The Membership And Influence Of The Yeltsin Family

The Membership of “The Family”

Contemporary historians are wont to begin their discussion of the Yeltsin
“Family” by citing the opinion of a retired commander of the Russian Border-
guards, General Nikolai Bordyuzha, who in early 1999 was serving both as
secretary of the Russian Security Council and as head of the Russian
Presidential Administration. Some observers believe that Yeltsin had, at least
briefly, considered making the silovik Bordyuzha his political successor.
On 19 March 1999, Bordyuzha took a telephone call from President Yeltsin
that he had the wit to tape. Later he gave a copy of this tape to his political
ally, former Russian prime minister Evgenii Primakov, for publication in the
latter’s book of memoirs, Eight Months Plus...
In the beginning of the
conversation, Yeltsin informed Bordyuzha that he had decided to separate
Bordyuzha’s two posts and was asking him to remain in the capacity of
secretary of the Security Council. Yeltsin then asked Bordyuzha for his opinion
of the proposed change. “Thank you, Boris Nikolaevich, for the proposal,”
Bordyuzha replied, “but I am forced to refuse it. If you have no objections, I
will present to you my arguments.”
“First,” Bordyuzha emphasized, “the decision is not yours, but it was imposed
on you by your daughter—[Tat’yana] D’yachenko—at the recommendation of
a group of people. The reason for this consists not in the mistakenness of
combining the two posts but in the fact that I initiated the removal of [Boris]
Berezovsky from the post of executive secretary of the CIS and declined to
take part in the campaign to discredit Primakov and his government. That
campaign was organized by D’yachenko, Abramovich, Yumashev and Mamut,
with the blessing of Berezovsky. Second, to remain at work in the Kremlin
would mean taking part in carrying out those decisions which are imposed on
you by D’yachenko, Yumashev, Abramovich, Berezovsky and Voloshin, and
many of them often bear an anti-state character or contradict the interests of
the state, and I do not want to participate in them... Having worked in the
Kremlin, I have come to understand that the country is not ruled by the
president but in the name of the president by a small group of un-
conscientious people, that it is ruled in their interests and not those of the
state.”
Yeltsin then let slip, “I had not expected that they had accumulated such
strength,” after which he inquired concerning the conditions under which
Bordyuzha would consent to stay on in both of his posts. Bordyuzha replied:
“Boris Nikolaevich, I am prepared [to stay on] but on one condition: from the
Kremlin there must today be removed your daughter—D’yachenko—
Yumashev and Voloshin, and free entry must be prohibited to Abramovich,
Mamut, and Berezovsky. In that case, I will continue to work.” At 8:00 p.m.
on the same day, Yeltsin issued a decree removing Bordyuzha from both of
his posts. Aleksandr Voloshin was named head of the Presidential
Administration, while Vladimir Putin, the then head of the FSB, also became
secretary of the Security Council.
That Bordyuzha’s harsh words to Yeltsin referred to a really existing group
has been confirmed by numerous knowledgeable Russians including other
senior figures who worked directly with Yeltsin, such as the authors of the
volume The Yeltsin Epoch. The group has been described—in a way that
cannot be completely documented but fits with many pieces of information
from a variety of sources—by a leading Russian political scientist, Liliya
Shevtsova: “In the spring of 1999,” she wrote, “Yeltsin seemed to be
considering leaving the political arena prematurely... As Yeltsin faded, he
relied even more on the people around him, most of all on his younger
daughter Tat’yana, then in her mid-thirties... In actual fact, in the last years
of Yeltsin’s second term, Tat’yana became the virtual ruler of the country...
Yeltsin’s last team, the one that prepared the Successor Project, was selected
by his daughter and her intimate friends... In the late 1990’s, Russia entered
the era of the political Family: rule by the president’s daughter and chums of
hers undistinguished by experience, brains or talent.”
“The names of Tanya’s major associates,” Shevtsova continued, “Valentin
Yumashev, Aleksandr Voloshin, Roman Abramovich—meant nothing to
anyone. Only Berezovsky, Tanya’s adviser, the leading intriguer of the tsar’s
court, was known, and only because he liked being in the spotlight. In the
later years of the Yeltsin administration, Berezovsky was crowded out by
younger people whom he had introduced to Tat’yana... like Abramovich and
Voloshin... [T]hey lost all sense of limits. They began discrediting potential
opponents and economic rivals...[T]he Family was driven mainly by greed...
Erik Kotlyar, “Mrakobesie (pod maskoi demokratii,)” Moskovskaya pravda, 15
September 1999. Zhilin and Vanin in their Novaya gazeta piece also cited Zverev as the
likely leaker.
“General ot informatsii,” Kommersant, 21 January 2000.
Brian Whtimore, “Old PR Man for New Mess,” The Moscow Times, 22 January 2000.
Epokha Yeltsina, Ocherki politicheskoi istorii (Moscow: Vagrius, 2001), p. 775.
Evgenii Primakov, Vosem’ mesyatsev plyus... (Moscow: “Mysl’” 2001), pp. 204-205.
Lilia Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, 2003), pp. 25-27.

From their position deep inside the Kremlin, this corrupt cooperative of
friends and business comrades-in-arms created a giant vacuum to suck
money out of Russia and into their own pockets.”29 It is worthwhile
underscoring Shevtsova’s key assertion that Berezovsky had by mid-1999
been “crowded out” by representatives of a younger generation whom he had
himself introduced to the president’s daughter.
Writing in the 1 June 1999 issue of Nezavisimaya gazeta, a publication
owned by Boris Berezovsky, the newspaper’s chief editor, Vitalii Tret’yakov,
distinguished three significant political clusters in the country: “The oligarchic
group of [Yurii] Luzhkov,” “the group of [Evgenii] Primakov,” and “the group
of, as it is now called, Abramovich—Berezovsky—D’yachenko—Yumashev—
Voloshin, or the Family. The first two [groups] de facto united and were able
in essence to shake the might of the Family... The Luzhkov-Primakov group
[also] concluded an unannounced temporary tactical union with the
communists for the sake of limiting the power of the Family.”
The ousting
of Primakov as prime minister in May of 1999, however, Tret’yakov added
with satisfaction, had permitted the Family “to restore the legitimacy of
Yeltsin (the source of its influence),” and “to destroy the anti-Yeltsin (anti-
Family) forces.”