[This is the transcript for Alex Sheremet’s video essay on Russia’s Wild 1990s, told through the eyes of murdered American journalist Paul Klebnikov. “The Murder and Resurrection of Paul Klebnikov” can be watched here. The transcript originally appeared in Alex’s literary magazine, AUTOMACHINATION.]

“God did not create all men equal. What is inside them is not equal.” – Khoza Noukhayev

Twenty years have passed since the killing of Paul Klebnikov (Павел Юрьевич Хлебников) on a Moscow street. Although he was an American citizen, born in America to American-born parents, his unsolved murder is better known in Russia than in the United States. A business journalist for Forbes Magazine, Paul Klebnikov’s seminal book, Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia, must be read in softcover. The hardback is long out of print and there are no electronic versions available. Paul is known as Pavel in Russia—another man, almost, for his death had even deeper implications abroad. Today, Klebnikov would be 61 years old. He is, like the Russians looking back, grounded in time, as the country they leave behind grows older, stranger, with a future not their own. Yet Klebnikov flowed in the opposite direction, towards Russia, as America itself grew less and less recognizable. After all, if one points to the dangers of journalism in Russia, Russia can point to America’s increasing tolerance for the murder of their own journalists on foreign soil. In the minds of oligarchs and warlords—the world Paul Klebnikov got to know—all things are enumerated. A book, no matter how worthwhile, is published only if there is money to be made. Politics grow whimsical in service of a trend. Berezovsky, Klebnikov’s chief antagonist, is long dead, possibly due to suicide, after losing a power struggle with Vladimir Putin and exhausting his wealth. Yet Klebnikov’s own death can’t easily be linked to Putin, and so he remains between memory and restoration: too captive to let go, yet too impractical to dwell upon—with his lessons perpendicular to the lessons being sought.

Before apprehending the circumstances of Paul Klebnikov’s death, one needs to see Russia in the 1990s. As Klebnikov argues, the liquidation of the Soviet Union violated not only its constitution, but a popular referendum in which citizens wished to keep the system intact. With no alternative in place, Russia soon collapsed alongside its former satellites. To deal with depression and exploding inequality, Boris Yeltsin enacted what was meant to be a ‘fair’ privatization scheme—the state would retain 20% of proceeds upon sale of a company, with the rest distributed among its workers, managers, and the Russian public by way of vouchers. In this way, all citizens could enjoy a stake in Russia’s best industries as they transitioned to a market economy. Yet the ruble overhang (among other problems) led to hyperinflation, encouraging Russians to sell their vouchers to organized crime groups—just enough, Klebnikov remarks, for a couple of bottles of cheap vodka. If the vouchers weren’t sold, they were invested into scam mutual funds and Ponzi schemes. Savings quickly became worthless, and employees went for months without pay. By 1994, the lifespan of Russian men cratered to 58. In 1997, ten percent of all newborns had been abandoned. America’s murder rate just peaked, yet Russia’s was already four times higher—with murder in some regions exceeding that of America’s Wild West. There was no Marshall Plan on the horizon, just shock therapy imported from Harvard. In contrast to America’s roaring nineties, Russia’s entire mineral and industrial base was being valued at a street price of $5 billion. With little work available, millions of women became prostitutes. Millions of children were left to institutions, and strange diseases old and new. Paul Klebnikov relates one such encounter on a train:

In the carriage was a mother with an ailing child. It was hot. The boy was stripped to his underwear and covered in sores, screaming for help. The boy’s crying continued throughout the night and the next morning the passengers seemed more silent than usual. There was a palpable sense of people trying to harden themselves against the child’s suffering. He fell asleep by midmorning. I later saw his mother sitting in the corridor alone, gazing at the Russian landscape. [Text adapted for YT.]

Back in the cities, a mob war had broken out over the country’s vast resources. Unlike in the USSR, where gang wars were decided by massive hand-to-hand brawls, mobsters were now being killed by bombs, sniper fire, poison gas, military rifles, and RPGs. The war began with a shooting outside of the LogoVAZ car dealership in Moscow after mathematician Boris Berezovsky refused to pay a rival gang for protection. “Go ask the Chechens,” he grinned. In other words, Russia’s most feared gangsters were already providing Berezovsky with krisha: or, a ‘roof’—physical security. Though Berezovsky survived the shooting, his chauffeur was killed by a remote-controlled bomb, and Berezovsky’s apartment booby trapped with a grenade. There were thousands of killings, often in daytime, often carried out by gangs which broke along ethnic and geopolitical lines. Many gangsters were athletes and Olympic champions whose gold medals belonged to a country which no longer existed. Many were Russian soldiers slashed from the new budget. Others were businessmen and government officials who worked with mobsters and terrorists. Oleg Lobov, Russia’s deputy prime minister, allegedly sold blueprints for sarin gas to the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, which then carried out the 1995 Tokyo subway attack. Sergei Timofeyev, known as ‘Sylvester’ for his resemblance to American actor Sylvester Stallone, came from the impoverished Moscow suburb of Solntsevo, flexing his muscle in part through government connects. Yaponchik (Япончик), or ‘Little Japanese’, so named for his Asiatic features, spearheaded the Mob’s anti-Chechen efforts. Nikolay Suleimanov was now the Chechen in charge, though not for long. He was killed by Russia’s most notorious hitman, Sasha Makedonsky, who was himself killed by Sasha the Soldier. After a life of mass murder, Max the Gimp found religion, only to be gunned down in front of his church.

