Boris Berezovsky (businessman), by Wikipedia

Re: Boris Berezovsky (businessman), by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:29 am

Spinning Boris
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/5/18

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Spinning Boris
DVD cover
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode
Produced by Cydney Bernard
Written by
Yuri Zeltser
Grace Cary Bickley
Starring
Jeff Goldblum
Anthony LaPaglia
Liev Schreiber
Music by Jeff Danna
Cinematography John S. Bartley
Edited by Michael Pacek
Release date
October 23, 2003
Running time
112 minutes
Country United States
Language English



Spinning Boris is a 2003 American comedy film directed by Roger Spottiswoode and starring Jeff Goldblum, Anthony LaPaglia and Liev Schreiber. In the film, a Russian political elite hires American consultants to help with Boris Yeltsin's reelection campaign when his approval rating is down to single digits.

The film claimed to be "based on the true story" of three American political consultants who worked for the successful reelection campaign of Boris Yeltsin in 1996, however some disputed the degree of involvement of the Americans in Yeltsin's reelection.[1][2]


Cast

• Jeff Goldblum – George Gorton
• Anthony LaPaglia – Dick Dresner
• Liev Schreiber – Joe Shumate
Boris Krutonog – Felix Braynin
• Svetlana Efremova – Tatyana Dyachenko
• Shauna MacDonald – Lisa
• Gregory Hlady – Andrei Lugov
• Vladimir Radian – Vasso
• Ilia Volok – Elvis Impersonator
• Konstantin Kazakov – Oleg Soskovets
• Judah Katz – Michael Kramer

See also

• Boris Yeltsin presidential campaign, 1996

References

1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/ ... ilm.russia
2. https://mobile.nytimes.com/1996/07/09/w ... -they.html

External links

• Spinning Boris on IMDb
• Spinning Boris at Rotten Tomatoes
• Article about film (Russian)
• Time Magazine article (July 15, 1996) detailing the events in the movie
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Re: Boris Berezovsky (businessman), by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:33 am

Part 1 of 2

Boris Yeltsin presidential campaign, 1996
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/5/18

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Boris Yeltsin presidential campaign, 1996
Candidate Boris Yeltsin
President of Russia
(1991–1999)
Affiliation Independent
Status Announced:
15 February 1996
Registered:
3 April 1996
Advanced to runoff:
16 June 1996
Won election:
3 July 1996
Headquarters President-Hotel in Moscow[1][2]
Key people Anatoly Chubais (campaign manager and chairman of campaign council)
Oleg Soskovets (campaign manager)
Tatyana Dyachenko (key advisor and member of campaign council)
Sergei Filatov (campaign organizer, head of campaign headquarters, co-head of ODOP)
Viktor Ilyushin (member of campaign council, co-head of ODOP)
Yury Yarov (executive head, member of campaign council)
Slogan Now we are united!

The Boris Yeltsin presidential campaign, 1996 was the reelection campaign of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1996 election.

Yeltsin was ultimately reelected, despite having originally been greatly expected to lose the election due to an immensely low level of public support prior to the official launch of his campaign.[1][3][4][5][6][7]

Background

Yelstin's approval had tanked after he had introduced significant reforms meant to push Russia towards a market-based economy.[1][8][9] He had eliminated the majority of Soviet-era price controls, privatized a large number of significant state assets, permitted the ownership of private property, welcomed free-market principles, and additionally allowed for a stock exchange to be established and for commodities exchanges and private banks to be created.[9] While some Russians (largely oligarchs) thrived under his reforms, many others faced significant hardships as a result of them.[8][9] A significant portion of the Russian populace had faced increased poverty under his leadership.[9] Additionally, crime rates had significantly increased during his presidency.[4]

Yeltsin had originally risen to power on a populist message of anticorruption and an opponent of Moscow's establishment politics. A political maverick, he was cast-out by the Soviet political establishment.[1] He found a base of support among liberal and pro-western democratic movements. In 1990, those movements united to form the Democratic Russia. This group held a base of power primarily in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and the Urals.[1] This political alliance brought him into power in June 1991, and helped him to resist a coup attempt in August 1991. The alliance formed the base of Russia's first noncommunist government.[1] However, this alliance never merged into a single political organization.[1] Yeltsin never officially joined the front, intending to maintain a level of separation between himself and partisan politics.[1] Thus, it consequentially splintered, leaving him without a unified base of support.[1]

Under Yeltsin's leadership, Russia faced the stigma of being a fallen international superpower.[9] Russia encountered a massive amount of corruption and lawlessness.[9] Russia's economy also faced a decline in industrial production and the Russian populace's qualify of life and life expectancy declined.[9][3]

As president, Yeltsin had allowed for a far more free media to exist than his Soviet predecessors had. In doing so, he not only allowed Russians to enjoy Western pop-culture, but he also permitted open criticism of his own leadership to be published by the press.[9]

1993

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Burnt White House following the 1993 constitutional crisis

Following the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, the Yeltsin government adopted a more nationalist and authoritarian agenda than they had previously championed.[1][9] Yeltsin saw a favorable result in the 1993 constitutional referendum vote.[1]

However, at the same time as the constitutional referendum, the pro-Yeltsin and pro-reform Russia's Choice party fared disastrously in the legislative elections. Russia's Choice might have seen their prospects harmed by Yeltsin's own refusal to officially align himself with or endorse the party.[1] A reason for Yeltsin's refusal to voice his support of the party might have been a desire of Yeltsin's to continue to separate himself from partisan politics,[1][10] while another reason might have been tension between Yeltsin and key members of the Russia's Choice party such as Yegor Gaidar and Boris Fyodorov.[1] Nevertheless, the party had been expected to garner as much as a 40% plurality of the vote. However, the party instead garnered merely 15.5% of the votes, placing behind Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party.[1] Zhirinovsky had successfully appealed to a chunk of the Russian electorate that had grown tired of both the communist leadership of the past and the current "democratic" leadership under Yeltsin.[1][11] Zhirinovsky had espoused a protofascist views and "law-and-order" rhetoric laced with racist undertones.[1] Combined, the core reformist (pro-Yeltsin) parties, including the Russia's Choice and Party of Russian Unity and Accord, received a mere 27.5% of the vote, whilst the core opposition parties received 43.3%.[1] The underperformance of the pro-Yeltsin forces in the 1993 legislative election alarmed some in Yelstin's camp of an urgent need for Yeltsin to revive his faltering public image.[1]

1994

Over the course of 1994, Yeltsin became more and more separated from core reformist politicians and organizations.[1] At the same time, Yeltsin was also becoming more and more separated from the opposition government and its leader, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.[1] Instead, Yeltsin increasingly relied on the advice of First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets and his own bodyguard and confidant Alexander Korzhakov.[1] Soskovets had been shaping Yeltsin's campaign strategy.

1995

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Our Home Russia fared poorly in the 1995 legislative election

The result 1995 legislative election was not better for Yeltsin. Core reformist (pro-Yeltsin) parties performed marginally worse than 1993, receiving a combined 25.5% of the vote.[1] Core opposition parties garnered 42.5% of the vote.[1]

The opposition Communist Party gained power in the 1995 legislative election. Its leader, Gennady Zyuganov, had a strong grassroots organization, especially in the rural areas and small towns. Zyuganov had appealed effectively to nostalgia for an era of Soviet prestige on the international stage and socialist domestic order. It was already clear at this time that Zyuganov was going to challenge Yeltsin for the presidency the following year.[12]

In the 1995 legislative elections, Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party placed second with 11.18% of the vote. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's centrist, non-reformist, party Our Home – Russia won 10.13%, placing third.[1]

The result of the 1995 legislative elections seemed to further indicate that support for Yeltsin's reformists was indeed in political decline.[1][13] The largest reformist party at the time, Grigory Yavlinsky's Yabloko won only 6.9% of the vote.[1] The next-largest reformist party, Yegor Gaidar's Democratic Choice of Russia, won a paltry 3.9%.[1] Yeltsin's advisers viewed this as evidence that it would be disastrous for Yeltsin to campaign as a reformist/democrat.[1] Indeed, polling in December placed Yeltsin behind both Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky.[14]

Campaign strategies

Soskovets strategy


Yeltsin's original, abandoned, campaign strategy had been devised by Oleg Soskovets in response to the defeat of pro-Yeltsin parties in the 1993 and 1995 legislative elections. Soskovets decided that for Yeltsin to win in 1996, he would need to adopt some of Zhirinovsky's style of rhetoric.[1] Soskovets worked alongside others, such as Alexander Korzhakov, to devise a strategy.[1] According to their strategy, Yelstin would need to position himself as an intermediate between the reformers and the Zhirinovsky-style protofascists by adopting the platforms of both. Yeltsin initially obliged, and took action to pivot and adjust his image accordingly.[1]

Abandonment of Soskovets strategy

In late-January 1996, members of Yeltsin's inner-circle began to inform him that they were worried that Soskovets' strategy was a losing strategy.[1] Soskovets' standing with Yeltsin was severely harmed after he failed to complete the campaign's signature drive by the deadline Yeltsin had assigned him.[4]

By February, Yeltsin had begun to abandon Soskovets' advice. At this time, several shadow campaigns were hard at work to support Yeltsin's candidacy, and were developing alternative campaign strategies for Yeltsin to adopt.[1] By early February, Sergei Filatov (a former member of Yeltsin's government) had been appointed as the interim head of the campaign headquarters. Filatov was also tasked with laying the groundwork for Yeltsin's official campaign committee. Filatov's appointment consequentially supplanted much of Soskovets' authority within the campaign.[15]

On March 23, in a meeting with Anatoly Chubais and members of Semibankirschina [The Seven Bankers] that polling showed him to be headed towards a defeat.[1][3]

Panic stuck Yeltsin's inner circle after their meeting with the Semisbankirschina made it clear to them that the opinion polls indicated that Yeltsin could not win. Some members of the inner-circle, such as Alexander Korzhakov, urged Yeltsin to cancel or postpone the election in order to prevent a Communist victory.[16][17] Others, such as Yegor Gaidar, urged Yeltsin to forgo seeking a second term, so that they could instead run a reform-minded candidate that would capable of winning the election.[4]

Instead of abandoning his candidacy, Yeltsin reorganized his campaign organization. Yeltsin's own daughter Tatyana Dyachenko was instrumental in convincing him to replace Soskovets as his campaign head.[1] While Yelstin distrusted his campaign advisors, he placed great trust in the advice of his daughter.[18] On March 23, day after the meeting with the Semibankirschina team, Yeltsin fired Soskovets, officially ending the Soskovets campaign.[1][3]

Adoption of a new campaign strategy

The campaign's revised strategy became more clear after liberal figures solidified their control of the campaigns central leadership. They rejected the premise of the earlier Soskovets campaign strategy, believing that trying to appeal towards communists and fascists would be a losing strategy. Instead, they formed an entirely new strategy for his campaign.[1][7]

Russia lacked a strong party system, thus partisan divides were less a factor for campaigns as they were in democracies with more developed party systems, such as France, the United Kingdom and the United States.[1] In both the 1993 and 1995 parliamentary elections, half of Russia's parliamentary seats were decided by voting in single-mandate districts. However, the other half was determined by a national system of proportional representation. Proportional representation encouraged the existence of a plethora of political parties and little incentive for party consolidation. In 1993, thirteen separate parties contested in legislative elections. In 1995, forty-three different parties did.[1] This was seen by the campaign's new leadership as being problematic to Yeltsin's candidacy. They believed that in order to win he would need to convince voters that he was the lesser evil, which he would be unable to effectively do without first convincing voters that they had only two options.[1]

The campaign worked to recast Yeltsin as an individual single-handedly fighting to stave off communist control. The campaign framed a narrative that portrayed Yeltsin as Russia's best hope for stability.[19] The campaign worked to shift the narrative of the election into a referendum on whether voters wanted to return to their communist past (with Zyuganov), or continue with reforms (with Yeltsin).[5][4]

Also important to Yeltsin's new stagey was to highlight the divide between the moderate and radical sides of the left-wing, highlight the left's radical views, and portray Zyuganov as a government bureaucrat with no practical government experience.[20]

Yeltsin's campaign also sought to replicate factors that had previously contributed to his victories in the 1991 presidential election and the 1994 constitutional referendum.[4] One such factor he sought to replicate was the public's perception of his leadership. In 1991, Yeltsin had been widely seen as a vigorous leader. This was no longer the case. Thus, Yeltsin took an active approach to campaigning in order to project an revive of vigor.[21] Another factor he replicated was the allocation of funds to popular causes, something he had also done in advance of the 1991 election and 1994 referendum.[21] He also repeated tactics used in 1991 and 1994 by firing unpopular officials, slowing down the pace of economic reforms (a plurality of Russians felt that the reforms needed to be more gradual), and promising to pivot a number policies in the direction favored by the public.[21]

Campaigning in first round

Early developments


Many predicted that Russia would succumb to the same trend that many other post-Soviet transition democracies, where nationalist politicians unseated incumbent leaders.[22]

Before Yelstin announced his intention to seek a second term, there was speculation that he would retire from politics due to his ailing health and the growing disapproval of his performance.[8] At the time Yeltsin was recuperating from a series of heart attacks.[8][9] Despite some efforts to revive the public's perception, Yeltsin still possessed a strongly negative image, with both domestic and international observers taking note his occasionally erratic behavior.[1][8] Additionally, amongst the aforementioned economic decline, Yeltsin encountered poor optics by enjoying the benefits of power, enjoying luxuries he himself had once criticized Soviet leaders for, such as chauffeured limos.[9] Yeltsin's popularity came close to zero.[8]

According to the former Kremlin Chief of Staff Sergey Filatov, Yeltsin initially did not plan to participate in the elections, but with the success of the Communist party in the legislative elections, he changed his decision.[23][24] Former Yeltsin's adviser Sergey Stankevich claimed that the Mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak was considered as a candidate for the presidency instead of Yeltsin, as Sobchak had all the necessary resources and had all the chances to win. However, at the end of 1995 Sobchak finally abandoned this idea, and Yeltsin still decided to be re-elected.[25][26]

In January, Yeltsin distributed an internal memo, which was soon leaked in the press. The memo urged his government to undertake radical measures to insure he would retain power. One of the suggested actions was to dismiss regional governors that did not provide a sufficient level of support to Our Home – Russia during the 1995 legislative elections. Other actions suggested in the memo were to channel government money into his election campaign, use state-run media to bolster his candidacy, cut funding to state-owned regional newspapers that supported opposition candidates, and to insure that positions in the Central Election Commission were occupied by individuals favoring Yeltsin.[15]

On January 22, Yeltsin stated that he would announce the final decision on whether he was going to run sometime between February 13 and 15. Yeltsin commented,

I realize that if I agree [to run], the struggle will be tough...Those who [I would] be running against are not exactly ordinary people, but we'll organize the campaign taking account of the experience in other countries.[15]


By this time, it was widely anticipated that, despite his unpopularity, Yeltsin was going to seek reelection.[15]

The days leading up to the announcement were characterized by a number of figures with connections to Yeltsin signaling whether or not they would support his reelection campaign. For instance, on February 5, Vyacheslav Kostikov, Yeltsin's former spokesman, indicated his opposition to Yeltsin's candidacy by delivering a crass and harshly-worded rebuke of the President. On February 8, Prime Minister Chernomyrdin denied long-standing rumors that he would seek presidency himself, declaring that Yeltsin had his, "complete and unconditional support."[13]

Announcement of candidacy

Image
Yeltsin's campaign announcement was held in the Youth Palace

Image
Yeltsin declared his candidacy in his native Yekaterinburg

On February 15, 1996, Yeltsin officially declared his intentions to seek a second term in a speech delivered at the Youth Palace in his native Yekaterinburg.[3][27][13] While delivering his announcement, Yeltsin's voice was uncharacteristically hoarse.[3] Yeltsin proclaimed, "the people want me to run a second time."[13]

Despite Yeltsin's insistence that the Russian public desired to see him run for reelection, polling indicated immense disinterest in his candidacy. On the day that he announced his candidacy, the majority of major polls showed him to be either in fourth or fifth place. Most political observers had already disregarded his prospects.[3] Polling showed him to possess an approval rating of 6%.[18][28][29] Joseph Stalin was found to be polling more favorably, scoring both lower negatives and higher positives than Yeltsin.[18][28] Polling also found that the majority of Russians believed that Yeltsin was to blame for wrecking the country's economy.[28]

The campaign faced the challenge of convincing voters that despite bleak circumstances under his incumbency, Russia would fare better under Yeltsin's continued leadership.[8]

Winter 1996

By the virtue of Yeltsin's incumbency, his campaign effort was given access to a plethora of resources that no other campaign had, making the advantage of his incumbency immense. While he was, on one hand, burdened by the failures of his incumbency, he was also provided substantial utilities by virtue his position as the head of the Russian government.[1][30] Yeltsin's campaign had access to the resources of agencies such as the FSB the FAPSI.[1] Korzhakov's own analytic center and regional heads of administration who Korzhakov helped to appoint were willing to assist the campaign.[1] The campaign used these resources for intelligence gathering and monitoring campaign spending, however they otherwise benefited only marginally from them.[1] However, Yeltsin found other means of using his incumbency as a tool for his campaign. Being an incumbent, he could demonstrate his willingness to fulfill promises he was making on the campaign trail.[31] In March he doubled a large number of pensions.[31] This received flak from his opponents, who accused him of essentially buying votes, however, Yeltsin's team argued that he was simply doing his job as President.[31] In early March, Yeltsin decreed that 40 million landowners in Russia would have the right to buy and sell property. This move made land a tradable commodity in Russia for the first time since 1917. Yeltsin hoped that this would benefit peasants and provide them a reason to embrace reforms, thus undermining their support for the communists.[32]

On March 15, the Communist Party, which constituted the largest faction in the State Duma, moved to pass a (largely symbolic) non-binding resolution denouncing the Dissolution of the Soviet Union.[3] This played right into Yeltsin's hands. Allegedly, Yeltsin's aides had they laid the groundwork for the vote by giving nationalists in the Duma the go-ahead to vote with the Communists and by coordinating the proceedings so that only Yeltsin's least popular allies in parliament speak out against the resolution.[3] When it passed, Yeltsin attacked the Communists by alleging that if one is to claim that the Soviet breakup was illegal, then Russia itself was an illegitimate state. This, seemingly inconsequential, vote now positioned Zyuganov as an apparent extremist.[3] Polling ultimately showed that less than a third of Russian's approved of the resolution.[32] The Communists proved unable to effectively respond to this development.[3] Soon after this, Yeltsin's own poll numbers began to improve.[3]

On March 24, Chernomydrin announced that Our Home is Russia would back Yeltsin's candidacy. He also announced his intention to form a broad coalition of parties to back Yeltsin's campaign.[33]

On March 27, 1996, Yeltsin benefited from International Monetary Fund director Michel Camdessus' approval of a $10.2 billion loan for Russia.[34][35][36]

Spring 1996

Throughout the Winter of 1996, Soskovets' strategy was losing traction. At the start of Spring, however, the strategy was entirely abandoned when Yeltsin fired Soskovets as his campaign manager.[1] As was detailed previously, new campaign leadership was added to the campaign, and a new strategy was being adopted.[1]

Yeltsin's candidacy was officially filed on April 3.[37] That same day, Democratic Russia leaders Lev Ponomaryov and Gleb Yakunin gave Yeltsin their personal endorsements, and encouraged members of their party to follow their lead.[37]

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Boris Yeltsin at his campaign's first official rally on April 4 in Belgorod. Belgorod was seen as a communist stronghold. In the 1995 legislative election, 35% of its electorate had voted for the Communist Party in its party list vote, and they had elected in their single-district vote Nikolai Ryzhkov[37] (Yeltsin's closest opponent in the 1991 presidential election).

