1. Was There Any Alternative?
Looking back, one has to concede that the only alternative candidate to today's president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was the former head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and former minister of foreign affairs Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov. I have always believed that in the choice between Putin and Primakov, Primakov should have been considered the lesser of two evils. Strategically, politically, ideologically, Primakov was very similar to Putin. Like Putin, he came from the security services. Like Putin, he was ready to make overtures to the communists and to flirt with Soviet symbolism. But in the long term, Primakov would have been easier to fight with and easier to get rid of. Both because he is older and because he is more traditional, more predictable, less "anything goes."
On September 11, 1998, when Primakov became prime minister of Russia, Berezovsky occupied a modest unofficial position as a member of Yeltsin's "family" and a formidable official position as executive secretary of the CIS. Quite quickly it became obvious that Primakov was gravitating toward the communists. This was clear from his appointments in the government as well as from his constant flirtations with the Duma, through which he planned to push Yeltsin's impeachment and become acting president of Russia before the election of 2000. In public, however, Primakov stated exactly the opposite. In particular, in this famous TV address to the nation on April 10, 1999, he unambiguously declared that he was opposed to impeaching the president or to calling for his resignation before the end of his term. He emphasized that he had no plans to take part in the Russian presidential election campaign, denied rumors that he was responsible for the initiation of criminal proceedings against famous businessmen, but insisted that stolen money had to be brought back into the country. Here is the text of Primakov’s speech:
“The year 1999 is connected with the electoral campaign. Therefore, the government believes that it must do everything in its power to ensure that the year will go by without serious conflicts, which could undermine stability achieved with such difficulty. Attempts to push an impeachment of the president through the Duma are untenable and counterproductive. There is no place for them. Such a political game is irresponsible and dangerous. It may not only destabilize society, but also cause an extremely serious political crisis. I am categorically in favor of President Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin remaining in his post for his whole constitutional term. I am categorically opposed to holding elections before they are scheduled to take place, both for the presidency and for the Duma. I believe that there is a serious danger in the calls that one hears, both in the Duma and outside it, to dissolve the party, to dissolve the Duma itself, to declare a state of emergency. This is a reckless course, which threatens to explode the domestic situation in the country. In other words, it's a road to nowhere.
The war of mudslinging that begins during an election campaign has nothing to do with the need for a serious, well thought-out fight against economic crime and corruption, striclty in keeping with the law. I have thought from the very beginning and have told Yuri Ilyich Skuratov that under the present circumstances he cannot continue to be general prosecutor. The discussion of this problem in the Duma has again convinced me of this conclusion. For inflammatory purposes, it is now being alleged that the leadership of the government and I personally were practically directly responsible for the initiation of specific criminal proceedings against several well-known businessmen. All charges must be made and investigated only within the framework of the law. The most important goal for the government is to create a situation in which enormous sums can be restored to the budget that were illegally funneled out of it. Criminal proceedings must never arise from political motives.
You can rest easy, I have no ambitions or desire to take part in the presidential election. And I'm not clinging and holding onto the prime ministerial seat, especially when there is a time frame for my work: today I am useful, tomorrow we shall see. And in general, the government is able to work fruitfully only when it receives stable, unconditional support from the administrations of the legislative and other bodies. In conclusion, dear television viewers, I would like to call on our whole society to work in concord."
What turned out to be important, however, was not what Primakov told the population, but how his speech was interpreted in the Kremlin by Yeltsin and his entourage. The longer Primakov spoke, the clearer it became that everything he said should be understood to mean the opposite: that Primakov was for the impeachment of the president, for his resignation before the end of his term, and for holding a presidential election ahead of schedule; that Primakov was against dissolving the State Duma (an option that was being seriously considered by the president, who had a constitutional right to dissolve the Duma and announce new Duma elections ahead of schedule); that Primakov was intending to run in the presidential election of 2000, and that he was intending to do so independently and not by arrangement with President Yeltsin and as a puppet of the "family"; that Primakov was behind the actions of the General Prosecutor's Office and General Prosecutor Skuratov, and specifically behind highly-publicized criminal proceedings against members of the president's "family" (including Berezovsky); and that Primakov was really was preparing to track down the funds transferred out of Russia to foreign bank accounts and return them to Russia.
