My family has been the rock that made everything possible. I thank my brother Sergei and my parents Misha and Raya for all their unconditional love, support and care. I am indebted to Diana Hewitt for looking after me in the Welsh mountains. My biggest debt, however, is to my wife Becky, who carried the burden of this book. She unfailingly read and edited various drafts and kept the family on an even keel. I thank her for her forbearance. My children Petya, Liza and Polina gave me the strength and reason to write this book in the hope that they would one day read it. I dedicate it to Becky with love and in friendship.
Dramatis Personæ
Alexander Yakovlev, a Soviet statesman, member of the Soviet Politburo, close ally of Gorbachev and the ideologist of Perestroika and Glasnost.
Yegor Yakovlev, referred to as Yegor, journalist and editor of Moskovskie novosti, the mouthpiece of Perestroika, and briefly the head of post-Soviet television.
Alexander Bovin, the bon vivant of Russian journalism, a speechwriter for Leonid Brezhnev and an expert on foreign relations.
Otto Latsis, economist and author, a columnist for Izvestia newspaper and editor of the Kommunist journal.
Vladimir Yakovlev, the son of Yegor Yakovlev and the founder and editor of Kommersant, Russia’s first capitalist newspaper.
Maxim Sokolov, the erudite and sceptical chief political columnist at Kommersant.
Alexander Timofeevsky, an essayist and Kommersant’s in-house reviewer.
Sergei Parkhomenko, a liberal journalist and editor of Itogi magazine.
Natalia Gevorkyan, the daughter of a KGB resident, a journalist at Moskovskie novosti and Putin’s interviewer.
Veronika Kutsyllo, a young intrepid reporter at Kommersant who kept a diary about the siege of the White House.
TELEVISION
Oleg Dobrodeev, the son of a documentary film-maker, the head of news and current affairs at NTV and later the general director of the state television corporation Rossiya.
Konstantin Ernst, one of the country’s top television and film producers, the head of Channel One.
Evgeny Kiselev, TV anchor, the face of NTV Russia’s first large private television channel.
Leonid Parfenov, a style-conscious television journalist and presenter of the Namedni programme that turned him into a celebrity.
Alexander Nevzorov, a stuntman and maverick television journalist.
Sergei Dorenko, a popular television presenter and a mercenary known as the ‘TV hit man’.
Yegor Gaidar, a child of the Soviet intelligentsia, a prime minister and the author of Russian economic reforms.
Anatoly Chubais, the economist in charge of privatization and later Yeltsin’s chief of staff.
Boris Nemtsov, a governor from Nizhny Novgorod, Yeltsin’s groomed successor and deputy prime minister.
Viktor Anpilov, an archetypal Soviet proletarian, agitator and leader of the Working Russia movement.
Alexander Borodai, the son of an orthodox nationalist philosopher, a PR man helping the Kremlin with the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine.
Vladimir Gusinsky, the founder and owner of the Media Most holding, including the NTV television channel.
Boris Berezovsky, the wheeler-dealer and manipulator of Russian politics, in charge of Channel One.
Igor Malashenko, ideologue, creator and first president of the NTV television channel.
Prologue: A Silent Procession
It was after midnight on 27 February 2015. I was making final changes to this book when I learned that Boris Nemtsov, a liberal politician once groomed to be president of Russia, had been shot four times in the back on a bridge just metres away from the Kremlin.
It was the most resonant political assassination in Russia’s post-Soviet history and it did not seem real. I knew Nemtsov well – he was more than a journalistic contact. Of all the Russian politicians I kept in touch with, he was the only one I considered a friend. He was charismatic, determined, honest, unpretentious and very full of life. Now his large body lay on the wet asphalt, covered by black rubbish bags, with the cupolas of St Basil’s behind him: his was a postcard murder – continue past the cover image of this book and you would hit the spot.
Those who killed Nemtsov acted with impudence and did not expect to be arrested. When one of them was detained, he turned out to be an officer linked to the service of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s strongman and former rebel installed by Russian president Vladimir Putin to keep the territory under his thumb. Kadyrov had sworn his personal loyalty to Putin, helped annex Crimea and promptly defended the alleged killer as a ‘true patriot’.
Nemtsov’s murder marked the first anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its ‘hybrid’ war against Ukraine. Now the violence ignited by Russia over the border returned to the homeland. The war in Ukraine, stoked and fanned by the Kremlin, has not just devastated a former Soviet republic that has dared to break free from its grip. It has devastated Russia itself – its sense of decency and moral fibre. It turned hatred, xenophobia and aggression into a norm and civility into an offence.
The murder of Nemtsov was first and foremost a murder of a good man, who tried to stop the war. In the state media this has earned him the title of a national traitor and an American stooge. In the weeks before his death he was demonized by television. Hate banners carrying his image were hung on building façades with the words ‘Fifth column – aliens amongst us’.
Six days before Nemtsov’s death, I watched thousands of people – some paid, others not – marching through the heart of Moscow, bearing slogans denouncing Ukraine, the West and Russian liberals. Muscle-bound toughs representing Kadyrov bore signs proclaiming ‘Putin and Kadyrov prevent Maidan in Russia’, alongside photographs of Nemtsov identifying him as ‘the organizer of Maidan’ (‘Maidan’ had become shorthand for Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, in Kiev, the epicentre of Ukraine’s revolution).
I was born and bred in the Soviet Union and have worked for many years in Russia, but never have I seen such levels of hysteria. This was something out of a photograph or a documentary of 1930s Germany. As Nemtsov said in an interview recorded hours before his death, ‘Russia is quickly turning into a fascist state. We already have propaganda modelled on Nazi Germany’s. We also have a nucleus of assault brigades, like the [Nazi] SA.’1