The Moscow Bombings of September 1999

“Of course there are also the stories told by [the journalist Aleksandr] Khinshtein and those like him that Boris Abramovich would come up to a naïve little fool, the daughter of the president, and whisper something in her ear, and that she would then jump up to convince her Papa to do what the bloodsucker-oligarchs demanded of her. I will not argue with people who believe in such fables.”[52]

Contrary to what Yumasheva-Dyachenko has asserted here, it appears that Berezovskii may well have exerted a kind of a quasi-hypnotic hold over her. The journal Profil reported in mid-September of 1999: “Boris Berezovskii in the beginning of September tried several times to seriously speak with Tatyana Dyachenko, but the daughter of the president, under pressure from her mother, avoided communications with the recent favorite.”[53] Naina Yeltsina apparently felt required to directly prohibit her daughter from holding further meetings with the oligarch.

Asked in July 2000 by a well-known investigative journalist, Evgeniya Albats, “What power did you have there [i.e., in the Family]?” Berezovskii responded:

“A purely ideological and ideational [influence]. That is, I indeed believe that I can rather well sense what is happening, advance logical conclusions, and, on that basis, predict the development of events… But with regard to cadres, here I make a great many mistakes. When I begin to give advice—place this person here or that person there—they already know that there is no need to listen to me.”[54]

A deputy head of Yeltsin’s presidential administration during this period, Igor Shabdurasulov, has essentially backed up what Berezovskii asserts. After confirming numerous reports that it was Berezovskii who came up with the idea for the “Unity” [Edinstvo] political party that throttled the Primakov-Luzhkov coalition in the December 1999 parliamentary elections, Shabdurasulov added:

“The fact that he [Berezovskii] was practically the sole person who at the beginning lobbied that idea is a fact. But, at the stage of the realization of the project, he stood a long way from it: he did not occupy himself with it, did not supervise it. At the stage of the election campaign itself some creative ideas came from him but…not at the level of maps, plans, schemas, or the approval or rejection of certain decisions.”[55]

During the course of the same interview, Shabdurasulov recalled that in July and August of 1999 those involved in discussions concerning the creation of a new political party had been “Valentin Yumashev, Boris Berezovskii, Aleksandr Voloshin, and, in part, Vladislav Surkov.”

Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana, made roughly the same point in a February 2010 blog: “Berezovskii often rushed about with new, frequently extravagant ideas. Sometimes his ideas were not at all senseless but rather useful [here she cited his plan to create the ‘Unity’ party]… He was good for a fountain gush [fontirovanie] of ideas, but was unsuited for daily, routine work.”[56]

One Yeltsin ally who took an exceedingly dim view of Berezovskii’s role as a fountainhead of ideas for the Yeltsin Family was Anatolii Chubais. Toward the end of 1999, he commented in an interview:

“I believe that in his ability to generate ideas Berezovskii is No. 1 in the Russian state. There are about 7-10 such persons [in Russia]. He generates ideas superbly. His weakness is that he is incapable of evaluating [those ideas]. Many of his ideas are not only unsuccessful but are monstrously dangerous [My italics—JBD] for the country as a whole.”[57]

More on the periphery than Berezovskii, but still squarely within the Family orbit, were two influential Russian power ministers, Sergei Stepashin (head of the MVD) and Vladimir Putin. As Pierre Lorrain has pointed out:

“Paradoxically, the arrival of Primakov in office [as prime minister] had the effect of according a great political importance to Stepashin and Putin. As we have known for a long time, the power ministers, responsible for the structures of coercion, are dependent on the president and not on the head of government. These two men remained in their posts preparing the return of the Yeltsin team. During the entire winter of 1999, they had been on ‘the front line,’ fighting Primakov’s wishes on who should be appointed to various positions…”[58]

Vladimir Putin—A Humble but Efficient Servant of the Yeltsin Family: If Berezovskii served as a fountainhead of at times useful ideas for the Family, it was another infinitely less flamboyant individual who methodically went about getting things done—even the most onerous tasks—on behalf of the Russian president and his close entourage. In so doing, he manifested an aptitude for intrigue and self-advancement that far exceeded that of the volatile, capricious and frequently unpredictable oligarch Berezovskii. Putin had first come to Yeltsin’s attention in May of 1998 when he had been named first deputy chief of the presidential staff for the regions. Appreciating Putin’s concise, informative reports, Yeltsin chose to elevate him, two months later, on 25 July 1998, to the post of director of the Russian secret police, the FSB. Putin’s background in Russian intelligence and his unblinking loyalty to Yeltsin and the Family were apparently factors behind this decision.

Not only was Putin a consistently loyal servant of the Russian president, but he reportedly also performed any and all tasks required by Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana. Taking issue with certain points made in one of Dyachenko-Yumasheva’s blogs, journalist Evgeniya Albats riposted: “You [Tatyana] are offended by my account of a session of the Presidential Administration during 1998-1999, by my recalling the fact that Vladimir Putin did not express his own opinion without first consulting with you?” “No, Tatyana Borisovna,” Albats continued, “That is not my invention—that is a direct quotation from a deputy head of the administration of Boris Yeltsin.” Albats also took issue with Tatyana’s denial that she and other officials in the Presidential Administration had habitually addressed Putin at this time as “Vova” (a nickname appropriate for youths and teenagers but not adults). “Literally everyone,” Albats noted, “called Vladimir Putin ‘Vova’—his colleagues in Piter [Petersburg], the former employees of the directorate for control of the Presidential Administration [where Putin had previously worked]…and even his subordinates in the FSB.”[59]

Speaking volumes in Putin’s favor, in Dyachenko-Yumasheva’s view, was the fact that Evgenii Primakov during the time that he was prime minister openly disliked the FSB director and sought his removal. As she wrote in a March 2010 blog: “Primakov very quickly came strongly to dislike the director of the FSB, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.” She went on to recall that Primakov had “unexpectedly asked that he [Putin] organize eavesdropping on the leader of the ‘Yabloko’ party, Grigorii Yavlinskii. Vladimir Vladimirovich was strongly surprised. And he said that it was inadmissible… To drag the FSB into politi