But then the swell of reform simply fizzled out as if someone had pricked it with a pin. And it remained dormant for twenty years. Still, we managed somehow. But were we to live out our age without any reforms?
No, here it was now! Gorbachev! Yemtsov’s faith, which had grown cold, began to glow hot once more. He went back to the university to lecture on the contemporary system of industrial management, using his old but now updated basic ideas (though without mixing in his former ideas from cybernetics—he hadn’t been able to keep up with developments in that field over the past twenty years).
But Gorbachev the reformer? What are you talking about? What did he do, this nearsighted, clumsy oaf? The orders he gave caused nothing but damage, just one blunder after another. He introduced Councils of Working Collectives! They were to study the plan sent down from the ministry and decide whether or not to approve it! I ask you now, is there any cook (never mind the manager of a powerful and renowned factory complex) who would allow something like that to go on in her kitchen? Wait, here’s something even better: this so-called working collective from now on will elect the manager! Half of what I do goes on outside the factory : all the deliveries, relations with the other enterprises, dealing with government, foreign currency purchasing—and tell me who in this working collective or any other riffraff is capable of deciding all these things? It’s raving lunacy! And then some wretched little newspaper—and one that focused on literature, besides—began a series of articles under the title “If I were the manager . . .” Just tell them what you want to do . . . Have you ever seen anything like it? Maybe your memory is better than mine. But I, at least, know how to draw conclusions from what I’ve seen. And so, what I think is—this is the end!
But whatever the end might be, those alive have to go on living. (And you have a second son who’s growing up. Isn’t that music for your soul? Now you have to live! And go on living for a long time!)
And so we floundered around through five years of perestroika. We tackled our problems through the “trial and error” method, as experimenters call it. And we had to do it ourselves, working far away from those who ruled over us, without making a nod toward Moscow. By the end of the eighties all the lines of communication among the industrial enterprises of the USSR had so deteriorated that you could no longer rely on your suppliers. And the giant Tezar was looking for ways to manufacture as many of its supplies as possible on its own.
But we still hadn’t felt the full misery of it all. Then we found out that they had driven out the party. Yes! I can say that I was the first one to dislike these beetle-browed people at the very top, despite all the orders I wear on my chest, despite my gold stars, despite the many times I spoke in the former Central Committee. Just think of me as a humble man, a simple professor of cybernetics. Still, the party was our rudder. It was our pillar of support. And they knocked it out from under us.
And so we rushed into the Great Reform, just as the old fisherman said as he sat by his hole in the ice: we’ll drop in a line and see what happens.
This was how it came to Tezar. Exactly three weeks after the brainy fellows began the reform, on an overcast day in late January, Yemtsov was given a telegram from the Ministry of Defense: “Cease dispatch of production number so-and-so and number so-and-so due to lack of funds.”
Alone in his large office but seated in his same old chair, Yemtsov looked at the telegram and felt the goosebumps rise on his scalp.
It was as if some evil spirit or demon had flown over, just brushing his head.
Or it was as if some enormous bridge, a marvel of engineering spanning a river broader than the Volga, had collapsed in an instant, leaving only a cloud of concrete dust slowly settling over the ruins.
For forty-one years, from the time in the St. George Hall, Yemtsov had been an industrial manager. For thirty-two years, since Francis Gary Powers, he had been manager of Tezar. And this telegram proclaimed: it was all over . . .
If the Ministry of Defense, three weeks after the start of the “reform,” had no money left for something like that, then they had no future. A wise man has to be able to see through everything, right through to the last wall at the back. This really was the end of it all. And the most unwise thing to do would be to flounder about trying to save yourself, to send off imploring telegrams, to deceive even yourself, to delay the final resolution. The telegram said only to “cease dispatch,” not to “cease production,” and there was still capacity in the shops and warehouses to go on producing for a time.
But no. Best to cut it off at once. Don’t prolong the death throes.
Had he sat there for a whole hour? He hadn’t turned on the light, and now his office was almost dark.
He switched on his desk lamp. He called in his three senior managers. In an aloof, emotionless voice, as if speaking of something unrelated to him, he told them that as of such-and-such a date, no further supplies were to be issued to the factory shops.
In other words, the Great Impetus was over.
DURING THOSE WEEKS, ninety-five of every hundred managers of defense plants rushed to Moscow to argue: “We will lose our technological expertise ! Give us some government contracts, and in the meantime we will go on producing for the warehouse!” They all feared one thing: that they would be excluded from the system of supplying the military: “Don’t cast me aside to be privatized.” The word “privatize” was as frightening as a sea monster.
Yemtsov saw it as clearly as if he were at absolute zero, -273 degrees: our electronics industry is finished. Our advanced technologies will die because sectors or factories cannot be maintained independently; there will always be some element missing from the whole complex. The system as a whole will deteriorate. Our advanced military technology will begin to collapse, and when that happens, no one will be able to restore it for decades.
Yet the whole reform led by Gaidar, Yeltsin, and Chubais was correct and brilliant! There were none of Gorbachev’s half-measures: the whole thing had to be destroyed, all of it, right to the last bit! And then, sometime in the future, Carthage will be rebuilt, though not by us, and it will certainly not be done in our fashion.