This is exactly how Primakov's speech was retold to Yeltsin (who had probably not been apprised of the content of his own prime minister's speech in advance). It made absolutely no difference whether Primakov was telling the truth or lying on April 10. One month later, on May 12, 1999, he was dismissed from his post and replaced by Sergei Stepashin, former head of the Federal Counterintelligence Service of the Russian Federation (the predecessor of the FSB).
We should note that Putin later took the course described by Primakov on April 10, except that Yeltsin's replacement was brought about not through a humiliating impeachment of the president, which would have exposed him and his family to the possibility of prison terms for crimes committed during his years in office, but through his voluntary resignation on December 31, 1999, before the end of his term, in exchange for a pardon guaranteeing lifelong immunity for Yeltsin himself and for the members of his family. But the essence of the maneuver remained the same: the prime minister replaced the president before the election and became the acting president. Naturally, in Russia, which had no system of genuinely free elections, it was much more difficult to run against an acting president, who had numerous administrative resources at his disposal, than it would have been to run against a candidate who did not occupy such a lofty official position. To be sure, this was in effect a completely illegal manipulation of the electoral system, bordering on a conspiracy to overthrow the government by a group of persons who were close to Yeltsin at that time and even controlled him. In any normal democratic country such chicanery would have been immediately detected and brought before the supreme court of the land. But in Russia as a whole it passed unnoticed and unprosecuted, in part because there was a collective sigh of relief following the resignation of Yeltsin, who had been suspected, among other things, of harboring a desire to cancel the election outright, declare a state of emergency, and usurp power.
Prime Minister Primakov in 1998-1999 (like Putin in 1999-2000) was also far from democratic principles. A quiet government coup, in Primakov's language, was called an "agreement between the branches of government." Primakov's idea was that the president should hand over some of his powers to the parliament, where the left wing was dominant. With this left-wing parliament Primakov hoped to come to an understanding.
2. Primakov's Note
At the same time, Primakov declared war on Russian business. This was called, naturally, not a war on business and businessmen, but a fight against corruption, but only because in Russia politicians were used to thinking abstractly and not concretely, while the population of Russia—whether armed with a calculator or not—did not know how to count. At the very beginning of February 1999, Primakov announced at a meeting of the Council of Ministers that he planned to grant amnesty to 90,000 felons and to fill their empty prison cells with 90,000 economic criminals; nor did amnesty for felons in Primakov's mind mean liberalization—there was just not enough room in the prisons for everyone: "To free up space for those whom we are now going to put in prison for economic crimes. This—this—this—just so you know, just so you don't get the impression that we're being lax on crime now by offering this amnesty," Primakov explained at the Council of Ministers meeting.
This announcement was made in the context of an open war between Primakov and Berezovsky, who in those months embodied the oligarchs, Yeltsin's "family," the businessmen, and those very economic criminals with whom Primakov planned to fill up the prison cells vacated by his amnesty. But any person who could count naturally had to understand that 90,000 "economic criminals" was nothing other than Russia's whole middle class, the entire corps of the country's businessmen. And in order to imprison 90,000 people over the course of a four-year presidential term, it would be necessary to imprison 60 people per day, without weekends or holidays.
Here is Primakov's famous note, handwritten by him personally, in violation of Russian law, since the law clearly does not give the prime minister the right to instruct the general prosecutor's office to open criminal proceedings (this constitutes an abuse of power, i.e. a criminal offense):
"I request that the matter be brought before the prosecutor general. Criminal proceedings must be started immediately. The harm to the state is enormous. What can be taken back?
12.7.98 Ye. Primakov"
Primakov publicly denied the existence of this note from December 7, 1998 in his address to a TV audience on April 10, 1999. And in the eyes of the senescent Yeltsin, this note became a piece of evidence—material proof that Primakov in his address to the nation had openly lied.
3. Berezovsky's Apartment
What was most remarkable was that Primakov's war on Berezovsky was waged by the prime minister of Russia from the apartment of the executive secretary of the CIS. On January 29, 1996, "citizen Berezovskaya, Yelizaveta Borisovna... sold her apartment, located at 3 Skatertny Lane, no. 1, apt. 12, Moscow, to citizen Bokayeva, Irina Borisovna." The parties to the transaction were relatives of the combatants. Yelizaveta Borisovna Berezovskaya was the daughter of Boris Berezovsky. Irina Borisovna Bokayeva was the wife of Yevgeny Primakov.
The dry, two-page text concerning the purchase and sale of the apartment boggles the imagination. Every line in the document raises questions. On January 29, 1996, Berezovsky's daughter sold her apartment to Primakov's wife for 116,425,981 rubles, which amounted to about $24,677. Say what you will, the apartment was cheap. But it was not a bad apartment. It had "six rooms with a net usable floor area of 213.0 square meters and 125.4 square meters of living space." Two hundred and thirteen square meters for $24,677 comes out to $116 per square meter! But what was most remarkable of all was that the Primakovs had not even paid the paltry $24,677 indicated in the purchase and sale agreement for the apartment of "poor Liza" (Berezovskaya). The Primakovs had, as it were, stolen the Berezovskys' apartment. At least, Berezovsky claimed that he never got any money from anyone for the apartment. With particular sadness Boris Abramovich recalled the marble floors and walls, the translucent ceilings, the 14-meter bathroom... His conclusion was sorrowful: there was no apartment like it in all of Moscow. Its market price was at least one million dollars. The sum of $24,677 (a little over 116 million rubles) was written into the purchase and sale agreement to avoid taxes.
Given this background, one can only smile at Primakov's anti-corruption war on Berezovsky as "the plunderer of Russia," especially since Russian public opinion and politicians, perhaps not entirely fairly, attributed the instigation of Primakov's resignation to the former owner of Primakov's apartment. On May 13, 1999, Gennady Seleznyov, the head of the State Duma, made the following unambiguous remark: "I was asked: who's behind Primakov's resignation? I told them directly: the man behind Primakov's resignation is Boris Abramovich Berezovsky."
4. Prologue
The video clip about Primakov that you have just seen is the prologue to this text. Primakov began confidently with a war on Yeltsin (who had rashly appointed him prime minister); with a war on Russian businessmen, who, to his way of thinking, were plundering Russia; with a war on the president's "family," ensconced in the Kremlin. But Primakov turned out to have miscalculated the contending forces. The president's administration, headed by Alexander Voloshin, turned out to be stronger than Primakov and his supporters—the State Duma and the mayor of Moscow. With a stroke of the president's pen, Primakov was removed no less hastily than he had been appointed to the post of prime minister. His farewell address to the Duma deserves to be called prophetic. On January 18, 2000, at the first meeting of the new convocation of the State Duma, Primakov declined to run for the post of chairman. Here is a part of his speech:
"Under these conditions, when one hears people casually suggesting, as if by the way, that a vote should be held quickly and openly, everyone else withdraws from the race. The conspiracy here is quite real, and the participants in the conspiracy, by the way, are not just the two largest factions, but those who support them, including the very smallest factions. And this here conspiracy one group of deputies tries to impose on the other. Under these conditions, the Duma won't able to do any work for the benefit of society. That's absolutely clear. Under such conditions, I withdraw my candidacy. I decline to run. (Exclamations: "Good for you!" Applause.) Don't clap. You'll clap for a different reason, when the Duma is brought so low that no one will care about it. That's when you'll clap (applause). If you want the Duma to work normally, you can't go into some conspiracy, you can't run over to where the representatives of the [president's] administration are sitting so they can instruct you. You have to get people to come together and to help our fatherland together. I categorically withdraw my candidacy. (Applause.)"
Primakov left the podium. Along with the departure of Primakov, as it turned out, the Duma's independence also disappeared. Under Putin, the Duma became a rubber stamp on laws drafted in the Kremlin by the president's administration. But along with the Duma's intransigence, the fearsomeness of Yevgeny Primakov also evaporated. Under Putin, Primakov began to support all the initiatives of the new leadership utterly and completely; in return, he was mollycoddled by the president and, instead of falling from grace, was favored with honorary positions, titles, and privileges. Here is one of Primakov's speeches in support of Putin during the last election campaign, from December 12, 2011:
"I hope that he will be president. I think he is the optimal figure for this. He wants to strengthen the army, the air force, and the navy with modern weapons, because raising salaries [in the army] is not enough. One also has to give them modern weapons. Putin's image is Russia's image. He will be president, I hope."
