Much ink was expended in the late 1990s on the thesis that Russian big business had “captured” the post-communist state and subordinated it to its purposes.93 The Svyazinvest fiasco, and Yeltsin’s role in it, suggests the outcome was more complex than that.
In their several prior encounters with the president, the moguls gathered the impression that he was well disposed toward them. Yeltsin, Mikhail Khodorkovskii said in an interview in 2001, looked upon the oligarchs the way CPSU bosses used to see members of the Komsomol—as individuals of a different generation, with strange opinions, perhaps, but on the right track and “following the defined rules of the game.” Mikhail Fridman of Alpha Group felt Yeltsin regarded them as “the product of his hands” and as “one of the instruments for realizing his plans,” and that he was sure “that all he needed to do was snap a finger and we would do what he said.” To Potanin, Yeltsin’s attitude was akin to that of a headmaster toward star athletes who sometimes break windows in the schoolyard: He approved of their talents more than he disapproved of their hooliganism. Yeltsin’s tsarist self-regard and playacting, all report, inoculated him against envy of their money and influence, and he was untouched by the anti-Semitism common in the old CPSU apparat (many of the most successful businessmen were of Jewish origin). 94 As it had been with other players, Yeltsin badly wanted not to appear beholden to the nouveau riche. He needed prodding to accept their help in 1996, and they would have donated almost any sum to fund his campaign if ordered to do so. Had he wished, Yeltsin without question could have financed his campaign from state coffers.95 After the election, he had no patience with warnings that the oligarchs were capable of causing him trouble. When he recruited Nemtsov from Nizhnii Novgorod, Nemtsov shared with him the perception that they were beginning to behave as if Yeltsin no longer counted. “Nonsense,” Yeltsin replied. “That is what they think.”96
Yeltsin received intelligence about the budding conflict over Svyazinvest and had Yumashev confer with Potanin and Gusinskii before July 25. Yumashev’s recommendation was that they divide the company down the middle—a notion hard to reconcile with the principle of market competition—but Chubais would not hear of it. One week after the auction, Berezovskii took advantage of a phone call Tatyana Dyachenko made to him on another matter to bend her ear on the injustice of the result.97 He addressed her in the second person singular and struck a cloying tone which she did not reciprocate.98 Dyachenko sounded politely receptive, although she did have doubts about Gusinskii’s belligerency. “Some kind of compromise” should be found on the case, she said, and on the whole the rules should require “normal competition” for state assets. Tatyana did not indicate her father’s opinion and Berezovskii did not ask her to influence it. When he opined that the minister for privatization, Al’fred Kokh, should be dismissed, she replied that would be up to Chubais, who supervised his department. Berezovskii went on to put in a good word for another cause close to his heart (and wallet)—a general amnesty for back taxes owing, with “a normal tax regime” instituted only after previous illegality had been forgiven. “Let me tell you with certainty,” he said knowingly, “no one [in Russia] has filed an honest tax return, except for the president, naturally.” Dyachenko took exception. Her entire family had paid all its taxes; a free ride for tax delinquents would be unfair to the upstanding majority of Russians; and, by some formula or another, business should pick up more of the tab for government.99 Berezovskii signed off by telling her he had been talking with “Valya” (Yumashev) and giving her his cell phone number. She had to ask him what codes to use to dial. The conversation demonstrated that the country’s best-known businessman had access to the president’s daughter and adviser in 1997, but also that they were not close and she had a mind of her own.
