The Metronome

by D. R. Bell

PART 4: THE PROPOSAL

  Saturday, June 24

  Once again, I get lucky on the Moscow–New York flight: The middle seat next to me is empty. The man in the aisle seat tries to strike up a conversation, but after receiving a few single-syllable answers, he thankfully gives up. I pull out the manila envelope with Voronezhsky’s document and start reading. I don’t read each and every word but try to focus on what’s relevant to the events I find myself embroiled in.

  From The Voronezhsky’s Thesis, 1998

  1. The Wolfowitz Doctrine and the Brzezinski’s Grant Chessboard

  The Wolfowitz Doctrine is the initial version of the US Defense Planning Guidance from 1992 authored by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz. It was published by the New York Times the same year. The policy stated:

  “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration…We must discourage the advanced nations from ever aspiring to a larger global or regional role…We continue to recognize that collectively the conventional forces of the states formerly comprising the Soviet Union retain the most military potential in all of Eurasia; and we do not dismiss the risks to stability in Europe from a nationalist backlash in Russia or efforts to reincorporate into Russia the newly independent republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and possibly others....”

  The Wolfowitz memorandum cast Russia as the gravest enemy of the United States. It also defined the United States as the global hegemon that would rule the world according to its interests. While the final version of the policy has been softened, there is no doubt that Wolfowitz expressed a widely held view in Washington, shared by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Even the six short years that passed since the memorandum produced a number of examples that confirm it.

  A close-to-home illustration was the broken pledge about respecting Russian interests and not expanding the military organization of NATO to Russia’s borders. It has been well documented that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, President George H. W. Bush met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta for a two-day summit and promised not to “take advantage” of a Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe” by expanding NATO into these territories. This promise has been confirmed by Jack Matlock, then-U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. who took part in the Malta summit and in subsequent negotiations between the U.S. Secretary of State James Baker with Gorbachev and the Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. Similar promises have been made by the German Foreign Minister Genscher and by the French President Mitterrand and confirmed by the Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and by American scholars Susan Eisenhower and Stanley Kober. Another American ambassador George Kennan wrote in the New York Times on Feb. 5, 1997: “Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

  When at a joint press conference with George H. W. Bush on Dec. 3, 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev said, “We are at the beginning of a long road to a lasting, peaceful era. The threat of force, mistrust, psychological and ideological struggle should all be things of the past,” most of us wanted to believe it. Instead, the United States abandoned its promises and extended NATO membership to Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states. Some believe that this happened because Bill Clinton didn’t want to be perceived as a foreign policy “wimp” during his re-election campaign against Bob Dole and used the NATO enlargement to advertize his assertiveness. Whatever reasons and internal politics have been involved on the American side, this was a blatant betrayal of the pledges made to Russia. We can no longer pretend: The United States continues to view us as Enemy # 1. The Cold War has never really ended. The United States intends to be the sole global superpower, protecting its hegemony at any cost. This will be justified by portraying itself as a “benevolent” hegemon. What is lost in this consideration is that “benevolent tzar” is still a tzar and subjects don’t always like to be ruled by any kind of tzar.

  This American attitude towards Russia has been further confirmed in the recent book “The Grand Chessboard,” by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor. Even he acknowledged that America had missed the opportunity to create an alliance with Russia in the mid-1990s and that many of the Russian concerns regarding NATO expansion were and still are legitimate. Having said that, Brzezinski proceeded to advocate an essentially adversarial relationship with Russia, in particular emphasizing actively undermining Russia’s relationship with the Ukraine in order to deprive Russia of European presence and of its position on the Black Sea via the Crimean ports.

  It is imperative for Russia to dispense with the illusions regarding its position vis-à-vis the United States. While many hold on to the belief of the trustful, friendly relationship, the reality of the situation is that the United States and Russia are not friends and more likely are enemies. It is clear that the United States sees it this way, and Russia must adjust its policies accordingly. Currently, Russia is obviously the weaker party in this struggle. But as the lessons of history teach us, empires and hegemonies are inevitably transient. The United States has its weaknesses that are already showing and will only grow more pronounced over time. The inevitable logic is the same as in the Roman Empire: The need for peripheral security will create a nearly endless series of threats and obligations. The United States will be forced to continue, at a tremendous cost, supporting an open-ended imperial project, sapping its finite resources. This document discusses how Russia can prepare and take advantage of these opportunities, while focusing on the financial side of the emerging warfare.

  Flight attendants arrive with a cart of drinks. I get black coffee and ask for a scotch. I’ll need a few of those to make it through Voronezhsky’s document.

