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of the Italian songs; but it was fascinatingto see him summarily and radically edithis work for the requirements of a differ-ent venue.

Caines is a genuinely .surprising artist.The same month, for the "Deli Dances"series, where dancers peribrmed inChashama's storefront window, he con-structed two installations. In one, wearingshorts and an eyeshade, he simply slept(or tried to sleep) on a mat for two hours,with a small collection of over-the-counter remedies for insomnia lined upnext to him. In the second, he slept—thistime in pajamas, with a blanket—whileHess, in a nightgown, meditated with herback to the street; at half-hour intervals,marked by an alarm clock, they exchangedplaces and activities. During the total offour hours that these installations lasted,hundreds of passers-by stopped to com-ment (and to smile) in perhaps a score oflanguages. Some of them remarked on thesmallest details, such as the names of theherbal preparations. They studied the

cover of a novel near Caines's head (it wasElective Affinities). They tapped on theglass to tr\' to get him to acknowledgetheir presence. He told me later that afterthe third tap, he learned that if he sighedor shifted his weight slightly when theyknocked, he satisfied their demands andthey stopped.

Some day, I have no douht, he will putthat lesson into play in a dance. At themoment, for November performances atThe Construction Company, Caines ispreparing a trio to four Worid War I-erasongs by Hindemith, vvith tragic lyrics bythe poet Christian Morgcnstern. Thesongs are rarely performed and, untilMontano tackled them this year, theyseem never to have been recorded. When Iasked what the dance would look like,Caines spoke of spiders, lobsters, bitterdrops, and black angels. "It's going to bepretty dark," he said. I was not filled withforeboding. Darkness is bearable, it iseven to be welcomed, in an artist who isalso a master of light. •

The InformationSpecialist^ / / S T E P H E N K O T K I N

Godfather of the Kremlin:Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russiahy Paul Klehnikov{Harcourt, Inc., 400 pp., $28)

Sale of the Century: Russia's Wild Ridefrom Communism to Capitalismhy Chrystia Freeland(Crown Business, 389 pp., $27.50)

L

AMID THE COLLECTIVE hys-teria that passes for report-ing and commentary onRussian affairs, perhaps noissue incites more misin-

formed commotion than that of "the oli-garchs." And among the oligarchs, theking of the hysteria is Boris Berezovsky.The diminutive, excitable, eyebrow-danc-

STEPHEN KOTKIN'S new book, The SovietCollapse, 1970-2000, will be publishedby Oxtbrd Universitv Press next fall.

ing tycoon, writes Paul Klebnikov, "oncetold the Financial Times that he and sixother financiers controlled 50 percent ofthe Russian economy and had arrangedYeltsin's re-election in 1996." Yes, he didsay that. But could such boasting havebeen remotely true?

Klebnikov abjures the path of ridiculeopen betbre him. Nor does he have muchtime for Berezovsky's grand failures, suchas the scheme to seize control of Russia'sgas monopoly-$9 billion in admitted ex-port revenue—which came to absolutelynaught (aside from turning the well-connected George Soros into an impla-

cable foe). Instead Klebnikov gives usthree hundred harrowing pages to conveythat Berezovsky is the "godfather of god-fathers." When Klebnikov first invoked theg-word, in a Forbes profile in December1996, Berezovsky sued for libel. Recently,the Russian won the right to sue the Amer-ican magazine in a British court. With theappearance of Godfather of the Kremlin,however, it may be time for Berezovskyto sue Klebnikov for impersonating hispublicity agent.

B ORIS ABRAMOVICH BEREZOVSKYwas bom in Moscow in January1946", a baby boomer. Klebnikov

provides no details of Berezovsky's child-hood or early adulthood, except to notethat his subject took a degree in electron-ics and computer science at Moscow'sForestry Institute, a cover for work on theSoviet space program. In 1970, Berezov-sky earned the equivalent of a doctorateat the Mechanical-Mathematical Depart-ment of Moscow University. The previousyear he had taken up an appointment atthe Control Sciences Institute of the Sov-iet Academy of Sciences, where he wouldspend the next two decades, first as aresearcher and ultimately as Correspond-ing Member. He wrote several dozen sci-entific articles and three monographsabout complex systems and informationmanagement (none of which are cited orquoted in Klebnikov's book). He helpedto establish and directed a research teamfor the study of systems design, which wascalled cybernetics—a term taken from theAmerican Norbert Wiener, who coined itin the late 1940s for the science of infor-mation and information systems control.As we shall see, Berezovsky remains aninformation specialist.

Klebnikov presents the tycoon as theposter boy, if not also the explanation,for everything that has gone wrong inRussia since 1991: the "failure [sic] ofdemocracy and capitalism," "the robberyof the century-,'' "the corruption and cronycapitalism epitomized by Boris Berezov-sky," and so on. But Klebnikov also worksagainst himself, showing in some of hisbook's best passages the extraordinarydegree to which shady market practicesbecame widespread already in the Sovietperiod. He also weaves a discussion of thepre-oligarch patterns of oligarch behav-ior: the channels of secret financing forforeign Communist parties, the KGB shellcompanies and banks in offshore loca-tions, the foreign trade contracts rigged toevade international laws, the old tax treatywith Cyprus permitting KGB money laun-dering operations, and the covert opera-tions windfalls derived from secret sales ofSoviet timber and oil abroad at worldprices. What his book superbly demon-

34 : OCTOBER 9, 2000

strates, but does not argue, is that, despitethe many levels of discontinuity beforeand after the collapse of the Soviet Union,the crookedness and breakdown of the oldand the crookedness and breakdown ofthe new are of a piece.

