Strongman, The

unrestrained capitalism at breakneck speed, with scant regard for the sensitivities of – and consequences for – the Russian people. Their ideas were eagerly taken up by Yeltsin’s own reformers, led by the economist Yegor Gaidar, who had been inspired by the ‘shock therapy’ that had transformed countries like Poland a couple of years earlier. Yeltsin had appointed him to ‘give the people economic freedom, and remove all barriers to the freedom of enterprises and entrepreneurship’. Within a few years millions of Russians were reduced to extreme poverty, while a handful of go-getters and former communist officials turned themselves into billionaire oligarchs, snapping up the country’s resources for a fraction of their value.
    Undoubtedly, under Yeltsin Russians enjoyed Freedom, with a great neon-lit, capital F, such as they had never known in their nation’s thousand-year history. The 1990s were riotous years. They saw an explosion of energies that had been pent up for 70 years of communism. Any Russian with a bit of cash and enterprise could set up a small business, if only a little stall selling Snickers bars and vodka. Russians were free to travel abroad, to read whatever they wished, say what they liked and demonstrate against their leaders. There were competitive elections and political parties. National television stations broadcast biting satire and no-holds-barred critiques of Kremlin policies. New private banks sponsored ballets and concerts. Shops quickly filled up with consumer goods and foodstuffs that Soviet citizens had only glimpsed in foreign films. After the dark decades of totalitarian rule, people now felt unafraid. There was optimism and hope. Certainly that’s how Russia looked to most Western observers. Evidently, it’s how Bill Clinton saw things.
    And yet, when I look back at my notebooks and dispatches from the time, I am reminded that most Russians had a very different impression. My reports for the BBC chronicled a decade of shame and humiliation.
    Yeltsin’s Russia was a country that seemed to be run by thugs. You saw them barrelling down the highways in their cars with darkened windows, or ordering thousand-dollar bottles of wine in the best restaurants and snarling contemptuously at the waitresses, or shopping in horrendously overpriced boutiques, and occasionally gunning each other down in broad daylight. Contract killings were commonplace, as Russia’s mafia-style gangs carved up territories and businesses.
    The BBC’s offices were located in a hotel and business centre part-owned by an American, Paul Tatum. After a dispute with his Chechen business partner, Tatum was riddled with bullets fired from a Kalashnikov rifle – at 5pm as he walked into a metro station near the hotel. His killer was never found. On another occasion I found myself in a traffic jam, and as I slowly edged forward noticed that a little hold-up was going on at the side of the road – again in broad daylight. Several men were pointing their guns at the head of some poor guy lying on the ground. On yet another ordinary day in Moscow a restaurant was raided, and we all threw ourselves to the floor while arrests were made. To get into my local supermarket, you had to walk past guards wearing fatigues and cradling AK-47s. All the early new capitalism was accompanied by violence and threats: whether you managed a five-star hotel or sold souvenirs from a trestle table on the Arbat, you paid protection money to one mafia gang or another.
    On the outskirts of the major cities, especially Moscow, the so-called ‘New Russians’ built mansions with swimming pools, wine cellars and fashionable turrets, all hidden from view behind 15-foot fences. They represented a tiny proportion of the population. Millions meanwhile were impoverished by the economic reforms that started in 1992. The sudden liberalisation of prices led to soaring inflation. Ordinary Russians lined the pavements selling off their belongings. The very centre of Moscow became a huge flea-market. I vividly remember one man in particular – a middle-aged scientist with a PhD – selling old rusting padlocks and other bric-a-brac.
    Other scientists emigrated in search of work that would give them a decent wage, many of them taking Russia’s strategic knowledge and secrets with them, leaving their country devoid of its best brains just when it needed them.
    Railway stations filled with beggars and homeless people. The Kursky vokzal –