Insiders must not read it: former Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev released memoirs in the USA

Sergey Kron

Kozyrev himself explained it to journalists in the following way: “If, say, Tamerlane was asked to remember now, he would try to hush up his most terrible sins a little.”

The Firebird: The Elusive Fate of Russian Democracy is the title of his book of memoirs, written in English, by the former first head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR and the Russian Federation (1990-1996), and now a private resident of sunny Miami Andrey Kozyrev.

The memoirs did not cause much excitement among the Americans, and the entire circulation, according to rumors, was bought by our diplomats working in America on the orders of the authorities from Moscow. Be that as it may, the book immediately became a rarity.

Judging by what was reported at the presentation of the book, which took place at the Kennan Institute in Washington, the works of the Soviet ex-minister were published in a small edition, and even in some provincial publishing house. “I wrote a memoir about the events during the reign of President Boris Yeltsin”, - Kozyrev said. - In the book, I did not try to assess the events of those years from the height of the present day. There are no re-evaluations in the book that I, perhaps, could do today".

Who let him go for permanent residence?

He is often called "the world-forgotten Kozyrev". Although many in Russia remember the "little man with a quiet voice" - both on Smolenskaya Square, and in the Duma, and at MGIMO, where he studied and taught, and as a successful businessman.

When Kozyrev was appointed head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the first thing they noticed was his liberal views, lively character, and unconditional support for Boris Yeltsin. In 1990, he was barely 39 years old. And Ivan Silaev, the then head of the Inter-republican Economic Committee of the USSR, which served as the all-Union government, recommended Kozyrev, at the suggestion of Burbulis, for the post of minister.

Kozyrev was not forgiven for his speech when he was approved for the post of minister in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. In particular, he said: "Democratic Russia must be and will be the same natural ally of the Western countries as the totalitarian Soviet Union was a natural enemy of the West".

At one time, even Gorbachev called the Foreign Ministry under his leadership "a branch of the US State Department".

Kozyrev was ready to be carried in the hands and in the East. After all, it was he who almost persuaded Yeltsin to hand over the Kuril Islands to the Japanese. On August 21, 1992, the Russian government issued an order on the preparation of a state visit to the Land of the Rising Sun. However, experts in the depths of the Lubyanka have calculated the risks and were horrified. Such a gamble, according to their conclusion, would have generated a wave of territorial claims against Russia, weakened at that time.

As a result, the special services simply ... thwarted Yeltsin's visit. Major General of the FSO Boris Ratnikov told about this years later. The security officers, according to him, accused the receiving party that it allegedly could not ensure the safety of the head of state. The Kurils remained in Russia.

“I met Andrey Kozyrev in 1993. As a minister, he did not openly admire anyone, but he did not irritate anyone, except for those employees of the Foreign Ministry who did not agree with his liberal views. Yes, he had a lot of mistakes. But he doesn't recognize them today. Kozyrev is still confident that Russia in the nineties could agree to the role of a junior partner of the United States of its own free will. But I met American generals who said then: "The main thing for us is to pull out the nuclear sting from you, and then you have to fight with your neighbors for at least a hundred years!" And one more thing. They complained about Minister Kozyrev that he had not read any documents. They were in his safe, and then, when he left, the safe was opened, and there were thousands of unread documents!" (Yevgeny Bazhanov, President of the Eurasian Institute of Geostrategic Research, diplomat, writer, publicist)

Over the five "Kozyrev" years, Russia has never used its veto right in the UN Security Council. The minister supported the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In 1992, under the leadership of Andrey Kozyrev, Moscow withdrew its military contingent from Germany on humiliating terms.

Kozyrev openly opposed the preservation of strategic objects of the Russian Federation - the Skrunda radar station, the Space Objects Tracking Center and (GRU reconnaissance center) in Ventspils and the submarine base in Liepaya (Latvia). With his submission, Russia actually abandoned them, exposing its defenses.

It was under Kozyrev that the Americans carried out an operation to deprive the post of UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali, the last independent secretary general of this organization, who had a firm position, including on Yugoslavia.

And yet, on Smolenskaya Square, to the former minister foreign affairs are treated differently today. Here is what the prominent Russian diplomat Anatoly Adamishin said about him:

“Yeltsin constantly reminded us that in August 1991 42 Soviet foreign missions supported the State Emergency Committee. When, at the very end of 1991, Kozyrev offered me to become his first deputy, one of the arguments was that it was necessary to help preserve the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We should give Andrey his due: he put a lot of effort into it".