Immediately after officially filing his candidacy, Yeltsin launched his first campaign tour.[6] He decided to travel to southern Russia's agricultural region, home to the Red Belt (where the Communists were particularly strong).[38][6] He began his travels with a trip to the city of Belgorod.[37] On his visit, Yeltsin was greeted with unexpectedly warm reception. Thereafter, the Yeltsin campaign staff arranged an exhaustive travel schedule for the president and Yelstin campaigned vigorously, maintaining a high media profile.[3][8][6][39]

Yeltsin traveled around the country and visited factories, met with voters.[40][41] As an advantage of his incumbency, Yeltsin had the liberty of traveling on the presidential jet. In contrast, Zyuganov had to travel by commercial flights.[30]

Many of Yeltsin's early stump speeches had a forward-looking tone, promising a better future for all Russians, and seeking to reposition him as a unifying force in Russian politics.[6] In an April speech Yeltsin said,

"We have ceased to see the world in terms of red and white. Before our eyes, it has become multicolored, vivid, and bright."[6]


Yeltsin worked diligently to convince Russian voters that he would be able to make it to the second round of the election and defeat Zyuganov. He was publicly dismissive of suggestions that a third force might coalesce.[21]

In April, for the first time a number of polls were showing Yeltsin leading Zyuganov. Polls also showed that Yeltsin's support was higher amongst younger, urban, and higher-income Russians, while Zyuganov's support was higher amongst older, poorer, and rural voters.[31] Polling showed signs that Yeltsin had likely benefited some from his recent announcement of plans to peacefully end the conflict in Chechnya.[31] Yeltsin also was benefiting from the Communist Party running a relatively poor campaign. The Communists had been rather unsuccessful in their marketing of Zyuganov's candidacy, failing to create appealing messaging.[31]

During the nation's Victory Day Celebration, Yeltsin gave an address to crowds in Red Square from atop Lenin's Tomb. He praised the Russian people, Russian soldiers, and the Allies (unlike Zyuganov, who failed to acknowledge the allied forces in the speech he delivered across town). After delivering his speech, Yeltsin broke with tradition and became the first Russian leader in 51 years to leave Moscow during the Victory Day celebration. Following a brief meeting with veterans in Gorky Park, he flew to Volgograd (Stalingrad), the site of some of the fiercest fighting during the war. Yeltsin said that, although the Volgograd region had consistently voted Communist in past elections, he felt morally obligated to visit the site due to its importance. Upon arriving in Volgograd, Yeltsin was reportedly greeted by crowds carrying signs saying "We love you" and "Yeltsin is a democrat."Victory Day Celebration: From atop Lenin's tomb, President Yeltsin addressed the crowds in Red Square celebrating the 51st anniversary of the end of World War II. Yeltsin praised the Russian people, Russian soldiers, and unlike his Communist rival speaking across town, the Allies. Yeltsin also called attention the recently reinstated red flag labeling it "a living link between the generations." He then became the first Russian leader in 51 years to leave Moscow during the Victory Day celebration. After meeting briefly with veterans in Gorky Park, Yeltsin flew to Volgograd (Stalingrad), site of some of the fiercest fighting during the war. Yeltsin explained, although the region has consistently voted Communist in recent elections, he felt morally obligated to visit a site of such importance. According to the government's ITAR-TASS press agency, crowds greeted Yeltsin carrying signs saying "We love you" and "Yeltsin is a democrat."[42]

Image
Yelstin campaigning on May 7

In early May, Yeltsin refused Zyuganov's challenge to hold a debate, saying,

I was a Communist for 30 years and had so much of that demagoguery that today, with my democratic views, I cannot bear this demagoguery any more...For this reason, I don't need the debate with Zyuganov. I stick to my beliefs, while he wants to drag the country backward.[42]


He went on to say, he did not have time to debate all of the ten candidates, and it would not be fair to debate just one.[42]

Over the Victory Day (May 9th) weekend, Yeltsin's campaign began a heavy advertising campaign. This was in violation of election laws, which mandated that candidates could not run television, billboard, or radio advertisements earlier than March 15.[16] The advertisements were created for the campaign by the Russian advertising firm Video International.[16] The advertisements starred veterans, and were commissioned by the Igor Malashenko (who was in charge of the campaign's image management and television advertising) to serve as the first step of an effort to Yeltsin's image among older voters.[1][16]

In May, Yeltsin's campaign saw a boost when The World Bank provided Russia a loan.[43] Yeltsin's campaign got a boost from the announcement of a $10 billion loan to the Russian government from the International Monetary Fund.[8] Yeltsin used trillions of rubles from the IMF loans to begin repaying government debt to state employees.[44]

At the May 17 CIS Summit in Moscow, leaders of the other nations that formerly composed the Soviet Union offered their collective endorsement of Yeltsin's candidacy.[44]

Yeltsin's campaign received a boost when on May 27, he and acting Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev signed a cease-fire. Following the signing ceremony, Yeltsin boarded a plane and immediately embarked on a surprise six-hour trip to Chechnya, where he visited soldiers and declared victory. This fulfilled a promise that Yeltsin had made that he would personally visit war-torn Chechnya before the day of the election.[44]

On May 31, Yeltsin unveiled his official campaign platform in the city of Perm. The choice of location made headlines, as Perm was widely seen to favor the Communist Party.[19] Perm was also thought to be especially unlikely to support Yeltsin because both the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist Party had beaten pro-Yeltsin parties there months earlier in the 1995 legislative election.[19] Yeltsin's campaign took a gamble by choosing to actively campaign in Perm, which ultimately paid-off when Yeltsin won the majority of its vote in the first round of the election, defeating Zyuganov by a wide-margin.[19]

Summer 1996

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Campaign advertisements grace the Moscow Metro ahead of the June election

By the summer of 1996, all major polls showed Yeltsin making notable gains.[44]

Back in April, Filatov sought for the campaign to avoid anti-communist campaigning (as this risked providing Zyuganov free publicity). However, by June, he had revised his approach, and the campaign issued direct criticism of the Communist platform.[6]

Near the end of the campaign, Dzhokhar Dudayev's widow endorsed Yeltsin for President of Russia. This further neutralized criticisms of his handling of the Chechen War.[5]

The campaign held GOTV in the run up to the day of the election. This included organizing rock concerts aimed at increasing youth turnout.[19][30] A June concert at Red Square drew 100,000 attendees.[30] In cities such as Perm, concerts were held the weekend prior to the election.[19]

Result of the first round

The government's decision to allow a wide election-day voting window (with polls open from 8 AM to 10 PM) was believed to allow for a greater voter turnout. Experts speculated that a stronger turnout would benefit Yeltsin's campaign.[19]

Yeltsin confidently issued predictions that he would place first in the first-round. However, his campaign's leaders kept their cards fair closer to their chest. Ultimately, Yeltsin did win the first round, albeit by only 3 percentage points. In carrying 35% Yeltsin placed between five and ten points lower than public polling had predicted he would. However, he had placed relatively near the projections of the campaign's internal polling.[1]

Many in Yeltsin's camp were actually happy that the result was close. They believed that a close margin would help motivate pro-reformist voters to participate in the second round of voting. They had feared a landslide first-round result in his favor would lead Yeltsin's supporters to be less motivated to vote in the second round.[1]

Some viewed Yeltsin as benefiting from Russian voters in the 1996 election possessing a greater concern with choosing the candidate that championed the political and economic future that they preferred with Russia, rather than evaluating the incumbent's performance.[1]

Yeltsin had also benefited from the inadequacy of his opponents' campaign efforts. Much of the opposition were mired with technical ineptness, ideological confusion, and political baggage. Many of his opponents became their own enemies, making it completely unnecessary for Yeltsin to concentrate any efforts on combatting their candidacies.[3]

Campaigning in the second round

After the results of the first round were announced, Yeltsin's campaign publicly expressed confidence that was that Yeltsin was going to win the next round, declaring their belief that most of Yavlinski, Zhirinovski, Lebed and Fyodorov's supporters were going to vote for Yeltsin in the second round.[43] To emphasize this anticipated coalition of support, Yeltsin's campaign adopted the slogan "Now we are united!"[43]

Two days after the first round of voting, Yeltsin hired Alexander Lebed as his national security advisor and, in return, received Lebed's endorsement.[1][3][45][5][46][47][48] During the first round, Yeltsin had brokered a secretive arrangement in which Lebed had agreed to support him in the second round.[3]

Entering the second round, the predominate concerns of voters were the war in Chechnya, skyrocketing prices, unemployment, and economic decline. Voters also desired for whoever won the presidency to oversee timely control over the payment of pensions and salaries and achieve peace in Chechnya.[43] Yeltsin's campaign aimed to convince voters that Yeltsin was successfully implementing measures to address all of these concerns. They also sought to convince the voters that Russia would not suffer a second Perestroika.[43]

Early in the runoff, the campaign encountered major road bumps. Days after the first round the campaign had to handle controversy in the fallout of the Xerox Affair.[47] Additionally, Yeltsin's health presented significant obstacle to the campaign.[1]

In addition to firings related to the aforementioned Xerox Affair, there were a number of other shakeups in Yeltsin's presidential administration. Yeltsin fired Pavel Grachev, at the request of Lebed.[49]

A week into the runoff campaign, Yeltsin fell ill upon returning from a campaign visit to Kaliningrad.[3] Yeltsin himself publicly insisted it was merely a cold or sore throat.[38] Despite their heavy efforts to cover-up Yeltsin's health problems, the campaign failed to entirely conceal from the public that the president's health had deteriorated significantly over the course of the campaign.[45] Rumors variably alleged that Yeltsin was, in fact, suffering from exhaustion, a breakdown, or depression.[3] Months after the election, it would be disclosed that he had, in fact, suffered a heart attack.[1][50]

For a period of time after the heart attack, Yeltsin ceased making campaign appearance and disappeared from public view. To cover up Yeltsin's absence, Yeltsin's campaign team created a "virtual Yeltsin" shown in the media through staged interviews that never happened and pre-recorded radio addresses.[51] He later returned to the campaign trail, however, with a drastically lighter travel itinerary than he had in the first round.[1][48]

During the runoff campaign, one of the advertising agencies working for Yeltsin's campaign printed over a million adhesive-backed posters with Zyuganov's image on them and the warning, "This could be your last chance to buy food!" These posters appealed to a genuine fear of hunger amongst the Russian populace, and were plastered on the windows of food markets all across the country. This proved to be an effective scare tactic.[3] Posters were printed by the campaign in the closing weeks which warned "The Communist Party hasn't changed its name and it won't change its methods".[6] By evoking unpleasant memories of communist rule, the campaign hoped to spur turnout amongst anticommunist voters and weaken the coalition between nationalists and Communists.[6]

Despite the tone of his campaign material, a little more than a week before Election Day, Yeltsin indicated a willingness to work with the Communists declaring that he was, "ready for dialogue and co-operation with all those for whom the fate of Russia is a top priority", including "honest Communists".

Near the close of the runoff campaign, Lebed became a burden to the campaign. Lebed made several incendiary remarks, which attracted controversey. On June 26, just a week before the election. While addressing an assembly of Cossacks on behalf of the campaign, Lebed said particular Russian religious sects, including Mormons, were "mold and scum" which had been "artificially brought into our country with the purpose of perverting, corrupting, and ultimately breaking up our state". In these remarks Lebed said that such "foul sects", needed to be outlawed be outlawed because they posed "a direct threat to Russia's security". He argued that Russia needed "established, traditional religions", which he named as being Russian Orthodoxy, Islam and Buddhism (noticeably omitting Judaism from this list of acceptable religions).[48]

On the day of the election, when Yeltsin made an appearance at a polling station in order to cast his own vote, he was described as appearing "shaky", drawing further concerns about his health.[45]

Result of the second round

Yeltsin won the final round of the election by a decisive margin, managing to defeat Zyuganov by nearly ten million votes.[45] On the night of the election, Zyuganov publicly conceded the race to Yeltsin, and congratulated him on his victory.[45]

Yelstin was re-inaugurated as President the following month.

Yeltsin's reelection defied a pattern amongst post-Soviet transition democracies of nationalists unseating incumbent leaders during their immediate bids for reelection.[22]

Platform and positions

Yeltsin was generally seen as representing the status quo, whereas Zyuganov was seen as opposing it.[1] On some issues Yeltsin was seen as being to the right of Zyuganov, whilst on other issues he was perceived as being to the left of Zyuganov.[1] Overall, however, Yeltsin was seen as a progressive or a liberal, while Zyuganov was seen as conservative.[1] Yeltsin was pro-reform, whilst Zyuganov was anti-reform.[1] Yeltsin was anticommunist, while Zyuganov was procommunist.[1] Yeltsin was a democrat, while Zyuganov was a nationalist.[1]

Yelstin was viewed as bolstering the causes of centrists, whilst Zyuganov was viewed as representing the nationalists.[1]

In early March, Soskovets, still the de-juror chairman of the campaign, publicly outlined the themes of Yeltsin's campaign as being, social support, strengthening Russian statehood, fighting crime, and emphasizing how government activities were promoting stability.[32]

On April 6 Yeltsin addressed a congress of his supporters. He announced that he would delay unveiling his campaign platform, until following month, claiming this was to prevent his opponents from "distorting or using" his program. However, Yeltsin did provide a very general overview of what his program might entail. He spoke on the themes of the family, fighting crime, ending the war in Chechnya, and strengthening CIS integration. Yeltsin promised that he would win so that "these elections will not be the last."[52]

On May 31, Yeltsin announced his official campaign program at an event in the city of Perm.[19] The platform was detailed in a 127-page document entitled Russia: Individual, Family, Society, State.[44]

His platform echoed much of his 1991 platform's rhetoric. It made promises to complete economic reform, to rewrite the tax code, compensate swindled investors, strengthen Russia's social welfare system and turn the nation's army into a modern professional fighting-force.[44]

In his platform, Yeltsin claimed to have pulled Russia back from the brink of catastrophe, bringing it toward a more definitive future. He took credit himself for overseeing the development of a multi-party democracy and the foundations of a liberal-market economy. He also credited himself for keeping Russia's territorial integrity intact, and reintegrating Russia with the world.[44]

In his platform, Yeltsin wrote,

As president I know better than most how difficult life is for you at the moment. I feel all your pain, all the country's pain. However, I am sure that this is the pain of a recovering organism.
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Re: Boris Berezovsky (businessman), by Wikipedia

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Part 2 of 2

Economic policy

Yeltsin promised to complete his economic reform, insisting that the reforms that had already been initiated should be carried-through.[44][10] However, in an effort to boost his popularity, Yelstin promised to abandon some of his more unpopular economic reform measures.[8] Yeltsin's enthusiasm for reform was markedly different than it had been in the early years of his presidency. Yeltsin now championed a more cautious and gradual approach to reform.[10]

Yeltsin also promised to rewrite the tax code and to compensate swindled investors.[44]

In late January and early February Yeltsin made promises to spend billions of dollars in support of coal miners in order to end workers strikes.[44][13] This was the first of many populist spending promises Yeltsin would make during his campaign.[13]

Yelstin promised to pay wages and pension arrears[8] and to raise pensions.[19] In March, to demonstrate a willingness to deliver on his promises, Yeltsin doubled many pensions.[31]

Yeltsin promised easier loans to buy homes.[44]

Yeltsin promised to provide compensation to those that had lost their savings through the hyper-inflation of 1991-92. Such payments would be distributed in a manner prioritizing war veterans, the disabled, and elderly.[44]

Yeltsin promised farmers that he would cut their electricity expenses in half and would forgive nearly 23 trillion rubles in farm debt.[44]

Military

Yeltsin promised to turn the nation's army into a modern professional fighting force. Yeltsin adopted a position favoring the abolition of conscription, proposing a gradual end to the policy to be completed by the year 2000.[44]

Yeltsin believed that Russia needed to ensure its military security, spite a decrease in world tensions. He condemned NATO expansion saying that the West was trying to '"reinforce its world leadership." Yeltsin also called for military reform to adjust to the new strategic situation, arguing that instead of hundreds of divisions that exist only on paper, Russia's military needed, "a few dozen divisions made up of entirely professionals."[44]

Yeltsin pledged to spend 2.8 trillion rubles on for research and development for defense sector.

Yeltsin called for adopting a strong nuclear deterrent policy.[44]

Ending the Chechen War

Yeltsin attempted to separate himself from taking responsibility for the unpopular military action in Chechnya, instead contending that his ministers should be the ones blamed.[10]

Yeltsin pledged to end the war in Chechnya.[8][53] He also promised to spend trillions of rubles rebuilding the war-torn region.[44] During his campaign, Yeltsin falsely claimed that he was already achieving a peaceful end to the conflict. He even went as far as erroneously denying reports that armed conflict was actively ongoing.[31] Yeltsin saw his candidacy as tilting upon the public's perception of his ability to deliver a peaceful to the conflict.[32]

On March 31, in a televised speech to the nation, Yeltsin announced his long-awaited peace initiative for Chechnya. He conceded that his administration would be willing to hold discussions with Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, and would be willing to discuss some form of autonomy for Chechnya within the Russian Federation short of outright independence, perhaps modeled upon Tatarstan. He named Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, who was more favorably viewed by Chechens, as heading these efforts. He announced that troops would be withdrawn from areas already secured. He also announced amnesty would be granted to most Chechen fighters. However, in a deft political move, Yeltsin declared that the decisions as to which Chechens would be granted amnesty would be decided by the State Duma, which was controlled by the Communist Party.[32]

On May 27, Yeltsin's efforts received a boost when he and acting Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev signed a cease-fire agreement.[44] This temporarily suspended military operations in the Chechen Republic.

Social policy

Welfare


Yeltsin promised to increase welfare spending and strengthen the nation's social welfare system.[8][44]

Yeltsin promised to provide free transportation to the elderly.[19] He also promised a significant increase in the amount of money given in monthly pensions.[44]

Yelstin promised that, for frozen regions of Northern Russia, he would subsidize children's holidays and build retirement homes in the south for their miners.[44]

Yeltsin promised to provide students with scholarships for science students, and better pension plans for teachers.[44]

Soviet reunification

Yeltsin made efforts to one-up the nationalists and communists on the issue of Soviet reunification by taking concrete actions. Yeltsin announced a series of agreements with states of the former Soviet Union pertaining to voluntary reunification.[32]

On April 2, Yeltsin and president Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus signed a treaty calling for further cooperation between the two nations.[32][54] The treaty would establish a Union State. It would also establish a "Community of Sovereign Republics" that would include supranational bodies for the military, environmental, and technical fields. A common currency was envisioned by 1997, to be followed by a joint budget and constitution afterwards. However, the nations would keep their own flags and continue to be sovereign states.[32]

Image management

Within the campaign council, Malashenko was tasked with managing television advertising and enhancing the president's image.[1] Additionally involved in shaping Yeltsin's image was Georgy Rogozin, who was given offices on the eighth floor of of the President-Hotel.[20]

The campaign council hired the country's leading campaign advisers, image consultants and advertising agencies.[1] Igor Mintusev and Yekaterina Yegerova of the campaign consulting firm Nikola M were both hired to work on Yeltsin's image.[1] The campaign also employed a number of media consultants, who were tasked with placing favorable articles in national and regional publications.[1]

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Normally a private individual, Naina Yeltsina (left) made herself more available to the public

During the campaign, Yeltsin's wife, Naina Yeltsina, normally a private individual, took a more public role, and met with the voters.[55]

The campaign made use of a number of catch-phrases, including "chose or lose" and "vote with your heart".[56]

Personal health of Yeltsin

At 65 years old,[45] Yeltsin's health had been in grave decline, with his heavy consumption of alcohol being a contributing factor.[9] By the time he had announced his reelection effort, Yeltsin was facing significant health problems. He was recovering from a series of heart attacks.[8][9] In 1995 alone, Yeltsin had suffered three heart attacks.[9]

Yeltsin campaigned energetically during the first round of the election in an effort to dispel concerns about his health.[8] Nonetheless, it was visible that his health was indeed declining while he was on the campaign trail.[45] For the benefit of his health while campaigning, Yeltsin temporarily gave up his heavy drinking.[30]

Yeltsin's campaign worked to conceal his ailing health from the public.[1][51]

Scandals during campaign

Xerox Affair


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Staffers were detained while leaving the Russian White House

On June 20, only three days after the first-round of voting, Yeltsin fired Soskovets, Korzhakovand and Barsukov from their roles in his presidential administration. Yeltsin alleged that the three had been interfering in his reelection campaign.[47] As noted earlier, Soskovets had drafted Yeltsin's original, abandoned, campaign strategy, and originally oversaw the campaign alongside Korzhakov and Barsukov.[1] All three had subsequently come into conflict with the new leaders of the campaign.[47]

The controversy stemmed from the June 19 arrest of two campaign staffers, Sergey Lisovsky (the general director of the company ORT-advertising) and Arkady Evstafiev (an assistant to Cubais). The two had been detained by security agents while leaving the Russian White House.[47][57] The security agents discovered $500,000 in a Xerox copy-paper box that was being carried by one of the men.[57] The men were arrested and interrogated at the behest of Barsukov and Korzhakov.[47][57]

The motivation of Barsukov and Korzhakov for arresting the men had likely been Korzhakov's resentment towards campaign manager Antoly Chubais. Korzhakov had been a key individual urging Yeltsin to postpone the election.[16][47] He had earlier caused a media frenzy in early May by publicly asserting the opinion that Yeltsin should postpone the election.[16] Distrusting and disagreeing with Chubais, Korzhakov and the others were likely attempting to filthy Cubais in Yeltsin's eyes.[47]

The arrests had been reported within hours by television networks, which led to the firing of Barsukov and Korzhakov, along with their political ally Soskovets. Both Chubais and Lebed quickly convinced Yeltsin that he would lose the election if he kept the three in his administration. Yeltsin desired to distance himself from any corruption investigation that might result from the event, and therefore obliged to the firings.[47]

The discovery of the $500,000 raised the public's suspicions of chicanery being conducted by Yeltsin's campaign. Chubais publicly proclaimed that such allegations were merely the work of political adversaries. However, he privately conspired to cover-up any evidence of illegal transactions.[58]

Media

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A television tower in Moscow

Yeltsin's campaign organized the most sophisticated media effort that Russia had ever seen.[3] While the Communist campaign relied on old-school techniques, such as campaign rallies and leafletting, Yeltsin's team commissioned firms to conduct focus-group research, polling, consulting, and direct mail advertising on behalf of campaign.[16]

Throughout the first round of the election, Yeltsin maintained a high level of media presence.[8][6] His approval benefited from this.[6] Additionally, his wife, normally a private individual, made herself available for interviews with the media.[55]

In March 1996, NTV general director Igor Malashenko was made a member of Yeltsin's newly-established campaign council.[1] Within the campaign council, Malashenko was tasked with managing television advertising and enhancing the president's image.[1][59] Malashenko commissioned Video International, the same firm that supplied NTV with most of its advertising and television programming, to produce television sports, posters and leaflets for the campaign.[1][16] He awarded additional contracts for direct mail and posters to Mikhail Semenov, who owned Russia's largest direct mail firm.[1]

Rather than asking voters whether they were better off under his leadership, Yeltsin's campaign sought to ask voters whether they believed they would be better or worse off under Zyuganov's leadership.[29]

Favorable media bias

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Ostankino Technical Center

The Yeltsin campaign successfully enlisted the national television channels (ORT, RTR, NTV) and most of the written press as agents in his campaign against Zyuganov.[1][29]

Supplementing the work of the numerous public relations and media firms that were hired by the campaign, a number of media outlets "volunteered" their services to Yeltsin's reelection effort. For instance, Kommersant (one of the most prominent business newspapers in the country) published an anti-communist paper called Ne Dai Bog (meaning, "God forbid").[1] At ORT, a special committee was placed in charge of planning a marathon of anticommunist films and documentaries to be broadcast on the chanel ahead of the election.[1]

In the 1991 election, there were two major television channels. RTR had supported Yeltsin, while Public Television of Russia had criticized him and covered the views of a large number of his opponents. In the 1996 election, however, no major television network was critical of Yeltsin.[29][60] The networks marginalized all of Yeltsin's opponents aside from Zyuganov, helping to create the perception that there were only two viable candidates. This allowed Yeltsin to pose as the lesser-evil. Near the end of the election, however, the networks began also providing coverage to the candidacy of Lebed,[60] who had already agreed to support Yeltsin in the second round.[1]

The European Institute for Media found that Yeltsin received 53% of all media coverage of the campaign, while Zyuganov received only 18%. In their evaluation of the biases of news stories, EIM awarded each candidate 1 point for every positive story they received and subtracted a point for every negative story they received. In the first round of the election, Yeltsin scored +492 and Zyuganov scored -313. In the second round of the election, Yeltsin scored +247 and Zyuganov scored -240.[29]

One of the reasons for the media's overwhelming favoritism of Yeltsin was their fear that a Communist government would dismantle Russia's right to a free press.[29][5]

There were instances of direct payments made for positive coverage (so-called "dollar journalism").[29]

Another factor contributing to the media's support of Yeltsin was that his government still owned two of the national television channels, and still provided the majority of funding to the majority of independent newspapers.[29] In addition, Yeltsin's government also was in charge of supplying licenses to media outlets. Yeltsin's government and Luzhkov, mayor of Moscow, flexed their power and reminded the owners, publishers, and editors that newspaper licenses and Moscow leases for facilities were "under review".[29]

Additionally, Yeltsin managed to enlist Russia's emerging business elite in his campaign, including those who ran media corporations. This included Vladimir Gusinsky, owner of Most Bank, Independent Television and NTV. NTV which had, prior to the campaign, been critical towards Yeltsin's actions in Chechnya, changed the tone of their coverage. Igor Malashenko, Gusinsky's appointed head of NTV, even joined the Yeltsin campaign and led the its media relations in a rather visible conflict-of-interest.[29] In early 1996, Gusinsky and his political rival Boris Berezovskii (chairman of the Board of ORT) decided that they would put aside their differences in order to work together to support the reelection Boris Yeltsin.[1]

In mid-1996, Chubais and Yeltsin recruited a team of a handful of financial and media oligarchs to bankroll the Yeltsin campaign and guaranteed favorable media coverage the president on national television and in leading newspapers.[61] In return, Chubais allowed well-connected Russian business leaders to acquire majority stakes in some of Russia's most valuable state-owned assets.[62] Led by the efforts of Mikhail Lesin, the media painted a picture of a fateful choice for Russia, between Yeltsin and a "return to totalitarianism." The oligarchs even played up the threat of civil war if a Communist were elected president.[63]

Additionally, to further guarantee consistent media coverage, in February Yeltsin had fired the chairperson of the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company and replaced him with Eduard Sagalaev.[64][65]

While the anti-communist pro-Yeltsin media bias certainly contributed to Yeltsin's victory, it was not the sole factor. A similar media bias in the run-up to the 1995 parliamentary elections had failed to prevent a communist victory.[4]

Advertising

Early advertising for the campaign sought to portray Yeltsin as a "president for all". Early billboards of the campaign included slogans such as "Yeltsin is our president" and "Yeltsin is president of all Russia".[6]

One particularly American-style campaign tactic that Yeltsin adopted was the use of direct mail letters.[42]

Television commercials

Before the election, it was originally predicted that Yeltsin's television advertisements would likely resemble those that had been run by Our Home Is Russia in the week prior to the 1995 legislative elections. One such advertisement that had been run by Our Home Is Russia in 1995 featured a man on the street interview of voters, with respondents either replying Our Home Is Russia or the Communist Party. Those supporting the Communist Party were shown to be far more slovenly than those supporting Our Home Is Russia. This particular ad had conveyed an image of a close two-party race (in spite of reality being that Russia's political landscape was then a multi-party system) in order to urge voter turnout. This type of advertisement was seen as having the advantage of scaring voters into supporting Yeltsin as the lesser-evil, and encouraging turnout by portraying a razor-thin race. However, it was also seen as having the disadvantage of reminding the voters that they could vote for Zyuganov if they wish to see Yeltsin removed from office, essentially providing free advertising to the Zyuganov campaign.[21]

Yeltsin's television campaign mainly focused on repairing his own image, rather than issuing attack ads on Zyuganov.[3] The challenge his campaign faced was that, due to Yeltsin's negative ratings and overexposure on television, it was believed he could not effectively deliver his campaign pitch himself. Instead, the pitch would need to be delivered indirectly. This meant that advertisements would not feature Yeltsin himself. A barrage of advertisements were released which featured working-class Russians, veterans, and elderly people providing testimonials in support of Yeltsin's leadership. The groups that were portrayed in these ads were demographics which typically voted for the communist party. Therefore, these ads aimed these testimonials towards peeling-away voters from demographics that typically leaned communist.[3][16]

Yeltsin's television advertising campaign avoided addressing difficult issues, such as the faltering economy.[3] Mikhail Margelov, the head of Video International, said,

We didn't want political or economic discussions. We decided to play on the field of basic human values ... people talking about their lives and basic values. If we came to a discussion of economic problems or crime, it's easy to criticize Yeltsin for that.[3]


Russian law prevented candidates from running advertisements before March 15. However, despite of this regulation, the Yeltsin campaign began broadcasting a set of campaign commercials under the guise of "public service announcements" earlier than was permitted. The Russian airwaves were flooded during on Victory Day with videos in which World War II veterans recalled their service and hinted at an ominous future under communist leadership. In one such video, a veteran remarked, "I just want my children and grandchildren to finally savor the fruits of the victory we fought for."[42]

Finances

Election laws specified that campaigns could spend up to $2.9 million.[29] The campaign claimed that its official expenditures were $3 million.[3] This amount does not accurately reflect the amount that was spent towards his campaign in both "unofficial" expenditures and outside expenditures.[3] Estimates of the cost of Yeltsin's campaign extended into the hundreds of millions of dollars.[29]

Yeltsin had run continuous television advertisements that were purchased at $15,000-$30,000 per minute. He employed a large campaign staff, traveled extensively, and distributed enormous amounts of high-quality campaign material.[29]

Yeltsin's campaign effort received immense financial backing from the business community.[3]

Additionally, Yeltsin's government found it necessary to force the Central Bank to provide it an extra $1 billion to fund the campaign promises before the election.[29]

Support from business community

An advantage of incumbency that the campaign benefited from was Yeltsin's ties to Oligarchs. Oligarchs gave significant funding to Yeltsin's campaign. Oligarchs that had benefited under his leadership felt obliged to support him in order to secure their own positions. Oligarchs believed that a communist victory would be devastating for them.[1] Amongst the oligarchs supporting Yeltsin were seven that subsequently were dubbed "Semibankirschina".

Oligarchs and businesses provided the campaign an amount that was estimated to be between $100 million and $500 million.[3] However, as mentioned earlier, the official campaign spending was reported to be a mere $3 million.[3]

In order to begin to deliver on his campaign promises before the day of the election, Yeltsin ordered $1 billion dollars to be issued by the Central Bank to pay for his campaign pledges.[44]

Loans for shares scheme

With the election approaching, strengthening support from Russia's new private business elite was believed to be critical to Yeltsin's reelection effort.[66] Beginning in 1995, Yeltsin's government began to use a loans for shares scheme in privatizing state-owned shares in companies.[3] The auctions were rigged, being non-competitive and frequently controlled by favored insiders with political connections.[67] The scheme was structured in a manner that made Yeltsin's victory a strong interest of the investors involved. The two-stage program was structured so that the loans would be made before the election, but the auction of the shares could only take place beginning after the election, making it of financial concern for them that Yeltsin would win the election.[66]

Low-cost bonds scheme

David E. Hoffman of The Washington Post reported that, during the election effort, Russian oligarchs profited from special deals involving low-cost government bonds. This, consequentially, sweetened the business communities support of Yeltsin's reelection effort.[66]

Campaign organizations

Central campaign


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The campaign's headquarters were in the President-Hotel

Image
Chubais, who became the head of the campaign

Oleg Soskovets served as the campaign's original chairman. When it was first launched, the campaign's structure consisted solely of a campaign management team led by Soskovets. The management team had set-up shop at the campaign's headquarters on the ninth level of the President-Hotel.[1]

Yeltsin ultimately fired Soskovets as his campaign chairman on March 23, and hired Chubais to lead the campaign in his place.[1][3] This represented a key change in the ideological slant of the campaign leadership. While Soskovets was a nationalist hardliner, Chubais was an avid reformer.[1]

Additionally, on March 19, Yeltsin had established new "campaign council" to lead the campaign.[1][27] Notably, this campaign council featured a number of liberals, in contrast to the nationalist hardliners that had been appointed to the initial campaign management team.[1] Among those that Yeltsin appointed to the newly-formed campaign council was Viktor Ilyushin, one of the predominate Kremlin insiders who urged him to abandon Skoskovets' campaign strategy.[1] Additionally, after firing Soskovets as the head of his campaign, Yeltsin invited a number of shadow campaign groups to merge their operations with his official campaign effort. In doing so, Yeltsin handed-over much of the many responsibilities of the campaign to these groups.[1]

After integrating various organizations that had been supporting his candidacy, the structure of the central campaign lacked cohesion. Additionally, after the initial creation of the campaign council, the campaign briefly acquired complicated leadership arrangement.[1] Yeltsin had not dissolved the original Soskovets campaign management team. While its leadership had joined the campaign council, they also continued to work independently and maintained offices on a separate floor from the rest of the campaign council members.[27] Between both the campaign council and the original management team (which had not been dissolved), the campaign had acquired two competing leadership groups.[1] However, the campaign council quickly emerged as the predominant leadership group, and ultimately negated the authority of the management team. Consequentially, with the campaign council emerging as the campaign's predominate leadership, liberals were in charge of a campaign that (under its original management team) had previously been run by nationalist-leaning hardliners.[1]

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Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana Dyachenko was a key figure, serving as the de-facto co-head of the campaign

While Chubais was the official head of the campaign, being named both Yeltsin's campaign manager and chairman of campaign council, he managed the campaign largely in tandem with Dyachenko, who was the de-facto co-head of the campaign.[1][20] Dyachenko coordinated much of the campaign from her Motorola cell phone.[68][69] Dyachenko used her phone very frequently to remain in constant contact with both her father and with members of the campaign operations.[69] She served as the primary conduit of communication between Yeltsin and his campaign operation.[29][20]

Yury Yarov served as the campaign's executive head.[20]

Also involved in the central campaign was Georgy Rogozin, who was in charge of security, as well as some image-management. Rogozin was given offices on the eighth floor of the President-Hotel.[20] Dyachenko also recruited her associate Viktoriya Mitina to work for the campaign.[20]

Members of the campaign council

• Mikhail Barsukov -fired after Xerox Affair[1][47]
• Viktor Chernomyrdin[1]
• Anatoly Chubais chairman[1]
• Tatyana Dyachenko[1]
• Viktor Ilyushin[1]
• Alexander Korzhakov -fired after Xerox Affair[1][47]
• Yury Luzhkov[1]
• Igor Malashenko[1][21]
• Sergei Shakhrai[1]
• Yury Yarov[1]
• Nikolai Yegorov[1]

Ilyushin oversaw the overall campaign operations.[29] He exerted strategic control over the campaign.[20] Dyachenko was in charge of personal contact between Yeltsin and the campaign.[29][20] Chubais was in charge of the campaign's finances.[29] Chernomyrdin was in charge of financial policy.[52] Malechenko was responsible for media relations. Luzkhov led the campaign efforts within the city of Moscow.[29][15]

Analytical group

On March 19, simultaneously to forming the campaign council, Yeltsin also impaneled an "analytical group" to be led by Chubais.[27] The organization enlisted the work of Dyachenko, Malashenko, Illyushin and Saratov as well as Valentin Yumashev, pollster Aleksandr Oslon, Vasily Shakhnovsky (chief of staff to Moscow's Mayor Luzhkov), Media-Most executive Sergei Zverev, and Duma deputy (and former deputy premier) Sergei Shakhrai.[27]

Foreign consultants

Flush with money, the central campaign hired an extensive amount of contractors for its campaign efforts. Most major research groups, think tanks, and public relations firms in Russia, at one point, worked for the campaign.[1] However, with Russians being relatively new to electoral politics, the campaign campaign also solicited the advice of private consults from abroad.[18][28] Among those advising the campaign was Tim Bell, a British political strategist that had helped shape the public-image of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.[16]

Team of Americans

A team of American political consultants (including George Gorton, Joe Shumate, Richard Dresner) advised the campaign.[3][18][28] They were hired in February by Soskovets, who hired them through a San Francisco firm with connections in Moscow. They were reportedly paid $250,000 for their consultation.[18][28][70][71] Formally, their role was as advisors to the Yeltsin family.[18] The team was given an unlimited budget with which to conduct focus groups and research.[28]

By this time, it was not unusual for experienced American consultants to be recruited to Russian campaigns. However, Yeltsin's team did not want to risk allowing Zyuganov to exploit their presence in the Yeltsin campaign as a means to lodge xenophobia-laden attacks on Yeltsin.[3] They especially worried that the involvement of foreign consultants might play negatively in the particularly nationalistic tone of the 1996 election.[3] Yeltsin's team of American political consultants was kept isolated from the rest of the campaign, and remained a secret until after the election was over.[3][45] They never met with Yeltsin himself, but instead sent detailed and unsigned memos to Dyachenko, with whom they worked closely.[3][18] They worked out of two suites on the eleventh floor of the President-Hotel, directly across the hall from Dyachenko's office.[70] To hide their involvement, the group claimed to be American businessmen conducting consumer research.[18]

Much of their advice proved to be obvious and redundant, however. While they subsequently claimed to have played a critical role in the campaign, this has been refuted by others in the campaign.[70] Dyachenko, for instance, reported that none of their contributions were central to the campaign's planning or strategy.[70][71]

They had no apparent communications with campaign leaders such as Chubais and Malashenko.[70] Because they had been hired by Soskovets, many of those leading the campaign distrusted and disregarded the consultants.[71]

Aleksandr Oslon commented on the role of the American advisors, stating, "when all the real decisions were made, they were not present."[70]

Despite this, the Americans subsequently boasted about their role in the campaign in a Time magazine cover-story which hyperbolically proclaimed, "Yanks to the Rescue".[72][73][71]


National campaign structure

Outside of its central leadership, the campaign consisted of two parallel structures. One was its formal national campaign organization, the second was an organization composed of outside groups.[1]

Formal national campaign organization

The formal nationwide campaign was largely overseen by Yarov, also a member of the campaign council. Yarov was responsible for the national campaign's official organizational work. Under his guidance, the campaign employed local representatives all across Russia. The local representatives were typically individuals who served in local governments.[1]

Shakhrai, also a member of the campaign council, assumed a role of coordinating with regional leaders. This was similar to a role that Yegorov occupied on the campaign management team.[1]

All-Russian Movement for Social Support for the President (ODOP)

The All-Russian Movement for Social Support for the President (also known as the ODOP) was an organization of Yeltsin's campaign which collaborated with outside groups providing their support to his candidacy. This formed the second nationwide structure of the campaign.[1][32] The ODOP and Chubais' campaign council jointly served as the main drivers of Yeltsin's campaign effort.[1]

Originally, Boris Yeltsin saw support from several political leaders and organizations who each declared themselves to be his candidacy's primary nongovernmental sponsor.[1] Vladimir Shumeyko announced that his social organization/quasi political party Reform's New Course would spearhead Yeltsin's reelection effort. Around the same time, the leaders of Our Home – Russia proclaimed that they were to be Yeltsin's primary campaign organization. After weeks of fighting between the two groups, Sergei Filatov started to form what would be the ODOP. The goal was to create a group that would serve as the campaign's predominant national support structure.[1] The group took on the task of finishing the work to secure the requisite paperwork and signatures to officialize Yeltsin's nomination, a task which it finished by April 5.[27][74] They thereafter convened the ODOP's founding congress on April 6. The founding conference made official the ODOP as an organization. It was immediately the most prominent organized movement supporting Yeltsin's candidacy.[1][27]

The organization drew membership from a vast array of more than 250 preexisting organization,[1][27] including political parties, unions, civic groups and social organization. Among the groups were Reform's New Course, Our Home – Russia, Alexander Yakovlev's Russian Party of Social Democracy, Lev Ponomaryov's Democratic Russia and Arkady Volsky's Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.[1]

The organization was led by Filatov along with Ilyushin.[32] They located the organization's headquarters on the tenth floor of the President Hotel, just above Yeltsin central campaign's offices.[1][20] They hired dozens of campaign managers from various political parties to help run the organization.[1] These included former Press Minister Sergei Gryzonov, Chief of Staff Nikolai Yegorov, and President of the "Politicka" Fund Vyachelslav Nikonov.[32]

People's House

A sub-organization of ODOP was named "People's House". This organization forged connections with citizen groups and was the unofficial disburser of campaign funds.[32][27] This was also directly overseen by Filatov.[32]

Key members of ODOP leadership

• Nikolai Filatov (co-head of ODOP; in charge of PR and People's House)[32]
• Viktor Illyushin (co-head of ODOP; national campaign organizer)[32][6]
• Nikolai Yegorov (in charge of regional work)[32]
• Vyacheslav Nikonov (in charge pre-election analysis)[32]

Moscow campaign organization

A separate campaign organization existed in Moscow, dedicated to rallying votes in the nation's capital, which was a rare bastion of strong support for Yeltsin.[1]

This component of the campaign was established early on. On January 22, it was reported that Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov had set aside his disagreements with Yeltsin to join his campaign. Luzhkov would be tasked with helping deliver Yeltsin votes in Moscow.[15]

Relations between organizations

With the exception of Moscow, it was not clarified what organizations were to be the campaign's primary regional representative. Consequentially, four different organizations acted under the separate assumptions that their regional offices were the primary regional representatives of the campaign. In each region, the formal national campaign organization (led by Yarov) would appoint its own representative. The ODOP would appoint their own separate representative as well. Our Home – Russia, despite being a member of ODOP, also would also appoint representatives of their own. A fourth organization, named NarodnyiDom, would also appoint their own representative.[1] In some locations the regional representatives of these organizations worked together, but in other locations there was no coordination between them.[1]

While confusing, having multiple separate organizations also gave significant flexibility to the national campaign. In regions that had strong local parties and civic organizations, the campaign headquarters would often treat the ODOP as their main regional representative. Therefore, the campaign would benefit from the work of the existing grassroots organizations that composed the ODOP. However, in regions with weaker nongovernmental organizations, the campaign headquarters would often treat the official national campaign organization, headed by Yarov, as their main regional representative. This allowed them to avoid being "held hostage" to the demands of grassroots organizations that had little or no local influence.[1]

Outside groups

While many outside groups supporting Yeltsin officially coordinated with the campaign through the ODOP, a number outside organizations functioned independently of the campaign.

NarodnyiDom

NarodyniDom (народныйдом; English: NationalHouse) was an outside organization supporting Yeltsin's campaign. The official claim was that the nationwide organization provided nongovernmental consultive social services to citizens and that its chapters served a social club for residents with free coffee and occasional entertainment. In actuality, campaign money was funneled through the organization to eschew detection.[1]

Vote or Lose

Image
Shirt from the Vote or Lose campaign

Sergey Lisovsky organized the Vote or Lose campaign. Vote or Lose was a $10 million series of television programs and rock concerts in the style of Rock the Vote. It was a get out the vote campaign aimed at mobilizing the youth vote in support of Yeltsin.[1][59]

See also

• Russian presidential election, 1996
• Opinion polling for the Russian presidential election, 1996
• Semibankirschina
• Soskovets campaign strategy
• Spinning Boris
• Boris Yeltsin presidential campaign, 1991

References

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23. Второй, понимаешь
24. «Ельцин не хотел идти на второй срок»
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38. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 2e8e8bced/
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40. Вторая кампания Бориса Ельцина - 1996
41. §1. Выборы Президента РФ в 1996 году. «Семья»: победа любой ценой
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46. Law-and-Order Candidate Finds Himself in Role of Kingmaker, by CAROL J. WILLIAMS, Los Angeles Times, 18 June 1996
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74. Вторая кампания Бориса Ельцина
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Re: Boris Berezovsky (businessman), by Wikipedia

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Yanks to the Rescue: The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win
by Michael Kramer
Moscow
Time Magazine
July 15, 1996

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Image

Image
Four More Years: Yeltsin campaigns with his daughter shortly before the final vote

Exclusive: Rescuing Boris: The secret story of how four U.S. advisers used polls, focus groups, negative ads and all the other techniques of American campaigning to help Borin Yeltsin win

IN THE END THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE CHOSE -- AND CHOSE decisively -- to reject the past. Voting in the final round of the presidential election last week, they preferred Boris Yeltsin to his Communist rival Gennadi Zyuganov by a margin of 13 percentage points. He is far from the ideal democrat or reformer, and his lieutenants Victor Chernomyrdin and Alexander Lebed are already squabbling over power, but Yeltsin is arguably the best hope Russia has for moving toward pluralism and an open economy. By reelecting him, the Russians defied predictions that they might willingly resubmit themselves to communist rule.

The outcome was by no means inevitable. Last winter Yeltsin's approval ratings were in the single digits. There are many reasons for his change in fortune, but a crucial one has remained a secret. For four months, a group of American political consultants clandestinely participated in guiding Yeltsin's campaign. Here is the inside story of how these advisers helped Yeltsin achieve the victory that will keep reform in Russia alive.

ALL DURING THE LONG EVENING of Dec. 17, 1995, Felix Braynin sat transfixed before a television set in the living room of a government guest house in Moscow. He didn't like what he saw. Returns from the elections for the Duma, the lower of Russia's parliament, represented a devastating setback for reform-minded parties, including the one linked to Boris Yeltsin. The Communists and their allies were on their way to controlling the body, a disturbing development because in six months Russians would vote for President. Yeltsin's standing in the polls was abysmal, a reflection of his brutal misadventure in Chechnya; his increasing authoritarianism; and his economic reform program, which has brought about corruption and widespread suffering. Considering the country's deep dislike of Yeltsin and the Communists' surge, Braynin, a close friend of some of Yeltsin's top aides, thought that something radical had to be done.

A compact, powerfully built former professional hockey and soccer player in his native Belarus, Braynin, 48, had immigrated to San Francisco in 1979. With $200 in his pocket, he began painting houses. He is now a wealthy management consultant who advises Americans interested in investing in Russia.

Most of Yeltsin's confidants believed the President would be magically reelected despite the Duma catastrophe, but Braynin thought otherwise. The President, he reasoned, could lose without the same kind of professional assistance U.S. office seekers employ as a matter of course. Braynin began a series of confidential discussions with Yeltsin's aides, including one with First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets, who at the time was in charge of the President's nascent re-election effort. Finally, in early February, Braynin was instructed to "find some Americans" but to proceed discreetly. "Secrecy was paramount," says Braynin. "Everyone realized that if the Communists knew about this before the election, they would attack Yeltsin as an American tool. We badly needed the team, but having them was a big risk."

To "find some Americans," Braynin worked through Fred Lowell, a San Francisco lawyer with close ties to California's Republican Party. On Feb. 14, Lowell called Joe Shumate, a G.O.P. expert in political data analysis who had served as deputy chief of staff to California Governor Pete Wilson. Since Wilson's drive for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination had ended almost before it began, Lowell thought Shumate and George Gorton, Wilson's longtime top strategist, might be available to help Yeltsin. They were -- and they immediately enlisted Richard Dresner, a New York-based consultant who had worked with them on many of Wilson's campaigns.

Dresner had another connection that would prove useful later on. In the late 1970s and early '80s, he had joined with Dick Morris to help Bill Clinton get elected Governor of Arkansas.
As Clinton's current political guru, Morris became the middleman on those few occasions when the Americans sought the Administration's help in Yeltsin's re-election drive. So while Clinton was uninvolved with Yeltsin's recruitment of the American advisers, the Administration knew of their existence -- and although Dresner denies dealing with Morris, three other sources have told TIME that on at least two occasions the teams contacts with Morris were "helpful."

A week after the Valentine's Day call from Lowell, Dresner was in Moscow. The Yeltsin campaign was at sea. Five candidates, led by Communist Gennadi Zyuganov, were ahead of Yeltsin in some polls. The President was favored by only 6% of the electorate and was "trusted" as a competent leader by an even smaller proportion. "In the U.S.," says Dresner, "you'd advise a pol with those kinds of numbers to get another occupation.
"

For two days the supersecretive Yeltsin high command avoided Dresner, and none of the team ever actually met the President. "There are too many factions and too many leaks to risk your dealing with him directly," Braynin explained to Dresner. "You are our biggest secret."

Then, at 3 p.m. on Feb. 27, Dresner met with Soskovets. In English, the First Deputy Prime Minister asked, "How's our friend Bill doing?" Most of the hour-long session was spent discussing Clinton's reelection prospects. Dresner had prepared a five-page proposal that called for the Americans to "introduce your campaign staff to sophisticated methods of message development, polling, voter contact and campaign organization."

Although Bush did not develop a close relationship with Yeltsin, his successor as president of the United States, Bill Clinton did....

During his first meeting with Yeltsin as president at the Vancouver summit, Clinton not only pledged financial support for the Yeltsin government in Russia but openly endorsed the Russian president as America’s horse in the show-down between the president and parliament, saying to Yeltsin in front of the press, “Mr. President, our nation will not stand on the sidelines when it comes to democracy in Russia. We know where we stand…. We actively support reform and reformers and you in Russia.” [94]

-- Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective, by Kathryn Stoner, with Michael McFaul


Soskovets had already read Dresner's paper and pointed to a calendar on his desk The days remaining before the presidential election's first round on June 16 were highlighted in large, bold numbers. "There's not much time," he said. "You are hired. I will tell the President that we have the Americans." And then Soskovets ominously added a thought that would reverberate in early May. Alluding to Yeltsin's poor standing and the reluctance of his aides ever to yield power to the Communists, Soskovets told Dresner, "One of your tasks is to advise us, a month from the election, about whether we should call it off if you determine that we're going to lose."

To preserve security, a contract was drawn between the International Industrial Bancorp Inc. of San Francisco (a company Braynin managed for its Moscow parent) and Dresner-Wickers (Dresner's consulting firm in Bedford Hills, New York). The Americans would work for four months, beginning March 1. They would be paid $250,000 plus all expenses and have an unlimited budget for polling, focus groups and other research. A week later, they were working full time, but the boss was not Soskovets.

Over the past few months, the Russian and Western press have identified six different people as Yeltsin's campaign manager. In fact, the person really in charge was Yeltsin's daughter Tatiana Dyachenko, 36, a computer engineer with no previous political experience. While those in the campaign's upper reaches have always known that Dyachenko was the key cog in the apparatus -- if only because she alone saw the man she routinely calls "Papa" on a daily basis -- her role has been widely misunderstood. After dodging the media for months, Dyachenko last week described her job to the Russian press: ''I'm kind of involved in everything. I'm everywhere -- everywhere there's a weak link."

THE HISTORY OF "TATIANA'S emergence is really quite simple," explains Valentin Yumachev, Yeltsin's close friend and ghostwriter. "The President decided in February that the campaign Soskovets was running was going nowhere. He needed someone he could trust completely, and she was it." None of Yeltsin's other senior campaign officials was "what you would call pleased with Tatiana's placement," adds Pavel Borodin, Yeltsin's Minister of the Presidency, the government's general-services manager. "But because she had no personal agenda they couldn't plot against her. Her power obviously derived from that, but also from her native intelligence and the knowledge she gained from the Americans, who brought us a professionalism and dispassion none of us was really used to."

 
One of your tasks is to advise us whether we should call off the election if you determine we're going to lose.


Image

ROOM 1120

The Americans set up their headquarters in Room 1120 of the President Hotel in Moscow. Yeltsin's daughter Tatiana Dyachenko, the real behind-the-scenes boss of the campaign, was in Room 1119. From left:

STEVEN MOORE

Moore is the public relations specialist the team hired

GEORGE GORTON

A longtime strategist for California Governor Pete Wilson, Gorton told Yeltsin's aides the election was "in the bag" even though he wasn't so sure

JOE SHUMATE

When everyone was worried about turnout the day of the first round, Shumate, a polling expert, said, "It won't go below 65%, and our model shows we win with that"

RICHARD DRESNER

In the late 1970s and early '80s, Dresner joined with Dick Morris to help elect Bill Clinton Governor of Arkansas. Sources say the team's contacts with Morris, Clinton's current political guru, were "helpful".

FELIX BRAYNIN

Braynin, an immigrant to the U.S., brought in the Americans. "Secrecy was paramount," he said. "If the Communists knew about this, they would attack Yeltsin as an American tool"


The American team hired two young men, Braynin's son Alan and Steven Moore, a public relations specialist from Washington, to assist them, and promptly established its office in a two-room suite at the President Hotel. The Americans lived elsewhere in the hotel and were provided with a car, a former KGB agent as a driver, and two bodyguards. They were told they should assume that their phones and rooms were bugged, that they should leave the hotel only infrequently, and that they should avoid the campaign's other staff members.

The Americans managed to hide their identity for many months. In interviewing various polling and focus-group companies before hiring three, they described themselves as representing Americans eager to sell thin-screen televisions in Russia. "That story held for far longer than it ever should have," says Shumate. The Americans carried multiple-entry visas identifying them as working for the ''Administration of the President of the Russian Federation," a bit of obviousness that constantly threatened to undermine all the supposed secrecy surrounding their real work.

The President is not a normal hotel. It is owned by the office of the President, and residence is by invitation only. A fence surrounds the property, which is patrolled by police armed with machine guns and wearing bulletproof vests. When Dyachenko moved her own office to the hotel to be near the Americans, the rest of the campaign took three floors of offices there as well. Yeltsin's badly split Russian advisers quickly set up separate fiefdoms on the eighth, ninth and 10th floors. Dyachenko worked almost exclusively on the 11th in Room 1119, directly across the hall from the Americans in 1120. She and they shared two secretaries, a translator, and fax, copying and computer-printing machines.

By the end, the team's office resembled a typical American campaign headquarters. Soda bottles and old food shared space with computer printouts. Graphs charting Yeltsin's progress in the polls hung on the walls, and the entire scene was dominated by a color-coded map of Russia with Post-it notes describing the vote expected in the nation's various regions. A safe stood unused, and documents intended for a shredder remained intact, in plain view.

Gorton followed Dresner to Moscow and encountered in Dyachenko a shy, intelligent and idealistic young woman who for some time recoiled at even the most mild American-style dirty trick. "But it wouldn't be fair," Gorton recalls her saying when he advised that Zyuganov be trailed by heckling "truth squads" designed to goad him into losing his temper. At their first meeting across a long table covered in green felt, Dyachenko confided, "I don't know this business. I don't know what to ask." For a few weeks, says Gorton, "the task was simple education, Campaigning 101, stuff like the proper uses of polling and the need to test via focus groups just about everything the campaign was doing, or thinking of doing."

Yeltsin's staff brought a set of potentially disastrous biases to the campaign. They thought the polls they read in the papers were good enough to determine strategy, and because so many of their allies had failed miserably in the Duma elections despite spending huge sums on television commercials, they believed political advertising was useless in Russia.

But the polling was inaccurate and unsophisticated and thus virtually useless in determining how thematically to guide the effort. "The pollsters asked mostly horserace questions," explains Dresner. "The focus-group operators were in love with indirection and literally asked people to answer questions like, 'If Yeltsin were a tree, what kind of tree would he be?' We needed to know whether voters would move to Yeltsin if he adopted a particular policy, but for that crucial purpose the research in hand was totally uninformative. As for the TV spots used in the Duma elections, they were creative and pretty, but they were far from hard-hitting. ''All of that," says Shumate, "had to be explained to a group of people who, no matter their professed commitment to democracy, were trapped in a classic Soviet mind-set. They thought they could win simply by telling big shots like the directors of factories to instruct their employees how to vote."

Starting from scratch, Gorton calmly explained to Dyachenko that she and her colleagues must suspend their beliefs. "You live in Moscow and travel in the most elite circles," he said. "Because you're smart, you are used to trusting your instincts. You can't do that in this kind of work. You have to know what the people you don't know are thinking."

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Bad ratings on the perception analyzer for a Yeltsin speech

SHAPING THE IMAGE

The U.S. team imported a variety of tactics that had never been used in Russian campaigns before. The "perception analyzer" above, common in the U.S., measures the responses of audience members as they turn a dial. The Americans established their credibility by using it to explain why a Yeltsin speech flopped. They also tested themes with focus groups, top right, calling 20 emergency tests between the first and second rounds. As for TV ads, bottom right, the team urged that they be used to attack the Communists. Dyachenko, meanwhile, near right, served as her father's all-purpose aide.

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Daughter, manager, stylist -- Dyachenko prepares Yeltsin for a TV taping


And then the team went to work. A great deal of their communication with Dyachenko and Yeltsin's other aides was conducted by written memorandums. "Translation was a constant problem," says Dresner. "We spent a full day trying to convey what we meant by having Yeltsin stay 'on message." Minister Borodin says, "Having the memos let the President consider them calmly. We had many discussions about the recommendations and in the end adopted most everything the Americans advised."

One of the team's first memos, designed to buy time for the Americans as they gave themselves a crash course on Russia, was titled "Why Bush Lost." Actually, the parallels were eerie. George Bush's complacency almost exactly resembled Yeltsin's. Like Bush's, the Yeltsin team thought the nation's economy was improving and that the President would receive credit for it; in fact, only a small segment of the population enjoys whatever progress there has been. Like Bush, Yeltsin simply refused to believe that the voters would elect his opponent. Like Bush's, the Yeltsin campaign was in disarray as factions fought for control. And also as with Bush, there was no clearly focused Yeltsin message, just a melange of ideas -- and even then, no disciplined plan for their delivery or appreciation of the need for such a plan.

Even a cursory reading of the Russian press quickly convinced the Americans that virtually the entire nation was furious about the salaries government workers had been owed for months on end. When Yeltsin's aides explained that the President had already promised to correct the back-pay problem, the droopy-eyed Dresner shook his head in disbelief. "You can't just promise these things," he told Dyachenko. "You have to do them. And then you have to make sure the people know what you've done."

That remark presaged a campaign-long insistence on a standard American campaign practice -- repetition. "Whatever it is that we're going to say and do," Gorton explained to Yeltsin's aides, "we have to repeat it between eight and 12 times." Those numbers were invented. "The Russians believe that anything that's worthwhile is scientifically based," says Shumate. "This gave us a leg up when we started to seriously use focus groups to guide campaign policy, but right at the start it let us pretend that we knew more than we really did. There's no data supporting how many times something needs to be repeated, but the Russians bought it as gospel."

With back pay identified as among the most irksome issues, the team advised that Yeltsin haul officials on the carpet for failing to distribute the cash as he'd directed. The President embraced that suggestion with relish, and the press eagerly reported the boss's taking his subordinates to task.

Stalin had higher positives and lower negatives than Yeltsin. We tested the two in polls and focus groups.


CLEVER AS THEY MAY HAVE been, that and similar tactical strokes were small beer. Yeltsin's problems were too big to be solved simply by delivering what people knew was due them in the first place. Even before their polling confirmed their suspicions, the Americans intuited that Yeltsin would lose and lose badly if the election were a referendum on his stewardship. Most Russians, the polls and focus groups found, perceived Yeltsin as a friend who had betrayed them, a populist who had become imperial. "Stalin had higher positives and lower negatives than Yeltsin," says Dresner. "We actually tested the two in polls and focus groups. More than 60% of the electorate believed Yeltsin was corrupt; more than 65% believed he had wrecked the economy. We were in a deep, deep hole."

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Focus groups indicated that many people thought of Yeltsin as a friend who had betrayed them

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One ad evokes the bad old days; the other shows slogans about moving forward, not backward


In one of the team's early memos, a 10-page document dated March 2, the Americans summed up the situation: "Voters don't approve of the job Yeltsin is doing, don't think things will ever get any better and prefer the Communists' approach.

A hallmark of the old socialist system was the provision of a basic level of social protection to all its citizens, including universal subsidies for housing, utilities, and social services, and income after retirement, irrespective of need....

By the end of 2000, USAID will have closed bilateral assistance missions in eight of the 27 countries, all in the Northern Tier: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. ...

Progress in the rest of the region is mixed....

The turmoil and pain resulting from incomplete reforms have discouraged citizens and led many to long for the certainty of the old Soviet days.

-- A Decade of Change: Profiles of USAID Assistance to Europe and Eurasia, by USAID


There exists only one very simple strategy for winning: first, becoming the only alternative to the Communists; and second, making the people see that the Communists must be stopped at all costs."