At the same time Klebnikov missesthe extent to which Berezovsl^ (alongwith Vladimir Putin) was a product ofunsuccesstlil Soviet-era economic poli-cies. In 1965, Prime Minister AiekseiKosygin tried to introduce greater flexi-bility for enterprises and other innova-tions to overcome sluggishness, but theinvasion of Czechoslova-kia three years laterundercut the will forexperimentation. Instead,in the 1970s and 1980s,the Kremlin placed a bigbet on the computeri-zation of production andplanning, and on tbeacquisition of Westerntechnolog>', despite ColdWar restrictions on trans-fers. Putin's KGB col-leagues in East Germanyset up front companiesand conducted remark-ably successfiil industrialespionage. Completely in-dependent of this, Bere-zovsky worked on makingSoviet indu.strial processesmore efficient.

Just as very few of theKGB's numerous acqui-sitions made it into lum-bering Soviet enterprises,so computerization failedto take off. By the 1970s,close to 100 pereent ofAmerican firms with moretban 500 employees hadmainframe computers. Inthe Soviet Union, onlyone-third of the equiva-lent enterprises did. Bythe 1980s, the SovietUnion had 200,000

to produce a lousy car that it took a U.S. orJapanese factory to produce a good one."Yet one person's white elepbant is anotherperson's fountain of gold. In May 1989,when Mikhail (iorbachev revived andexpanded some of Kosygin's measures,legalizing small capitalist-like enterprises,Berezovsky formed a "joint venture" withthe Italian firm Logo Systems in Turinand the general director of AvtoVaz. Jointventures were meant to eneourage foreigninvestment and technology transfers, forwhich they received tax advantages andcould transfer profits abroad. They be-

Boris Berezovsky by Vint Lawrence for The New Republic

the population's demand for tbe cheapcars knew no bounds. It was by suchmeans that "red directors" and their asso-ciates "privatized" and stripped tbe assetsof state property across eleven time zones.Tbis happened long before anyone fi'omHarvard or Wasbington arrived to adxisethe "young reformers" about privatization.Conveniently, there was no worry tbatwithout the revenue side (auto sales) thecost side (auto production) would bringon insolvency at AvtoVaz, since govern-ments continued to issue Soviet-stylecredits to tbe giant employer, or simply

allowed it not to pay itseleetrieity bills.

Berezovsky parlayed anobscure joint venture tosell software into thecountry's most extensivenetwork of car dealer-ships, wbieh accountedfor 10 percent of nationalsales. Tbis alchemy re-quired more than con-nections to a red directorand Moscow officials, andmore than a talent forrudimentary flini tlam.The early 1990s in Russiawas a time when Soviet-era criminals came upfrom the underground,aping the gangsters inpirated Ainerican videos,riding Kalashnikov-

stuffed Land Cruiserswithout license plates,and launching grenadeattacks to expand "marketshare." Cash auto saleswere especially violent.For security' and enforce-ment, in the absence of aeivil service, and a reliablepolice and judicial system,Berezovsky appears tohave employed a privatearmy of Chechens. By1993, tbey were besiegedin a "'mob" turf war by

microcomputers, while the United Stateshad 25 million—a number that was aboutto sk\Toeket. Tbe bet on "perfecting" theplanned economy lost. Berezovsky, likePutin, was part of the debris.

Here Klebnikov picks up the stor\-noting tbat one of Berezovsky's responsi-bilities involved consulting for the Sov-iet automaker A\toVaz, which had beenbuilt in the 1960s by Fiat. AvtoVaz was aSoviet showease—in other words, a mon-ument to monumentalism. It made morecars tban any otber factory in the world,witb an assembly line a full mile and aquarter long. Klebnikov remarks tbat "ittook AvtoVaz thirty times the man-bours

eame an ideal legal instrument for a time-honored Soviet practice: free use of theresources of state companies for privategain.

As the planned economy imploded,Berezovslw, like tens of thousands of oth-ers, was vigorously rearranging the pieces.His new company, LogoVaz, was sup-posed to supply automation software, butit became instead a middleman for sellingAvtoVaz cars. The factory, like innumer-able post-Soviet enterprises whose bilk-ing expanded, was selling its products,Lada jalopies and Niva Jeeps, to Bere-zovsk>' and his partner, the carmaker'sgeneral director, at a loss—even though

Russian gangs. On June 7, 1994, as Bere-zovsky's armored Mercedes 600 ambleddown a Moscow street, a remote controlbomb detonated. It was the capital's mostpowerful explosion (in a highly competi-tive year). "Berezovsky stumbled out ofhis car, his clothes smoldering," Klebnikovwrites. "His bums were severe, requiringmonths of treatment in a Swiss clinic." Hisbodyguard lo.st an eye. His driver wasdecapitated.

