privatization of unique assets in the capital generated sizeable revenues, which were used not only to line the pockets of officials but also for infrastructure and services. Most accounts of privatization exclude Moscow, even though it is an immense part of the Russian economy.

21 David Hoffman, ‘Russia’s Clans Go to War’,
Washington
Post
, 26 Oct. 1997. Ironically, it was only after the 1997 sale of a quarter stake in Russia’s telecom giant brought the first real privatization revenues to the state treasury that Chubais was dismissed from government, as a result of a scandal involving a book advance. (For the book, see n. 18.) 22 Maxim Boycko, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny,
Privatizing Russia
(Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. vii, 97, 125.

23 Blasi
et al
.,
Kremlin Capitalism
, 170.

24 Gertrude Schroeder, ‘Dimensions of Russia’s Industrial Transformation, 1992 to 1998: An Overview’,
Post-Soviet
Geography and Economics
, 39/5 (1998), 243–70 (at 251).

25 Anders Aslund, ‘Observations on the Development of Small Private Enterprises in Russia’,
Post-Soviet Geography
and Economics
, 38/4 (1997), 191–205.

215

notes

26 Schroeder, ‘Dimensions’, 262.

27 Clifford Gaddy,
The Price of the Past: Russia’s Struggle with the
Legacy of a Militarized Economy
(Washington, 1996).

28 Woodruff,
Money Unmade
, 5; Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman,
Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic
Reform in Russia
(Cambridge, MA, 2000), 73–7.

29 In Russian agriculture, the legacy of Soviet social welfare policies and entrenched social constituencies also shaped the possibilities and limits of rural ‘reforms’. Stephen K.

Wegren,
Agriculture and the State in Soviet and Post-Soviet
Russia
(Pittsburgh, 1998).

30 Thane Gustafson,
Capitalism Russian-Style
(New York, 1999), 220.

31 Joseph Kahn and Timothy L. O’Brien, ‘Easy Money: A Special Report. For Russia and its U.S. Bankers, Match Wasn’t Made in Heaven’,
New York Times
, 18

Oct. 1998; Murray, ‘Dollars and Sense’, 31. See also Thane Gustafson,
Capitalism Russian Style
(Cambridge, 1999).

32 George Soros, ‘Who Lost Russia?’,
New York Review of Books
, 13 Apr. 2000, 10–16. Bemoaning the stinginess of the West, one analyst noted that Russia’s ‘reform team faced a rather hopeless situation with the old bureaucracy’ (Aslund,
How
Russia Became
, 90). Another commentator urged the West to give $500 billion to Russia in 2000, after presenting copious evidence of official corruption. Stephen F. Cohen,
Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist
Russia
(New York, 2000).

33 Richard E. Ericson, ‘Economics and the Russian Transition’,
Slavic Review
, 57/3 (1998), 609–25. The debate between shock therapists and gradualists, one scholar has 216

notes

written, ‘seems besides the point’, because the evidence suggests that a country’s proximity to the European Union border rather than its policy orientation shaped economic outcomes. Stephen E. Hanson, ‘Analyzing Post-Communist Economic Change: A Review Essay’,
East European Politics
and Societies
, 12/1 (1998), 145–70.

6. Democracy without liberalism?

1 Eugene Huskey,
Presidential Power in Russia
(Armonk, NY, 1999), 13–16. Gorbachev’s last prime minister, Valentin Pavlov, aptly called the presidential administration and CC apparat ‘Siamese twins’ (Pavlov,
Upushchen li shans?
, 167).

2 Because Yeltsin would not brook anyone who had worked too closely with Gorbachev, most of the top apparatchiks from the old CC ended up working for Khasbulatov, who had lost the Russian premiership to Gaidar, but whose team constantly outmanœuvred Gaidar and the Yeltsin entourage. Kostikov,
Roman
, 81. Khasbulatov, by the way, appropriated the apartment on Shchusev Street that had been built for Brezhnev but which Brezhnev (and later Yeltsin) declined to occupy as simply too large (460 square metres).

Korzhakov,
Boris Yeltsin
, 138–46.

3 Thomas Graham, ‘The Fate of the Russian State’,
Demokratizatsiya
, 8/3 (2000), 354–75.

4 Korzhakov, the bodyguard, helped plan and led the assault on parliament, amid considerable wavering in the Defence Ministry and presidential staff. Korzhakov,
Boris Yeltsin
, 155–99 (quote p. 158).

5 Kostikov,
Roman
, 267.

6 It bears keeping in mind that, since the 1789 revolution, 217

notes

France has had fifteen constitutions (and five different republics).

7 Eugene Huskey, ‘The State–Legal Administration and the Politics of Redundancy’,
Post-Soviet Affairs
, 11/2 (1995), 115–43. The Presidential Administration, like the old CC, came to control appointments to the ministries. At the same time, the Russian government, too, contained a large contingent of vice-premiers who did not have ministerial portfolios and whose trans-ministerial supervisory functions also recalled the overlord functions of the ‘secretaries’ of the old CC. Sergei Vasilyev, ‘The Government of Russia’, in Edward Skidelsky and Yuri Senokosov (eds.),
Russians on Russia
(London, 2000), 1–9.

8 Huskey,
Presidential Power
, 42.

9 Kostikov,
Roman
, 8; Korzhakov,
Boris Yeltsin
, 81–2; Boris Yeltsin,
Midnight Diaries
(New York, 2000), 112, 275. See also George Breslauer, ‘Boris Yeltsin as Patriarch’,
Post-Soviet
Affairs
, 15/2 (1999), 186–200.

10 They were Chuvashiya, Tuva, and three republics in the North Caucasus, including Chechnya. Tuva, like Chechnya, bordered on another country (Mongolia), but was not violently separatist.

11
Obshchaia gazeta
, 11–17 Dec. 1997. See also Anatol Lieven,
Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power
(New Haven, 1998).

12 Robert J. Kaiser, ‘Prospects for the Disintegration of the Russian Federation’,
Post-Soviet Geography
, 36/7 (1995), 426–35.

13 Mary McAuley,
Russia’s Politics of Uncertainty
(New York, 1997), 222.

14 Valerii Streletskii,
Mrakobesie
(Moscow, 1998), 4; Korzhakov,
Boris Yeltsin
, 404.