Key Associates Yumashev Voloshin And Abramovich
Three Berezovsky Proteges: Yumashev, Voloshin, and Abramovich
Valentin Yumashev had been appointed head of the Russian Presidential
Administration in March of 1997 at the age of thirty-nine. A journalist by
training, he had by that time ghostwritten two volumes of Yeltsin’s memoirs.
It has been noted that he was “a good friend of Yeltsin’s daughter Tat’yana
D’yachenko and has close links to [then] Security Council Deputy Secretary
Boris Berezovsky. Since 1991, Yumashev has held senior posts at the
magazine Ogonek, which is partly financed by Berezovsky’s Logovaz
empire.”
In December of 1998, Yeltsin abruptly removed Yumashev from
the post of head of the presidential administration, perhaps because he had
been supporting Viktor Chernomyrdin as Yeltsin’s successor, but Yumashev
continued to remain a close advisor to the Russian president, largely due to
his ties to Tat’yana D’yachenko.32 In memoirs published in the year 2000,
Yeltsin termed D’yachenko and Yumashev, plus Aleksandr Voloshin, “the inner
circle.”
(In January of 2002, it was reported in the media that Yumashev
and D’yachenko had gotten married.34)
Journalist Elena Tregubova has reported that Yumashev began attempting to
foist on her as early as September of 1998 a version that the country was on
the edge of disaster: “The fact is,” Yumashev warned her, “that we have
received secret information from the special services that the country finds
29 Ibid., pp. 27-28.
Vitalii Tret’yakov, “Chto dal’she,” Nezavismaya gazeta, 1 June 1999.
OMRI Daily Digest, 12 March 1997. See also “Yumashev—sovsem ne Chubais,”
Kommersant, 12 March 1997.
Monitor, 7 December 1998.
Yeltsin. Midnight Diaries, p. 112.
“Tat’yana D’yachenko stala Yumashevoi,” Argumenty i fakty, 23 January 2002.
itself on the eve of mass rebellions, in essence on the verge of revolution...
Believe me, the information concerns... secret reports that have been made
to the president!”35 This, of course, sounds like advanced advertising for the
“Storm in Moscow” scenario. “Yumashev,” Tregubova adds, “could not have
imagined that a mere three months later the existence of such ‘secret
information’ would be categorically denied in a confidential chat with me by
the future president of Russia Putin, heading at that period of crisis the chief
special service of the country.”
Liliya Shevtsova has noted in her book Putin’s Russia that both Aleksandr
Voloshin and Roman Abramovich were figures “with a strange, even dubious,
past, implicated in shady dealings.”
In profiling Voloshin, the publication
Sovershenno sekretno wrote in August of 1999: “Aleksandr Stal’evich
Voloshin was born on 3 March 1956 in the city of Moscow. He graduated from
the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers in 1978... From 1986 through
1992, he worked in the market department of the All-Union Scientific-
Research Institute of Market Conditions (VNIKI). At that time, as a civil
servant, he began to provide information assistance to various organizations
in exporting motor vehicles. On a commercial basis, of course. This is where
Aleksandr Stal’evich became acquainted with Boris Abramovich Berezovsky,
the head of the automobile alliance AVVA, and subsequently became his
close business partner.”
“After getting close to Berezovsky,” the account continued, “the career of the
former engineer’s assistant took off like a supersonic jet—in November 1997
Voloshin was appointed assistant for economic questions to presidential
administration head Yumashev. On 12 September 1998, he became deputy
head of the Kremlin administration and soon held the post of head of this
department. His dream had come true—he joined the principal Family of
Russia with the rights of one of the leaders. Despite being employed in state
and other posts, Aleksandr Voloshin did not forget about commerce either
and participated in highly varied and at times highly questionable projects.”
Yeltsin’s daughter Tat’yana D’yachenko-Yumasheva paid the following effusive
tribute to Voloshin in a December 2009 blog: “I believe that Sasha is a
brilliant politician. Perhaps the strongest of those with whom I had the
fortune to work. He is bold, firm, decent [poryadochnyi] and insanely hard-
working.”
