The Russia Conundrum

Mrs Thatcher made a visit to a church service at the Russian Orthodox monastery at Zagorsk, outside Moscow, and attended a performance of Swan Lake at the Bolshoi with Gorbachev and his wife Raisa. But most memorably, she went walkabout, mingling with the Russian people, listening to their views and answering their questions. There was no attempt to curb her interaction with the crowds who turned out to greet her on the streets of Krylatskoe, a recently built but already down-at-heel suburb in western Moscow, and their excitement was plain to see.

The enthusiasm for the West was real, and it was at least in part explained by the next stop on Mrs Thatcher’s itinerary. In the longstanding tradition of Potemkin villages² – fake facades to impress outsiders – the prime minister was taken on a tour of a supermarket that had been specially stocked with supplies of bread and cheese, tinned fruit and fresh veg. Looking back, it is amusing to imagine what Mrs Thatcher thought to herself when she saw this array of very basic foodstuff – which for us back then represented unimaginable luxury. Those reporters who stayed behind after the motorcade had departed saw the efforts of local shoppers trying and failing to empty the shelves before the goods were all packed away.

Five decades earlier, the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova had recorded in her epic verse drama, Poem Without a Hero, how a brief encounter with a charming British diplomat had opened her eyes to another, undreamed of universe beyond the grim reality of Soviet life. Akhmatova called him a ‘guest from the future’, because she regarded him as the intimated herald of a future that Russia, too, might one day enjoy.

The future ripens in the past …

All the mirrors on the wall

show a man not yet appeared

who could not enter this white hall.

He is no better and no worse,

but he is free of Lethe’s curse:

his warm hand makes a human pledge.

This guest from the future, can it be

that he will really come to me…?

In 1987, Mrs Thatcher with her self-confident optimism and unwavering belief in Western values, her stylish hats, glamorous sable- collared coats and beige suede boots, also seemed like a ‘guest from the future’, a portent of what Russia’s future could be if the right choices were made and history were to look kindly on the nation’s efforts.

CHAPTER 3

A TURNING POINT

Gorbachev’s reforms created opportunities for those capable of seizing them. But decades of the Soviet state had destroyed people’s capacity for initiative and few took up the challenge of private enterprise. People were so used to the state taking all the decisions for them – providing them with a minimal wage for minimal work, basic accommodation, heating and food – that they had lost the ability to think and act for themselves. For those of us willing to risk it, perestroika offered the possibility of great rewards. Menatep Bank thrived; by the standards of the time, my partners and I were well off.

But there was a problem. The hardline communists were angry at Gorbachev’s flirtation with capitalism and were threatening to overthrow him. In August 1991, they staged a putsch. Tanks were on the streets, Gorbachev was detained in his holiday home in Crimea and the coup leaders were promising to take Russia back to the old days by reversing his political and economic reforms. If they succeeded, our businesses would have been crushed and there could have been personal consequences for us and our families. People were scared that all the rights and freedoms that had come to us since perestroika began would be lost forever. That’s why I joined Boris Yeltsin on the barricades around the Russian parliament, even though not everything about the Yeltsin administration – including the nepotism and incipient corruption – was to my liking. The coup plotters ordered tanks and troops to take over the streets of Moscow and sent the elite Alfa KGB unit to storm the Russian parliament building to destroy us. The people of Moscow linked arms and swore to stand in the way of the tanks. Some of them were shot or crushed to death, but we were defending freedom and democracy. We were defending ourselves and everything we had achieved. That is why we took the decision not to surrender. It was one of the most emotional moments of my life.