It was an unfortunate pattern: by the time Paul Klebnikov had set up interviews, many subjects were already dead. A few proved to be resilient, however, if only for a spell. The Chechen guerilla leader, Shamil Basayev, outlived Paul Klebnikov by two years—both were wanted men, yet only one believed in the protections of liberal democracy. Basayev had long become a specter, with children reporting nightmares in which Basayev hunted them. He masterminded events such as the Budyonnovsk hospital siege (1995) and Beslan school massacre (2004), allowing the state to fuel a moral panic in which almost anything could be blamed on shadowy Chechens. In the 1990s, misbehaving children might be threatened with placement in an orphanage, as the primary fear was institutional collapse. By the 2000s, it was Shamil Basayev who would steal all the bad kids into an Orientalist Chechnya, marry off the girls and conscript the boys to fight against their motherland. As kidnappings became routine, private intermediaries stepped in. Chief among these was Boris Berezovsky, who was seen laughing with known militants and handing over suitcases of cash. By fulfilling a basic function of the state, Berezovsky helped undermine the state even as he acted partly at its behest. After all, the only reason why a Muscovite math-geek had an ‘in’ with warlords is because of shared business interests designed to steal (or from the Chechen perspective, redistribute) Russia’s wealth. Once this process began, it proved difficult to stop, as the state no longer had an ideology to sustain itself—just graft.

In Godfather of the Kremlin, Klebnikov details not only the turf war between gangsters, but the implicit and explicit war against Russian collectivism. As gangsters courted politicians, Russia understood these were the rules of the game. Boris Yeltsin was encouraged to ‘liberalize’ the economy despite a weak government and powerful cartels. This would last until Vladimir Putin’s election in 2000, signaling a shift in mob rule. Klebnikov’s book ends around this time, wherein Klebnikov is hopeful but not entirely trustful of Putin, for while America loved Boris Yeltsin, as he was drunk, and weak, and solicited electoral interference from the West, Klebnikov, like most Russians, saw Yeltsin as a traitor, and Putin as his right-hand man. Yet Putin was Berezovsky’s man, as well, and Berezovsky’s crimes were many. To start, no billionaire in the 1990s could attain his status without killing. There were few rules as Russia transitioned to capitalism, no real ability to collect taxes, and plenty of criminals who, in the absence of a Leviathan, dragged the state into their power struggles. Berezovsky now controlled Russia’s biggest media outlet, promising Yeltsin favorable coverage in exchange for toleration. He was soon implicated in the murder of Russia’s most famous journalist. AvtoVAZ, a Berezovsky-linked car company, produced subpar automobiles which could only turn a profit by taking advantage of hyperinflation. According to Klebnikov, he nearly destroyed Russia’s biggest airline, Aeroflot, after embezzling hundreds of millions into Swiss bank accounts. Not satisfied with controlling one or two industries, Berezovsky emerged as a winner in Russia’s oil wars, which had left hundreds of other executives dead. He gifted Yeltsin’s daughter jewelry and cars, received favorable terms in public auctions, and enjoyed friendly relations with metals tycoon Marc Rich, a fugitive from American justice until Bill Clinton pardoned him on his last day in office. (It turned out Rich’s ex-wife was a major Democratic Party donor.)

Paul Klebnikov training for the US Marines.

As Russia began to crack down on its billionaires, Berezovsky ran for a seat in the Duma, thus granting him immunity from prosecution. At one point, close to 1/4^th of Russia’s Parliament were former convicts, including pimps, murderers, drug dealers, and serial fraudsters. Once Yeltsin’s oligarchs designated Putin as his heir, the mood changed. Moscow’s 1999 apartment bombings injected fresh patriotism and ideology into an anemic nation-state. The Second Chechen War was meant to avenge a humiliating defeat in Grozny, while continued terrorism only helped Putin, who was tasked with crafting Russia’s response. In an infamous New Year’s Eve address, Boris Yeltsin resigned, handed off the presidency to Putin, and asked forgiveness of the Russian people. Putin would go on to win 53% of the vote—a landslide in a multi-candidate election. As if to cultivate a sense of humility (or distance), Putin kept the inauguration to an hour, including just nine minutes for his own remarks. He appeared dynamic and bold next to the mechanical Yeltsin, and spoke to frightened oligarchs like a mob boss. Putin’s first major scandal, the sinking of the Kursk submarine, destroyed his popularity, as the oligarch-controlled press disciplined him and tested his commitment to free speech. Once Putin began to go after the oligarchs’ media enterprises, Boris Berezovsky, Putin’s main benefactor, openly declared war. This led to the re-opening of Russia’s Aeroflot investigation and forced Berezovsky into exile. With the West’s help, Berezovsky re-invented himself as a crusader for ‘Western values’, while Europe and America offered their platforms and credulity. Failing to understand the contradiction—or perhaps glimpsing the West’s own underlying logic—Boris Berezovsky defended oligarchy and political repression in an op-ed for the Washington Post:

As for undue influence, our critics should not forget that a strong civil society and the middle class that serve to protect democratic liberties in the West do not exist in Russia. What we have are communists – still too powerful – and ex-KGB people who hate democracy and dream of regaining lost positions. The only counterbalance to them is the new class of capitalists, who, under extraordinary circumstances, find it acceptable – indeed, necessary – to interfere directly in the political process.

This was the Russia that Paul Klebnikov found in 2004. He was now Editor-in-Chief of the Moscow branch of Forbes Magazine and had already received death threats for his investigations into Berezovsky. Yet the oligarch no longer had much influence there, and Klebnikov was busy with other subjects. Colleagues say Klebnikov was overcome with messianic feeling; that he wished to be a part of Russia’s transition to democracy and help root out corruption and adopt America’s (stated) ideals. Perhaps he had these exact thoughts as he stepped out of his office on the night of July 9^th. Or perhaps he felt more banal concerns, as it was late, and he was tired, and had recently committed to monthly trips back to New York to see his wife and kids. As he crossed the street on his way to the train, he did not see the stolen Lada automobile—forged from Berezovsky’s AvtoVAZ—roll down a window. [Sound of gunfire.] A pedestrian flagged down an ambulance. Klebnikov said he didn’t see the assailants and didn’t know who might be after him or why. After being loaded into a stretcher, he realized there was no oxygen tank. A second ambulance came but took fifteen minutes to get moving. Once Klebnikov arrived at the hospital, an elevator malfunction stuck him between floors. Someone tried to pry the door open with a chair as indifferent medical staff looked on. Вот, a nurse said, это его судьба. There it is—that is his fate. Paul Klebnikov died in the same way so many other Russians die: by accident, or on a whim, or by the apathy of those around them, or by explicit and calculated design. In short, his values did not align with those of his environment, and as Russian history suggests, material reality trumps all—but questions of life and death, especially.

Vladimir Putin in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

There are many competing theories of Klebnikov’s murder. Given Vladimir Putin’s desire for grand bargains, it is possible some Berezovsky loyalists were spared, or simply went into hiding. The illiberal nature of British speech codes allowed Berezovsky to win a partial retraction of Klebnikov’s reporting, perhaps emboldening these supporters. Another theory is that Klebnikov’s more recent work angered Russia’s remaining oligarchs as it revealed their names and details. Much of this information was already known, but Klebnikov made it famous—with the implication of more to come. Still another theory is apocryphal, wherein Klebnikov received sensitive material just days before his death. He is said to have called it “the worst thing I have ever seen”—but what was it, assuming it was real? As Klebnikov grew wary of Putin’s creeping authoritarianism, could it have been information related to the Moscow apartment bombings? It seems unlikely Putin would care about Klebnikov’s more liberal-minded critique of Russia’s government, as he was far more useful as a critic of Berezovsky. Yet Putin’s alleged involvement in terrorism would override all other concerns. Then again, it is strange that the oligarchs would not themselves reveal such information given their links to Yeltsin, Chechnya, and corrupt officials on the billionaires’ dole. Russia’s own investigation into Klebnikov’s death was marred by controversy, including a closed-door trial which saw the acquittal of three Chechens, a conviction on unrelated charges in a separate trial, the Supreme Court’s overturning of the first acquittals, and years of legal wrangling after one suspect disappeared. Some Russian journalists continue to play up the Chechnya angle, focusing on Klebnikov’s suspicions regarding illegal arms sales. Today, the state continues to maintain that Chechen gangster Khozh-Ahmed Noukhayev (Khoza) was involved in Klebnikov’s murder, which is a claim worth considering in detail.

In 2003, Paul Klebnikov released Разговор с варваром: Conversation with a Barbarian, an extended interview with Khoza Noukhayev interspersed with the author’s own remarks. Like Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Khoza was politicized by way of the Soviet Union, studying in Moscow State University while drafting plans for an independent Chechnya. He was forged by Stalin’s deportations, which left at least a quarter of all Chechens dead and hundreds of thousands like himself exiled. [Though curious and self-directed], Khoza identified as a ‘barbarian’ first, for he rejected much of Soviet history and culture. Yet Klebnikov’s book is full of Khoza’s thoughts on world literature, the constructive—and destructive—roles of socialism, and more. Consider, for instance, his comment on Leo Tolstoy:

Paul Klebnikov: Some say that the truest Christian path – it is turning the other cheek.

Khoza Noukhayev: This is not the truest Christian path. This is a corrupted Christian path. There is no such thing as never being allowed to kill. No such thing as Tolstoyism. I certainly respect Tolstoy as a writer. (But) he simply never found an alternative to the state. His whole problem is in this. To complete his worldview, he still had to make a choice. In the same Bible, it is said: ‘an eye for an eye’ and ‘turn the other cheek’. Tolstoy didn’t hold himself to the principle ‘an eye for an eye’. Yes, the Bible consists of the Old Testament and the New Testament…How people respond to the Old Testament—that is the key question.

This is the Khoza Noukhayev of the early 2000s, then widely seen as a reformed gangster. As Chechens took control of Moscow’s mob scene in the 1990s, Khoza was fighting in the Battle of Grozny, which left him with a permanent limp. He was soon meeting with figures such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Margaret Thatcher in order to solicit billions for his holding company. At the same time, he was wanted for questioning over the Moscow bus bombings, only to re-emerge with Aleksandr Dugin’s pro-Putin Eurasia Party to argue for Chechnya’s partition. Once the Second Chechen War began, he funded separatist magazines and, allegedly, other militant groups, claiming that his years as a mob boss were in service of this greater good. Klebnikov, for his part, couldn’t help but notice the pride—glee, even—Khoza took in describing past crimes. Nor did Klebnikov think much of Khoza’s business ventures, calling his plans for the Caucasian Common Market “absurd”. In a particularly naïve moment, Klebnikov remarks on a looming ‘clash of civilizations’—a popular sentiment during the War on Terror, which reduced the real world to the vying of ideas. Despite surrounding himself with gangsters, Klebnikov did not see the connection between a mob boss bent on self-enrichment, and the laundering of one’s past through jihad. Rather than a clash of civilizations, it is more like a search for a more respectable outlet for one’s id. Indeed, Klebnikov is at once fascinated and repulsed by Khoza, yet Khoza, watching this American pine for an imagined, Americanized Russia, almost certainly felt the same.

Khozh-Ahmed Noukhayev, from Jos de Putter’s “The Makings of a New Empire” (1999)

It is said Khoza Noukhayev was unhappy with his depiction in the book and thus ordered Klebnikov’s execution. But this seems as pat as the counterfactual that Khoza died half a year prior in the Caucasus, or the idea that Chechen gunmen were to blame. Did Khoza’s purported links to Berezovsky make this angle more believable? Perhaps, but over twenty years later, there is little appetite for resolution. If anything, there seems to be, in line with shifting geopolitics, an unspoken desire to forget. In one of the earliest Amazon reviews for Godfather of the Kremlin, a customer offers this prediction:

Should American political elites feel more dissatisfied with an increasingly assertive and independent line of the new Putin government, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the same media clowns who castigated Berezovsky…now trump him as a ‘voice for freedom’ against ‘returning dictatorship’. Then again, it would not be terribly new or surprising.

These days, former oligarchs [such as Berezovsky’s business partner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky,] are still taken seriously, and questions about their past remain untouched. [Vladimir Putin’s biggest critics can handle Khodorkovsky with kid gloves, while some Russian citizens express distaste for heroic figures such as Anna Politkovskaya over damaging Putin’s credibility. Alex: cut from video essay.] In the West, Paul Klebnikov can’t get his final book translated into English, but in Russia, Pavel is still a subject of speculation—at least among ordinary folks. In other words, everyone has staked out a position according to their preferred cult of personality. Yet as Klebnikov argues, in a choice between two evils, the only moral option is to abstain. That he is now used for purposes beyond his own intention is not something Klebnikov could have guessed. To understand why, one needs to turn not to the liberal critique of Russia, but to Khoza Noukhayev, who informed a disbelieving Klebnikov:

…The state is a lifeless mechanism. It has no morality, only interests. Interests must be satisfied. Only if the people demand morality will the state consider it. But if a people’s moral sense is undeveloped, the state will lower itself accordingly.

If there is a clash of civilizations, it is this—the competition between one’s waking life and resurrection. For resurrection is a kind of mechanism, as well; dispassionate labor in the Russian sense of творчество—a creative impulse to get from there to there. Now that America is in the hands of its own oligarchs, death is the next and inevitable stage. Yet it is what comes after which decides the extent and span of the present day.

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