The Moscow Bombings of September 1999

Elsewhere Reddaway has emphasized that modern Russian political life cannot be understood without reference to “political technology,” which represents an extreme form of political consultancy involving manipulation of individuals and large-scale deception. Since, Reddaway explained, at the core of any “political technologist’s” plan, there lies a conspiracy, any good analyst of Russian politics needs to be a conspiracy theorist as well. Conspiracy theorists, he noted, are usually mocked in countries with transparent political systems. But a system becomes more prone to conspiracies if the ruler remains in power for a long time and controls large parts of its wealth. Russia and Iran, he observed, would be two examples of present-day countries with conspiratorial politics.[19]

The conspiratorial nature of Russian politics, Reddaway added, presents a challenge to the normal research methods of political science, since quantification cannot be applied to the analysis. As a result, scholars of contemporary Russia have to study minute documents and to determine which Russian analyst is close to the regime. The study of Russia’s politics, Reddaway concluded, requires “the resurrection of Kremlinological methods with which to understand the various manipulations and conspiracies.”[20]

Leaving Room for Contingency: In discussing conspiracy, it is also necessary, as Donald Jensen has pointed out, to leave room for contingency.[21] Conspiracies often do not produce the effects desired by the conspirators. One key contingent effect triggered by the conspiracies discussed in this article occurred in early to mid August 1999, the chronological terminus of this paper: ethnic Avars living in mountain Dagestan reacted highly unfavorably to the incursion spearheaded by Dagestani “wahhabis” under the titular leadership of field commanders Shamil Basaev and Khattab. The Avars sided decisively with the Russian government against the wahhabis. This result had apparently not been foreseen by the leaders of the incursion.

The Problem of Sources: I have already noted Peter Reddaway’s assertion that the nature of the phenomena being studied in this paper requires a partial resurrection of Kremlinological analysis. In seeking to determine what actually took place and why it occurred, I have been required to cast as broad a net as possible. To take one example, in analyzing the background to the early August 1999 incursion into Dagestan, I cite, inter alia, the findings of a Russian investigative weekly; the work of a Russian journalist reporting for RFE-RL; the words of the former commander of the MVD troops in Russia; the eyewitness recollections of a deputy minister of internal affairs of Dagestan; the findings of veterans of the Russian special forces; the views of a retired Russian military colonel; and the eyewitness reporting of a journalist writing for Frankfurter Rundschau. Casting a broad net and then carefully sifting through the information collected—always bearing in mind that Russia is in no sense a law-based state—can lead a researcher in the direction of unearthing the truth.

With this background in mind, let us then begin focusing closely on the period from May through August of 1999 when the “Storm in Moscow” scenario was first bruited and then, in part, put into effect.

Two Western Journalists Issue Warnings: It was two well-connected Western correspondents who were the first to publicize the fact that a radical, bold and lawless group had managed to achieve political supremacy in the Kremlin. On 6 June 1999, the Moscow correspondent for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Daglabet, Jan Blomgren, reported that one option being seriously contemplated by this group was “terror bombings in Moscow which could be blamed on the Chechens.”[22] Ten days later, Giulietto Chiesa, the long-serving chief correspondent for the Moscow bureau of the Italian newspaper Stampa, commented at length on several recent bombing incidents in Russia in an article entitled “There Are Also Different Kinds of Terrorists,” in the 16 June 1999 issue of the weekly Literaturnaya gazeta.[23] (In a book published later that year, Chiesa revealed that he had written the article after he had “received information concerning the preparation of a series of terrorist acts in Russia which had the goal of canceling the future elections.”[24] For this reason, he noted, he had felt compelled to write the article for Literaturnaya gazeta containing “a somewhat veiled warning.”[25])

One has to distinguish, Chiesa emphasized in his Literaturnaya gazeta piece, between “small terrorism,” or, in Italian Mafiosi terminology, “a settling of accounts” and a completely different kind of terrorism, which can be termed “state terrorism.” The explosion of a bomb in Vladikavkaz, North Osetiya, on 19 March 1999, which killed a reported seventy persons, Chiesa asserted, was a likely example of state terrorism. “That criminal act,” he pointed out, “was conceived and carried out not simply by a group of criminals. As a rule the question here concerns broad-scale and multiple actions, the goal of which is to sow panic and fear among citizens.”