It eomes as no surprise, perhaps, thatBerezovsky had already sought to diver-sify. Back in 1991, he had ditched hisItalian software partner Logo systems,reineorporating LogoVaz as a joint ven-

THE NEW REPUBLIC : OCTOBER 9, 2000 : 35

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ture with tbe Swiss trading firm Andre &Cie and the all-important carmaker Avto-Vaz. The new LogoVaz obtained a privi-leged export license from the Ministry ofForeign Trade, signed by tbe ministerP>otr Aven (today a top businessmanassociated with Putin). Domestic pricesfor oil, aluminum, and strategic rawmaterials had not been liberalized, andBerezovsky', like many otbers with theirexport licenses in hand, sold them abroadat world prices. Tbe sizeable differentialsbrought in really big dough, and Bere-zovsky acquired choice spreads in Mos-cow, London, and southern France. WbenpvTamid schemes emerged as the nextfrontier, he got a piece of tbat action, too—in partnership, again, with the director ofA\toVaz, as well as with Alexander Volo-shin, who later became bead of the presi-dential administration at the end of BorisYeltsin's second term, and retains thatposition under Putin.

A LL OF THIS is well known. Kleb-nikov's contribution lies in expos-ing Berezovsky's next move. When

the Soviet-era airline, Aeroflot, was par-tially privatized—49 percent went toworkers and managers, wbile 51 percentremained in state bands—Berezovskymanaged to install his own people fromLogoVaz to run the business on behalf ofthe state's controlling packet. He also setup a Swiss company called Andava, inpartnership with bis Aeroflot manager,to handle the airline's billing and foreignbanking operations. Andava squeezedAerofiot for eommissions, but accordingto Klebnikov it "performed no task thatAeroflot could not perform itself."

Klebnikov should know: he visitedAndava and a related company in Lau-sanne, and found few employees and littleactivity. Despite huge operating profits, hewrites, the airline was losing money andits planes were being impounded for fail-ure to pay for leasing. Klebnikov showsthat Aeroflot paid usurious fees not justto Andava, but also to a string of compa-nies, which sbared tbe same managers,bankers, accountants, and, presumably,owner. Berezovsky bimself once braggedto Russia's leading newspaper Kommer-scint—-which be later bought, with thehelp of a front man—that he intended to"privatize" the profits of Russia's majorairline. Klebnikov broke tbe Andava storyin Forbes in early 1997, and it was pickedup in the Russian and Swiss press. A crim-inal investigation, alleging $200 millionto $300 million in illegal transfers, waslaunched.

In March 1997. however, Boris Yelt-sin's son-in-law, Valer\' Okulov, arrived asAerofiot's new general director, and notlong thereafter tbe airline was exempted

from tbe currency repatriation rules of tbeRussian Central Bank. Tbis, presumably,was done to oficr retroactive protectionfrom cbarges of misdirecting Aeroflotmoney. In 1999, tbe offiees of Aerofiot,Andava, and otber companies in Russiaand Switzerland were raided, Okulov firedall LogoVaz people, and Berezovsky lostwbatever control he had over Aeroflot'scash flow. A warrant was issued for hisarrest—the first and only in his heeticcareer—and then quickly rescinded. Heclaims to have long ago severed bis con-nections to the Swiss-based companiesunder investigation. Tbe case remainsopen.

How did an auto dealer and commodi-ties trader who was almost killed by agangland bomb come to know a son-in-law of tbe Russian president? Klebnikovrehearses the familiar story, told byYeltsin's intimate and bodyguard, Alek-sandr Korzbakov, of bow the president'sghostwriter and surrogate son ValentinYumashev brought Berezozvskv' into tbeKremlin on the pretext of publishingYeltsins second memoir. (This was thememoir that was designed to explain whyhe had to bomb tbe mutinous parliamentin October 1993.) An important support-ing reference from the well-known Avto-Vaz general director—whom Yeltsin hadconsidered for prime minister in 1992—helped to overcome any hesitancy abouttbe then obscure Berezovsky. He broughtout the book quickly and handsomely,depositing "royalties" in a London bankaccount for the president, or deliveringbricks of casb ("from book sales") direetlyto tbe Kremlin.

As a reward, Berezovsl^ became amember of tbe Presidential Tennis Club,the center of court societ>'. One memberof the club, Korzhakov, who ran the Krem-lin while Yeltsin lay in hospital or moodilydisappeared, became a special target ofBerezovsky's attention. The car dealer alsobefiiended Tanya Dyachenko, Yeltsin'sfavorite daughter, on whom he bestowed aNiva ofl'-roader and tben a Chevrolet.When Berezovsky began bragging abouthis tight links with "the family," long-timeinsiders became afraid to cross him. Tbiswas the information specialist's method:the more he talked up his eonnections, themore power be began to exercise in prac-tice. It was just a matter of time before berealized tbat he needed his own media.

n.

EVEN THOUGH Channel 1 of Russ-ian state television reached onehundred and eight>' million poten-

tial viewers throughout the fomier SovietUnion, a result of thirty years of invest-ment, few people seem to bave under-

stood its power and its importance. Usinghis point man Badri Patarkatsishvili, anall-purpose fixer who had worked in theauto repair business in Georgia before1991, Berezovsky's LogoVaz got a piece ofChannel l's advertising sales, which werehandled by Sergei Lisovsl^. Tben Bere-zovsky began lobbying Korzbakov, and onoccasion Yeltsin, to privatize the station,promising, evidently, that it would be thePresident's station and repel the attacksagainst him in other media.

But someone else had already raised theidea of privatizing Channel 1: Vlad List-yev, a distinguished producer and proha-bly the eountr;''s most popular TV host. Toget the network out from under the state,Listyev tried to enlist Berezovsky's belp.Instead Berezovskv' helped himself. Inlate 1994, the Kremlin announced thecreation of a new company called ORT(Russian Public Television), in whieh itsold a 49 percent stake. There was no auc-tion, of course, and tbe tycoon put upsome chump change for bis acknowledged8 pereent stake, doling out tbe other 41percent of private shares to surrogates.But Listyev battled to retain control. OnMareh 1,1995, be was found on his apart-ment stairwell landing, shot in the head.

In the completely unregulated Repub-lican paradise that is Russia, being calleda gonif is perhaps not the most sting-ing indictment. No, the stinger of Kleb-nikov's book is tbe Listyev murder. Andyet be can marshal only circumstantialspeculation and innuendo. At the book'soutset, Klebnikov announces bis inten-tion to be as conservative as possible inpiecing together "tbe fragments of truth"from interviews and rumors, though hewarns that it is necessary' to "bridge thegaps witb assertions." 'As I looked intoBerezovsky's meteoric career," he begins,"I discovered a history replete witb bank-rupt companies and violent deaths." Hesoon adds, however, tbat "there is no evi-dence that Berezovsky was responsible tbrany of the deaths."

SUCH IS THE challenge of tbisprosecutorial book. To conneetBerezovsky to the most grisly events,

Klebnikov quotes the tycoon's publisheddenials. To illustrate Berezovskys profit-able commodities trading, Klebnikov de-scribes another eompany. After a long setpiece about a corrupt aluminum dealernamed Mare Rich, Klebnikov writes tbat"there is no evidence that Berezovsky everdid busine.ss witb Marc Ricb or even methim." Then wby, in a book on Berezovsl^,mention Rieh, and link bim to Berezovsky,even witb a denial? "It is not impossible,"Klebnikov explains in a footnote, "thatLogoVaz was fronting for Marc Rich."

Many times Klebnikov repeats Korzba-

36 : OCTOBER 9, 2000

kov's allegation tbat Berezovsky "beggedhim" repeatedly to kill another oligarch,Vladimir Gusinsky, apparently to softentbe reader for the coming Listyev murdersuspicions. Only late in tbe text do welearn tbat Korzbakov's allegation emergedas part of a "sleaze war" in tbe autumnof 1996. Klebnikov's information aboutBerezovsky being a suspect in the Listyevmurder comes from an anonymous sourcein the Moscow city vice squad—wbichreports to Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, a closeassociate of Gusinsky, who is Berezovsky'sareh-enemy.

Klebnikov empbasizes that right afterthe murder, detectives "swarmed" I^go-Vaz headquarters. With Yeltsin out oftown, Berezovsky went to Korzhakov andmade a video appeal to the President,arguing that the murder was a setup ofBerezovsky" to barm the president. Kleb-nikov reprints a purported transcript ofthe video from the Russian press, andasserts that Korzbakov protected Bere-zovsky. (Tbe men in cbarge of the investi-gation were fired: they worked for the cityand Mayor Luzhkov, wbo was tben oneof Korzhakov's prime targets.) Berezov-sky h;is denied involvement, in an inter-view with Klebnikov and elsewhere. Tbeauthor notes tbat investigators also ques-tioned Lisovsky. Listyev had announcedhis intention to break Lisovsky's monop-oly on allocating advertising sales on Feb-ruary 20, 1995, eight days before beingkilled. The murder has never been solved.Berezovsky came to control the network.

To recap, Berezovsky paid perhaps afew million bucks for his lucrative Avto-Vaz car dealership, and nothing for hiscontrol over Aeroflot's nifty cash flow, and$320,000 for bis minority ownership andfiill control of the country's dominant TVnetwork. And when his pyramid schemewent bust, he walked away unscathed,witb around $50 million. (On Wall Street,he would be feted as a genius.) Next cameoil. .lust before tbe sleaze privatizationsof 1995-1996 were scbeduled to close, anew eompany, Sibneft or Siberian Oil,appeared out of nowhere; and with therationale that the "president's" TV net-work (Channel 1) needed cash, Korzhakovhelped guide Sibneft to Berezovsky andhis partner Roman Abramo\ich, an oiltrader and close as.sociate of LeonidDyachenko, the President's son-in-law.They paid about $100 million, after some-one else's bid of $170 million was "disqual-ified."

Most recently. Berezovsky and Abram*ovicb also appear to bave acquired amajor stake in the aluminum smeltingbusiness. Klebnikov writes about Bere-zovsky's "initiative" in 1999 to take overthe aluminum business; but insiders saythat the deal was tbe work of Gazprom's

chairman, Rem Vyakhirev, who had beenfigbting over aluminum plants with Ana-toly Chubais, the head of the UnitedEnergy power monopoly, a major Gaz-prom eustomer (and deadbeat). Vyakbi-rev, whose job Berezovsky bad once eon-nived to take, brought in Berezovsky andAbramovich to undercut Chubais, underthe ancient principle that the enemy of myenemy is a useful tool for screwing myenemy.

