#6060 #6061
[Third Issue of the Day]
#2
Berezovskiy Seen Behind Story of Yabloko Accepting His
Money To Fight Kremlin
Obshchaya Gazeta
31 January 2002
[translation for personal use only]
Article by Maksim Glinkin: "A Good Party for an
Oligarch's 'Daughter'"
Last week it finally transpired where Boris Berezovskiy, whose last television channel has been taken away from him, is laundering his millions. It turns out that the out-of-favor oligarch now has two main projects: The Chechen war and the Yabloko party. Yavlinskiy has allegedly agreed to fight Putin in Moscow using Berezovskiy's money and the separatists are fighting in the Caucasus using money from the same source. The bearings of one credit line were taken by FSB [Federal Security Service] special officers; the other supply channel was unearthed by political commentators from two of the capital's newspapers and one Internet publication.
Neither the former nor the latter are adducing any evidence and, naturally, are not disclosing their sources. The FSB is citing the secrecy of the investigation while the authors of the journalistic investigations get by without any references at all although they underpin their evidence with worldly logic. Liberal Russia, they say, does not have any political weight but it has Berezovskiy's money. On the other hand, Yabloko has a name but has run out of money. So Boris Abramovich had decided to give his rich but ignoble bride away to a poor but highbred groom. They say the proud Yavlinskiy balked initially but then recognized that a marriage of convenience is better than starvation.
Whereas the FSB's theory still has to be investigated by Interpol, the Yabloko sensation lasted for less than a day. Liberal Russia's leaders immediately stated that there could be no question of their joining Yavlinskiy's party. Yavlinskiy's party members made an analogous statement. Other Duma experts to whom our colleagues went for clarification only laughed: The news of a sudden alliance between Yavlinskiy and Berezovskiy provoked nothing but smiles from people who know anything at all about politics.
"People have been making matches for us all down the line!" Yabloko Press Secretary Yevgeniy Dillendorf laments. "When we were discussing the firing on the White House, we were called reds and exposed as being in a secret alliance with the Communists. When we did not agree to support the government version of the budget, we were repainted as 'pinkos.' Recently, literally the day before the Christmas holidays, we were accused of having sympathies with the Petersburg security officials fighting Voloshin. Moreover this was done by the very same journalist who has now thrown Yabloko into the camp of Berezovskiy's friends."
Incidentally, this is the second time over the last three years that the label of "Berezovskiy supporter" has been stuck onto the party. Using sources that were just as well informed, the press included Boris Abramovich in Yavlinskiy's party's election list in the Duma 1999 elections. Yavlinskiy's party members even had to put out a counter-slogan to disavow this "relationship": "Apples [Yabloki] do not grow on birch trees [Berezy]."
The malevolent spin doctors are probably already convinced that the more fantastical the piece of news, the easier the public will believe it. After all, Yavlinskiy and Berezovskiy have never hidden their mutual antipathy. In August, when promoting Liberal Russia, the ex-oligarch said at one press conference: "The rightists have discredited themselves, betrayed the rightist cause, and become an adjunct to the authorities and there is no faith in Yabloko." Yavlinskiy's party members have always paid Berezovskiy back in the same coin. "We have never had any contact with Berezovskiy," party Deputy Chair Sergey Mitrokhin says. "The possibility is simply ruled out. Both in light of his reputation and the extremely negative role he has played in the Russian economy and politics. Neither can there be any coalition with Liberal Russia while Berezovskiy is included in its political council."
In a word, those who launched this newspaper "canard" had no need to reckon on it flying for long. Which makes it all the more interesting to understand who started all this and why. People in Yabloko itself immediately suspected that the mudslinging was organized by someone from the SPS [Union of Right-Wing Forces]. The SPS does indeed appear in a very favorable light in the notorious articles against a backdrop of the helpless pottering of politicians from rival political structures.
Yavlinskiy's party members also know that the rightists are very resentful toward them for their criticism of Nemtsov's beloved brainchild, the plan for military reform with six-month conscription. The fact that Yabloko's main military expert, Aleksey Arbatov, spoke against the SPS's program was not enough. Yavlinskiy did not support his colleague Nemtsov at the Duma leaders' meeting with the president either. So the spreading of the rumor of a secret alliance with Berezovskiy could be interpreted as a symmetrical response to Yabloko.
The rightists, however, categorically deny any involvement in this scandal. People in the SPS office on Malaya Andronyevskaya admit that they are dissatisfied with Yabloko over the latest demarches but claim that they still count it their ally and it would perhaps not be to their advantage to sully their partner's reputation. Many people in Yabloko itself also doubted that the order for the malevolent spin-doctoring came from the friendly organization. Some supposed it was the work of Pavlovskiy's hands. A previous scandal surrounding Yabloko -- Vyacheslav Igrunov's high-profile departure with the ensuing performance of denunciation -- has also been linked to the well-known political scientist.
Losing themselves in conjectures, the Yabloko members began to conduct their own investigation. In the upshot it turned out that the order came ... from Berezovskiy himself. It is true that he originally planned to publish this version only in Gazeta.ru but the news spread quickly in journalistic circles and the result was that it surfaced in some newspapers as well. It is amusing to observe how this information changed depending on the authors' sympathies as it moved from publication to publication; the first source talks about BAB [Boris Abramovich Berezovskiy] very respectfully, whereas the other media emphasize either the criminal origins of his money or the failure of the Liberal Russia project. The result is that this action's initial objective was distorted to the point of being unrecognizable. It was a simple one: To show that even such principled politicians as Yavlinskiy are going after Berezovskiy's money. Which means Boris Abramovich is popular, his reputation is not so bad, and, most importantly, he is still capable of seriously influencing Russian political life.
There may have been another incidental aim: To cause Yabloko and the SPS to fall out. Rumors that the articles were prepared either with the direct participation or the tacit approval of the rightists began to spread almost immediately after these articles appeared. Besides, there really are people in the SPS who are dissatisfied with the alliance with Yabloko while one of the main lobbyists for getting closer to Yavlinskiy's party, Viktor Pokhmelkin, has left the SPS.
Finally, a blow was dealt to Yabloko itself, which BAB seemingly considers his main rival on the rightist oppositionist flank. But the effect could turn out to be the reverse. At any rate, the numerous scandals of last year only boosted Yavlinskiy's party's popularity. Its ranks swelled by almost double -- from 7,000 to 13,000 people over the year. This is despite the fact that the first two television channels were closed to Yabloko's leaders: They declared a boycott in revenge for the campaign to defend NTV [Independent Television] and against the importation of spent nuclear fuel. Yavlinskiy's party members may be being helped by the lack of coordination of their enemies' actions. Gagging on the television is always compensated by a large amount of PR in the newspapers.
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