“Actions of this type,” Chiesa went on to stress,

“have a very powerful political and organizational base. Often, terrorist acts that stem from a ‘strategy of building up tension,’ are the work of a secret service, both foreign but also national…. Terrorism of this type (it is sometimes called ‘state terrorism’ since it involves simultaneously both state interests and structures acting in the secret labyrinths of contemporary states) is a comparatively new phenomenon… With a high degree of certitude, one can say that the explosions of bombs killing innocent people are always planned by people with political minds. They are not fanatics, rather they are killers pursuing political goals. One should look around and try to understand who is interested in destabilizing the situation in a country. It could be foreigners…but it could also be ‘our own people’ trying to frighten the country….”

The 19 March 1999 bombing of a market in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Osetiya, referred to by Chiesa as a likely example of “state terrorism,” was, it should be noted, the second largest terrorist attack to occur in Russia since the beginning of the perestroika period, following a November 1996 bombing in the Dagestani city of Kaspiisk. One Western observer has commented:

“At first glance, the most likely catalyst [for the Vladikavkaz bombing] is the Osetian-Ingush conflict… [That] conflict, however, has never included such random acts of terror as the Vladikavkaz terror…. A more likely version involves the trouble in neighboring Chechnya…. [MVD] chairman [Sergei] Stepashin indirectly confirmed that he suspects a Chechen connection to the bombing…. [T]he Russian authorities have drastically tightened security along the Chechen-Russian border, in what amounts to a de facto blockade. Moscow also continues to threaten sanctions against Chechnya.”[26]

It will be noted that both Blomgren’s and Chiesa’s warnings concerning future terror bombings were issued roughly three months before the actual Moscow terror bombings of September 1999.

Of greater public significance than these two warnings by foreigners was one issued by a Russian journalist, Aleksandr Zhilin, under the heading “Storm in Moscow” [Burya v Moskve] in the 22 July 1999 issue of the newspaper Moskovskaya pravda. “From trustworthy sources in the Kremlin,” Zhilin wrote,

“the following has become known. The Administration of the President has drafted and adopted (individual points have been reported to Yeltsin) a broad plan for discrediting [the mayor of Moscow Yurii] Luzhkov with the aid of provocations, intended to destabilize the socio-psychological situation in Moscow. In circles close to Tatyana Dyachenko [Yeltsin’s younger daughter], the given plan is being referred to as ‘Storm in Moscow.’”[27]

“As is confirmed by our sources,” Zhilin went on,

“the city awaits great shocks. The conducting of loud terrorist acts (or attempts at terrorist acts) is being planned in relation to a number of government establishments: the buildings of the FSB, MVD, Council of Federation, Moscow City Court, Moscow Arbitration Court, and a number of editorial boards of anti-Luzhkov publications. Also foreseen is the kidnapping of a number of well-known people and average citizens by ‘Chechen rebels’ who with great pomp will then be ‘freed’ and brought to Moscow by Mr. [Vladimir] Rushailo [the newly appointed head of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs].”

Actions employing the use of force, Zhilin continued, in summarizing the leaked document, “will be conducted against structures and businessmen supporting Luzhkov.” In addition, “a separate program has been worked out directed at setting organized crime groups in Moscow against one another and provoking a war among them.” Relations with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation would also intentionally be aggravated. All of these measures, taken together, would implant in Muscovites, Zhilin concluded, “a conviction that Luzhkov had lost control over the situation in the city.”

In a subsequent article, Zhilin revealed that the “Storm in Moscow” document he had cited in his earlier piece had been dated 29 June 1999 and that a copy of it had come into his possession on 2 July. “Since the information contained in that document was very serious and had ramifications for the safety of Muscovites,” he recalled,

“I passed a copy of it to the deputy premier of Moscow, Sergei Yastrzhembskii. I also showed the document to my colleagues from TV. Everyone said that this could not be true…. Today I understand that those journalists who rejected even the theoretical possibility of the existence of a plan of destabilization in Moscow, one that included terrorist acts, were reasoning like normal, decent people. They could not understand in their minds how, for the sake of some political goals, someone could commit such barbaric acts.”[28]