But when Yemtsov announced to an anxious and tight-knit band of managers who were all supplying the state that he was going to privatize his factory, these defense contractors erupted with rage: “Have you lost your mind? How can you even imagine privatizing the things that we do? There’ll be no privatization as long as we’re alive!”
“Really?” Yemtsov smiled with his usual air of assurance, though his smile was a bitter one. “Fine, let’s discuss it so I can crush your arguments. If I’ve understood you correctly, you think that despite all this, our metallurgical industry, for example, will continue to grow. Do you think we can go on churning out low-grade steel when the market for special steels has disappeared? You’re all thinking of the past. But you’d better forget it. There’ll no longer be any head office for the defense industries, and there’ll no longer be any employees in the defense industries. And before long, we’ll be unable to match the level of our current production.”
Among all the idiotic buzzwords and phrases of the time—“perestroika,” “accelerated development,” “a socialist market,” and then “reforms” (but no one knew just what sort of reforms)—there was one that was remarkably intelligent and perceptive, if one truly grasped its meaning. It was addressed to factory managers: “Become the masters of your production!”
Absolutely true! It captured it all! That was the key.
BUT IF YOU are the “master of production,” in name at least, then why not become one in practice?
Becoming a master, though—how does that happen?
It’s always more difficult for the first one who has to blaze a trail through unexplored territory. Still, he had won some time for the reconstruction of Tezar.
In fact, there were a few others like him in the “party of economic freedom.” He joined the group, but what he encountered was either a lot of empty tal
k or people who wanted political power. No, politics was not going to solve this problem.
At first, Yemtsov believed that he could get help from Western investors. When a group of Western bankers visited Tezar, he received them graciously and trustingly and entertained them lavishly, in Russian style. They smiled and were very polite; they enjoyed the caviar; but they offered not one penny of help.
Nor could the Russian government provide more than small change. He had to hurry.
Now that there were no travel restrictions, he decided to go to America himself. He was received very graciously, as a “progressive entrepreneur.” There were meetings and business breakfasts and lunches; he took advice from specialists. But there wasn’t a penny for investment. What he did hear, again and again, was the same piece of advice: No one would be willing to invest in such a giant as your Tezar; that could only be a losing proposition. You have to take it apart and create many separate enterprises ; then each one of them will have to sink or swim on its own.
From his childhood in Poltava he recalled what Gogol had written: “I’ve given birth to you, and I can kill you as well.”
The Council of Ministers was a regular circus, everyone elbowing each other aside in their efforts to lobby officials. And so Yemtsov squeezed into an airplane with the vice premier, and while they were en route to a conference, he obtained permission to privatize Tezar and break it up into smaller segments.
If you cut up a living body, the pieces will still wriggle about in search of one another. But we had no other option.
And so now my principle will be this: No more of these inflated government contracts! First the money, then the order. You pay your money, then you get your goods—isn’t that the way it’s normally done? They had left us no choice: now it was money in advance. Tezar’s military manufacturing was reduced to only five percent—just spare parts for anti-missile defense and a few bits and pieces. He divided Tezar into sixty subsidiaries, but he remained general manager of all of them. Part of their authorized capital came from the former Tezar; the rest would come from wealthy backers they had to seek out on their own. The aim of each of these individual cells was to survive, and so they were left to “wriggle.” Each of these sixty firms had the same legal rights; the office of the general manager—now given the new designation of “holding company”—had its own legal basis.
There was one principle for all of them: Henceforth, we don’t care how you earn your money! You want to use UHF for processing buckwheat? Fine. Microwave ovens (something we hadn’t seen before) for the domestic market? Start turning them out! Someone wants to manufacture VCRs? Excellent. Plastic window frames, children’s toys. As for those who have nothing going and can’t pay wages, then don’t pay them. You’ll have to let your workers go.
The whole city was abuzz: “The electronics plant has switched to making garden rakes!” (That wasn’t far from the truth.) Those who knew more about what was happening—the electronics engineers or managers of defense plants all over the country—said: “Yemtsov is tearing the Tezar empire apart!” Those workers who had not yet been laid off but were on their second or third month with no wages, and those who had already been laid off, were seething with rage. They gathered in raucous crowds at the factory office, cursing the manager. Yemtsov set up a meeting with them in the factory recreation center.
Still agile in his old age, thin as a rail and with the same bright eyes and face of his youth, he went to face the storm. He felt the same devilmay-care boldness that had served him so well at other times in his life. He knew he had not lost his ability to think on his feet and knew he would now take them utterly by surprise.
The hall was filled with loud, angry voices. Yemtsov raised his hand with its long fingers as a schoolteacher might when demanding silence. Speaking with all the volume and clarity he could still muster, he said: “Who is responsible for all this? Is it the Supreme Soviet we have today? But who elected the Supreme Soviet? Is it the managers who are responsible ? Or is it the workers? Whom did you vote for? Did you elect managers, organizers, and businessmen who knew what they were doing? No! You rushed off to elect some self-styled democrats, most of them former instructors of Marxism-Leninism, some economists, ivory-tower professors, and journalists . . . Khasbulatov, Burbulis, Gaidar, Chubais—and I can list thirty more. Who elected them? So now you can take your red banners and march off to these wise gentlemen and look for justice. But I can see farther than they can, and I’m saving you! I may be leaving you unemployed, but remember: it’s only for 1992 and no longer than that. Coming from Tezar, you’ll still manage to find work or adapt yourself to a new job. But anyone who goes marching off with a red banner to look for his wages will be left high and dry.”
IT’S NOT DIFFICULT for a young man to rebuild his career and change his views and his plans. But a man of sixty-five?
You’re confident that you’re right. Yet you feel the bile rising in your throat when you think of how everything collapsed.
You have to have a mind that never loses its remarkable agility; you have to change, immediately, all those things that have guided you until now, as if none of them meant anything, and then set off marching briskly along some new path.
And you stumble at every step. A steady flow of microwave ovens and VCRs—better and cheaper than those Tezar produced—came from Japan. Well then, there’s no point wallowing about, we have to shut down our own amateurish production. (And lay off even more workers. In fact, many engineers, office staff, and workers did not wait for layoffs and left. But who were the ones who walked away? At first, the very best of them, then the second best. What remained was a gray mass, the ballast. Out of a workforce of eighteen thousand, only six thousand were left.)
A year passed, and one quarter of the fragments of Tezar had gone bankrupt, failed, or were dissolved. Some, though, had found a way to make a profit. It meant looking very closely, seeking out areas where no one had ventured, no one had anticipated, no one had explored; it meant digging up the earth itself and searching beneath it and even looking into outer space. Here was something new that had popped up: portable hand telephones working through satellites. Let’s look at that! We’ll build base stations for them and electronic switching systems and sell numbers to subscribers—there’s profit to be made! Even simple gas meters that Gazprom doesn’t have but that everyone needs—there’s profit!
Yes, gentlemen-comrades, we have nothing to be ashamed of; any sort of business suits us! Even garden rakes, even hats, even renting out our luxurious accommodations, our palaces and our kindergartens, even housing a store selling Scandinavian furniture! Even a supermarket! A casino or even a regular brothel! (Selling things is a way of life, but who will buy our old factory shops? And the state that’s refused to give us help is still eager to take from us—for debts, for electrical power.)
The most promising idea, though, was to create our own bank jointly with those elements of Tezar that were successful. Given his quickness and acuity he didn’t let pass that brief time when new banks were springing up by the dozens. Those who waited too long could sit and chew their nails. A bank is a sensory system for everything that lives and creates! And (something they never expected) three years later, the Tezar Bank was awarded the American Torch of Birmingham Prize. (Years before, recovery from the Great Depression began in the city of Birmingham, Alabama; hence the prize.)
Those managers of defense plants who had waited for state contracts for a year or two, or who had built up debt by continuing production, were now floundering pitiably like frogs cast up on a sandy shore. Yemtsov, however, had not only managed to do what was necessary in time but had not even been weakened by the sudden fracture in the continuity of his life and in the life of his country. He would still walk about his former holdings looking even more proud and authoritative than before, when he was a famous Red manager. Sometimes he would frown as he passed the casino and think: “I’d be happy to pay those half-baked impotents not to listen to their music.”
Once again he was a conqueror, though he kept all his old orders and gold “Hero” stars in the lower drawer of his desk. If your mind is agile and you keep your youthful passion for activity, you’ll never fail. He would say: “My view is that making money is an interesting occupation. No less interesting than being the beating pulse of the military-industrial complex or, say, understanding cybernetics.”
And when my son grows up, he should get some of his education abroad.
2
AN ATTEMPT HAD been made on the life of a banker in the building at 15 Karl Marx Street. There was an explosion in the building’s lobby, but the banker was unharmed; he and his wife left immediately by car.
The call about the incident came to the oblast Organized Crime Division late in the evening. The duty lieutenant should have gone out to investigate immediately, but he knew how dangerous something like that could be at night, even with a backup of two policemen armed with submachine guns: where there had been one explosion there could well be a second and a third. And so the lieutenant waited until dawn—a late February dawn—and then set off.
The building was a co-op, and the tenants themselves had installed a steel exterior door to the lobby. The magnetized support for one of the two bombs that had been set off was still attached to the door. The interior wooden door had been blown through at the height of a man’s chest, and the whole lobby was lacerated by fragments that lay scattered across the floor. The lieutenant had warned the building staff not to touch anything during the night, and the tenants who returned the previous evening had passed through the lobby with great caution. The lieutenant took all the measurements and compiled a description of the incident. The banker himself (his name was Tolkovyanov; he was a younger man) was not at home. No one answered the door to his apartment, which turned out to be quite an ordinary one with just two rooms—something that surprised the lieutenant. The banker and his wife had not returned after the explosion; their two-year-old child, the building staff explained, was probably with his grandmother.
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