Michael Dobbs - Down with Big Brother

What is clear, however, is that many apparatchiks chose precisely this moment to launch their own careers as private businessmen. Veselovsky himself was a prime example of this phenomenon. In early 1991, while still working for the Central Committee, he hooked up with a flamboyant Canadian millionaire named Boris Birshtein. A Soviet émigré who had once run a textile factory in Lithuania, Birshtein understood the importance of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with well-placed bureaucrats. That, after all, was the way biznes had always been conducted in Russia. Personal connections were the key to business success. “You just need to get in the saunas, and that’s where you really do business,” he boasted to a Western reporter. 51

Unlike most foreign businessmen, Birshtein deliberately flaunted his wealth. With his fleet of private jets, sable-lined coat, and diamond-studded brooch, he was almost a caricature of the Russian idea of the successful capitalist. When he came to Moscow, he hired the biggest limousine possible and traveled from office to office in a motorcade worthy of a head of state. The Moscow Police Department, which had itself benefited from Birshtein’s generosity, was happy to provide the tycoon with an impressive escort.

By his own account, Veselovsky helped Birshtein rent a luxurious party-owned mansion on the Lenin Hills that had previously been reserved for such visiting foreign dignitaries as Fidel Castro and Henry Kissinger. The two men hit it off immediately. Veselovsky provided Birshtein with introductions to party bureaucrats, whose assistance was essential for the conclusion of lucrative foreign trade deals. Birshtein permitted Veselovsky to escape from the stifling world of party apparatchiks into the world of private jets and diamond brooches. After the negotiations for the mansion had been concluded successfully, Birshtein offered his new friend a one-year contract as a “consultant.”

“He was influential and intelligent. He had a Ph.D. in economics,” Birshtein recalled later. “We started to think about different businesses. He said, ‘I’m sick of the party. It’s all bullshit. I want to leave.’ It was then that I offered to hire him.” 52

The relationship between Birshtein and Veselovsky proved beneficial for both men. The Canadian millionaire helped the former KGB colonel move to Switzerland, giving him the use of a lakeside villa in Zurich and a silver Mercedes. In the meantime, Birshtein’s own fortunes began improving sharply. Prior to 1991 his private Toronto-based company, Seabeco, had been struggling with creditors and disgruntled former employees. In 1991 business suddenly took off. The Seabeco Group spawned dozens of offshoots, including a number of highly profitable joint ventures with Russian trading companies. The business grew and grew until, one day, Birshtein overreached himself. At the peak of his influence, in September 1993, he was caught up in a sensational bribery scandal involving the Russian security minister and declared persona non grata. 53

EXCEPT FOR THE FACT that it attracted a lot of attention, because of the mystery surrounding Communist Party finances, there was nothing unusual about Veselovsky’s transformation from apparatchik to businessman. There was a fin de régime atmosphere in Moscow in the spring of 1991, and bureaucrats were lining up to jump ship before it was too late. Many of Veselovsky’s colleagues in the Central Committee apparatus found jobs in the emerging private sector at this time, as “experts” or “consultants.” Veselovsky himself later said that from April 1991 onward practically all the senior officials in the administration department of the Central Committee were involved in commercial activity of one kind or another. 54

This was a crucial turning point. In the past Communist ideology had provided the ultimate justification for the power and privileges of the Soviet elite. But many members of the elite were now discovering that they could maintain their privileged positions in society even without the ideology. If they were clever enough and agile enough they could trade their positions in the old Communist regime for equally comfortable positions in the nascent capitalist order. In many cases they were trading up. Why drive a Volga when you could be driving a Mercedes? It was no longer necessary to pretend that they were the vanguard of the proletariat, chosen by history to build a socialist utopia.

Not all members of the elite arrived at this conclusion at precisely the same time, of course. Some apparatchiks lacked the wits to succeed as entrepreneurs; some were scared by the thought of changing careers in midstream; some believed that the Communist Party was the only organization capable of holding the Soviet Union together. Mixed in with the thousands of careerists and cynics—people who worried only about their “bottoms,” to use the popular expression—were a few true believers. What mattered, however, was that the party was no longer a monolith. And once it ceased to be a monolith, it was no longer invincible.

The collapse of communism unleashed a ruthless struggle for the vast economic resources that had previously been controlled by the state. The nomenklatura capitalists grabbed whatever they could, while the going was good. In many cases assets were sold off for practically nothing; this was “grab-it-ization” rather than privatization. The wild scramble for property that got under way in the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1991 represented the relatively benign form of this struggle for power and wealth. But the potential for violence was always just beneath the surface, as events in Yugoslavia soon demonstrated.

THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL produced a wave of self-congratulation in Western capitals. When communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, many people in the West assumed that the new order would be represented by politicians like Václav Havel and Lech Wałęsa, who had spent most of their lives struggling against totalitarian dictatorship. The slaying of the Communist dragon appeared to represent the final victory of the liberal, free market values dear to Western democracies. Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson had triumphed over Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

The sense of victory was short-lived. Just because communism was in its death throes did not mean that democracy had triumphed. Communism was more than just an ideology; it was a guide to political action, a tested method of achieving, and retaining, supreme power. Like a malevolent virus, communism possessed a unique ability to adapt to changing circumstances. A skillful Communist leader knew how to exploit the divisions in society, how to rouse the have-nots against the haves, how to employ populist demagoguery to rout his political opponents. If circumstances required, such a leader might even be prepared to switch ideologies, in the interests of retaining supreme power. This was a struggle in which the ends always justified the means.

Nowhere did Communist leaders have greater success in shedding their ideological skins than in Yugoslavia. The role of political trailblazer came naturally to the Yugoslav Communists. Apart from Russia, Yugoslavia was the only country in Eastern Europe where the Communists had come to power through their own efforts, rather than with foreign assistance. Under their leader Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav Communists had conducted a successful guerrilla campaign against the Nazi occupation of their country in World War II. They had consolidated their power after 1948 by refusing to submit to Stalin. This act of defiance made Yugoslavia a favorite of the West and a candidate for billions of dollars of economic assistance. But the liberal, easygoing facade presented by Yugoslav Communists was deceptive. When their power and privileges came under threat, they put up a more ruthless fight than any of their more orthodox, Soviet-sponsored comrades, with infinitely more tragic results.