One of the editors of the supplement to Moskovskaya pravda in which Zhilin had published his “Storm in Moscow” piece subsequently identified Sergei Zverev, a deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration, as the likely source for the leaked document.[29] It might also be noted that Sergei Yastrzhembskii, the then deputy premier of Moscow, to whom Zhilin had passed a copy of the document, had previously worked as Yeltsin’s press secretary and as a deputy head of the Presidential Administration from August 1996-September 1998.[30] His loyalties appeared to be unclear. In January of 2000, he returned to the Kremlin as an assistant to then acting president Putin.[31] The authors of the volume The Yeltsin Epoch have identified Yastrzhembskii as “a person prepared to play according to the rules of the [Yeltsin] ‘Family.’”[32]

As Aleksandr Zhilin has underscored, the information aired in his 22 July article—a month and a half before the Moscow terror bombings—was largely ignored, because what he was claiming appeared to be unthinkable: namely, that a radical group ensconced at the very top of the Russian state would actively seek to implement measures aimed at massively destabilizing both the nation’s capital and Russia as a whole.

The Membership of “The Family”: Contemporary historians are wont to begin their discussion of the Yeltsin “Family” by citing the opinion of a retired commander of the Russian Border-guards, General Nikolai Bordyuzha, who in early 1999 was serving both as secretary of the Russian Security Council and as head of the Russian Presidential Administration. Some observers believe that Yeltsin had, at least briefly, considered making the silovik Bordyuzha his political successor.

On 19 March 1999, Bordyuzha took a telephone call from President Yeltsin that he had the wit to tape. Later he gave a copy of this tape to his political ally, former Russian prime minister Evgenii Primakov, for publication in the latter’s book of memoirs, Eight Months Plus…[33] In the beginning of the conversation, Yeltsin informed Bordyuzha that he had decided to separate Bordyuzha’s two posts and was asking him to remain in the capacity of secretary of the Security Council. Yeltsin then asked Bordyuzha for his opinion of the proposed change. “Thank you, Boris Nikolaevich, for the proposal,” Bordyuzha replied, “but I am forced to refuse it. If you have no objections, I will present to you my arguments.”

“First,” Bordyuzha emphasized,

“the decision is not yours, but it was imposed on you by your daughter—[Tatyana] Dyachenko—at the recommendation of a group of people. The reason for this consists not in the mistakenness of combining the two posts but in the fact that I initiated the removal of [Boris] Berezovskii from the post of executive secretary of the CIS and declined to take part in the campaign to discredit Primakov and his government. That campaign was organized by Dyachenko, Abramovich, Yumashev and Mamut, with the blessing of Berezovskii. Second, to remain at work in the Kremlin would mean taking part in carrying out those decisions which are imposed on you by Dyachenko, Yumashev, Abramovich, Berezovskii and Voloshin, and many of them often bear an anti-state character or contradict the interests of the state, and I do not want to participate in them… Having worked in the Kremlin, I have come to understand that the country is not ruled by the president but in the name of the president by a small group of un-conscientious people, that it is ruled in their interests and not those of the state.”

Yeltsin then let slip, “I had not expected that they had accumulated such strength,” after which he inquired concerning the conditions under which Bordyuzha would consent to stay on in both of his posts. Bordyuzha replied:

“Boris Nikolaevich, I am prepared [to stay on] but on one condition: from the Kremlin there must today be removed your daughter—Dyachenko—Yumashev and Voloshin, and free entry must be prohibited to Abramovich, Mamut, and Berezovskii. In that case, I will continue to work.”

At 8:00 p.m. on the same day, Yeltsin issued a decree removing Bordyuzha from both of his posts. Aleksandr Voloshin was named head of the Presidential Administration, while Vladimir Putin, the then head of the FSB, also became secretary of the Security Council.