In hindsight, the need for an anticommunist emphasis by the Yeltsin campaign -- the need to "go negative" -- seems self-evident. But when the Americans first harped on anticommunism as the "only" route to victory, many in the campaign resisted. And despite their status and patronage, the Americans had to fight long and hard before that core strategy was accepted. As Dyachenko told the team after reading the memo, "We have many factions and each has its own view, but most everyone agrees that with communism coming back all over Eastern Europe and with Stalin's reputation rising here, a campaign based on anti-communism is wrong for us."

The argument over the campaign's central message raged all through March. Matters finally came to a head in early April as Yeltsin prepared to give a speech unveiling his campaign program. That address was expected to signal the campaign's substance and tone, and it became a major battleground for control of the campaign
. In a nine-point member dated April 2 that covered content, theme and staging, the team wrote that the "overall goal of the kickoff speech [should be] to demonstrate to the average Russian that Yeltsin understands the suffering the country has been going through ... The President will be talking to people in their homes through their TV sets. These average people are the true audience. The people in the hall are props. If this event is successful, it will show that Yeltsin the politician is guided by personal concerns that are in tune with those of most other Russians."

In 1989, the state controlled almost every aspect of economic activity—bureaucrats set prices, established production quotas for factories and farms, decided which companies got credit and how much, and determined wages and working conditions.

Governments owned not only utilities and public transportation, but almost every other economic enterprise as well. Private businesses were banned or severely limited. The region was filled with factories employing thousands of workers they didn't need, to produce shoddy goods that no one wanted. For years, the whole system was propped up by subsidies and noncommercial trading relationships and sustained by wasteful use of energy that polluted the land, air and water.

That system crumbled when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union imploded. Today, the countries of the region are moving—some quickly, and some far too slowly—toward open, market-driven economies. Prices have been freed. State-owned enterprises have been sold to private owners. New economic institutions are leading to improved economic policies and management. A commercial law framework is being put in place and enforced. Sound banking systems and practices are beginning to emerge. Commercial lending to productive private enterprises is growing.....

During the Soviet period, the price of natural gas was kept so artificially low that Russians joked it was cheaper to leave a gas stove on all the time than to waste matches lighting it. The result, of course, was that huge amounts of natural gas were wasted. Although the wholesale price of gas rose after 1991, consumers did not conserve, mainly because most Russian apartments do not have individual gas meters. A USAID program that links a U.S. utility and Russian counterpart is helping to change that....

Creating market economies and establishing democracy offer the people of Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia the best long-term hope for higher living standards and a better quality of life. In the short and medium term, however, the weight of change has taken a heavy toll on social services and benefits and caused unemployment and poverty to rise....

USAID has been a leader, both in responding to crises and in establishing social programs that make a lasting difference. USAID has worked closely with international donors to meet the region's emergency needs for food, shelter, fuel and medical supplies. A range of cooperating organizations have laid the foundation for in-depth solutions to the region’s social problems, by helping groups and communities develop the skills, resources and expertise needed to address these challenges.....

Early in the decade, the Ukrainian Government recognized that it had to take a close look at government spending levels and begin to tackle the issue of universal subsidies. In close coordination with local governments, Ukraine initiated a policy which introduced the recovery of real costs for housing and utilities while also protecting the neediest. Universal subsidies for communal services were replaced with financial assistance targeted to help the poor. USAID provided technical expertise to help the municipalities conduct income surveys and objectively determine cut-off points for government aid. Three months after enactment of the enabling legislation, the national housing subsidy program opened 750 offices across the country. As many families started to pay for housing and related services, those in the low income brackets received subsidies. By 1999, over four million families were being helped with targeted subsidies and the government was realizing a net budget savings of $1.2 billion. The success of this program demonstrated that economic reform could be compatible with social protection and laid the groundwork for other targeted social assistance programs in the region.

-- A Decade of Change: Profiles of USAID Assistance to Europe and Eurasia, by USAID


The Americans wanted a diverse audience, "not just middle-aged guys in suits," as the memo put it. They wanted women and students and popular officials like the mayor of Moscow to stand by the President's side.



"Too many Russians believe Yeltsin is an isolated man who can't be trusted, a man surrounded by a handful of advisers who have their own agenda," the Americans explained. They also wanted a brief speech that television viewers might actually sit through. "No more than 15 minutes," they advised. And they wanted Yeltsin to enter the hall through a large and boisterous crowd that would mob him.

They got none of it. Yeltsin spoke for almost an hour. Without so much as a pat on the back, he strode to the stage to the unenthusiastic, rhythmic clapping of middle-aged guys in suits. More popular leaders did not stand beside him because his Russian aides feared his being overshadowed. He wandered across themes and left no one with a sense of confidence. He was terrible. "The factions won," his daughter told the team afterward. "They were scared of the kind of things you recommended."


Angry about losing the battle over the speech, and certain it represented a disastrous trend in the campaign, the Americans set out to prove their point after the fact. They replayed excerpts of the address -- and some other film footage and still photographs of Yeltsin -- for an audience of 40 Russians wired to a "perception analyzer," an instrument often used in the U.S. Audiences have their hands on dials and are asked to move them in different directions to indicate their degree of interest and approval of what they are seeing and hearing. An electronically produced chart records their reactions.

The results shocked Yeltsin's Russian assistants. Each time cameras panned the stiff, unsmiling audience, the dials turned down -- as they also did when the President pledged to improve people's lives. "The analyzer taught us that Yeltsin should avoid promising anything," says Shumate. "The country just didn't believe him."

Science "won the day again," says Dresner. "We showed we'd been right from the start." From then on, the American team's influence grew -- and anticommunism became the central and repeated focus of the campaign and the candidate.

Having helped establish the campaign's major theme, the Americans then set out to modify it. The Americans used their focus-group coordinator, Alexei Levinson, to determine what exactly Russians most feared about the Communists. Long lines, scarce food and re-nationalization of property were frequently cited, but mostly people worried about civil war. "That allowed us to move beyond simple Red bashing," says Shumate. "That's why Yeltsin and his surrogates and our advertising all highlighted the possibility of unrest if Yeltsin lost. Many people felt some nostalgia for what the communists had done for Russia and no one liked the President -- but they liked the possibility of riots and class warfare even less." "'Stick with Yeltsin and at least you'll have calm' -- that was the line we wanted to convey," says Dresner. "So the drumbeat about unrest kept pounding right till the end of the runoff round, when the final TV spots were all about the Soviets' repressive rule."

In Video International, the advertising firm hired before the Americans arrived, Yeltsin had a first-rate team. The series of 15 one-minute spots produced for airing before the first-round balloting on June 16 was "at least as good as most anything you could get in the West," says Dresner. "Showing average Russians grudgingly coming to the realization that they had to support Yeltsin was the only way to move people who essentially wished the President was out of their lives."

The Americans were "vital," says Mikhail Margolev, who coordinated the Yeltsin account at Video International. Margolev had worked for five years in two American advertising agencies but freely acknowledges that his methods are still influenced by his earlier tenure as a propaganda specialist for the Soviet Communist Party and as an undercover KGB agent masquerading as a journalist for TASS, the Russian news agency. "The Americans helped teach us Western political-advertising techniques," says Margolev, "and most important, they caused our work to be accepted because they were the only ones really close to Tatiana. She was the key. The others in the campaign were like snakes, and snakes, you know, often eat each other. Putting his daughter in to get things done was Yeltsin's smartest move, and she was clearly leaning on the Americans."

The TV ad the Americans most wanted was the one the campaign made last, which had Yeltsin himself speaking. "We actually wanted him in every spot," says Gorton. "After all those great ads with average folks talking about their lives and then about Yeltsin, we wanted the President to come on and say that he understood what they were talking about, that he heard their complaints, that he felt their pain." But Yeltsin resisted -- and that caused the team to reach out to Bill Clinton's all-purpose political aide, Dick Morris.
 
Yeltsin Can Get Re-Elected, But Is He Able to Govern?

BORIS YELTSIN CAME BACK TWICE LAST WEEK. HE WRAPPED up his re-election triumph at the polls, then reappeared in his Kremlin office looking better than his supporters at home and abroad had feared he might. Amid rumors of more heart problems, he had canceled his public appearances a week before the second round of balloting. But there he was at his desk last Thursday, smiling and conferring with Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin on who will be in the next Cabinet. Yeltsin called in television crews to film a short victory statement, in which he told the Russian people he was proud of them for making the election "free and fair." He took a call from Bill Clinton, and they chatted for 25 minutes. Later a White House official said Yeltsin had confessed to campaign fatigue and was planning to take a vacation after his inauguration on Aug. 9.

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Having delivered his votes, Lebed looks less secure.

Yeltsin has managed to get re-elected, but can he govern? At 65, he is already well past the average life-span of Russian men, and since July 1995 he has had at least two episodes of myocardial ischemia, a shortage of blood supply to the heart. He also has a long pattern of rising to crises and then withdrawing into spells of depression and heavy drinking, though this time he promised voters he would not "go into hibernation." He cannot afford to. Reform of the Russian economy is still a work in progress, and his lieutenants are already circling one another in preparation for a power struggle. If he is not in charge, things could fall apart.

No one outside Yeltsin's inner council knows just what ailed him before last week's election. Officially he had a cold and had lost his voice. That is what his wife Naina said, explaining that he seldom got more than four hours of sleep a night during the campaign. In his made-for-television appearances just before last week's voting, he looked pale and stiff, but an old back injury often makes him move awkwardly. Doctors working for U.S. intelligence agencies tried some long-range diagnosis and concluded that Yeltsin probably was not suffering a recurrence of ischemia. More likely a touch of flu or another virus, they thought. But some Russian officials were told it was heart trouble.

While Yeltsin looked much improved at the end of the week, his illness touched off another round of speculation about who would succeed him. The Russian constitution provides that if the President dies in office, the Prime Minister temporarily takes over, pending a new election within three months. Prime Minister Chernomyrdin would be a leading candidate in such an election, as would Yeltsin's new security adviser, Alexander Lebed, and several others.

Lebed has already proved his vote-getting ability, winning almost 15% in the first round last June. But now that he is on the official stage in Moscow, he is turning into something of a loose cannon in the eyes of his government colleagues. In a series of public statements Lebed called Mormons "scum," told a visitor not to talk "like a Jew," and suggested the position of Vice President should be re-established, with himself in the role. As a strongman, "I look more like a Vice President," he told state television. "I need more powers," he said, even though he described himself as a "semi-democrat" at best. In an indirect attack on Chernomyrdin, who retains close links with the natural-gas industry he once headed, Lebed accused the "energy barons" of accumulating "overwhelming influence." Lebed was bold enough last week to send Yeltsin a list of names he thought should be selected for the next Cabinet, including his nominees for the Defense Ministry and the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor to the KGB.

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Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin may have very quietly played a strong hand. He slapped down Lebed, and Yeltsin reappointed him

Lebed was important to Yeltsin's re-election, so Chernomyrdin has loyally kept silent during most of these provocations. Now that Yeltsin has renominated him as Prime Minister, and now that Duma speaker Gennadi Seleznyov, a top Communist leader, has indicated he will not oppose him, Chernomyrdin is firing back. Yeltsin, he told reporters, had instructed him to put together a list of Cabinet members for the President's approval. "I have never delegated any of my powers to anyone, and I will not," he said. As to the vice presidency, says Chernomyrdin, that will have to wait at least four years: "I never heard of a country voting separately for a Vice President after the President has been elected." Nicholas Burns, spokesman of the U.S. State Department, says, "Right now Chernomyrdin is the second most powerful person in Russia." As Prime Minister, Chernomyrdin has been No. 2 all along. The positions Lebed has been given are purely advisory, and he could be dismissed from them at any time. The Yeltsin government, a Russian politician says, "might well start thinking in terms of cutting Lebed down to size." To dismiss him out of hand would be inviting a backlash from Lebed's nationalist backers, but he will probably be kept focused on the tough tasks of fighting organized crime and corruption and reforming the hard-pressed military. Says Chernomyrdin: "As for security and order, there will be plenty of work for everyone." Lebed's political role, which was to get Yeltsin re-elected, may be over.

Chernomyrdin rejects the spate of warnings, including some from Lebed, that Russia's economy is heading for a crisis later this year because of Yeltsin's campaign promises. "There will be no crisis next fall," he says. Maybe not. While Yeltsin made a lot of pork-barrel promises, no one knows how much he has actually paid out. International Monetary Fund officials say Russia was within its guidelines for June.

Even so, there are plenty of minicrises coming. Privatization is lagging; agriculture is unreformed; the government is not collecting the taxes it is owed; and industrial production is still falling. Lebed and Chernomyrdin are sparring, and the Duma is looking for ways to assert its authority. A strong, engaged President may be able to sort it all out, and Yeltsin's supporters hope he has the heart for it.

-- by Bruce W. Nelan. Reported by Dean Fischer/Washington and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow


COMMUNICATING IN CODE -- Clinton was called the Governor of California...

To "find some Americans," Braynin worked through Fred Lowell, a San Francisco lawyer with close ties to California's Republican Party. On Feb. 14, Lowell called Joe Shumate, a G.O.P. expert in political data analysis who had served as deputy chief of staff to California Governor Pete Wilson. Since Wilson's drive for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination had ended almost before it began, Lowell thought Shumate and George Gorton, Wilson's longtime top strategist, might be available to help Yeltsin....

After months being cooped up in the President Hotel wearing blue jeans, sneakers and PETE WILSON FOR PRESIDENT T shirts, the Americans headed for the building where Russia's central election commission would be announcing the results as they came in.


... Yeltsin the Governor of Texas -- the Americans sought Morris' help. They had earlier worked together to script Clinton's summit meeting with Yeltsin in mid-April. The main goal then was to have Clinton swallow hard and say nothing as Yeltsin lectured him about Russia's great-power prerogatives. "The idea was to have Yeltsin stand up to the West, just like the Communists insisted they would do if Zyughnov won," says a Clinton Administration official. "By having Yeltsin posture during that summit without Clinton's getting bent out of shape, Yeltsin portrayed himself as a leader to be reckoned with. That helped Yeltsin in Russia, and we were for Yeltsin."

The American team wanted Clinton to call Yeltsin to urge that he appear in his ads. The request reached Clinton -- that much is known -- but no one will say whether the call was made.


Dresner said he personally was involved in talks with the White House through President Bill Clinton's adviser Dick Morris. Those talks led Clinton to persuade Yeltsin that it was necessary to campaign "outside the Kremlin," he said.

-- Hollywood Spins Yeltsin Spin Doctors, by Andrei Zolotov Jr.


Yet it was not long before Yeltsin finally appeared on the tube. That was the good news -- the bad news was that the spot was awful. With all three of the American principals out of the country (the only time that happened during their employment), Video International dealt with Yeltsin on its own. Gorton had written several memos detailing how the shoot should proceed. Yeltsin, he said, should be filmed for at least four hours over several days, with the best 15 or 30 seconds culled for airing. "Even a former actor like Ronald Reagan would never attempt so important a task with less time and preparation devoted to the job," Gorton advised.

But it was not to be. "You'd have to say we were a bit reluctant to push the President," says Margolev. So at 6 one morning, after Yeltsin had slept barely three hours, Video International taped him for about 40 minutes. The finished commercial had Yeltsin speaking for more than two minutes. He looked exhausted. "It was ridiculous," says Shumate. "Here you have a guy whose health is a major issue, and his fitness to serve is called into question by his very own television spot."

Yeltsin also had problems with his regular TV coverage, even though he essentially controlled the state-run networks. As late as March, the news shows continued to criticize the President mercilessly, a favorite target being the war in Chechnya. "It was ludicrous to control the two major nationwide television stations and not have them bend to your will," says Dresner. In writing, the team adopted a more diplomatic tone. "Wherever an event is held," they wrote, "care should be taken to notify the state-run TV and radio stations to explain directly the event's significance and how we want it covered." Beginning in April, Russia's television became a virtual arm of the Yeltsin campaign, a crucial change that actually came fairly easily. With none of the more democratic candidates breaking through in the polls, most Russian journalists came to regard Yeltsin as the only effective bulwark against the Communists -- and thus the best guarantor of their own careers.

What really caused surprise was the public's reaction to the biased reporting. "We focus-grouped the issue several times," says Shumate. The results were contained in a June 7 wrap-up memo on TV coverage. Only 28% of respondents said the media were very biased in Yeltsin's favor -- a group that consisted mostly of Zyuganov's partisans. Twenty-nine percent said the media were "somewhat biased," but they broke in Yeltsin's favor. Amazingly, 27% said they thought the media were biased against Yeltsin.

Each day brought decisions on details that required careful thought and management. The Americans advised on staging crowds (and government employees were regularly instructed to attend Yeltsin's rallies). They conceived Russia's first-ever serious direct-mail effort (a letter from Yeltsin to Russian veterans thanking them for their service). They designed a campaign to use Yeltsin's wife Naina on the stump, where she was regularly well received. And they fought continuously all suggestions that Yeltsin debate Zyuganov. "He would have lost," Gorton says simply.

While the team dreaded the possibility of Yeltsin's being lured into debating Zyuganov, two greater threats loomed in early May. The Americans had been hoping to ignore Soskovets' instructions to signal a possible loss so that the elections could be canceled or delayed, but the issue was forced on May 5 when Yeltsin's closest aide, General Alexander Korzhakov, suggested a postponement.

Gorton had felt it coming and "for the first time ever," he says, "I wrote that an election was in the bag. No caveats, nothing about the trend looking good. I just flat out said you could take it to the bank Actually, at that point, we had Yeltsin up by about 10 points. It certainly wasn't in the bag, but we didn't want the balloting disrupted.
We might have fudged a bit if our numbers were close, but we didn't have to. Back then, we really thought we'd win comfortably."

Yeltsin scolded Korzhakov and said the election would be held on schedule. At the same time, he suggested that others besides Korzhakov believed a communist victory could provoke a civil war. That comment was widely interpreted as signaling that Yeltsin might indeed be planning to follow Korzhakov's advice later on. In fact, it was part of the strategy to make re-electing the President look like the best way for Russians to avoid chaos.

The only drawback of the team's encouraging analysis was that Yeltsin took it too much to heart. "When he said he was confident that he'd win the election outright in the first round by capturing 50% of the vote, it told us again that you can only lead politicians so far," says Dresner. "The only real threat to victory was a low turnout, and Yeltsin helped depress it by giving voters a reason to take the day off. If they thought Yeltsin's victory was a done deal, as he himself had indicated, why bother voting?"

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THE COUNT: An official at the election commission stands before a huge board showing incomplete returns on Wednesday night


The Americans were the ones close to Tatiana. She was the key, and she was obviously leaning on them.


The other crisis had been percolating for some time. The President's three democratic opponents had long talked of coalescing behind one or the other of them, and the speculation reached a fever pitch at the beginning of May. Had "they managed that," says Gorton, "it could really have killed us." A good deal of time was devoted to strategizing about how Yeltsin could stop the so-called "third force" from emerging. The two key third-force players were Grigori Yavlinsky, the leading democrat in the race, and the war hero Alexander Lebed. The team advised Yeltsin to woo his opponents publicly in order to boost their already inflated egos. "We thought that once they enjoyed the limelight, neither would be willing to drop out in favor of the other," Shumate explains. "Having them all in the race prevented the rise of a single, democratic alternative to Yeltsin."

KEEPING LEBED AS AN independent candidate was considered especially critical -- unless he dropped out of the first round in favor of Yeltsin, which seemed highly unlikely. ''All the data suggested that if Lebed withdrew to join a third-force coalition, his supporters would defect to Zyuganov," says Gorton. Thus on May 5, the Americans wrote that "Lebed would be the strongest third-force threat, and we believe paying a significant price for his support would be well worth it." The Americans didn't know that other Yeltsin aides were already reportedly aiding Lebed financially and logistically. "All we did advise," says Dresner, "is that if and when Lebed joined with Yeltsin, he not be given a government position until after the election was decided. Our polling showed that about 2% of voters would shy away from Yeltsin if that happened. On that point, we were ignored." Lebed won a startling 15% of the first-round vote, and in a dramatic move, Yeltsin almost immediately thereafter appointed him his national security adviser. According to an exit poll, 56% of those who voted for Lebed in the first round voted for Yeltsin in the runoff."