Kozyrev emphasized:

“There is no other human interest to live well. And they live well in the West. Look at countries with market economies and democratic systems ... Everything else is demagoguery for the unfortunate. If you don’t have the money to buy a villa on the southern coast of France, they start to compose a fairy tale that you don’t need it, you live here in Asiopa”.

“Andrey Kozyrev, if I understand correctly, proceeded from the assumption that in order to maintain the status of a great power, Russia simply must be the first partner of the United States. The Americans did not mind - welcome, but only as a junior partner. They have never recognized any equality - neither then nor now”, - said Anatoly Adamishin about his former boss.

And here is how the former press secretary of the President of Russia Vyacheslav Kostikov recalled about the ex-minister:

“There was a moment when almost every visitor from Western Europe who came to the Kremlin to meet with the head of state asked Yeltsin “not to surrender Kozyrev”. I don’t remember that they stood up for Yegor Gaidar like that, although he was also known as a Westerner. In the end, Boris Nikolayevich got tired of this obsessive intercession. "Why are they so interceding for this Kozyrev?" - Yeltsin was indignant.

On January 9, 1996, the president released Andrey Kozyrev from his duties as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia at a personal request, formally in connection with the election of a second convocation to the State Duma of the Russian Federation...

In the State Duma, Kozyrev found himself isolated: the liberals did not forgive him for supporting the war in Chechnya, the rest - for the betrayal of Russia. He had no weight and could do nothing. “I suffered for four years and left”, - the deputies said about Kozyrev.

The disgraced minister taught for some time at MGIMO, was a member of the board of directors of the American pharmaceutical corporation ICN Pharmaceuticals. During the August 1998 crisis, he used the information to his advantage, which was provided by Chubais's assistants, and earned before the 1998 default, as they say, a lot of money in the GKO market. The former Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, Yuri Skuratov, wrote about this.

The funds earned in Russia, Kozyrev successfully invested in American real estate. He now lives in Florida with his family and has American citizenship.

“Former Foreign Minister Kozyrev operated with billions of rubles on the GKO market. When his surname appeared, he began to be indignant: he did not play, they say, libel. Played! How he played! The operations are all scheduled, they all remained in the computer databank! These people, having Chubais in their friends, could well use insider information" (Yuri Skuratov, former Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation)

By the way, it still remains a mystery how Andrey Vladimirovich managed to leave for permanent residence in the United States. After all, he is a carrier of high-level state secrets?

With the ambitions of the president

Kozyrev's "Firebird" is considered by many both in the United States and in Russia to be a brilliant documentary thriller, which is literally filled with previously unknown details from the history of the era of "Tsar Boris".

Here is what the memoirist writes about the events of the end of 1995. Andrey Kozyrev, who simultaneously holds the posts of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and the State Duma deputy from a single-mandate constituency in the Murmansk region, paid a campaign visit to his constituency on the eve of the new parliamentary elections.

The minister was accompanied by the regional governor Yevgeny Komarov, who at some point asked Kozyrev to get out of the car for a confidential conversation. The official made it clear: there may be a wiretapping in the car. But Kozyrev, he said, asked Komarov to stop playing "spy games" and openly say directly in the car what he wanted. The governor hesitated for a long time, but already in the car, he invited Andrey Vladimirovich to stand as a candidate for the upcoming presidential elections. “I spoke with several of my fellow governors at our meeting a few days ago. Their initial reaction was encouraging. They would like to make you, Andrey Vladimirovich, their candidate!", - whispered Komarov.

In order not to get into a mess, Andrey Kozyrev gave an evasive and non-binding answer and very soon flew to Moscow. Having landed at the capital's Vnukovo airport, the minister did not go home or to work, but instead decided to wait for the arrival of Boris Yeltsin's plane, who was also returning from a trip to Russian regions.

A laid table was already waiting in the guest room for the president and the staff of his administration. Yeltsin quickly knocked over a few glasses of brandy and seemed to be cheerful. “Suddenly,” writes Kozyrev, “Yeltsin stopped laughing and turned his steel gaze on me.

- Why don't we drink to the new president of Russia, Andrey Vladimirovich? - he suggested to me in a strained voice, which immediately made a noisy drunken party turn into a zone of dead silence.

“We have a president”, - I said. - I propose to raise our glasses for him to stay! - Everyone stood up, ready to drink.

- Not! - Yeltsin roared like a bear. - I mean the new president - the one who will be elected next year!