That Bordyuzha’s harsh words to Yeltsin referred to a really existing group has been confirmed by numerous knowledgeable Russians including other senior figures who worked directly with Yeltsin, such as the authors of the volume The Yeltsin Epoch. The group has been described—in a way that cannot be completely documented but fits with many pieces of information from a variety of sources—by a leading Russian political scientist, Lilia Shevtsova: “In the spring of 1999,” she wrote,

“Yeltsin seemed to be considering leaving the political arena prematurely…. As Yeltsin faded, he relied even more on the people around him, most of all on his younger daughter Tatyana, then in her mid-thirties…. In actual fact, in the last years of Yeltsin’s second term, Tatyana became the virtual ruler of the country…. Yeltsin’s last team, the one that prepared the Successor Project, was selected by his daughter and her intimate friends…. In the late 1990’s, Russia entered the era of the political Family: rule by the president’s daughter and chums of hers undistinguished by experience, brains or talent.”[34]

“The names of Tanya’s major associates,” Shevtsova continued,

“Valentin Yumashev, Aleksandr Voloshin, Roman Abramovich—meant nothing to anyone. Only Berezovskii, Tanya’s adviser, the leading intriguer of the tsar’s court, was known, and only because he liked being in the spotlight. In the later years of the Yeltsin administration, Berezovskii was crowded out by younger people whom he had introduced to Tatyana… like Abramovich and Voloshin… [T]hey lost all sense of limits. They began discrediting potential opponents and economic rivals….[T]he Family was driven mainly by greed…. From their position deep inside the Kremlin, this corrupt cooperative of friends and business comrades-in-arms created a giant vacuum to suck money out of Russia and into their own pockets.”[35]

It is worthwhile underscoring Shevtsova’s key assertion that Berezovskii had by mid-1999 been “crowded out” by representatives of a younger generation whom he had himself introduced to the president’s daughter.

Writing in the 1 June 1999 issue of Nezavisimaya gazeta, a publication owned by Boris Berezovskii, the newspaper’s chief editor, Vitalii Tretyakov, distinguished three significant political clusters in the country: “The oligarchic group of [Yurii] Luzhkov,” “the group of [Evgenii] Primakov,” and

“the group of, as it is now called, Abramovich—Berezovskii—Dyachenko—Yumashev—Voloshin, or the Family. The first two [groups] de facto united and were able in essence to shake the might of the Family…. The Luzhkov-Primakov group [also] concluded an unannounced temporary tactical union with the communists for the sake of limiting the power of the Family.”[36] The ousting of Primakov as prime minister in May of 1999, however, Tretyakov added with satisfaction, had permitted the Family “to restore the legitimacy of Yeltsin (the source of its influence),” and “to destroy the anti-Yeltsin (anti-Family) forces.”

Three Berezovskii Proteges: Yumashev, Voloshin, and Abramovich: Valentin Yumashev had been appointed head of the Russian Presidential Administration in March of 1997 at the age of thirty-nine. A journalist by training, he had by that time ghostwritten two volumes of Yeltsin’s memoirs. It has been noted that he was “a good friend of Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko and has close links to [then] Security Council Deputy Secretary Boris Berezovskii. Since 1991, Yumashev has held senior posts at the magazine Ogonek, which is partly financed by Berezovskii’s Logovaz empire.”[37] In December of 1998, Yeltsin abruptly removed Yumashev from the post of head of the presidential administration, perhaps because he had been supporting Viktor Chernomyrdin as Yeltsin’s successor, but Yumashev continued to remain a close advisor to the Russian president, largely due to his ties to Tatyana Dyachenko.[38] In memoirs published in the year 2000, Yeltsin termed Dyachenko and Yumashev, plus Aleksandr Voloshin, “the inner circle.”[39] (In January of 2002, it was reported in the media that Yumashev and Dyachenko had gotten married.[40])

Journalist Elena Tregubova has reported that Yumashev began attempting to foist on her as early as September of 1998 a version that the country was on the edge of disaster: “The fact is,” Yumashev warned her, “that we have received secret information from the special services that the country finds itself on the eve of mass rebellions, in essence on the verge of revolution…. Believe me, the information concerns…secret reports that have been made to the president!”[41] This, of course, sounds like advanced advertising for the “Storm in Moscow” scenario. “Yumashev,” Tregubova adds, “could not have imagined that a mere three months later the existence of such ‘secret information’ would be categorically denied in a confidential chat with me by the future president of Russia Putin, heading at that period of crisis the chief special service of the country.”

