Alexander Korzhakov

Korzhakov with Yeltsin in 1991

Being the head of the Presidential Security Service, Korzhakov was frequently accused of interfering in governmental affairs, as the Service gathered evidence on high government officials engaged in corruption, bribe-taking, and squandering money. He was regarded as one of the hard-liners of Yeltsin's team, a strong backer of the war in Chechnya, and an opponent to holding the presidential election in 1996.

In December 1994, Korzhakov organized an armed raid on the Moscow headquarters of Most Bank headed by Vladimir Gusinsky, an ally with Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov, who was a potential rival to Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential elections. Soon after the raid, Luzhkov denied he had any desire to run for president – and Gusinsky quickly moved with his family to London.

Running up to the 1996 Presidential election, there were serious doubts that President Boris Yeltsin would allow elections to take place. On 5 May 1996, Korzhakov explicitly called for postponing the elections. However, the elections took place as planned and Yeltsin finished first in 16 June 1996, initial round of the Presidential elections with about 35% of the vote, scheduled to compete with Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov in the runoff on 3 July 1996.

During Korzhakov's reign, it is believed that the Presidential Security Service acquired documents which implicated first deputy prime minister Anatoly Chubais in illegal financial transactions during the privatization period that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. On 19 June 1996 Sergey Lisovsky (a wealthy advertising and showbusiness magnate) and Arkady Yevstafyev (a close aide to former first deputy prime minister Anatoly Chubais) were arrested while leaving the White House of Russia, allegedly carrying a case containing 500 thousand dollars. After being questioned for 11 hours by Presidential Security Service, Lisovsky and Yevstafyev were released. Tipped off by Chubais, television networks started to broadcast updates on the unfolding scandal through the night, portraying the arrests as a coup attempt by Korzhakov. The next day, 20 June 1996, Korzhakov was abruptly dismissed by Yeltsin at the urging of Chubais.

According to one view, the firings of Korzhakov were the result of a battle between factions within the President's inner circle – between a group that wanted to take power by force and a group that wanted to win the election "legitimately." Others saw the events in the context of an ongoing struggle between three groups: the former heads of the power ministries, representatives of the energy complex, and representatives from financial circles.

An important contribution of the biography is its description of the anti-democratic mentality inside the Kremlin. Korzhakov explains the severely negative outlook of Yeltsin, and the ruling elite as a whole, towards the democratic institutions. Korzhakov recounts certain developments in March 1993, when the Russian parliament was only inches away from impeaching the president. Aware of this danger, Yeltsin ordered Korzhakov to prepare the arrest of all deputies in the case of impeachment. Referring to documents never published before, Korzhakov asserts that Yeltsin had even planned to use chemical gases in order to "smoke" the deputies from the building. The Parliament was eventually stormed by the Russian army on 4 October 1993 and the rebellion suppressed by force.

In regards to the presidential election in 1996, as well as in 1993, Yeltsin had – according to Korzhakov – no intention of leaving the Kremlin and was prepared to take any actions to insure his continued stay. Yeltsin felt free to express his contempt toward democratic principles in Korzhakov's presence. Some episodes the author relates are almost resonant of the Nixon years and the published Watergate tapes. According to Korzhakov, in the summer of 1996, Yeltsin and his prime minister, Victor Chernomyrdin debated the very serious possibility of canceling the presidential election. Korzhakov adds several significant details which possibly confirm the view that the Kremlin violated many democratic rules during the presidential election campaign in 1996. He also fully explains, with much elaboration, the story about how Anatoly Chubais' people tried to illegally take 500 thousand dollars from the Kremlin.

Democratic institutions such as the Parliament and the courts played an extremely limited role in the life of the Kremlin and had no influence over the decision making process. Instead, Yeltsin's family emerges, according to Korzhakov, as a leading political institution in Russia. Korzhakov concludes, "when it came to making decisions, Yeltsin was motivated not by the interest of the state, but by his own family clan".

Alexander Litvinenko – a former KGB/FSB Officer who changed sides in early-mid 2000s in his book "Blowing Up Russia" blames Korzhakov (along with Barsukov): only "their greed for money" was the reason of the first and partly the second chechen war.

Korzhakov contends that the Kremlin was run by various unconventional leaders such as body guards like Korzhakov, himself. In the book, Korzhakov confessed that he and the FSB chief Mikhail Barsukov, another member of Yeltsin's guard, "governed the country for three years".

Korzhakov paints an interesting portrait of the people around Yeltsin, few of whom are depicted as being more elevated in moral virtue and intellect than the author. Korzhakov describes the atmosphere surrounding Yeltsin as thick with unbridled favoritism, a fertile ground for intrigues among those struggling for the president's ear.

Even the idea of murder hangs over the Kremlin in the late 1990s. The requests and promises of people in the Kremlin to murder their political rivals are interspersed throughout the book. In 1999, Korzhakov repeated allegations that financial mogul Boris Berezovsky tried to convince him to murder Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, financial tycoon and NTV founder Vladimir Gusinsky, as well as popular crooner and Duma deputy Iosif Kobzon, a Luzhkov ally.[2]

Korzhakov also contends that during his State Duma election campaign in the aftermath of his ousting from the Kremlin in June 1996, his political adversaries wanted to kill his main rival in the parliamentary election in Tula in order to render the election invalid.