As early as May of 1999, the newspaper Kommersant was reporting that “the
real powers pulling Yeltsin’s strings and practically determining cabinet
assignments are Sibneft’ head Roman Abramovich and business magnate
35 Elena Tregubova, Baiki kremlevskogo diggera (Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2003), pp. 98-
99.
Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, p. 27.
Oleg Lur’e, “Kak zakalyalsya Stal’evich,” Sovershenno sekretno, August 1999. English
translation in Johnson’s Russia List (JRL), no. 3499, 14 September 1999. For a useful
detailed discussion of Voloshin’s business and political career, see Aleksei Makarkin,
“Lichnyi politicheskii defolt. Voloshin: politik-innovator,” Politcom.ru, December 2001.
“Bol’shaya medveditsya: Doch’ prezidenta,” Medved’, December 2009, no. 12. URL:
http://medved.magazine.ru?mode=article_view&sid=49&id=260
Boris Berezovsky, with Abramovich in the lead position, not Berezovsky.”39
The newspaper Moskovskii komsomolets made the same point, reporting in
early June that Abramovich was “the personal friend of Tat’yana Borisovna
D’yachenko, Valentin Yumashev, and Boris Berezovsky, and at his age of 33
he manages without any self-publicity the financial flows of the presidential
‘family.’ [My italics] He is its treasurer... He is alleged to have regularly paid
for the vacations of Yumashev and D’yachenko at Swiss alpine ski resorts...”
“Today,” the account went on, “rumor ascribes to Roman Abramovich the
role of principal and most aggressive ideologue of the ‘family.’ He is alleged
to be the author of the idea of a ban on the CPRF and the dissolution of the
State Duma. The idea of Lenin’s reburial with the subsequent commitment to
Moscow of troops to put down spontaneous revolts is attributed to him.”
Concerning Abramovich, Yeltsin’s daughter, Tat’yana, wrote the following in a
December 2009 blog: “He and I are friends. He is an intelligent, very
interesting, striking individual. He is an unusually decent [poryadochnyi] and
faithful person.”41
Four Other Key Family Associates
In addition to the figures mentioned by General Bordyuzha and Liliya
Shevtsova, several other individuals have been seen by commentators as
belonging, though in perhaps a less direct sense, to the Family. In his book
The Metamorphosis of Russia, Georges Sokoloff argues that Anatolii Chubais,
a former head of Yeltsin’s Russian presidential administration and, at the
time, director of the state electricity monopoly, EES, should be considered a
de facto member of the Family, since he was “present at all crucial
decisions.”42 In the Russian version of his memoirs, Yeltsin directly names
Chubais as a Family member.43 Berezovsky and Abramovich are not so
named. This reflects the fact that Yeltsin met rarely with the latter two, but,
by contrast, frequently with Chubais. Thus Yeltsin’s perception of the Family’s
membership differed somewhat from that of political observers.
Boris Berezovsky—A Fountainhead of Ideas for the Yeltsin Family
In the case of Boris Berezovsky, all of his real but beginning-to-dwindle
political influence was obtained through the intercession of D’yachenko and
Yumashev. As Berezovsky stipulated in August of 1999: “I am indeed in
contact with Tat’yana D’yachenko. I saw her ten days ago. But my last
39 RFE/RL Newsline, 27 May 1999.
Leonid Krutakov, “Man Without a Face Abramovich Emerges from the Shadows: Roman
Abramovich Has Taken Control of the Russian Budget,” Moskovskii komsomolets, 2 June
1999. Translation in JRL, no. 3324, 4 June 1999.
From an interview with Medved’ magazine: “Bol’shaya medveditsa: Doch’ prezidenta,”
Medved’, December 2009, no. 12. URL: http://medved-
magazine.ru?mode=article_view&sid=49&id=260
42 Georges Sokoloff, Metamorphose de la Russie, 1984-2004 (Paris: Fayard, 2004), pp.
549-552.