Lilia Shevtsova has noted in her book Putin’s Russia that both Aleksandr Voloshin and Roman Abramovich were figures “with a strange, even dubious, past, implicated in shady dealings.”[42] In profiling Voloshin, the publication Sovershenno sekretno wrote in August of 1999: “Aleksandr Stalevich Voloshin was born on 3 March 1956 in the city of Moscow. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers in 1978… From 1986 through 1992, he worked in the market department of the All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Market Conditions (VNIKI). At that time, as a civil servant, he began to provide information assistance to various organizations in exporting motor vehicles. On a commercial basis, of course. This is where Aleksandr Stalevich became acquainted with Boris Abramovich Berezovskii, the head of the automobile alliance AVVA, and subsequently became his close business partner.”[43]

“After getting close to Berezovskii,” the account continued,

“the career of the former engineer’s assistant took off like a supersonic jet—in November 1997 Voloshin was appointed assistant for economic questions to presidential administration head Yumashev. On 12 September 1998, he became deputy head of the Kremlin administration and soon held the post of head of this department. His dream had come true—he joined the principal Family of Russia with the rights of one of the leaders. Despite being employed in state and other posts, Aleksandr Voloshin did not forget about commerce either and participated in highly varied and at times highly questionable projects.”

Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko-Yumasheva paid the following effusive tribute to Voloshin in a December 2009 interview: “I believe that Sasha is a brilliant politician. Perhaps the strongest of those with whom I had the fortune to work. He is bold, firm, decent [poryadochnyi] and insanely hard-working.”[44]

As early as May of 1999, the newspaper Kommersant was reporting that “the real powers pulling Yeltsin’s strings and practically determining cabinet assignments are Sibneft head Roman Abramovich and business magnate Boris Berezovskii, with Abramovich in the lead position, not Berezovskii.”[45] The newspaper Moskovskii komsomolets made the same point, reporting in early June that Abramovich was

“the personal friend of Tatyana Borisovna Dyachenko, Valentin Yumashev, and Boris Berezovskii, and at his age of 33 he manages without any self-publicity the financial flows of the presidential ‘family.’ [My italics—JBD] He is its treasurer…. He is alleged to have regularly paid for the vacations of Yumashev and Dyachenko at Swiss alpine ski resorts….”

“Today,” the account went on,

“rumor ascribes to Roman Abramovich the role of principal and most aggressive ideologue of the ‘family.’ He is alleged to be the author of the idea of a ban on the CPRF and the dissolution of the State Duma. The idea of Lenin’s reburial with the subsequent commitment to Moscow of troops to put down spontaneous revolts is attributed to him.”[46]

Concerning Abramovich, Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana, wrote the following in a December 2009 interview: “He and I are friends. He is an intelligent, very interesting, striking individual. He is an unusually decent [poryadochnyi] and faithful person.”[47]

Four Other Key Family Associates: In addition to the figures mentioned by General Bordyuzha and Lilia Shevtsova, several other individuals have been seen by commentators as belonging, though in perhaps a less direct sense, to the Family. In his book The Metamorphosis of Russia, Georges Sokoloff argues that Anatolii Chubais, a former head of Yeltsin’s Russian presidential administration and, at the time, director of the state electricity monopoly, EES, should be considered a de facto member of the Family, since he was “present at all crucial decisions.”[48] In the Russian version of his memoirs, Yeltsin directly names Chubais as a Family member.[49] Berezovskii and Abramovich are not so named. This reflects the fact that Yeltsin met rarely with the latter two, but, by contrast, frequently with Chubais. Thus Yeltsin’s perception of the Family’s membership differed somewhat from that of political observers.

Boris Berezovskii—A Fountainhead of Ideas for the Yeltsin Family: In the case of Boris Berezovskii, all of his real but beginning-to-dwindle political influence was obtained through the intercession of Dyachenko and Yumashev. As Berezovskii stipulated in August of 1999: “I am indeed in contact with Tatyana Dyachenko. I saw her ten days ago. But my last meeting with Boris Yeltsin goes back to July 1998…. I myself am convinced that Boris Yeltsin does not like me.”[50] Yeltsin made roughly the same point during an interview: “As an entrepreneur Berezovskii was rather successful but as a politician he was not. He was nothing outstanding. Contrary to rumors, I was never in close contact with him. He did not visit me at home, and we did not sit at one table.”[51]

In the course of a December 2009 blog, Tatyana Dyachenko-Yumasheva had the following to say about Berezovskii’s influence on her father: “The last time Papa met with him was in 1998, when Boris Abramovich was an official, the executive secretary of the CIS. They had no [subsequent] telephone conversations.” She then added indignantly: