Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin

by Andrei A. Kovalev

  By the early 1990s the contours, and some of the representatives, of what basically constituted a new elite in the USSR were extremely clear. The members of this elite believed that they enjoyed the freedom that had been bestowed upon them—that is, a license and freedom to receive personal benefits. Naturally, entrepreneurs and those with the greatest opportunities for enrichment became members of what was then still a covert elite. Traditionally, the ones who had this opportunity were highly placed bureaucrats in the sector of the real economy; party big shots, including people from the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) and the trade unions; and, of course, the KGB, which controlled every aspect of life. A symbiosis developed between pseudo-democratic demagogy and the cynicism and mercilessness of a part of the ruling class linked to the goal of achieving their own aims.

  In August 1991 an extremely curious document came into the hands of the paper Moskovskie novosti (Moscow news):

  Personal Pledge to the CPSU

  I ____, a member of the CPSU since____, party membership No. ____, hereby confirm my conscious and voluntary decision to become a trusted agent of the party and to carry out assignments from the party in any position and under any circumstances without disclosing my membership in the institution of trusted agents. I swear to preserve and carefully utilize in the interests of the party the financial and material means entrusted to me, and I guarantee to return them at the very first request. I acknowledge that everything I earn as a result of economic activity using party funds is the property of the party, and I guarantee to turn such earnings over at any time and any place. I swear to maintain strict confidentiality of the information entrusted to me and to carry out the instructions of the party conveyed to me by authorized persons.

  Signature of member of the CPSU ____

  Signature of the persons undertaking the obligation.4

  According to the Moskovskie novosti the Central Committee of the CPSU and the KGB were engaged in this activity. KGB Col. Leonid Veselovskii was transferred to work in the Administrative Department of the CPSU Central Committee. In his report to the KGB dated July 9, 1991, Veselovskii wrote that he was transferred to meet the “urgent need of the leadership of the Administrative Department of the Central Committee to establish a subdivision capable of coordinating the economic activities and economic structures of the party under changing conditions . . . SU.”

  His report continued, “The means of generating income for party coffers that are not reflected in the financial documents must be used to acquire anonymous shares, stocks in individual companies, enterprises and banks, on one hand to ensure a stable income independent of the party’s future position and, on the other hand, so that these shares can be sold on the stock exchange at any time and the capital subsequently invested in other areas with the aim of concealing the party’s participation while preserving its control.” To implement this plan, he proposed “organizing a timely selection of particularly trustworthy persons who would be tasked with carrying out specific points of the program, not excluding the possibility of establishing a category of secret party members who would guarantee the program’s viability under any circumstances during this extraordinary period.” He also proposed establishing, with the help of the KGB, a network of stock companies abroad in which the brokers would be trustworthy persons, a list of whom should be drawn up immediately. Then in banks of the countries where these stock companies would be based, accounts should be established in the names of the stockbrokers and funds deposited in these accounts. The next step would be to establish joint ventures on the territory of the USSR.

  According to the article, it was precisely through initiatives by the KGB colonel that, in the spring of 1991, Soviet millionaires to whom the CPSU entrusted 400 million rubles appeared on the scene simultaneously.5 These plans basically meshed with the project for market reforms that envisaged restricting political and civic freedoms—including freedom of speech, the right to strike, and so forth—that Anatoly Chubais, one of the most influential and resilient persons in post-Soviet Russia, proposed to Gorbachev in March 1990.6 The concept outlined therein of isolating the government from the interests of various social groups can hardly be deemed democratic. Summing up the preceding information, it turns out that at least many, if not all, of the conditions created in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods, and perhaps later as well, came about as the result of joint action between the KGB and the CPSU aimed at conserving and increasing the funds of the CPSU. Those in possession of these fortunes are incredibly highly paid managers of these assets and perform an extremely delicate function.

  If one accepts this version as plausible, even correct, then two fundamental questions arise. The first and foremost is, to whom do these assets now belong? To the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF)? It is possible though unlikely. The oligarchs do not curry favor with the Communist Party and its leader Gennady Zyuganov; rather, they do so with the executive branch of power, the Kremlin above all.

  The second question is, whose responsibility is it to ensure that the “trustworthy persons” of the now defunct CPSU carry out their obligations? At least formally, the CPRF is quite unable to do this. But the transfer of the assets of the CPSU to “trustworthy persons” took place jointly with the KGB and, one may reasonably suppose, under its aegis. Thus, one cannot exclude the possibility that what happened around the time the CPSU was banned, and then reborn as the CPRF, was the division of property or its redistribution between the communists and the special services.

  I should add, even though I have already spoken about this and have more to say, that it was right after the coup that the KGB itself and its agents became flush with power.