  2. Financialization of the U.S. and its Societal Implications

  We will define “financialization” as the increasing dominance of the finance industry in a national economy. While we don’t deny the importance of financial matters, when financial motives, financial markets, and financial institutions rise to the primary role in a society and extract inordinate rewards compared to the productive industries, we will consider such a society “financialised.” It is worth observing that financialization took place a number of times in history. Some examples include Spain in the 16th century, the Netherlands in the 18th century, and the British Empire in the 19th century. If we include the cases of less developed economies where the government was “financialised” in terms of taking on excessive financial obligations, then the Roman Empire in the 5th century and France in the 18th century would make the list. Each of these countries was either the leading or one of the most advanced economic powers of the time. In all cases, financialization preceded their decline, sometimes collapse. These societies have followed an evolutionary progression, from agriculture to industry, commerce, and finally finance.

  It is our premise that the U.S. economy follows the same pattern of financialization that would lead to a similar decline. The primary indicator is the gradual reversal of the anti-trust regulations that were put in place in the first third of the 20th century with regards to financial institutions. In 1994, restrictions on interstate banking were eliminated. In 1996, U.S. banks were allowed to sell insurance. In 1997, they were allowed to buy securities firms. As this paper is being finished, Citicorp, a major U.S. bank, merged with a major insurance company, Travelers Group, in violation of anti-trust regulations. We can expect that the U.S. Congress will thus remove the last remaining obstacles to creating massive financial conglomerates. At this writing, the U.S. financial sector already represents clos
e to 20% of the country’s economy, exceeding U.S. manufacturing.

  What are the likely consequences of this development for U.S. society? We can expect a number of mutually reinforcing trends:

  - The financial industry will use its leverage to capture an inordinate amount of the country’s wealth while benefiting only a small portion of the society

  - The wealth will be used to further advance a crony capitalism, where the industry will use lobbying and donations to establish strong relationships with the government and regulatory sectors to further advantage the industry

  - Select financial institutions will grow and become “too big to fail,” creating systemic economic problems where public finances will be used to compensate for the errors, while successes will be privatized.

  - Increasing market speculation will create boom-and-bust instability. The capital markets will stop playing its intended role of allocating capital to most productive uses and instead become instruments of policy. The same large financial institutions will be able to manipulate the markets to their advantage.

  The eventual impact on the society will be profound. Some of the likely developments include:

  - Rising inequality, as the upper classes extract ever increasing share of the country’s wealth

  - Rise of credit and debt needed to feed the financial machine which requires constantly rising supply of funds in order to operate

  - Effective devaluation of the currency. This will be required in order to both support creation of cheap debt and allow extraction of the wealth by the unproductive financial class

  - Emergence of the political/financial elite that will effectively rule the country and will attempt to centrally manage the increasing share of the economy. This process will become self-reinforcing as the government will become dependent on the continued source of debt that financial institutions will provide.

  As we know from the history of other countries that followed a similar path, including the history of the failed U.S.S.R, the model described above is unstable and not sustainable. When the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, cooperation between social classes is undermined, and the nation gradually loses its ability to cooperate. It can continue growing for some time, especially for a rich country like the United States, but ultimately, to quote Herbert Stein, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

  The crucial variable in the rise and fall of empires has always been the collective capacity for action. The Roman Empire went from being a cohesive nation of citizen-soldiers to an atomized society of extreme inequality and lack of solidarity between individuals. Great countries die by suicide, and “financialization” is the core element of that process. That much is predictable. What is impossible to predict is the exact process and timing. The situation is unique compared to previous “financialised” societies because for the first time in history, the world is truly global and financial warfare will represent an important part of any large conflict.

  The section is full of tables and graphs trying to prove the points, I skip over them. Back in 1998, this was a theory, an attempt to predict an outcome of future experiment. Eight years later, we can judge some of the results: the financial industry was indeed completely deregulated in 1999, the banking business was consolidated amongst a few giant institutions, finance profits and compensation went through the roof. In 2000, we deregulated the derivatives, enabling a shadow financial system of unknown risk. The U.S. dollar declined about 20 percent, while debt went up sharply. Too early to draw conclusions, but I have to give Voronezhsky at least some credit for these predictions coming true.

  I drink the last of my scotch, ice cubes rattling, and continue:

  3. Emerging Instruments of Financial Conflict in International Policy

  Financial power had always been an integral part of national security. But the global nature of the modern financial and monetary systems combined with development of computer and communications technologies and reluctance to unleash the destruction of traditional military options, will raise the importance of financial warfare to a whole new level. Financialization of the U.S. will accelerate this process, as the financial sector will become both more sophisticated and in a greater need of protection and expansion in order to ensure its self-preservation.

  We have already seen examples of such operations, but so far they have been isolated incidents. One instance was application of sanctions against Serbia in 1993: the U.S. had identified and seized the assets of the Serbian leadership, impeding the regime’s ability to resist the NATO attacks. Another instance was the use of financial sanctions against individuals and companies that the United States believed to be involved in the Colombian narcotics trade. The United States evolved a special office of the U.S. Treasury Department called the Office of Foreign Assets Control designed to conduct such financial operations. While this organization existed in different forms and under different names since World War II, the true potential of this type of warfare is only now being realized.