JUNE 16 WAS A HORRIFIC DAY. AS THE FIRST round vote approached, Yeltsin's support softened. It had been built up, virtually a point at a time, over three months. It was eroding now as Lebed gained. The Americans' private polls indicated only a 5-point lead for Yeltsin over Zyuganov. The two candidates who received the most votes in the first round would go to the runoff, and Yeltsin was almost certain to make the cut. Finishing second to Zyuganov would be a stunning blow to his momentum. A low turnout could produce exactly that result, and the first indications signaled a turnout below expectations.


The team members paced nervously in Room 1120. Gorton damned Yeltsin for ever predicting outright victory in the first round. Braynin wondered if the low turnout was owing to Russians' watching the Germany-Russia soccer match, and the four argued about whether Russia's defeat would cause voters to hit the vodka bottle rather than vote during the two hours remaining before the polls closed in the country's western region. "We peaked too soon," Dresner screamed. Only Shumate seemed cool. He had long before concluded that Zyuganov would never get more than 32% of the vote in the first round -- the combined total the Communists and their ideological soul mates had reached in the December 1995 Duma election. "This stinks," Dresner repeated every few minutes as he checked the turnout around the nation. "It won't fall below 65%, and our model shows we win with that," answered Shumate, who then left with his wife Joyce to attend a production of La Traviata at the Bolshoi Theatre.

A bit of relief came when a CNN correspondent reported that "the only thing voters we've spoken with like less than Yeltsin is the prospect of upheaval." Dresner howled. "It worked," he shouted. "The whole strategy worked. They're scared to death!" After months being cooped up in the President Hotel wearing blue jeans, sneakers and PETE WILSON FOR PRESIDENT T shirts, the Americans headed for the building where Russia's central election commission would be announcing the results as they came in.

COMMUNICATING IN CODE -- Clinton was called the Governor of California....


"The hell with security," Dresner said. "I want to see this." And there they sat near the back of the auditorium, six guys in suits with computer projections in their hands and a lap-top computer. The place was overrun with reporters, but Yeltsin's secret American advisers were never recognized.

The final tally for the first round showed that Yeltsin had edged out Zyuganov 35% to 32% (the Communists had indeed been held to the level they reached in December). Gorton began drafting a memo designed to guide Yeltsin's remarks, and Dresner began plotting 20 emergency focus groups to determine what voters were thinking. In less than an hour, another memo was written urging the quickest possible runoff date. "We've got to try and keep Zyuganov from capitalizing" on the first round's surprise tightness, Shumate said. "July 3 would be good," said Gorton. "That's about as soon as possible, and it's in the middle of the week so that people will be in town rather than at their dachas." "We need turnout," Dresner said over and over. "We've got to have turnout."

Why, with unlimited funds, expert advice and the media in his pocket, did Yeltsin win the first round by only three points? The Americans identify several points:

>> The continuing underlying hostility toward Yeltsin. "He never overcame the fact that most Russians can't stand him," says Dresner. "Anyone but a communist would probably have beaten him."

>> Zyuganov succeeded in softening his image despite numerous self-inflicted mistakes. "He said some really scary things to appease his hard-core backers and ensure that they voted," says Gorton. "If he had moved more astutely to broaden his base and if he'd aped Clinton and said, 'It's the economy, stupid; he might have pulled it off."

>> A slackening of the Yeltsin campaign's anticommunist message in the last 10 days. The Americans had advised "that you cannot hit hard enough, or long enough, the idea of the communists' bringing civil unrest if they win." In the first round, says Shumate, "the repetition lesson never took completely."

>> Yeltsin's attendance at rock concerts and other frivolous events. "We needed to reach young voters," Dresner says, "but our photo-op lectures were taken to an extreme. A disturbing dissonance was created. You shouldn't have the President out there dancing and prancing if your main message is that the country is going to dissolve into chaos if the other guy wins. Either you run a serious-business campaign seriously, or you don't."

>> Yeltsin's prediction of a first-round victory so huge that a runoff wouldn't be necessary. "Believe what you want," says Dresner, "but there is never any justification for hype like that unless you're out to depress the turnout, which is the exact opposite of what we were trying to do."

THE FIRST ROUND'S CLOSENESS guaranteed that the two-week runoff campaign would be conducted with care, regardless of the predictions that Yeltsin couldn't lose. The Americans' insistence on the anticommunist message was pursued with a vengeance. At the end, Yeltsin's television advertising was almost exclusively a nonstop diet of past Soviet horrors. Lebed's law-and-order theme dovetailed nicely with the pre-existing Yeltsin emphasis on preserving stability. Several bogus poll predictions were put forth to make the race seem close and thus increase turnout. Everything clicked except for Yeltsin's health, which naturally was barely covered by the pro-Yeltsin media. The press resumed its criticism of the President following his victory last Wednesday, but until then the media had been positively slavish about following the campaign's injunction: "Not a word about bad things."

The Americans claim no special knowledge about the President's illness or its severity and are unconcerned about the course of Yeltsin's second term and whoever will finally emerge as its key players. "We were brought in to help win," says Gorton, "and that's what we did. The Russians are prideful and say that people like us won't be necessary in the future because they've learned what to do. You hear that everywhere after the hired guns have done their work -- and it may be true. All I know is that for every guy who thinks he can go it alone, there will always be another guy who knows he can't."

Last week Russia took a historic step away from its totalitarian past. Democracy triumphed -- and along with it came the tools of modern campaigns, including the trickery and slickery Americans know so well. If those tools are not always admirable, the result they helped achieve in Russia surely is. But just as in America, the consultants can only take Yeltsin so far.
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Re: Boris Berezovsky (businessman), by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Sun Aug 05, 2018 9:18 pm

S.F. Grand Jury Indicts Russian Businessman in Alleged Ponzi Scheme
by Bill Wallace, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Gate
Published 4:00 am PDT, Saturday, September 4, 1999

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A federal grand jury in San Francisco has indicted a local Russian businessman for laundering criminal profits through the scandal-plagued Bank of New York.

Alexander Lushtak, 33, was named in a 23-count federal indictment charging him with participating in a scheme to defraud investors of more than $1.5 million and launder the funds through the Bank of New York.

In recent weeks, the financial institution, based in Manhattan, has been rocked by an investigation linking the bank to a multibillion-dollar operation headed by Russian immigrants who allegedly laundered criminal revenues for organized-crime figures and corrupt government officials in Russia.

The scandal has created a major international furor and caused relations between the United States and Russia to deteriorate. Top U.S. officials are concerned that some of the money being laundered through the Bank of New York may be from International Monetary Fund loans.


It is not known whether Lushtak's alleged money-laundering activity was related to the New York scheme. The indictment, filed Wednesday, was unsealed yesterday.

According to the indictment, which resulted from a joint investigation by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service, Lushtak was the operator of a San Francisco financial firm called A&A Financial Management, which promised investors extremely high interest rates on invested capital.

Lushtak allegedly had his victims wire money to a corporate account for A&A Financial Management at the Bank of New York.

Instead of investing the money as promised, Lushtak allegedly used some of the money to make initial interest payments to early investors in order to convince them that the investment was sound.

According to the indictment, the rest of the money was stolen by Lushtak, who used it to build an expensive house in Tiburon and pay off massive gambling debts at Nevada casinos, among other things.

Last November, The Chronicle reported that FBI agents and investigators from the San Francisco district attorney's office and the state Department of Justice were investigating Lushtak and two other Russian immigrants -- Felix Braynin and Vladislav Chernoguz.

Victims, some of whom claim to have lost as much as $3 million, had told authorities that the three men were involved in a complicated series of transactions that involved securities firms in San Francisco, Nevada and the Grand Cayman Islands.

Braynin is a former professional soccer player who helped recruit U.S. campaign consultants for beleaguered Russian President Boris Yeltsin's 1996 re-election campaign.

ALL DURING THE LONG EVENING of Dec. 17, 1995, Felix Braynin sat transfixed before a television set in the living room of a government guest house in Moscow. He didn't like what he saw. Returns from the elections for the Duma, the lower of Russia's parliament, represented a devastating setback for reform-minded parties, including the one linked to Boris Yeltsin. The Communists and their allies were on their way to controlling the body, a disturbing development because in six months Russians would vote for President. Yeltsin's standing in the polls was abysmal, a reflection of his brutal misadventure in Chechnya; his increasing authoritarianism; and his economic reform program, which has brought about corruption and widespread suffering. Considering the country's deep dislike of Yeltsin and the Communists' surge, Braynin, a close friend of some of Yeltsin's top aides, thought that something radical had to be done.

A compact, powerfully built former professional hockey and soccer player in his native Belarus, Braynin, 48, had immigrated to San Francisco in 1979. With $200 in his pocket, he began painting houses. He is now a wealthy management consultant who advises Americans interested in investing in Russia.

Most of Yeltsin's confidants believed the President would be magically reelected despite the Duma catastrophe, but Braynin thought otherwise. The President, he reasoned, could lose without the same kind of professional assistance U.S. office seekers employ as a matter of course. Braynin began a series of confidential discussions with Yeltsin's aides, including one with First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets, who at the time was in charge of the President's nascent re-election effort. Finally, in early February, Braynin was instructed to "find some Americans" but to proceed discreetly. "Secrecy was paramount," says Braynin. "Everyone realized that if the Communists knew about this before the election, they would attack Yeltsin as an American tool. We badly needed the team, but having them was a big risk."

To "find some Americans," Braynin worked through Fred Lowell, a San Francisco lawyer with close ties to California's Republican Party. On Feb. 14, Lowell called Joe Shumate, a G.O.P. expert in political data analysis who had served as deputy chief of staff to California Governor Pete Wilson. Since Wilson's drive for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination had ended almost before it began, Lowell thought Shumate and George Gorton, Wilson's longtime top strategist, might be available to help Yeltsin. They were -- and they immediately enlisted Richard Dresner, a New York-based consultant who had worked with them on many of Wilson's campaigns.

Dresner had another connection that would prove useful later on. In the late 1970s and early '80s, he had joined with Dick Morris to help Bill Clinton get elected Governor of Arkansas. As Clinton's current political guru, Morris became the middleman on those few occasions when the Americans sought the Administration's help in Yeltsin's re-election drive. So while Clinton was uninvolved with Yeltsin's recruitment of the American advisers, the Administration knew of their existence -- and although Dresner denies dealing with Morris, three other sources have told TIME that on at least two occasions the teams contacts with Morris were "helpful."


-- Yanks to the Rescue: The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win, by Michael Kramer


Braynin, 50, emigrated to the United States from Belarus in the mid-1970s and began building and maintaining houses. He eventually worked his way into the upper echelons of Moscow's emerging foreign investment industry, winning powerful friends in Russian political circles, including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

He allegedly used his political and financial connections to convince investors that he could earn them large amounts of money.

At the time of the investigation, more than two dozen civil lawsuits had been filed in local courts accusing Braynin, Lushtak and Chernoguz of fraud, misappropriation of funds and breach of contract.

The men allegedly used three companies, Intercapital Trust Ltd., A&A Financial and BCL Capital Group, as fronts for their schemes to defraud.

Intercapital Trust Ltd. is a Nevada corporation with an office in San Francisco. A&A Financial Management is based in San Francisco. BCL Capital Group lists a mailbox address in the Grand Cayman Islands.


To preserve security, a contract was drawn between the International Industrial Bancorp Inc. of San Francisco (a company Braynin managed for its Moscow parent) and Dresner-Wickers (Dresner's consulting firm in Bedford Hills, New York).

-- Yanks to the Rescue: The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win, by Michael Kramer


Lushtak is being held by federal authorities until a bail hearing scheduled for next week. If convicted, he could receive up to 20 years in federal prison for each money-laundering allegation and five years for each mail fraud charge.

Braynin and Chernoguz were not named in this week's indictment, and neither could be reached for comment yesterday.
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Re: Boris Berezovsky (businessman), by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Mon Aug 06, 2018 1:16 am

WikiLeaks cables: Moscow mayor presided over 'pyramid of corruption': Criminality, bribery and sleaze endemic in city administration, US ambassador reported to Washington
by Luke Harding
The Guardian
Wed 1 Dec 2010 16.30 EST First published on Wed 1 Dec 2010 16.30 EST

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Image
Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov. WikiLeaks cables allege Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov oversaw a system in which almost everyone was involved in corruption or criminal behaviour. Photograph: Ilya Pitalev/EPA

The US ambassador to Russia claimed that Moscow's veteran mayor Yuri Luzhkov sat on top of a "pyramid of corruption" involving the Kremlin, Russia's police force, its security service, political parties and crime groups.

The 74-year-old has subsequently been sacked as mayor by President Dmitry Medvedev, after the Kremlin-controlled media broadcast allegations of corruption aimed at him and his billionaire wife, Yelena Baturina, who heads a construction company called Inteko
. The couple have vehemently denied the accusations as "total rubbish" designed to make Luzhkov "lose his balance".

In a leaked secret cable sent in February, the US ambassador John Beyrle gives a forensic account of Moscow's "murky" criminal world, alleging a shadowy connection between bureaucrats, gangsters and even prosecutors.

According to Beyrle corruption in Moscow was "pervasive". "Luzhkov is at the top of the pyramid," he claimed. He told the US state department: "Luzhkov oversees a system in which it appears that almost everyone at every level is involved in some form of corruption or criminal behaviour."

Russia's well-developed system of bribe-taking was ubiquitous, Beyrle said. In the absence of laws that worked, Luzhkov -– as well as other mayors and governors -– paid off "key insiders in the Kremlin". Officials had even been spotted entering the building carrying large suitcases, presumed to be "full of money".


The ambassador wrote his cable in response to speculation that Luzhkov, the capital's charismatic mayor since 1992, was about to lose his job. When Medvedev ignominiously dismissed him in September, the Russian president said he had lost confidence in Luzhkov.

Most analysts believe the firing had little to do with the allegations of corruption but was linked to a power struggle between Luzhkov and Russia's federal leadership, which Luzhkov eventually lost.

In a section called "Background on Moscow's criminal world", Beyrle asserted bluntly: "The Moscow city government's direct links to criminality have led some to call it 'dysfunctional', and to assert that the government operates more as a kleptocracy than a government".

"Criminal elements enjoy a 'krysha' [a term from the criminal/mafia world literally meaning 'roof' or protection] that runs through the police, the federal security service (FSB), ministry of internal affairs (MVD) and the prosecutor's office, as well as throughout the Moscow city government bureaucracy.


"Analysts identify a three-tiered structure in Moscow's criminal world. Luzhkov is at the top. The FSB, MVD and militia are at the second level. Finally ordinary criminals and corrupt inspectors are at the lowest level."

Under this system, all businesses in Moscow were forced to pay bribes to law enforcement structures, in a virtual parallel tax system: "Police and MVD collect money from small businesses while the FSB collects from big businesses." An FSB krysha was the most sought after, Beyrle said, with the FSB protecting Moscow's top organised crime gang.

This sleaze went all the way to the top of Russian power, Beyrle said. Bribes were distributed upwards under the "power vertical", Vladimir Putin's bureaucratic hierarchy. He quoted one source who said: "Everything depends on the Kremlin … Luzhkov, as well as many mayors and governors, pay off key insiders in the Kremlin."


The same source alleged that officials went into the Kremlin "with large suitcases and bodyguards", and speculated that the "suitcases are full of money". Another source disagreed. He pointed out it was simpler to pay bribes "via a secret account in Cyprus" -– an offshore route popular with rich Russians.

The ambassador offers the most detailed and apparently authoritative account so far of corruption in the Russian state and its security agencies. He cites Transparency International's 2009 survey which confirms Russia as the world's most corrupt major economy. The report estimates bribery costs Russia $300bn (£190bn) a year, about 18% of its gross domestic product.

Beyrle also reported allegations about Baturina, who heads the largest construction company in Moscow. After Luzhkov entered office, his wife became Russia's wealthiest woman, amassing a fortune put at $1.8bn. Since her husband's sacking she has spent most of her time abroad, with the couple's teenage daughters moving to London. Luzhkov's dubious friends and associates, the US alleged, included Vyacheslav Ivankov -– a recently murdered and notorious Russian mafia boss known as Yaponchik -– and other "reputedly corrupt" Duma deputies. "[Source removed] said that the Moscow government has links to many different criminal groups and it regularly takes cash bribes from businesses."

According to Beyrle, the same system of bribery worked in Russia's provinces: "The governors collect money based on bribes, almost resembling a tax system, throughout their regions." As in Moscow, businesses paid off the FSB, the interior ministry and the militia who "all have their distinctive money collection systems". (Moscow police heads also reportedly had a "secret war chest of money … used to solve problems that the Kremlin decides, such as rigging elections".)

Deputies in Russia's parliament generally had to buy their seats in government, Beyrle's cable suggested. "They need money to get to the top, but once they are there, their positions become quite lucrative money-making opportunities."


His allegations are likely to be most embarrassing for the Kremlin, after a high-profile campaign by Medvedev against corruption. So far it has shown few results.

Beyrle noted that Putin and Medvedev faced a tricky dilemma when deciding Luzhkov's fate. He was a "trusted deliverer of votes" for United Russia, Putin's pro-Kremlin party, Beyrle suggested. Against this, the Kremlin had to weigh up what the ambassador claimed to be "Luzhkov's connections to the criminal world".

Another cable sought to lift the lid on Luzhkov's business empire, much of it acquired using city funds to invest in "less than transparent" projects sealing agreements with former Soviet countries including Moldova, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The projects deliberately promoted Luzhkov's "nationalist foreign policy", it reported.
Luzhkov channelled cash to separatist pro-Russian movements in Ukraine and the Baltics. "This was 'at the behest of the Russian government, thereby giving the government of Russia plausible deniability when accused of funding certain political parties."

He also struck deals in the separatist regions of neighbouring countries, including South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, and Transnistria in Moldova. In Kosovo he used Moscow city funds to build housing for ethnic Serbian refugees, while in Bulgaria he bought beach resorts on the Black Sea for city hall staff.

"The Moscow city government has cultivated its influence in far-flung Russian regions as well as in foreign countries, ostensibly for the benefit of its citizens but to a greater extent for the city's well-connected business elites," the cable concluded.
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Re: Boris Berezovsky (businessman), by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Mon Aug 06, 2018 8:13 am

The President's News Conference With President Boris Yeltsin of Russia in Moscow
April 21, 1996
Public Papers of the Presidents
William J. Clinton
1996: Book I
Location:
Foreign Country
Russian Federation
The American Presidency Project

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Russia-U.S. Relations

President Yeltsin. Dear members of the press, ladies and gentlemen, our discussion with the President of the United States of America lasted sufficiently long, about 5 hours, and in substance became the continuation of the discussions that were started within the G-7, issues which we discussed within the 8, and today's meeting also to a great extent coincided. First of all, this was security; regional stability was also discussed in the bilats.

I think that today's discussion gave a rather large contribution to the successes of the G- 7 in Moscow in the security area—discussions of a whole series of issues on nuclear security and how to move ahead on START II, to strengthen the ABM Treaty of 1972. We now have rather good schedules on what Russia has to do, what the United States has to do by October of this year.

We've reached progress on European security as well. In May, we have an important meeting which should be dedicated to reviewing the CFE Treaty and forces in Europe. We agreed to work in this area and to concentrate more in the future on the wording of the treaty itself. You'll probably have questions at this.

Our two countries as cosponsors of the Middle East peace process we discussed in great detail. We discussed the situation in Israel and Lebanon. They were discussed also at the meeting of the 8 and now the ministers of foreign affairs of our countries are continuing talk. We're constantly in touch with them, and today we summarized a bit on some of the decisions reached.

Russia and the United States play a key role in the settlement in Bosnia. Our peacekeeping troop units are working very well. We have to reinvigorate this and aim it at nonmilitary aspects of the settlement, such as holding elections, providing for human rights, and rebuilding the destroyed areas.

I want to especially underscore here the fact that the elections do not interfere with the longterm cooperation between our two countries. I mean, our Presidential elections do not stand in the way. Our policies allow us to speak about various issues and we have a practice now and a tradition with Bill to hold normal, regular meetings whenever we meet, and whenever we make comments to each other and react to each other's statements. This is as any family would have it. There are sometimes comments made to each other—these issues at least have no ideological nature whatsoever. The United States and Russia are great powers. It's not just for us to get involved with big global issues, but we look out for our own interests.