  Let us return to the August coup. I should note that a traditional, fundamentalist Soviet elite, exemplified in the State Emergency Committee, existed in the USSR. This traditional elite differed from the unusual aggressiveness of the emerging new elite, which is often closely linked with the old elite and dependent on it. (It would be a mistake, however, to lump together these two elites, despite the dependence of the new elite on the old, since only a very small number of the old elite became members of the new ruling elite.) The liberal reformers, who might provisionally be called Gorbachevites or supporters of perestroika, found themselves between the hammer and the anvil. They did everything in their power to liquidate totalitarianism, but they could not stomach the irresponsible egotistical radicalism characteristic of much of the new elite. As a result of Gorbachev’s own initiatives, by this time very little depended upon him and his supporters because the old mechanism of supreme power—the Central Committee of the CPSU—was stripped of its plenary powers and a new mechanism had not been created.

  One could reasonably suppose that this new elite was the real puppet master of the August 1991 events. It succeeded in transforming the theatrical and highly stylized violent seizure of power into a creeping coup d’état that led to the redistribution of power and property. Such an assumption explains why the plotters pretended to be so weak and powerless and lacking the resolve to conclude what they had begun. Sadly, however, the coup was widely supported in society. Much is explained if one assumes that the new elite used the coup to achieve its own aims. For example, this would explain why the State Emergency Committee did almost nothing to hold onto the power it had seized, its refusal to attack the Russian White House, and the swift withdrawal of troops from Moscow.

  This hypothesis is worth considering and not only with regard to Russia since something similar may well have occurred in other Soviet republics. Moreover, it explains the convergence in Russia of business with power and the special services that lead to the monstrous penetration of all socially significant spheres of Russian life by agents of the special services, among them ministers, deputies, journalists, politicians, and many, many others.

  Even this quick retrospective look at the results of the August 1991 coup and the events that followed confirms that despite its apparent failure, the puppet m
asters behind the scenes undoubtedly succeeded in their criminal activities. Apart from the destruction of the USSR, they achieved both the official goals of the coup as well as those that were carefully concealed. This is why August 1991 became the point of departure for contemporary Russian history. The scriptwriters for this production, as well as the lighting specialists, the makeup artists, and the costume designers—all deserve high marks for their professionalism.

  Anna Akhmatova, one of Russia’s finest poets, said, “One cannot live in the Kremlin.” I would add that one also cannot work there; it is a place inhabited by specters, according to the definition of the Marquis de Custine, the discerning French aristocrat who wrote about his travels in Russia in 1839. With extremely rare exceptions the entire presidential wing consists of immense, luxurious offices with adjacent visitors’ waiting rooms of similar proportions. In addition, there is an office for one’s assistant. And, of course, a break room for the chief to rest in. There are four-room deluxe suites. But there is simply nowhere to work. While the degree of luxury for the chief was over the top, Chernyaev’s deputy, Karen Brutents, worked in his break room. Five advisers, including me, were crammed together in the assistants’ cubbyhole, which was meant to accommodate one person and was equipped with one desk and one city phone and one official telephone. Accordingly, one not only had to read but also to write on one’s knees or, in the best case, on a little table for visitors on which there was no room to spread out papers. The single desk was assigned to whomever had the most urgent and important task. Looking around from inside this palatial administrative cubbyhole, one wondered how any work at all could be done there.

  Contrary to legend, working in the Kremlin was remarkable for the complete absence of any perquisites and privileges. I recall that store shelves in Moscow were empty; even bread and milk were difficult to find. A rationing system existed, but in order to convert your coupon into goods, you had to find a store where they had what you needed and then wait in line, often for hours. Administrative officials in the Office of the President were occasionally able to buy a kind of absolutely inedible mystery chicken—my wife and I have never seen anything like that before or since—a dozen eggs (that was a real treat), and a kilogram of noodles. Once, however, we were given a unique opportunity to ride to a vegetable supply depot and buy potatoes by the sackful. For those times this was a real bonus. Our neighbors in the elite apartment house—senior scholars, famous artists, high-ranking civil servants—surreptitiously took potatoes from the sack that was placed on the staircase landing. My wife and I pretended not to notice.

  A sojourn inside the Kremlin walls might seriously distort one’s vision if one was unaware of the danger. I am thinking not only of the president and highly placed officials but also about myself and people like me.

  Working in Gorbachev’s secretariat during this period was often a theater of the absurd. The country was collapsing, not least because of the president’s inaction. Instead of working on solving real problems, he was receiving foreigners and often repeating himself. The president assigned us to draft talking points for his conversations, various speeches, and personal messages. He wasted a lot of time on these. Everything that was really important and that his guests might have found interesting was either not included or deleted before reaching the president. Every attempt to exert influence ran into a brick wall. For example, I remember proposing to Anatoly Chernyaev that in my new post I should maintain my contacts with Soviet human rights advocates and democrats. Looking daggers at me, he responded, “Don’t forget that everything you do here reflects upon the president.”

