The Last Time Dissidents Ran

"The last time dissidents ran to the American embassy was about fifteen years ago," I said.

"Soon they will start running again. So what do you advise?"

"I don't know, I need to find out. I'll call you back by evening our time."

1995

I had met Berezovsky five years before this. At that time, I was managing a large American scientific project in Russia. Every time I came to Moscow, I visited Boris at the "club"—the reception house of his company "Logovaz" on Novokuznetskaya Street, where "all of Moscow" crowded, and the bar offered the best red wine in town. They said it was brought from his own vineyard by Boris's closest partner—the Georgian Badri Patarkatsishvili.

Boris was interesting to me not only as one of the main protagonists of the grand drama of Russian politics of those years. I was attracted to him by the commonality of our origins. We were the same age and came from the same circle—the Moscow scientific intelligentsia. However, a quarter of a century ago, I became interested in politics and, after several years of dissident activity in the circle of A. D. Sakharov, left for America—as it seemed, the land of unlimited opportunities, to resume my scientific studies. As for Boris, he—a capable mathematician—remained in Russia and also succeeded in science. But then the revolution of 1991 occurred, and unlimited opportunities opened up—who would have thought!—in Russia. Boris became fabulously wealthy, becoming the first major importer of cars, and then an "oligarch"—a super-successful participant in the scandalous privatization auctions of the mid-90s. Berezovsky played a key role in Yeltsin's victory over the communists in '96—he organized a consortium of oligarchs who financed and managed the election campaign.

It was at this time that his conflict with the special services began. At the height of the election campaign, Yeltsin's head of security, General Korzhakov, and FSB chief Barsukov tried to stage a coup—to persuade the president to cancel the elections, dissolve the Duma, and ban the Communist Party. Boris was one of those who convinced Yeltsin to stay on the democratic path. The confrontation between the oligarchs and the generals in Yeltsin's inner circle ended with the defeat of the latter and the resignation of Korzhakov and Barsukov.

However, after Putin came to power, Boris Berezovsky's star faded from the Kremlin sky. The influence of the special services in the Kremlin increased sharply. A crackdown on press freedom began, a redistribution of the state structure—the construction of an authoritarian "vertical of power," and the war in Chechnya resumed. Boris, who was a member of the Duma, his TV channel, and several newspapers openly criticized the policies of the new president. The turning point was the "Kursk" submarine disaster. After Putin's actions during the tragedy were sharply criticized on ORT, the President demanded that Berezovsky hand over control of the channel to the Kremlin. Having received a refusal, Putin gave the command to Boris's long-time enemies—the special services—to "press" him to the full extent. By the time his night call woke me up in New York, Boris Berezovsky had become the "first political emigrant" of post-Soviet Russia.

A few hours after Boris's call, I was entering the White House office in Washington, where I had an appointment with an old acquaintance—a Russia specialist who worked as one of President Clinton's advisors on the National Security Council.

"Second floor, left corridor," a dark-skinned policeman muttered, glancing briefly at my passport.