Cars, commodities trading, airline rev-enues, oil, aluminum: add it up, andpretty soon it begins to sound like money.And it was. But it was also a lot of noise.Have Berezovsky's dimensions ever reallyapproached the big, swinging depictionin the press? Even Klebnikov acknowl-

edges that Berezovsky was far from Rus-sia's biggest commodities trader. He wasindeed "only one of a score of new busi-ness magnates," and "by no means thewealthiest."

Consider also that in 1995 the suppos-edly all-powerftil tycoon lost his eontractto be the dealer for AvtoVaz. Wbile Bere-zovsky's companies were bandling Aero-flot's perfectly respectable cash stream,Klebnikov could bave noted that theother tycoons' private banks were manag-ing the billion-dollar superfiands of tbeFinance Ministry: state customs dutiesand national tax receipts. It would havebeen wortb mentioning, too, that Berezov-sky only accidentally backed into Aero-fiot. Gusinsky had secured the Aeroflot

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account, as a government decree an-nounced, but then an expose—in one ofGusinsl^s newspapers!—about an "in-centive" (free shares in a Siberian tin fac-tory paid to the Kremlin point man on thedeal) caused a reversal of the decision. Bethat as it may, Berezovsky eventually losthis grip on Aeroflot, as on AvtoVaz. Andduring the giveaway privatizations, otherplayers acquired much bigger companies,especially in oil. True, Berezovsky waslater handed a major share of Russia'svaluable aluminum production, but onlyafter having been rebuffed trying to grabthe real prize, gas. In .sum: the editors atForbes, which once estimated Berezovsky'snet worth at $3 billion, do not bother withan estimate anymore.

HI.

A LL THAT LOOTING, and late in thebook Klebnikov reveals that Bere-zovskj' "was perpetually strapped

for cash." Hows that? Sure, his expenseson the villas, the private plane, the chil-dren's boarding schools, the security, thecompromising dossiers, the politicians,and so on, were substantial—but the "god-father of godfathers" strapped for cash?Klebnikov does not explain. I would sug-gest that Berez()vsk\''s multifarious—andoften disorganized ventures leaked moneylike a sieve. In the Aeroflot shenanigans,Klebnikov implies that all the skimmedcash went to the top gny, but Berezovsky's"people" were no doubt taking substantialcuts for themselves up and down the line.The same goes for the oil business, andthe relationship with Abramovieh, whoseapparent looting of Sibneft Klebnikovmentions but fails to assess adequately. Asfor Berezovsky's appropriation of hugesums associated with Yeltsin's re-electioncampaign in 1996, Klebnikov, citing em-bezzlement estimates of between $200million and $300 million, does not ex-plain how many people had access to themoney stream, and who stole from whom.Within the looting, there was looting.

Anyone who has spent time observingBerezovsl^ from the inside, the peoplehe receives, the phone calls, the brain-storming sessions, can see that he is notespecially focused on the details of busi-ness. Hi.s operation, rim out of the oldSmirnoff mansion, which he refurbishedand renamed LogoVaz Honse, resembles aRussian novelist's depiction of life on anobleman's estate, with concentric circlesof favorites, "hunting" partners, and lack-eys, as well as musicians, painters, actors,and other sponges. Wherever Berezovsky,known as "Borya," moves in, they move inright behind him, considering anythingthat they encounter theirs for the taking.

The "baron," who busies himself with

38 : OCTOBER 9, 2000

grand strategies, complex intrignes, andsocializing—ultimately they are all thesame thing—has neither the steady tem-perament nor the steady technique to dis-cipline the moveable kleptocratic feast.He knows it, and they know it. They payhim with flattery, and with the implemen-tation of directives or initiatives, and insome cases viith genuine talent. Whatkeeps the whole flotsam afloat is hisdelight in hosting the endless party, inproper Russian style, as well as his shrewdintelligence and his engaging sociability,his access to the court and layers of gov-ernment, and his spactacular skill at pro-jecting an image.

I N THE END, it all comes down to in-formation. Berezovsky, with Korzha-kov's assistance, is alleged to have set

up a private electronic eavesdroppingfirm, which relied on KGB expertise andstate-of-the-art technology, and gatheredmaterial for blackmail. As Deputy Secre-tary nnder the president of the SecurityCouncil, and later as Executive Secretaryof the CIS, Berezovsky made endlesshigh-level contacts, picking up cell phonenumbers throughout the central and pro-vincial bureaucracy and the former Sovietrepublics. In the corridors and the dachasof the political and propertied class, in theChechen hills, or among the numerousjournalists whom Berezovsky employs orsupports, ingratiators came to understandthat the quiekest way to his good graces,and his money, was to call him with the lat-est scoop, whatever he learned of before apublic announcement he would rush toclaim as his own idea, and the media,including those he does not own, wouldtake his assertions of patrimony at facevalue, flattering his vanit\' and increasingtheir viewership or the circulation.

Only the tiniest number of people hasseen all the way behind the curtain. Oneis Sergei Kiriyenko, the wunderkind cho-sen (briefly) by Yeltsin as prime ministerbetween the long-serving gas king Cher-nomyrdin and the academic-diplomatPrimakov. Kiriyenko (a.k.a. Bambi) de-mystified the Berezovsky- phenomenon forKlebnikov. "After spending five monthsat my job," the flred prime minister toldthe author,

I got the impression that all the storiesthat Berezovsky tells about his ability toinfluence the presid(;nt directly are purefiction. Berezovsky is able to project ademonic image quite brilliantly. He doesthis thanks to the fact that he has accessto good information and as soon as hefinds out that someone, somewhere, istrying to do something, he immediatelyappears in public with a similar sugges-tion, so that the next day, everyone will

think that it was done hecause Bere-st^ mentioned it.

