Masha Gessen - The Man Without a Face

We take a large table at a restaurant that, like all the eateries in the neighborhood, is filled with protesters ordering mulled wine in an attempt to warm up. Friends and strangers are shouting the latest news across tables. Andrei is the first to read a couple of lines from a radio station’s website: “The protest is drawing to a close. A police representative has mounted the stage. He says, ‘Today we acted like the police force of a democratic country. Thank you.’ There is applause.” At our table there is a momentary silence. “This is great,” all of us start saying then, looking at one another incredulously. “This is great.” How long has it been since any of us was able to say, unequivocally, “This is great” about something happening in our city?

I leave my friends at the restaurant to return to my family at the dacha. I drive over the Big Stone Bridge—the largest bridge over the Moscow River—just as the police leave Bolotnaya Square. There are hundreds upon hundreds of them, moving along the sidewalk four and five across, the length of the bridge. For the first time that I can remember, I do not get a knot in my stomach while I look at police in riot gear. I am stuck behind an orange truck with a snowplow. It still has not snowed, so I am not sure what the truck is doing out in the street, but I notice a white balloon tied to the corner of the plow.

Protests were held today in ninety-nine cities in Russia and in front of Russian consulates and embassies in more than forty cities around the world.

In the evening, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, tells journalists that the government has no comment on the protest and promises to let them know if a comment is formulated.

A few minutes later, NTV, the television channel taken away from Vladimir Gusinsky ten years ago and eviscerated, airs an excellent report on the protest. I watch it online—it’s been years since I had a working television in the house—and I recognize something I have observed in other countries when I covered their revolutions. There comes a day when you turn on the television and the very same goons who were spouting propaganda at you yesterday, sitting in the very same studios against the very same backdrops, start speaking a human language. In this case, though, this moment gives my head an extra spin, because I can still remember these journalists before they became goons, when they last spoke human about a dozen years ago.

As I approach our dacha, it starts to snow. By morning, the countryside will be covered in white.

I am grateful to Cullen Murphy, who first suggested I write a piece about Vladimir Putin for Vanity Fair, and to my agent, Elyse Cheney, who noticed that the resulting piece wanted to become a book. My editor, Rebecca Saletan, made that book immeasurably better than it would have been without her. Many other people helped along the way, and I hope someday soon I will be able to thank them in print without fearing that such recognition might be harmful. You know who you are, and I hope you know how grateful I am. Two people cannot avoid mention, however: my friend and colleague Ilya Kolmanovsky, whose research and insights were crucial in the early stages of this project; and my partner, Darya Oreshkina, who has made me happier and more productive than I have ever been.

Page 3 a draft law on lustratsiya :The full text of the law is available at http://www.shpik.info/statya1.html. Accessed July 14, 2010.

Page 3 she learned that the KGB:Marina Katys, “Polozhitelny itog: Interview s deputatom Gosudarstvennoy Dumy, sopredsedatelem federalnoy partii Demokraticheskaya Rossiya Galinoy Starovoitovoy,” Professional , July 1, 1998. http://www.starovoitova.ru/rus/main.php?i=5&s=29. Accessed July 14, 2010.

Page 3 1991 post–failed-coup decree:Constitutional Court decision citing the decree and overturning its most important provisions. http://www.panorama.ru/ks/d9209.shtml. Accessed July 14, 2010.

Page 4 a decree forbidding protests:In fact, the ban on protests was a one-two punch: the cabinet issued a ban, and Gorbachev followed with a decree creating a special police body to enforce the ban. Both were deemed unconstitutional by the Russian government, whose authority Gorbachev, in turn, did not recognize. http://iv.garant.ru/SESSION/PILOT/main.htm. Accessed July 15, 2010.

Page 6 she immersed herself in an investigation:Andrei Tsyganov, “Seleznev dobilsya izvineniya za statyu Starovoitovoi,” Kommersant , May 14, 1999. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc-rss.aspx?DocsID=218273. Accessed July 15, 2010.

Page 14 experienced overall improvement:Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, “A Normal Country: Russia After Communism,” Journal of Economic Perspectives , vol. 19, no. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 151–74. http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/shleifer/files/normal_jep.pdf. Accessed April 30, 2011.

Page 15 importing used European cars:David Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002).

Page 15 “He was the first bureaucrat”:Author interview with Boris Berezovsky, June 2008.

Page 17 swindled Russia’s largest carmaker:Hoffman.

Page 17 acquired part of a large oil company:Whether Berezovsky was an actual owner of 25 percent of Sibneft and 49 percent of ORT, the Channel One company, is in fact unclear: as this book goes to press, a London court is trying to determine just this. What is uncontested is that he was the sole manager of the television company and drew significant income from the oil company.

Page 18 “someone who is capable of doing it”:Natalia Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov, Ot pervogo litsa: Razgovory s Vladimirom Putinym . http://archive.kremlin.ru/articles/bookchapter1.shtml. Accessed Feb. 7, 2011.

Page 20 “Chubais believed”:Tatyana Yumasheva (Dyachenko)’s blog, entry dated Feb. 6, 2010. http://t-yumasheva.livejournal.com/13320.html#cutid1. Accessed April 23, 2011.

Page 24 one hundred people died:Number of victims cited according to the Moscow City Court’s sentence in the case of A. O. Dekushev and Y. I. Krymshahalov. http://terror1999.narod.ru/sud/delokd/prigovor.html. Accessed May 5, 2011.

Page 26 the decree was also illegal:Speech by Duma member Sergei Yushenkov, Kennan Institute, Washington, D.C., April 24, 2002. http://terror99.ru/commission/kennan.htm. Accessed May 5, 2011.

Page 26 “We will hunt them down”:Putin’s Sept. 24, 1999, TV appearance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_PdYRZSW-I. Accessed May 5, 2011.

Page 27 resemblance to Mussolini:Unpublished memo leaked to me by Berezovsky’s team in November 1999.

Page 27 “Everyone was so tired of Yeltsin”:Author interview with Marina Litvinovich, July 1, 2008.

Page 30 “My friends… My dears”:Boris Yeltsin’s address, Dec. 31, 1999. Text: http://stra.teg.ru/library/national/16/0. Accessed May 6, 2011. Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvSpiFvPUP4&feature=related. Accessed May 6, 2011.

Page 31 “Russia’s new century”:Vladimir Putin’s address, Dec. 31, 1999. Text: http://stra.teg.ru/library/national/16/2/print. Accessed May 6, 2011. Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4LLxY4RPwk. Accessed May 6, 2011.