I quickly replied:

- Boris Nikolaevich, there is already a president, but there is no need for a new one...

“And I have other information”, - dead silence settled in the room again. “The new president will be Kozyrev”m - he said meaningfully. Nobody moved, seeing that Yeltsin was not joking. For a second, I was also paralyzed".

Another week passed. Kozyrev flew again to campaign in his constituency. On the street in Murmansk, a man whose face was covered with a scarf took him by the arm: “I respect you, Mr. Minister. You deserve to know the truth. This is a copy of the report that Yeltsin received from the intelligence agent".

“The stranger handed me a piece of paper, barely waited for me to read it and quickly pulled it back. And disappeared! The text was indeed familiar. It was a printout of two conversations that I had with Komarov in the car”, - Andrey Kozyrev writes in his book.

Already in 1995, during a flight from Pskov to Moscow, Yeltsin again started talking about the presidential elections. “I don’t want to run again”, - he said, - "The candidate must be someone younger, with fresh brains".

But then Boris Nikolayevich began to sort out possible young candidates for the post of head of state. I remembered Nemtsov and Yavlinsky. And he himself recognized them as "weaklings", not ready for a fight with Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky".

People from Kozyrev's entourage say: from the Foreign Ministry, he really wanted to move to the Kremlin. It turns out that the minister had presidential ambitions. Until now, the former minister says with some melancholy: “Yeltsin would have been good at destroying the old system, communism, but he is not the leader who could build something new. We could not force him to choose a new leader among us".

The chapter in the book, which describes the beginning of the process of NATO's rapid expansion to the East, aroused great interest among the readers.

It was August 1993. Yeltsin came to Warsaw to meet with the then Polish leader Lech Walesa. He invited the Russian president to a private dinner in a “simple and friendly format: one-on-one".

“Much after midnight I was awakened by a call from the chief, which was unusual. When I entered Yeltsin's apartment, it was clear that he was almost incapable of speaking. Finally, Boris Nikolayevich said that he agreed with Walesa to insert a new wording in a political declaration prepared in advance, which was scheduled to be signed the next morning. Yeltsin handed me a piece of paper with a clumsy handwritten text, but he was not in a good condition to discuss anything... The text contained Russia's commitment to support Poland's aspirations to join NATO as soon as possible".

Andrey Kozyrev describes his dialogues with Western politicians quite frankly. From the point of view of the first foreign minister of the Russian Federation, during the presidency of Bush Sr., relations between Moscow and Washington resembled "heaven on earth". But at the end of 1992, Bush Sr. lost the election to Bill Clinton. The lafa was over, and a terrifying reality began in its place.

During his first meeting with the new US Secretary of State Warren Christopher in February 1993, Kozyrev outlined his vision of Russian-American relations. But here is the reaction of his interlocutor:

“Christopher listened politely and nodded at the right moments. But I felt that he was either not grasping the essence of what I was talking about, or he did not care. It seemed that he was only interested in the very fact of a friendly meeting and discussion of some momentary logistic issues - mainly the preparation of the first summit of Clinton and Yeltsin...

This muffled reaction began to shape a completely different terrifying reality in my brain. Unlike Baker and Bush, the new team in Washington did not seem to have an understanding of the market reforms that were taking place in Russia. For them, we were not reformers involved in the hard work of transforming an evil empire into a democratic power and a potential partner of the West, but just outsiders with whom to bargain in the struggle to achieve the urgent interests of the Clinton administration...

Everything I said to Christopher about the difficulties of this fateful transformation turned in his eyes into a diplomatic trick aimed at obtaining additional points for bargaining".

During the meeting, Clinton, in his own manner, began to promise Yeltsin "mountains of gold". "Yeltsin interrupted the US president in the middle of his stream of promises" and asked what Russia can get right now?

Clinton consulted with his assistants and majestically offered an amount of... six million dollars. The voice returned to Yeltsin only after he took a long sigh: "This is pennies, Bill!"

All this can be summed up with a quote from Andrei Kozyrev's memoirs: "Despite the assurances of cooperation handed out at the summits, in our daily practice we dealt with competition and slightly veiled hostility from Washington".

Once at the Valdai Forum, President Vladimir Putin said:

- In a conversation with President Richard Nixon, Kozyrev noted that Russia has no national interests, there are only universal values. Nixon shook his head. This suggests that Nixon has a head, and Mr. Kozyrev, unfortunately, has a cranial box, but there is no head as such".