Here was the Eureka moment for Kleb-nikov; but he rolls right over it. In thepages that follow, he goes on to discussBerezovsky's promotion and removal ofprime ministers, without adducing anyevidence tor these colorfiil claims, thoughhe does pause to concede that Berezovskydid not control the government "com-pletely." In Klebnikov's account, nothing isbeyond the evil genins, not "mastemiind-[ing] two successful presidential elections(in 1996 and 2000)" and placing "his cho-sen candidate on the throne," not instigat-ing the Second Chechen War. The tycoonis made to appear ubiquitous and omni-potent, just as he would like it to appear.

CHRYSTIA EREELAND DOES nOtshare Klebnikovs grasp of theSoviet inheritance in coiTuption or

gangsterism, but as the former Moscowbureau chief of the Financial Times sheenjoyed access to several dozen top play-ers, and by effective juxtapositions shepunctures their individual puffery. In thecase of Berezovsky; for example, she showsin her book that although some meetingsof the Yeltsin re-election effort in 1996took place at LogoVaz Honse, a great manypeople helped to organize the campaign,above all Anatoly Chubais and Igor Mal-ashenko. (Berezovsky himself once toldKomnier.sant that the key was bringing thepresidents younger daughter Tanya intothe team, and opening a direct channel tothe reclusive president, and that this hadbeen Valentin Yumashev's idea.)

Of course, whatever the work of politi-cal operatives and the media manipula-tion, tens of millions of educated Russianswent to the polls, and the candidates wholost were poor campaigners with circum-scribed appeal. To guard against losingsight of a country while illuminating theworld of "the oligarchs," Freeland followsher high-jinks narratives of scams andcrashes with "working family" interviews.Her account of the falling-ins and falling-outs among the high and whining exhi-bits a keen appreciation of the interplaybetween "oligarch" back-stabbing and co-dependency. By contrast, her adherence tothe fiction of "young reformers," whom shecalls "McKinsey Revolutionaries," intro-duces the air of a morality play; but thischaracterization is falsified by her ownnarrative, let alone by what she neglects toreport, such as the shifty Chubais reign atthe United Power monopoly. Some read-ers may also feel that even as Freelanddiminishes Berezovsky- and captures thestudied duplicity of the "blue blood" oli-garch Vladimir Potanin, she is perhapsless exacting with Vladimir Gusinsky.

Gusinsky, to make a long and brutishstory short, is a Soviet-era black markethustler (jeans, New Age copper bracelets),gypsy cab driver, and youth festival im-presario who, during perestroika, foundedMOST, a real estate and construction firmthat grew fat from city hall contractsunder Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and really fatafter MOST 'S accounting department be-came a bank to manage vast public moneyfrom Moscow's municipal accounts. Thiswas the basic enrichment scheme thatcreated all the oligarchs, and Gusinskypioneered it. Gusinsky s easier time withFreeland may result less from svTiipathythan from sources. Rather than rely on themedia echo chamber of self-promotionand denunciation by Berezovsky andGusinsky, she cross-examines a viide andvoluble circle, but Korzhakov adds a wildcard: he turned against Berezovsl^, butLuzhkov and Gusinsky remain fast allies,leaving us with considerably less first-hand dirt on "the Groose."

IV.

U LTIMATELY, ALL THE fi.lSS SUr-rounding Berezovsky and Gusin-sky arises not because they epito-

mize crony capitalism—the upper tenpercent of Russia's 145 million people dothat—but because they control the coun-try's top two television stations, ORTand NTV. The eye-popping story of NTV(Independent Television) has never heenpresented systematically, though Free-land and Klebnikov tell parts of it, as didDavid Remnick in Resurrection and EllenMickiewicz in Changing ChanneU. It is atale of parallel plots, fantastic fortunes,skilled journalism, hyper-commercialism,and crashing overdue debt. Freedom ofthe press, like any other right, can be sus-tained only when it is adequately andproperly financed.

NTV came about in 1993 on the initia-tive of Yevgeny Kiselyov, host of Wrap-Up, the popular Sunday night franchise onChannel 1 (the future' ORT), and Mala-shenko, an erstwhile think tank analystand Gorbachev aide, and latterly a state TVexecutive. The boss at the state channeldrove these two talents to establish theirown production company, for which theysought backing from Gusinsky, who sug-gested doing a vi'hole network that hewould finance. Initially, NTV got permis-sion to broadcast a few hours on theregional St. Petersburg channel, also avail-able to viewers in Moscow. During Yelt-sin's \aolent clash with parliament in1993, the infant network supported thepresident and began lobbying for theright to broadcast on the more substantialChannel 4.