In today's meeting, we have defined more carefully our policies, our tasks. We have established on the basis of equality—we've added the words "on the basis of equality" in our cooperation, which is in consistence with the interest of our two countries. And in the majority of cases, the lion's share of cases, others support both us and the United States in all of this. Our partners all have interest and see interest in the positive development of U.S.-Russia relations. They view our relationship as a factor which promotes international cooperation. This is very good.

Next week, I'm going to China. There, I plan to touch upon many of the issues which we discussed yesterday and today in Moscow. I'm counting on understanding from the Chinese.

I want to say that I'm very pleased with my discussion with the President of the United States, and I hope that Bill will also express his points of view, how he assesses our meeting today.

Thank you, Bill.

President Clinton. Thank you very much, President Yeltsin.

Ladies and gentlemen, just a few years ago the mere fact of a meeting between the American and Russian Presidents was news. But this is my 3rd trip to Moscow as President and my 10th meeting with President Yeltsin. So now the news is no longer that we are meeting, but instead what we're meeting about and what is being done for the benefit of our people.

After this meeting there is much to report. First, let me thank President Yeltsin for initiating and then hosting yesterday's nuclear summit. It is fitting that this summit was held in Moscow. For 3 years, the President and I have worked together in trying to make the world a safer place by reducing the nuclear threat that all our citizens face. Because of those efforts, Russian and American missiles are no longer pointed at each other's cities or citizens. We've both made deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals by putting START I into force. And we'll make even deeper cuts when the Duma ratifies START II.

We've worked with Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakstan to dismantle nuclear weapons on their land. And yesterday, with other world leaders, we took important steps to make nuclear materials more secure so they don't fall into the wrong hands, to make the civilian use of nuclear power safer, and to strongly support the passage of a comprehensive test ban treaty this year.

The United States and Russia are also working together to promote peace in the world's most troubled regions. The President and I reviewed the situation in Bosnia, where our troops are serving side by side to help its people rebuild their land and their lives.

As cosponsors of the Middle East peace process, we discussed the terrible outbreak of violence in Lebanon and northern Israel. We agree on the need to secure a cease-fire to stop the violence, and as all of you know, our foreign ministers are both in the region as we speak. The best way to prevent violence from returning is to continue implementing the agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and to secure a comprehensive peace in the region that includes Lebanon and Syria.

The political and the security partnership between our nations is strengthened by our growing commercial ties. We've worked hard to take down the old barriers to trade and to investment. Thanks to President Yeltsin's leadership, 60 percent of Russia's economy is now in the hands of its people, not the state. Inflation has been cut; democracy is taking hold. Since 1993, trade between the United States and Russia is up 65 percent. And the U.S. is now the largest foreign investor in this great nation. That's helping to create more good jobs and new opportunities in both our countries.

The President and I also discussed areas in which we have differences, as he mentioned. The flank issue of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty is one of them. But we are working hard to find a solution to that that is acceptable to all parties prior to the review conference in May, and I can say with confidence that we did move closer to that goal today.

We also made important progress in distinguishing between antiballistic missile systems that are limited by the ABM Treaty and theater missile defenses which are not. As a result, we'll send our negotiators back to Geneva next month with the aim of concluding an initial demarcation agreement this June.

From St. Petersburg to Moscow, these last 3 days have allowed me and our entire American delegation to see the richness of Russia's past, the achievements of its present, and the promise of its future. I want the Russian people to know how much the American people support Russia's commitment to democracy and to reform. We've learned from our history that building a thriving democracy is not easy or automatic, but Russia is making dramatic progress, as evidenced by the Duma elections last December and the coming Presidential elections this June.

This is a time of real possibility and opportunity to make our people more prosperous and more secure. The United States wants a strong, stable, and open Russia, to work with us as equal partners in seizing those opportunities and turning the challenges of a new era in the common solutions.

Thank you.

President Yeltsin. Thank you. Please, questions.

U.S. and Russian Elections

Q. A question to both Presidents: To what extent do the elections in Russia and the United States in November define the U.S.-Russian relation today? Thank you.

President Clinton. Who will go first? I'll go first. Well, I think all elections have consequences, and so the relationship will be defined obviously by these elections in important ways. The United States supports the direction that Russia has taken in building a vibrant and open democracy and in moving toward an economic reform which would put more of the economy in the hands of the people. And we now see, after some very difficult years, some real progress being made. And we look forward to being a good partner in that effort, as well as in making our countries more secure and ending the nuclear threats and in finding ways to work together to solve other problems around the world.

Two great nations like ours have a lot of common interests for the future, and I would hope no matter what happens we'll be able to pursue that. But I don't think we should be under any illusion that people run for office on platforms that they intend to implement and, therefore, all elections involve choices and have consequences. And so the people of Russia and the people of the United States will have to come to grips with that and make their own judgments, as great democracies do.

President Yeltsin. I, too, would like to answer since the question was to both Presidents. I have to say that with every meeting with the President of the United States, our relations improve. Not a single meeting has yet been empty. It always has given us not only to our countries, to our peoples, but all of us some sort of a positive.

Undoubtedly, also, yesterday's meeting of the 8 has given a lot, and today's meeting with the President, since the meetings touched upon a large variety of issues and problems, bilateral, international in nature where issues came together, coincided, et cetera.

But I just wanted to tell those who in the press and in the media have already tried to tally up the score and say, "Well, they especially really contrived this whole meeting in Moscow in order to help the President of Russia, President Yeltsin"—that's not so. This was planned a long time ago; way back in Halifax we had statements to this effect. And no questions which have to do with any kind of mutual obligations or tie-ins to the elections both here or in November in the United States—we did not have any tie-ins, any mutual obligations to each other, especially material or financial. We gave no assurances, any deals. We were here open, honest. So don't suspect here—suspect us in any way, a meeting such as the 8 or a meeting of two Presidents of two great nations.

Q. In Sharm al-Sheikh it was reported that you told President Yeltsin that you would support his reelection bid with positive U.S. policies, and that you asked him for help with clearing up some negative issues such as the poultry dispute. Was there a—did you talk about politics today? I mean, what were your political discussions? And how do you both think that a meeting like this helps you with voters?

President Clinton. First of all, let me clear up the report from Sharm al-Sheikh. What I said in Sharm al-Sheikh and what I believe is that the best politics is to do the right thing and advance the interest of our people. I did bring up that trade dispute, just as I have brought up a dozen or more trade disputes with other leaders all around the world. That's a big part of my job now, and I think I did the right thing.

Today at our luncheon, the President gave me a brief overview of what he thought—quite brief—was the present lay of the land with the elections coming up and again said that he was trying to do his job, that he wanted to do his job. And I told him I thought that producing concrete results for the people by doing your job was the best thing to do politically. So that's the—which is essentially what I also said when we talked at Sharm al-Sheikh.

Whether these things have any benefit or not, who knows? You know, most of our people are—most democracies all over the world are people preoccupied with problems at home, somewhat skeptical about foreign policy. But I can tell you this: Because of this nuclear summit the people of Russia and the people of the United States are going to have a more secure future. And that's what's important. And because of the meeting we had today, we're much closer to resolving a couple of very important issues that relate to our ability again to make the world a safer place: the CFE Treaty, the demarcation between antiballistic missile systems and theater missile defenses, and a number of other areas in which we need to cooperate for the safety and for the future of our people.

So it seems to me that that's what we ought to look at. Have we done the right thing or not? Are people going to be better off or not? Are they going to be safer or not? Is the future going to be brighter or not? That is how I think that we would both wish to be judged. And I think it's a great mistake to put too much of a political spin on this since typically, at least, foreign policy does not play that big a role in voting patterns. But it's very, very important to how people live and what kind of future we have.

President Yeltsin. I agree with President Clinton that the discussion was on the go constantly, during the breaks. And just as before, we said we have to have an equivalent partnership of the two countries. We have to support this relationship and help each other, all the Presidents, just like we support each other as countries, as people. And this is only natural. Now, as far as any specific issues having to do with campaigns and helping each other in campaigns in specifics, there was none.

Now, the second part of the question, Bill didn't touch upon the second part—I don't know, maybe he or I can maybe respond and say that the production of fowl which came from the United States was—there was one batch that was stopped and held up by our health service. After that we quickly got together. We set up a commission; let the Gore-Chernomyrdin commission figure it out, get into the details in the poultry question. And they did and they were convinced that, yes, there was some violations. Those violations were taken care of, and now trade once again has been reestablished and it's back to normal.

Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty

Q. You've already spoken about European security. Can you tell us a little more in detail specifically what the CFE Treaty—how it was touched upon, and the limitations on the flanks, please, if you would?

President Yeltsin. The question of European security has a lot of aspects, including NATO. So I don't think that we've got to lay all of these issues out to you at this very moment and how they relate to the central question, but more specifically and in detail we discussed the issues of the limitations on the flanks, since this really has to do with our direct interests on the Caucasus and in the northwest of our country near Kaliningrad.

But the way it turned out was that in Germany when we were moving our forces back to Russia, the closest way to go was to Kaliningrad. And so we saturated Kaliningrad with our troops and forces and equipment, and the whole oblast—really a lot of saturation— and went beyond the limits that were provided for in the CFE Treaty itself.

Also another situation here is the Caucasus because, as you know, what we have there, because of the situation in Chechnya—right now it's not bad, so what we're doing is implementing my plan on finding a settlement in the Chechnya problem. And things are going according to plan the way it's been approved. Nonetheless, there is a concentration of conventional forces, tanks and things; in some cases it varies from what the CFE Treaty may be calling for.

So President Clinton, at my request, very carefully reviewed with his advisers and specialists, and they went and decided that temporarily we would be given the opportunity to, within the overall framework of the overall total numbers, to do some movement of forces on the territory. Of course, the conference in May is going to finally decide that. But they expressed their opinion, and once again, this issue has been discussed. There was one question to us that we move from one site a part of our equipment. We didn't argue; we're going to move it. And in short, there really is no question for discussion remaining. We hope that around May 15, when the conference is held, this treaty is going to be adjusted somewhat and everything will be fine.

Chechnya

Q. President Yeltsin, you just mentioned that things were going according to plan in Chechnya. But there are other reports that hostilities there continue and human rights groups are complaining still about the behavior of Russian forces. I wonder, for President Clinton, what do you say to those who believe that the United States has not been firm enough, hasn't been critical enough, and that even now the criticism is muted specifically because the United States is anxious to see President Yeltsin reelected?

And for President Yeltsin, what would you say to those who believe that your call for a cease-fire was motivated largely by short-term political interests?

President Yeltsin. In your question you made a couple of errors right off the bat. First of all, you said that the United States is seeking the reelection of President Yeltsin. I have different data. Second, military actions in the Chechnya region are not going on. No military operations are being carried out from March 31. It's another matter—some bands are still running around. Out of 22 regions of Chechnya, 19 of them have signed agreements. In three, there are still—the bosses there are still the bands; they're still in charge. And in fact, it's true they are making life difficult for a lot of people.

But I repeat again, there are no military operations now underway. A state commission has been set up headed by Chernomyrdin; contact has been established with Dudayev through intermediaries. The intermediaries we have, Shaimiev, Orlov—we have people like that, King Hassan II, the King of Morocco, who have agreed to act in the role of intermediaries and to talk to Dudayev, to influence him from the point of view of negotiations only on one question that he is not in agreement with, in other words, that the Chechen Republic from our point of view—and this is an absolute—must be and will remain within Russia.

President Clinton. Let me make two brief points. First of all, I think the record will reflect that the United States has consistently supported a political solution to the Chechnya crisis and offered its support for that. And when President Yeltsin made his announcement on March 31st, we supported that.

You say that there are some who say we should have been more openly critical. I think it depends upon your first premise; do you believe that Chechnya is a part of Russia or not? I would remind you that we once had a Civil War in our country in which we lost on a percapita basis far more people than we lost in any of the wars of the 20th century over the proposition that Abraham Lincoln gave his life for, that no State had a right to withdraw from our Union.

And so the United States has taken the position that Chechnya is a part of Russia, but that in the end, a free country has to have a free association, so there would have to be something beyond the fighting, there would have to be a diplomatic solution. That's what we have done.

But we realize this is a very difficult problem. And we have—President Yeltsin said today in our private meeting he wanted a diplomatic solution. He specifically asked me to do a thing or two that he thought might be helpful to him in securing a peaceful resolution of this and an end to the fighting and a real reconciliation between the people of Chechnya and the rest of Russia. So I intend to do what he requested in that regard, and I will continue to try to advocate an end to the violence and do what the United States can to support a resolution of this.

Russia-U.S. Relations

Q. As a whole, how do you assess the progress in the field of security, including the issue of ABM? And how is this going to affect the future of equal partnership between Russia and the United States?

President Yeltsin. The word "equal" or "on an equivalent basis"—when we first signed the first treaty we weren't around, that word wasn't around. And it occurred later, because we saw some sort of discrimination practiced against Russia. And that's why the word "equal" or "on an equal basis in all respects"—that's what appeared.

Now, as far as security, we discussed in detail these issues. And in general, of course, for some time we're not going to be forcing the widening of NATO at our request. President Clinton promised this and somehow to influence his colleagues.

I believe that, in fact, it will be thus for a while. Then gradually maybe we ourselves will find, together with NATO, a relationship, maybe to come up with an agreement that, let's say, no country will be allowed to enter NATO, let's say, without Russia's agreement, and then maybe only through a consensus will be NATO changing. In other words, there is a variety of solutions for this problem, but we yet have to work on this.

We talked about it in detail, but, look, we're not going to be sitting here giving you everything exactly in detail what we did for 5 hours. We're going to have a 5-hour press conference then.

President Clinton. A brief comment on the two issues President Yeltsin mentioned. The United States has within it some people who have had questions about the ABM Treaty to which we're a signatory. I believe the United States should keep its treaty commitments. I think if we expect Russia to keep its treaty commitments, we have to keep ours. Not so long ago I vetoed a defense bill passed in the Congress because I thought it would have put us out of compliance with the ABM Treaty.

What we have to do now, because the ABM Treaty does not prohibit the development of theater missile defenses, is to define clearly what the lines between the two are, both regular velocity and high velocity theater missile defense. We made real progress here in doing that. And I'm convinced that if we do this in an open way that has a lot of integrity, that requires— where no one can question our commitment to the ABM Treaty, I think we'll all be just fine on this, and I think it will work out very well.

With regard to NATO, our differences are well-known, but I think it's also worth pointing out that as with other aspects of this relationship, they have been clear and open, there have been no surprises, and from my point of view there have been no changes.

I will say again: My goal is for a democratic, undivided Europe. The world has been caused a lot of trouble in the last 1,000 years repeatedly because of the divisions of Europe, number one. Number two, my goal is to see the United States and Russia over the long run develop a strong, equal partnership of two great democracies, freedom-loving countries that define their greatness in terms of their values and their example and the achievements of their people and not the domination of other nations. And I believe that we will find a way to work that out that's consistent with the position I've taken on NATO.

And so I feel—I believe that as this thing goes along we'll find answers to that. And so my position hasn't changed about NATO, but I do not in any way, shape, or form mean any threat to the security of the long-term legitimate interests of Russia there. And the more important thing is—by the way, practical thing—is the progress we have made here with the ABM theater missile defense issue. That's a very significant advance for both countries in resolving a real, as opposed to an imagined, security problem.

President Yeltsin. One minute, I didn't respond to part three of that second question on the ABM.

The thing is that, really, we did have at one time differences when the U.S. side began to develop its own system beyond the ABM. And we expressed our surprise at this. And when Bill Clinton became President we agreed solidly that we are going to abide by the ABM Treaty. And for all this time, all the times we've met, we've had never any doubts, and we've had never any claims or questions to each other or any doubts that this treaty is in any way going to be changed or modified or changes introduced or anything like that.

It's another matter now that, as Bill Clinton said, that we've got to, simply from the technical point of view, have that demarcation between strategic and theater nuclear systems. But that's being carried out now by our specialists and experts, U.S. experts. And that will be fulfilled to not the detriment of either the United States or the Russian Federation.

Russian Elections

Q. The two Presidents: Both of you today have talked very optimistically and hopefully about U.S. and Russian relations. But again to return to the elections, if the Communists were to win in this election, do you believe that this close relationship can continue? And particularly to Mr. Yeltsin, do you believe your Communist opponents are in fact a different kind of Communists than the ones whom you helped put out of power and the party that you once walked out of?

President Yeltsin. I have nothing to think here on this score. There's nothing to think about because I am sure that I will be victorious.

President Clinton. Well, my answer's irrelevant. [Laughter]

Should we take one more? Do you want to take one more?

President Yeltsin. One more question. One more question each—you and I, each side, one more question.

Nuclear Testing

Q. Boris Nikolayevich, a question to you: Have you discussed the issue of banning nuclear testing, and is there any difference of opinion on nuclear testing?

President Yeltsin. Yes, this issue was discussed yesterday at the meeting of the 8, since the topic was, after all, nuclear security, and everything there, practically speaking, starts with nuclear materials and testing. So when we talked about testing, banning testing yesterday, I will say that we had a very, very loyal discussion, a pleasant talk. All, to the very last one, agreed that this year we've got to sign the treaty on banning and testing in any size of tests forever and forever.

But not all nuclear states participated at yesterday's meeting of the 8. Now, with the others we're going to have to do a little work, especially with China. Well, that's why we, the leaders of the states, and that's where members of the 8 which decide these big political issues and other issues in order to somehow move forward and make progress on these big issues and to reach agreements and to prepare accords with other states. And we're going to be attempting to do that. I have got the conviction that we are going to find an agreement and, after all, I think we will be able to sign this year.

President Clinton. I'll just make a brief supplemental remark there. We have all agreed to go with the so-called Australian language, which is a strict zero-yield comprehensive test ban treaty. That is the only kind of treaty that can give the people of the world the certainty that they really are seeing the end of the nuclear age of the big weapons.

Some other countries want to kind of leave a big crack in the door for so-called peaceful tests or experimentation. And we all believe that we just have to try to persuade them to our way of thinking. I think the biggest and most important issue now is trying to persuade the Chinese to adopt the position that we have adopted. And I suggested on behalf of the 8 that we ask President Yeltsin to take this issue up on his trip to China. He agreed to do that, and the rest of us agreed to do our best as well to support that and try to persuade the Chinese that this is the right course for the future. And I have every hope that we can succeed.

Assistance to Russia

Q. Mr. President, the U.S. assistance to Russia after communism fell has been a fraction of what the Marshall plan did for Europe to help rebuild Europe after World War II. With many Russians questioning whether capitalism and democracy have really made their lives better, do you feel that the West has missed a historic chance to help Russia? And if you're reelected next year and there's a new Congress, do you foresee anything more ambitious in the future?

President Clinton. Well, first of all, the short answer to your question is no, I don't think that the West has missed an historic chance. The present Congress I think has underestimated the impact that a relatively small amount of investment assistance in other countries can have, not just in Russia but in other places in the world. And so I think that's a mistake. I think not paying our U.N. dues is a mistake, not investing in the International Development Association is a mistake.

But let me ask you—you compared this to the Marshall plan. There are some things that are quite different. For one thing, we are now the largest—the United States is the largest private investor in Russia, and the flow of private investment is much broader and quicker than it was at the end of World War II. For another thing, the United States has strongly supported the multi-billion-dollar aid package coming out of the international financial institutions, which were not available to do those things, again, as a part of the Marshall plan on anything like this scale. Thirdly, even though our assistance to Russia has dropped in the last couple of years, the Nunn-Lugar funds are still helping the denuclearization movement, and funds that I asked the Congress to adopt in the '93-94 timeframe, those funds have by no means all been used up. That is, they're still awaiting specific projects. So money has been appropriated for investment here that can still be invested here as the projects come on line.

So our commitment to the economic revitalization of Russia is very strong. And I would point out that I believe Russia has privatized a higher percentage of its economy than any of the other countries of the former Soviet Union. And the economic problems that Russia has endured began before the Soviet Union disappeared. And we see the economy coming back now, and I think that things are going in the right direction.