Yeltsin, Prezidentskii marafon, p. 258.
meeting with Boris Yeltsin goes back to July 1998... I myself am convinced
that Boris Yeltsin does not like me.”44 Yeltsin made roughly the same point
during an interview: “As an entrepreneur Berezovsky was rather successful
but as a politician he was not. He was nothing outstanding. Contrary to
rumors, I was never in close contact with him. He did not visit me at home,
and we did not sit at one table.”
In the course of a December 2009 blog, Tat’yana D’yachenko-Yumasheva
had the following to say about Berezovsky’s influence on her father: “The last
time Papa met with him was in 1998, when Boris Abramovich was an official,
the executive secretary of the CIS. They had no [subsequent] telephone
conversations.” She then added indignantly: “Of course there are also the
stories told by [the journalist Aleksandr] Khinshtein and those like him that
Boris Abramovich would come up to a naïve little fool, the daughter of the
president, and whisper something in her ear, and that she would then jump
up to convince her Papa to do what the bloodsucker-oligarchs demanded of
her. I will not argue with people who believe in such fables.”
Contrary to what Yumasheva-D’yachenko has asserted here, it appears that
Berezovsky may well have exerted a kind of a quasi-hypnotic hold over her.
The journal Profil’ reported in mid-September of 1999: “Boris Berezovsky in
the beginning of September tried several times to seriously speak with
Tat’yana D’yachenko, but the daughter of the president, under pressure from
her mother, avoided communications with the recent favorite.”47 Naina
Yeltsina apparently felt required to directly prohibit her daughter from holding
further meetings with the oligarch.
Asked in July 2000 by a well-known investigative journalist, Evgeniya Al’bats,
“What power did you have there [i.e., in the Family]?” Berezovsky
responded: “A purely ideological and ideational [influence]. That is, I indeed
believe that I can rather well sense what is happening, advance logical
conclusions, and, on that basis, predict the development of events... But with
regard to cadres, here I make a great many mistakes. When I begin to give
advice—place this person here or that person there—they already know that
there is no need to listen to me.”
A deputy head of Yeltsin’s presidential administration during this period, Igor’
Shabdurasulov, has essentially backed up what Berezovsky asserts. After
confirming numerous reports that it was Berezovsky who came up with the
idea for the “Unity” [Edinstvo] political party that throttled the Primakov-
Luzhkov coalition in the December 1999 parliamentary elections,
Shabdurasulov added: “The fact that he [Berezovsky] was practically the sole
person who at the beginning lobbied that idea is a fact. But, at the stage of the
realization of the project, he stood a long way from it: he did not occupy
44 Agathe Duparc, “Berezovsky Interviewed on Putin, Luzhkov,” Le Monde, 12 August
1999. English translation in JRL, no. 3439, 14 August 1999.
Lyudmila Telen’, Pokolenie Putina: Portrety-interv’yu (Moscow: Vagrius, 2004), p. 180.
Tat’yana Yumasheva, “Otvety na voprosy,” 26 December 2009. URL: http://t-
yumasheva.livejournal.com./3892.html
47 Inessa Slavutinskaya, “Glavnyi geroi: Izgnanie iz raya,” Profil’, 13 September 1999.
Evgeniya Al’bats, “Boris Berezovsky,” Izvestiya, 29 July 2000.
himself with it, did not supervise it. At the stage of the election campaign
itself some creative ideas came from him but... not at the level of maps,
plans, schemas, or the approval or rejection of certain decisions.”49 During
the course of the same interview, Shabdurasulov recalled that in July and
August of 1999 those involved in discussions concerning the creation of a
new political party had been “Valentin Yumashev, Boris Berezovsky,
Aleksandr Voloshin, and, in part, Vladislav Surkov.”
Yeltsin’s daughter, Tat’yana, made roughly the same point in a February 2010