  Many other proposals were similarly rejected. My work often boiled down to meaningless verbiage. Even the hard-won decision to have Shevardnadze take part in the Rome meeting of the Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was supposed to elevate relations with that organization, was not implemented. Shevardnadze plunged into domestic political struggles. Contrary to his memoirs, in which he writes that his main goal was to secure the independence of Georgia, he tried his utmost to prevent the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Incidentally, this was one of the few occasions when the Office of the President showed some initiative. Often our work with respect to policymaking and taking concrete positions on important matters was not well coordinated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other ministries and departments. In other words, Gorbachev did not utilize the potential inherent in his foreign policy to guide events into what he considered the proper channel. There was a surprising lack of clarity as well as an unfortunate tenuousness with regard to essential matters in his conversations with, and personal messages to, foreign interlocutors. The situation was no better with regard to other issues where, too, everything drowned in verbiage and in meetings that, likewise, were dedicated to yet more verbiage.

  Working with my immediate boss, Chernyaev, was no simple matter. His previous experience had taken its toll. (Chernyaev was a party functionary who had been involved in the “international communist and workers’ movement.” Even in his personal diaries he put “human rights” in quotation marks, and he had no use for Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, or “anti-Sovietism” in general.) Sometimes it seemed as though we spoke different languages. Incidentally, the majority of officials in Gorbachev’s secretariat came from the Central Committee. Perhaps there was nothing terrible about this, since there are decent people everywhere, as well as dogmatists, freethinkers, and reactionaries. Unfortunately, their prior experience left its mark.

  Thus, after the battle to hold the Moscow Conference on Human Dimension of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (discussed in chapter 1), Chernyaev assembled in his office the officials of his small group—five advisers, including me, and Brutents, who, as the lone deputy assistant to the president, had a unique status. Just one issue was on the agenda: blocking the inclusion in the final document of a sentence stating that respect for human rights transcended the domestic authority of the state. I had drafted the offending sentence while I was still working in the Foreign Ministry and could not let it be buried so easily. Unfortunately, I was overcome with emotion. After my very pointed remarks that this discussion betrayed an utter lack of understanding of human rights and an unwillingness to accept democratic changes in the country, the meeting broke up. The following evening Chernyaev passed along Gorbachev’s order to me that I should “be at the conference so that everything would work out well.” I suspect that my outburst played a role in this.

  The result was that the Moscow conference document contained language initiated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that had been adopted by consensus and that was binding upon all states: “The participating states emphasize that questions relating to human rights, basic freedoms, democracy, and the supremacy of law are international in character. . . . They categorically and resolutely declare that the obligations undertaken by them in the area of assessing human rights by the CSCE are questions of direct and legal interest for all participating states and are not exclusively domestic matters of the governments concerned.”

  Despite some difficulties in my relationship with Chernyaev, I had an excellent opportunity to observe from the inside what was going on. For example, I remember the following fleeting episode in the first days after the coup that attested to the tense and incandescent atmosphere. The Kremlin was still practically empty. I ran into Yevgeny Primakov in the corridor. We were walking along and talking about some trifling matter. Suddenly his eyes narrowed. He stared down the dimly lit corridor and, instinctively trying to hide, dashed to the right into the bay of the door to Yakovlev’s future office. Without stopping to think, I followed him since, against the background of endless conversations about the second-level membership of the State Emergency Committee, I saw a group of military men coming toward us. It turned out that they were new officers whom Marshal Yevgeny Shaposhnikov had just presented to the president.

  Overall there was not a bad atmosphere in and arou
nd Gorbachev’s secretariat. (I will not speak about all of the president’s staff, since I had almost no contact with the protocol, housekeeping, and other auxiliary services.) A characteristic feature: when at the height of the regular nightly crush of work and Gorbachev’s secretary brought in papers to his assistant Georgy Shakhnazarov, Shakhnazarov would treat her to a shot of cognac to keep her going and would say that everyone who was still on the job should drop in and see him. The only instance of arrogance I encountered was with Vadim Medvedev.7 I had already approached the entrance to the building when I was stopped by his guard lest I disturb his boss, who was promenading up and down. It was just the opposite with Alexander Yakovlev. I was waiting for the two-person elevator when Yakovlev and his bodyguard approached. Naturally, I stepped slightly aside to let them go first. The ideologist of perestroika insisted that I ride with them despite my objections about overcrowding. Incidentally, whenever I saw him, Yakovlev was a font of benevolence and wisdom. However, I had little contact with him. And one reservation: naturally, Yakovlev and Medvedev were not colleagues in the secretariat—they had much loftier positions—but at least we were “together in the same boat” with Yakovlev and his circle. These observations may be trifles, but they are rather revealing. How we got along with each other in the secretariat and the Office of the President was largely determined by just how few of us were involved. Not infrequently, however, the outwardly comradely relations masked something entirely different, including an abundance of KGB agents, unequal relations, intellectual differences, variations in how well grounded different people were, and so on. Most of these factors are typical among colleagues everywhere.