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"A Way Out of the Dead End"

A WAY OUT OF THE DEAD END!

1. Our society is deeply divided. This division grows more catastrophic by the day. The fault line separating us into reds and whites, us and them, cuts straight through Russia's heart.

The heated election battle tempts opposing politicians to try solving our problems with one decisive stroke. The forces behind these politicians are simply biding their time. They will emerge the day after either side's victory. This will happen with inevitable certainty, regardless of individual intentions. After the June vote, whichever minority wins—red or white—will claim a mandate to impose rules fundamentally rejected by an enormous portion of society.

The ultimate victor won't be any particular truth, but rather the spirit of violence and discord. The mutual hostility between political forces is so intense that any one side can only establish itself through means leading to civil war and Russia's disintegration.

In this critical hour, we, Russia's entrepreneurs, call upon intellectuals, military leaders, members of executive and legislative branches, law enforcement officials, and media representatives—all who hold real power today and on whom Russia's fate depends—to unite in finding a political compromise that can prevent severe conflicts threatening Russia's core interests and its very statehood.

2. Russian politicians must be urged toward serious mutual concessions, strategic political agreements, and their legal formalization. There simply is no alternative. Each political force has its own legitimate perspective. But no single force has the right to forcibly impose its truth upon the entire society

3. We share the special concern of patriotic forces for Russia's fate as a historically formed union of peoples in which Russians have played and continue to play a unifying role.

However, we must clearly distinguish between constructive policy and political exploitation of national themes. More than half of Russia's children come from mixed marriages. We are all Russians, and attempts to divide us into "purebloods" and "foreigners" contradicts the very essence of Russia's historical gathering of peoples.

4. The actions of certain political figures and parties have transformed the word "democracy" into almost a synonym for anti-state sentiment in the minds of many citizens. The denigration of Russia's historical path and its sacred values, the trampling of the Soviet period of Russian history must be rejected and stopped.

At the same time, we cannot allow the discrediting of the great ideas of freedom, civic responsibility, justice, law, and truth—these are the essential elements of true people's power. This is what millions of Russians stand for when they vote for democrats and democracy despite the costs of reforms. This voting demonstrates that Russia is determinedly striving to overcome barriers to legal, informational, and civil freedoms. This aspiration must be respected and considered in the political balance created to protect Russia's national interests.

5. A serious political threat lies in the fact that, should the communists win the presidential election, they might realistically attempt an ideological revenge. This gives reason once again to see them as a force wishing to make final and vital decisions as if on behalf of the entire society.

We understand the communists and recognize their political role as representatives of social groups who have suffered during the difficult and often mistaken reforms. However, communists should not insist that society abandon the painful achievements of the last decade. While condemning the historical outcomes of this decade and accusing all other forces of devastating steps, communists must at minimum share responsibility for the collapse of the USSR. The CPSU, which the CPRF claims to succeed, also bears responsibility for the failures of the stagnation era. It was under CPSU leadership that the country missed two technological revolutions: the modern industrial revolution of the 1960s and the information revolution of the 1970s. It was the CPSU leadership that was responsible for the USSR's collapse. This collapse necessitated reforms under conditions of diminished state control, and it was precisely the "emergency" nature of these reforms that led to such painful social costs.

Using nostalgia in their power struggle—the longing for the irretrievably lost lifestyle of the 1970s-80s—the communists are essentially doing the same thing as their opponents! Their opponents exploited the unrealistic dream of quickly achieving Western prosperity. The communists exploit the dream of instantly returning to the living standards of the stagnation era. Do politicians consider what will happen after another inevitable public disappointment?

6. Meanwhile, by the second half of the 1990s, the reform process has begun to yield certain results, although barely perceptible. Promising a return to what was lost will actually deprive the country of these hard-won and painful gains, only multiplying losses and further destabilizing society. Those who ignore this fact take upon themselves the full weight of political and historical responsibility for another state and social catastrophe.

7. Recent actions by various political forces confirm our worst fears. We see vital state interests being displaced by narrow political goals. The threat of a state crisis triggered by the ill-considered denunciation of the Belovezha Accords is one of the alarming moments of pre-election confrontation, when the State Duma caused obvious damage to statehood. Implementation of these initiatives would have transformed Russia into a mini-USSR, which could soon be dismantled in the same way the larger Union was dismantled in 1991.

In saying this, we don't intend to demonize any single side. Damage to statehood is also caused by the current authorities' actions. The ineffective policy in Chechnya, which has created a threat to Russia's integrity, is another example of devaluing statehood for political gain.

The tragedy of the current situation is precisely that political struggle pushes each of the main forces toward actions that, willingly or unwillingly, damage Russia's already fragile statehood.

8. We understand that there are groups in the country eager to increase political tension. There are also deliberate, persistent anti-state actors. We don't want to engage in exhausting and fruitless lecturing! Those who encroach on Russian statehood by betting on ideological revanchism and social confrontation should understand that domestic entrepreneurs possess the necessary resources and determination to influence politicians who are either too unprincipled or too uncompromising.

Russia must enter the twenty-first century as a prosperous, great power. This is our duty to our ancestors and descendants.

President of Logovaz Group B.A. Berezovsky
Chairman of the Board of Siberian Oil Company V.A. Gorodilov
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Most Group V.A. Gusinsky
President of KB Yakovlev A.N. Dundukov
President of MAK Vympel N.V. Mikhailov
President of Yukos Oil Company S.V. Muravlenko
President of Rosprom Company L.B. Nevzlin
President and General Director of Avtovaz A.V. Nikolaev
Chairman of the Board of KB Vozrozhdenie D.L. Orlov
President of ONEXIM Bank V.O. Potanin
President of Capital Savings Bank A.P. Smolensky
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alfa Group Consortium M.M. Fridman
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Menatep Bank M.B. Khodorkovsky

Ahead of the 1996 presidential election, the richest of Russia’s rising businessmen—not yet known as oligarchs—got together to assert the power of capital over the political process. In an open letter published in two of Russia’s biggest papers, Nezavisimaya gazeta and Argumenty i fakty, thirteen of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs suggested that the only way out of impending political crisis was to compromise with capital. The letter was addressed to both President Yeltsin and his most serious competitor, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov—and heaped plenty of criticism on both. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, wrote the capitalists, “of which the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is the successor,” was responsible for all the failures of the late-Soviet era and the humiliations of collapse. At the same time, Yeltsin administration reforms had proven “difficult and often mistaken.”

Although the document later known as “The Letter of the Thirteen” took no clear side in the presidential contest, it stated that no Russian leader could possibly rule without the support of the new tycoons. “Dear Presidents! Without us, neither you, Mr. Yeltsin, nor you, Mr. Zyuganov, will have a controlling stake in power. The time has come to decide whether you’ve come to terms with our power.” The term “controlling stake” (kontrol’nyi paket, in the original, meaning 51% of a joint-stock company) directly transposed capitalist jargon onto the political sphere. Nevertheless, the letter’s central value was not capitalism, but so-called gosudarstvennost’, meaning “sovereignty” or “statehood.” The entrepreneurs called specifically for a strong state aligned with—if not outright run by—its business interests. The letter ended with a threat that brought state sovereignty and mobster capitalism into prescient alliance:

“We understand that there are groups in our country that wish to cultivate political tensions. There are conscientious, stubborn anti-statists. We do not want to undertake an exhausting and fruitless pedagogy! Those who would threaten Russian statehood [gosudarstvennost’], insisting on ideological revanchism, on social confrontation, must understand that responsible entrepreneurs have the necessary resources and the will to take action against both unprincipled and uncompromising politicians. Russia must enter the twenty-first century a great, thriving nation. That is our obligation to our ancestors and to our descendants.”

An early declaration of the political power of new Russian capital, the “Letter of the Thirteen” documented the transformation of businessmen into oligarchs. Indeed, in the months that followed, Yeltsin came to terms with several of the letter’s signatories, who would help bankroll his reelection campaign and control the media narrative in exchange for future capital-friendly policies. After Yeltsin won re-election, seven of the letter’s most influential signatories, all bankers, became unofficial presidential advisors, inaugurating the period popularly known—on the model of “Semiboyarshchina” or “rule by seven boyars” (1610-12) during Russia’s Time of Troubles—as “Semibankirshchina” or “rule by seven bankers.” In 1998, the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), only recently repatriated to Russia after decades of exile, observed that these men collectively held some 70% of the nation’s wealth.

Despite the power the seven bankers enjoyed, the desires expressed in their April 1996 letter could only be fully realized after Yeltsin had ceded power to his chosen successor, Vladimir Putin. Although several of the letter’s signatories soon found themselves stripped of their holdings, exiled, in prison, or dead—all as a direct result of Putin’s rise to power—“the regime of Vladimir Putin,” as Dmitry Butrin put it in Kommersant Vlast’ ten years later, “is a precise incarnation of the ideological construction that the authors of the ‘Letter of the 13’ considered in April 1996.” What the signatories wanted, Butrin continued, “was the recognition of the primacy of state power and statehood in Russia.” Reading the letter in the Putin era produces “a clear nostalgia for the near future.”