I do believe that the United States and the rest of the advanced economies should continue their commitment to investment and to support democracy and economic reform. I don't think we should let up. But I think it's a mistake to say that a historic opportunity has been missed, because a great deal has been done.

Thank you very much.

NOTE: The President's 121st news conference began at 2:42 p.m. in the Executive Office Building at the Kremlin. President Yeltsin spoke in Russian, and his remarks were translated by an interpreter. In his remarks, President Yeltsin referred to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin of Russia, President Jawhar Dudayev of Chechnya, and President Mintimer Shaimiev of Tatarstan.
Citation: William J. Clinton: "The President's News Conference With President Boris Yeltsin of Russia in Moscow," April 21, 1996. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=52702.
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Re: Boris Berezovsky (businessman), by Wikipedia

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U.S. Entrepreneur Is Gunned Down in Moscow
by The Associated Press
November 4, 1996

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An American businessman involved in a long dispute over control of one of Moscow's best-known hotels was shot to death today by an unknown assailant with a machine gun.

The businessman, Paul E. Tatum, 39, a native of Edmond, Okla., and a former fund-raiser for the Oklahoma Republican Party,
was killed near the entrance to the Kievsky metro station in downtown Moscow, a police spokesman said. The station is located near the Radisson-Slavyanskaya hotel, where Mr. Tatum had his office.

The police spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the shooting had occurred at 5:10 P.M. and that top-level police officials were investigating the case.

Russian businessmen have frequently been killed since the collapse of Communism, although the slaying of foreign businessmen has been relatively rare. Many of the murders are contract killings and remain unsolved.

Mr. Tatum, a founding partner of the riverfront hotel, was involved in a long power struggle with the management of the joint venture that administers the property. Courts in Moscow and the United States have been looking into the dispute.

The struggle came to a head in 1994, when Mr. Tatum tried to oust the joint venture's director, reportedly going as far as to cut off his phone lines. In response, guards were posted at the hotel entrance to keep Mr. Tatum out.

The dispute is said to involve the Moscow city government and the Radisson Hotel Company, the Minnesota-based company that is Mr. Tatum's American partner.

Matt Seward, former chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, said his longtime friend refused to be intimidated.
Mr. Tatum told him a few weeks ago that he expected a decision in the dispute soon. ''And he was 95 percent sure he had won,'' Mr. Seward said.

Mr. Seward described Mr. Tatum as the ''quintessential entrepreneur'' who became fascinated by the business potential in Russia in the decade before the break-up of the Soviet Union.

''Paul's a risk-taker -- he wouldn't have built a hotel in Moscow if he wasn't a risk-taker,'' Mr. Seward said.

The Radisson-Slavyanskaya houses a string of shops and Western offices, including those of large broadcast media companies, and serves as the home in Moscow for dozens of expatriates. President Clinton has been staying at the hotel during his trips to Moscow.

Mr. Tatum had vowed to continue doing business in Russia despite the hotel struggle.

''This is entrepreneurs' heaven,'' he said in a 1994 interview. ''There's no telling how quickly this country could develop and how much it could look like the United States in a very short period of time.''

Officials at the hotel refused to answer questions today, and phone calls to hotel management in the United States went unanswered.

The American Embassy in Moscow had no immediate comment, apart from a terse statement saying: ''We deplore the murder of any U.S. citizen.''
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Re: Boris Berezovsky (businessman), by Wikipedia

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9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA [Excerpt]
by Webster Griffin Tarpley

RUSSIANS EXPOSE US-UK TERROR ROLE AFTER SCHOOL MASSACRE

In early September, 2004, terrorists attacked a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, in the Russian Federation. Before this hostage crisis was over, more than 300 people, over half of them children, were killed. On Monday. September 6, Russian President Vladimir Putin made remarks to the western press which exposed the key role of the US and British governments in backing Chechen terrorism. Whatever Putin's previous role in events regarding Chechnya, his post-Beslan political posture tended to undercut the legitimacy of the supposed Anglo-American "war on terror," and pointed up the hypocrisy of the Bush regime's pledge that it would make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them -- since Washington and London were currently harboring Chechens implicated in terrorism. All in all, Putin's response to the Chechen events, on the eve of the third anniversary of 9/11, brought the collapse of the official 9/11 myth measurably closer. The hypocritical terror demagogy of Bush and Blair was now undercut by the head of state of another permanent member of the UN Security Council.

On Monday September 6, Putin spoke for three and one half hours with a group of some 30 western correspondents and Russia experts at his dacha near Novo Ogarevo outside Moscow. Most US press ignored these remarks. Putin, a KGB veteran who knew whereof he spoke, told the gathering that the school massacre showed that "certain western political circles would like to weaken Russia, just as the Romans wanted to destroy Carthage." He thus suggested that the US and UK, not content with having bested Russia in the Cold War, now wanted to proceed to the dismemberment and total destruction of Russia -- a Carthaginian peace like the one the Romans finally imposed at the end of the Punic Wars in 146 BC, when they poured salt into the earth at Carthage so nothing would ever grow there again. (Le Monde, September 8, 2004) There was no link between Russian policy in Chechnya and the hostage-taking in Beslan, said Putin, meaning that the terrorists were using the Chechen situation as a pretext to attack Russia. According to a paraphrase in Le Monde: "The aim of this international terrorism, supported more or less openly by foreign states, whose names the Russian president does not want to name, is to weaken Russia from the inside, by criminalizing its economy, by provoking its disintegration through propagating separatism in the Caucasus and the transformation of the region into a military staging ground (place d'armes) for actions directed against the Russian Federation."

"Mr. Putin," continued Le Monde, "restated the accusation he had launched in a veiled form against western countries which appear to him to use double-talk. On the one side, their leaders assure the Russian President of their solidarity in the fight against terrorism. On the other hand, the intelligence services and the military -- 'who have not abandoned their Cold War prejudices,' in Putin's words -- maintain contacts with those the international press calls the 'rebels.' 'Why are those who emulate Bin Laden called terrorists and the people who kill children, rebels? Where is the logic?' asked Vladimir Putin, and then gave the answer: 'Because certain political circles in the West want to weaken Russia just like the Romans wanted to destroy Carthage.' 'But, continued Putin, "we will not allow this scenario to come to pass."' Le Monde went on: "This is, according to [Putin] a bad calculation, because Russia is a factor of stability. By weakening it, the Cold War nostalgics are clearly acting against the interests of their own country." In Putin's words: "We are the sincere champions of this cooperation [against terrorism], we are open and loyal partners. But if foreign services have contacts with the 'rebels,' they cannot be treated as reliable allies, as Russia is for them." (Daniel Vernet, "M. Poutine accuse et s'explique sur sa 'guerre totale' au terrorisme," Le Monde, September 8, 2004)

In Guardian correspondent Jonathan Steele's account of the meeting with Putin, the Russian President gave this response to the US and UK on the question of negotiating with the Chechen guerrillas of Asian Maskhadov: "Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace? You find it possible to set some limitations in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child-killers?" (London Guardian, September 7, 2004)

On Saturday, September 4, Putin had delivered a national television address to the Russian people on the Beslan tragedy, which had left more than 300 dead, over half of them children. The main thrust was that terrorism constitutes international proxy warfare against Russia. Among other things Putin said: "In general, we need to admit that we did not fully understand the complexity and the dangers of the processes at work in our own country and in the world. In any case, we proved unable to react adequately. We showed ourselves to be weak, and the weak get beaten." "Some people would like to tear from us a tasty morsel. Others are helping them. They are helping, reasoning that Russia still remains one of the world's major nuclear powers, and as such still represents a threat to them. And so they reason that this threat should be removed. Terrorism, of course, is just an instrument to achieve these gains." "What we are dealing with, are not isolated acts intended to frighten us, not isolated terrorist attacks. What we are facing is direct intervention of international terror directed against Russia. This is a total, cruel and full- scale war that again and again is taking the lives of our fellow citizens." (Kremlin.ru, September 6, 2004; EIR, September 7, 2004)

Around the time of 9/11, Putin had pointed to open recruitment of Chechen terrorists going on in London, telling a German interviewer: "In London, there is a recruitment station for people wanting to join combat in Chechnya. Today -- not officially, but effectively in the open -- they are talking there about recruiting volunteers to go to Afghanistan." (Focus -- German weekly newsmagazine, September 2001) In addition, it is generally known in well-informed European circles that the leaders of the Chechen rebels were trained by the CIA, and that the Chechens were backed by US- sponsored anti-Russian fighters from Afghanistan. In the summer of 2004, US-UK backed Chechens destroyed two Russian airliners and attacked a Moscow subway station, in addition to the school atrocity.

Some aspects of Putin's thinking were further explained by a press interview given by Aslambek Aslakhanov, the Chechen politician who was one of Putin's official advisors. A dispatch from RIA Novosti reported Aslakhanov's comments as follows: "The terrorists who seized the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, took their orders from abroad. 'They were talking with people not from Russia, but from abroad. They were being directed,' said Aslambek Aslakhanov, advisor to the President of the Russian Federation. 'It is the desire of our "friends" -- in quotation marks -- who have probably for more than a decade been carrying out enormous, titanic work, aimed at dismembering Russia. These people have worked very hard, and the fact that the financing comes from there and that they are the puppet masters, is also clear." Aslakhanov, who was named by the terrorists as one of the people they were going to hold talks with, also told RIA Novosti that the bid for such "talks" was completely phony. He said that the hostage-takers were not Chechens. When he talked to them, by phone, in Chechen, they demanded that he talk Russian, and the ones he spoke with had the accents of other North Caucasus ethnic groups. (RIA Novosti, September 6, 2004; EIR, September 7, 2004)

On September 7, RIA Novosti reported on the demand of the Russian Foreign Ministry that two leading Chechen figures be extradited from London and Washington to stand trial in Russia. A statement from the Russia Foreign Ministry's Department of Information and Press indicated that Russia would put the United States and Britain on the spot about extraditing two top Chechen separatist officials who had been given asylum in Washington and London, respectively. They were Akhmad Zakayev, known as a "special representative" of Asian Maskhadov (currently enjoying asylum in London), and Ilyas Akhmadov, the "Foreign Minister" of the unrecognized "Chechen Republic- Ichkeria" (then residing in the USA). (RIA Novosti, September 7, 2004; EIR, September 8, 2004)

"SCHOOL SEIZURE WAS PLANNED IN WASHINGTON AND LONDON"

This was the headline of an even more explicit unsigned commentary by the Russian news agency KMNews.ru. This analysis blamed the Beslan school massacre squarely on the U.S. and British intelligence agencies. The point of departure here was that Shamil Basayev, the brutal Chechen field commander, had been linked to the attack (something that Putin advisor Aslambek Aslakhanov had said was known to the Russian FSB, successor of the KGB). The article highlighted the recent rapprochement of London and Washington with key representatives of Asian Maskhadov: Britain's giving asylum to Akhmad Zakayev (December 2003) and the USA's welcoming Ilyas Akhmadov (August 2004). Basayev, viewed in European circles as a straight-out CIA agent, openly claimed responsibility for the school massacre almost two weeks after the fact.

KMNews: CHECHEN TERROR BOSS ON US STATE DEPARTMENT PAYROLL

The Russian news agency KMNews wrote: "In early August ... 'Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Chechen Republic-lchkeria' Ilyas Akhmadov received political asylum in the USA. And for his 'outstanding services,' Akhmadov received a Reagan-Fascell grant," including a monthly stipend, medical insurance, and a well-equipped office with all necessary support services, including the possibility of meetings with political circles and leading U.S. media. "What about our partners in the 'anti-terrorist coalition,' who provided asylum, offices and money to Maskhadov's representatives?" asked the Russian press agency. Citing the official expressions of sympathy and offers of help from President Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, KMNews warned: "But let's not shed tears of gratitude just yet. First we should ask: were 'Special Representative of the President of CRI' Zakayev or 'Minister of Foreign Affairs of the CRI' Akhmadov, located in Great Britain and the USA, aware of the terrorist acts that were in preparation? Beyond a doubt ... and let's also find out, how Akhmadov is spending the money provided by the Reagan-Fascell Foundation. We note: this Foundation is financed by the U.S. Congress through the budget of the State Department! "Thus, the conclusion is obvious. Willingly or not, Downing Street and the White House provoked the guerrillas to these latest attacks. Willingly or not, Great Britain and the USA have nurtured the separatists with material, information and diplomatic resources. Willingly or not, the policy of London and Washington fostered the current terrorist acts." "As the ancients said, cui bono? Perhaps we are too hasty with such sweeping accusations against our 'friends' and 'partners'? Is there a motive for the Anglo-American 'anti-terrorist coalition' to fan the fires of terror in the North Caucasus?" "Alas, there is a motive. It is no secret, that the West is vitally interested in maintaining instability in the Caucasus. That makes it easier to pump out the fossil fuel extracted in the Caspian region, and it makes it easier to control Georgia and Azerbaijan, and to exert influence on Armenia. Finally, it makes it easier to drive Russia out of the Caspian and the Caucasus. Divide et impera! -- the leaders of the Roman Empire already introduced this simple formula for subjugation."

KMNews: TERROR SUPPORTERS "ON THE BANKS OF THE THAMES AND THE POTOMAC"

KMNews continued: "Alas, it must be recognized that the co-authors of the current tragic events are to be found not in the Arab countries of the Middle East, but on the banks of the Thames and the Potomac. Will the leadership of Russia be able to make decisions, in this situation?" "Yes -- if there is the political will. The first thing is that black must be called black, and white, white. It is time to admit that no "antiterrorist coalition" exists, that the West is pursuing its egotistical interests (spreading its political influence, seizing fossil fuels deposits, etc.). Our own coalition needs to be formed, with nations that are genuinely interested in eliminating terror in the North Caucasus. Finally, it is time to change the entire tactics and strategy of counterterrorism measures. It is obvious that catching female suicide bombers on the streets of Moscow or carrying out operations to free children who are taken hostage, are, so to speak, the 'last line of defense.' It is time to learn to make preemptive strikes against the enemy, and it's time to carry combat onto the territory of the enemy. Otherwise, we shall be defeated." (Source: KMNews.ru, September 7, 2004; EIR, September 8, 2004)

Izvestia stressed the probable ethnic composition of the terrorist death squad, and its likely role in exacerbating tensions in the ethnic labyrinth of the Caucasus. Izvestia found the targeting of North Ossetia in the Beslan incident "not accidental," pointing to the danger of "irreversible consequences" for interethnic relations between Ossetians, Ingushis and Chechens. "Russia is now facing multi-vectored threats along the entire Caucasus," the paper wrote. (Izvestia, September 3, 2004)

In the wake of Putin's speech, prominent Russian commentators discussed the recent terror campaign against Russia in terms of a possible "casus belli" for a new East-West conflict. Several commentaries reaffirmed Putin's key statement that international terrorism has no independent existence, but functions only as "an instrument," wielded by powerful international circles committed (in part) to the early destruction of Russia as a nuclear-armed power. A commentary in the widely read Russian business news service RosBusinessConsult (RBC) was entitled "The West is unleashing Jihads against Russia." In language reminiscent of the Cold War, RBC charged that the recent wave of terror attacks against Russia, beginning with the sabotage of two airplanes and a terror bombing at a Moscow subway station, and culminating so far in the Beslan attack, was immediately preceded by what RBC calls "an ultimatum from the West," for Russia to turn over the Caucasus region to "Anglo-Saxon control."

ANGLO-AMERICAN TERROR ULTIMATUM TO RUSSIA FROM THE LONDON ECONOMIST

"Some days prior to the onset of the series of acts of terrorism in Russia, which has cost hundreds of lives, a number of extremely influential Western mass-media, expressing establishment positions, issued a personal warning to Vladimir Putin, that Russia should get out of the Caucasus, or else his political career would come to an end. Therefore, when the President on Saturday spoke of a declaration of war having been made against Russia, this was not just a matter of so-called 'international terrorism' ... One week prior to the first acts of terrorism, the authoritative British magazine, the Economist, which expresses the positions of Great Britain's establishment, formulated the Western position concerning the Caucasus, and above all the policy of the Anglo- Saxon elite, in a very precise manner," RBC wrote.

CZECH NGO BLOWS UP RUSSIAN TANK; BRITISH EXPERTS TRAIN CHECHEN GANGS

The RBC commentary went on to cite the Economist of August 19, 2004, which contained what RBC characterized as the virtual ultimatum to Russia. RBC noted that "the carrying out of such a series of coordinated, highly professional terrorist attacks, would be impossible without the help of qualified 'specialists'." RBC noted that at the end of August one such "specialist," working for an NGO based in the Czech republic, was arrested for blowing up a Russian armed personnel carrier. Also, British "experts" were found instructing Chechen gangs in how to lay mines. "It cannot be excluded, that also in Beslan, the logistics of the operation were provided by just such 'specialists'," noted RBC.

The RBC editorial concluded: "Apparently, by having recourse to large-scale terrorist actions, the forces behind that terrorism have now acted directly to force a 'change' in the political situation in the Caucasus, propagating interethnic wars into Russia. "The only way to resist this would be for Moscow to make it known that we are ready to fight a new war, according to new rules and new methods -- not with mythical 'international terrorists', who do not and never existed, but with the controllers of the 'insurgents and freedom fighters'; a war against the geopolitical puppet-masters who are ready to destroy thousands of Russians for the sake of achieving their new division of the world." (RBC, September 7, 2004; EIR, September 1 2004)

In a related comment, the Chairman of the Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, Dmitri Rogozin, declared in an interview on Sunday September 5: "I think [those behind the terrorism] are those who would like to see Russia totally discredited as a power ... I think that the aim is to destabilize the political situation in the country and plunge Russia into total chaos." (Ekho Moskvy, September 6, 2004) Western press organs responded to the school massacre with a campaign to blame, not the terrorists, but the Putin regime and Russian society. This disingenuous policy further stoked Russian resentment. On September 6, Strana.ru headlined, "Western Press: The Tragedy Is Russia's Own Fault," commenting that "unlike official politicians, journalists do not want to admit that the bombings and hostage-takings in our country are acts of international terrorism." (EIR, September 7, 2004) Another example this Putin-bashing was the article by Masha Lippman in the Washington Post of September 9, 2004. This was quickly followed by a campaign against Putin for being undemocratic, including, with indescribable hypocrisy, the complaint that Putin had not purged his intelligence officers after the school massacre -- this from the US, where no one had been held accountable for 9/11.

A basic reason for the US-UK surrogate warfare against Russia was the great Anglo-Saxon fear of a continental bloc of the type which emerged during the run-up to Bush's Iraq aggression. The centerpiece of the continental bloc would be the German-Russian relationship. Washington and London feared that Russia would soon agree to accept euros in payment for its oil deliveries. This would not just prevent the Anglo-Americans from further skimming off oil transactions between Russia and Europe. It would represent the beginning of the end of the dollar as the reserve currency of the world, a role which the battered greenback, weakened by Bush's $500 billion yearly trade deficit and Bush's $750 billion budget deficit, can no longer fulfill. If Russia were to adopt the euro, it was expected that the Eurasian giant would quickly be followed by Iran, Indonesia, Venezuela, and other counties. This would put an end to the ability of the US to run astronomical foreign trade deficits, and would place the question of a US return to a production-based economy on the agenda.

The 9/11 myth was still a menace to mankind.
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Re: Boris Berezovsky (businessman), by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:14 pm

Boris Berezovsky’s Art Collection Said to Contain Substantial Number of Fakes
by Marion Maneker
Art Market Monitor
June 11, 2014

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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Reports say that 19 of the paintings in deceased Russian Oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s collection are fakes. The discovery was made by Berezovsky’s daughter as she seeks to unravel the tangled business affairs that seem to have led to his death.

The fakes are said to be part of a collection that was once valued around £50m (though these valuations in the press are notorious for their slim basis in fact):

Administrators of the billionaire’s estate are considering calling in police after 19 paintings were revealed to be forgeries. They are believed to include all the works that once hung in Wentworth Park, his former £25m Surrey mansion.

The fakes include copies of two works by the Russian landscape painters Alexei Savrasov and Alexandre Altmann which were previously valued at £550,000 and £75,000.
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