The "entrepreneurs" appeared to obtain

their prize, but then the decree mysteri-ously "got lost." By way of explanation,Klebnikov points to jealous TV producers,who somehow managed to block a presi-dential directive but capitulated whenGusinsky threatened to stage a car acci-dent—a piece of entertaining slander putout hy Berezovsky. Freeland has the realstory: Kiselyov and Malashenko, makingthe rounds, accidentally discovered thatYeltsin's tennis coach, who kept a Kremlinoffice, was eyeing Channel 4 for an all-sports network. When assured that NTVwould have extensive sports program-ming, he stepped aside. The elated duopaid a licensing fee that was all licenseand no fee, for one of only a handful ofnational TV stations.

Klebnikov aptly describes NTV's earlyprogramming—during the six prime timehours on what had been the country'seducational channel—as "pornography,horror, and gore (even hy American stan-dards)." He also observes that the fledg-ling venture developed lively and popularnews programs. These came in handywhen it lucked into the graesome FirstChechen War of 1994-1996, which asMickiewicz recounts, boosted ratings"suddenly and substantially." NTV hadreporters on the frontline, gave airtime tothe Chechen side, and showed images thatexposed official lies and the coverage onChannel 1. Korzhakov and others in theKremlin went berserk. With its licenseat stake, NTV became more cautious in1995, as Freeland notes, broadcastingsome government statements on the warthat its producers knew to he false.

Still, it continued to let the images ofdisorganized slaughter speak for them-selves. In just two years, NTV emerged as aforce to be reckoned with on the Russianscene. It was largely in response to NTV'scoverage of Chechnya that President Yelt-sin and Korzhakov decided to cede con-trol of ORT to a jealous Berezovsky. "Por-traying Gusinsky as a menace," Freelandwrites, "helped to enhance Berezozvsk>''sown power." Indeed. Yet in a perverse way,the establishment of ORT may also havehelped save NTV, for it made license revo-cation seem less urgent. More importantlyfor the new network, in March, 1996 MaJ-ashenko signed on as chief media opera-tive for the Yeltsin re-election campaign.NTV collaborated out of a mixture of con-viction and self-interest: it opposed theCommunist candidate for president, andit sought the rights to Channel 4's entirebroadcast day. "We understood," Mala-shenko told Freeland, "that if Yeltsin wonthe elections, then we would get that chan-nel." In the fall, afrer the electoral victory,NTV did get the extended hours, doublingits airtime. Russia now had not one buttwo Rupert Murdochs.

M ALASHENKO TOLD David Rem-nick, v^ithout elaborating, "thattelevision turned out to be an

'incredibly profitable' business." That is amysterious statement. The entire televi-sion advertising market in Russia is esti-mated at no more than $200 million,which is not enough to operate NTV andORT, let alone the full spectrum of sta-tions. Whatever its political value, tele-vision in Russia certainly looks like aninvitation to financial bankruptcy. NTVhas survived only because the gas monop-oly, in which the government is the largestshareholder, made a substantial invest-ment in the station, in exchange for a 30percent stake—which has grovm to nearlyhalf as Gazprom extended "loans" to NTVthat were pledged against shares and areunpaid. ORT, which is 51 percent state-owned and is therefore supposed toreceive federal budget financing, is inroughly the same boat: in the spring of1996, according to Mickiewicz, it receivedjust $30 million of the $220 million nec-essary to cover operating expenses fromthe govemment. Berezovsky as minorityowner may have supplied some funding,but unpaid debts accumulated.

But in a sense Malashenko was right.People in Russian television have beenmaking very good money. Mickiewiczwrites of "kickbacks and payola determin-ing whose songs were played, whose firmwas covered as a news item," and of Dumapoliticians looking for coverage who mustpay their way on the box. Elections areEl Dorado for the networks. (Sound famil-iar?) One executive told Mickiewicz in1993 that "some 82 percent of all televi-sion airtime had been sold, or 'ordered' byinterested parties," though she concedesthat over time the extent of camouflagedinfomercials "was extremely difficult toidentify." Ofren, Mickiewicz notes, "it wasthe individual correspondent, not thechannel, who sold [the option of becom-ingj news stories." At NTV, the processmay be more organized, or more hierar-chical. At the same time, according topeople with direct experience, rates forplanting a two-minute "news" piece onNTV have declined over the years fromaround $30,000 to $10,000. Otherstations, such as the fiilly private TV-e—acquired by Berezovsky when its co-founder, CNN, pulled out—have taken totracking down victims of companies thatpaid for "news stories" shown on NTV toadvance their interests.

The opportunity to become the subjectof a positive feature or to defame one's ene-mies, all in the guise of news, is forsale to "sponsors" on both Russia's mainnetworks, but the level of professionalismon NTV is superior, and up to now it hasprovided far more of a counterweight

THE NEW REPUBLIC : OCTOBER 9, 2000 : 39

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to the government. Folloviing the briefarrest of Gusinsky in June, which incon-gruously transformed him into a martyr,the Kremlin pressured NTV s sugardaddy,Gazprom, a partially state-ovnied com-pany, to use the networks massive out-standing debt to force an ownershiptransfer. After releasing Gusinsky, whofled and remains abroad, the Kremlinpushed through the appointment of itsown heavy, and one-time Gusinsky casu-alty, as chief of a new gas monopoly sub-sidiary, called Gazprom Media, which hastaken eharge of NTV forfeiture "negotia-tions," in tandem viith the state prosecu-tor. Over at debt-ridden ORT, not longago, Putin's Kremlin renewed Berezov-sk '̂'s operating license—bnt more recentlyhe, too, was served with an ultimatum torelinquish his 49 percent stake or facecriminal charges. Future control over bothORT and NTV remains unclear, and in thebalance hangs the fate of both Berezovskyand Gusinsky as "oligarchs." What doesnot hang in the balance is the fate of Rns-sia, whose daily life and far-flung regionsare almost invisible on the Moscow-based"national" networks.

O UTRAGED AT WHAT he sees inRussia, Klebnikov thinks that hehas the answer. Even though

much of what appears in his book hasnothing to do with Boris Berezovsky,Klebnikov relentlessly insists upon thetycoon's centrality with such hyperboleas "he hijacked the state." But this mis-takes symptom for disease. The Russianstate consists of millions of central andprovincial officials, who are mostly con-trolled by no one, and certainly not byPresident Putin. This disarray in the stateinhibits the establishment of either aneffective regulatory civil service or aneffective dictatorship (let alone a "retumto totalitarianism"). This is also whatallows Berezovsl^—and many, many oth-ers at various levels—to poach and to "pri-vatize" select officials, systematically oron a one-time basis. If there really were aRussian state to hijack, Berezovsky wouldnot exist as a phenomenon whose sig-nificance virtually everyone (not least inWashington) loves to inflate.

Freeland, who offers a rounder andsubtler criticism of the oligarchs, is skep-tical that Putin can "discipline" or sweepthem away, popular as such a step wouldbe domestically and internationally. Theproblem extends beyond specific indi-viduals, wbo would simply be replaced.Reaching for the big picture, Freelandcompares Russia to an heiress consumingher inheritance. "After a decade of almostno investment," she concludes, Russia'sSoviet-era infrastructure "is beginning todecay." Beginning?

Tragically, it required a Russian sub-marine to blow itself up, leaving its crewat the ocean floor, beyond rescue by theirown navy, for the world to rediscover thebanaJ fact that the Soviet Union has stillnot finished collapsing, and that Vladi-mir Putin is still in some ways a careermid-level official with uncertain politicalinstincts and with more problems thanpower. And then the Promethean Soviet-era television tower incurred a damagingfire, and the Russian president, who wassupposed to arrest the decline, howledat the dilapidated state of the country'sinfrastructure, and the need to do some-

thing. He had spent nearly a year sortingout a civil war among the bloated mili-tary brass over the direction of militaryreforms, finally announcing that troopstrength would be cnt from 1.2 million to800,000, even tbongh the mobilizationfor the Second (and ongoing) ChechenWar produced well under 100,000,gmnts so that mercenaries bad to behired. Putin did win a \ictory when theDuma passed a flat tax, reducing tax rates.Now if only he could reduce Russia's armyof tax collectors, who calculate their ovm"tax" rates, and often collect for them-selves. •

The Art of theTemporaryBy ADAM K I R S C H

Collected Poems in Englishby Joseph Brodskyedited by Ann Kjellberg(Fat-rar, Straus & Giroux, 540 pp., $30)

JOSEPH BRODSKY, who died in1996 at the terribly early age of55, now enjoys at least threeposthumous lives. First, and byfar most important, is the Russ-

ian poet who was frequently called thebest poet of his generation, the heir toAkhmatova, Mandelstam, and Tsvetaeva.This body of work is inaccessible to mostAmerican readers, this writer included,but Brodsky himself saw it as the heart ofhis achievement. In 1987, after he receivedthe Nobel Prize, an interviewer asked himif he had won as an American poet ofRussian origin or a Russian poet livingin America, and he firmly replied: "ARussian poet, an English essayist, and, ofconrse, an American citizen."

Brodsky's second legacy is his uniquelypassionate and humanistic defense ofpoetry, made in the face of Soviet repres-sion and American indifference. He wasone of the few writers and thinkers in ourtime who wonld argue, without embar-rassment, that "poetr>- occupies a bigherposition than prose, and the poet, in prin-ciple, is higher than the prose wTiter"; andmore, that "literature—and poetry in par-ticular, being the highest form of locn-

ADAM KIRSCH v/rites frequently aboutpoetry for The New Republic.

tion—is, to put it bluntly, the goal of ourspecies." Brodsky even made the claim,contrary to his beloved Auden, that litera-ture is of direct moral and political benefitto its readers: "I'll just say that I believe-not empirically, aJas, but only theoreti-cally—that for someone who has read a lotof Dickens, to shoot his like in the name ofsome idea is somewhat more problematicthan for someone who has read no Dick-ens." When Brodsky made sueh asseri:ions,his audience could not easily dismissthem, because his own life was an exampleof poetry saving a soul from tyranny.

The story of that life has been told andretold, though seldom by Brodsky himself.{"For a writer to mention his penaJ experi-ences," he wTote, "is like dropping namesfor normal folk.") In his early twenties, hewas savaged in the Soviet literary pressand hauled before a Leningrad tribu-nal, which demanded: "Who included yonamong the ranks of the poets?" His reply—"No one. Who included me among theranks of human beings?"—has becomelegendary, but at the time he paid for itwith a year and a half in an Arctic laborsettlement. Prevented from publishing,Brodsky was eventually expelled from theSoviet Union in 1972, never to see bisfamily or his country again. The couragewith which he then remade his life and

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