  We should expect that development of the tools of financial conflict will continue and that these tools will leverage the strengths and advantages of the U.S. financial complex:

  - The U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. The majority of world trade is conducted in dollars. The dollar makes up almost two-thirds of foreign reserves in other countries. The American ability to print, at will, the most accepted currency of the world gives it tremendous advantage in financial affairs

  - Global importance of the U.S. banking system and capital markets. It is difficult for a country, or even for a large company, to function in financial isolation. The United States can – and will – exploit this to punish those that are not complying with American policies. After all, it’s not necessary to target the offenders directly. It is much more effective to threaten to punish anyone who may work with the offender in any capacity. The mere threat of such action will likely be sufficient to isolate anyone the United States wishes to.

  - Access to and control of banking data. It’s a fallacy to assume that because most of the banking institutions and telecommunication networks are not controlled by the United States, the private deposits and transaction information will remain private. As described above, the U.S. financial complex has developed a tremendous leverage not only over the U.S. policies, but also over non-U.S. entities. We should expect that information about any transaction, any bank-to-bank transfer via standard banking mechanisms, such as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), will become available to the United States.

  In short, the financialization of the United States, while weakening many aspects of the economy and societal cohesion, is also providing the United States with powerful tools for using the financial system in its national interests. In the process, we can expect that the United States will develop the surveillance capabilities over both foreign and domestic entities and individuals that the security services of the past could only dream of.

  I shrug this off. There were some publicized financial actions against North Korea and money laundering in Eastern Europe, but otherwise I see no evidence that Voronezhsky’s thought experiment ended up being correct.

  Flight attendants are back with a so-called dinner, I take a break with some form of lasagna and a refill on my scotch.

  4. Implications for the Russian National Security

  As we explained in previous sections, we expect the United States to develop increasingly sophisticated surveillance and financial warfare tools and employ them in its international policy. In the ongoing debate within the Russian government, some argue that this is not to be concerned with since the United States in the 20th century has been largely a benevolent power. The U.S. post-World War II behavior towards vanquished Germany and Japan is given as an examples of this benevolence. In our view, such an argument is missing the point. U.S. behavior will be driven by U.S. interests, and any benevolence will be shown only to the extent of such in
terests. But even more important is the simple maxim that’s been shown true throughout history and that Russia is well familiar with: “Power corrupts.” When presented with the opportunities that such financial power makes possible, it is inevitable that at some point – and probably sooner rather than later – policy decisions will be made to the advantage of the American ruling elite rather than worldwide well-being. It is not in the Russian national interests to be dependent on the American goodwill. Moreover, the very unsustainability of the financialised model that the United States is embarking on makes such dependency especially dangerous.

  Another argument being made is that with the United States being strong and Russia, at least at this time, weak, there are no real policy alternatives. While acknowledging the pragmatic point of Russia’s relative weakness, we must disagree with the conclusion. There is no possibility – or even desirability – of directly confronting the United States in the near future, but many wars have been won by patience and guerilla tactics. The very course that the United States is undertaking ensures that its weaknesses, and our opportunities, will increase over time.

  What are the present and likely-to-emerge U.S. weaknesses that we should seek to exploit? This list provides a suggested roadmap for how Russia can protect its national security and resist U.S. dominance in this ‘financialised’ environment:

  - Nurture alliances with like-minded nations. The nature and application of the U.S. power will likely lead to “if you are not with us, you are against us” attitude that the Russian people are, unfortunately, so well familiar with. Unilateral actions and/or actions done with support of only a handful of allies will force other nations to choose sides. Countries such as China, India, Brazil, Iran represent possible targets. Brzezinski identified a possibility of such an alliance, but discounted its likelihood due to diverging interests. We believe he underestimated the unifying factor of resisting American hegemony.

  - Work to end the “reserve currency” status of the U.S. dollar. The United States will be increasingly forced to grow through the rise of indebtedness rather than true wealth creation through production. The government will be forced to operate in persistent deficit in order to support the ever-larger proportion of the poor. There is no constructive outcome to this state but the effective devaluation of the currency. This will undermine the ‘reserve currency’ status of the U.S. dollar, key pillar of the U.S. financial power. Russia can help to accelerate the process by working with like-minded nations to eliminate the dollar from bilateral or multilateral transactions

  - Avoid the oversight of the U.S. financial system. One avenue is to work with allied countries to construct parallel financial networks, e.g., alternatives to SWIFT, a separate credit card system, etc. The other avenue is to deeply embed some of our financial resources into the Western system, so these resources are not perceived as “potentially hostile.” While both approaches can and should be pursued, the “deep embed” has an additional advantage of being secret. As increasing indebtedness makes the U.S. system more leveraged and less stable, where even a limited but unexpected and well-placed action can cause a wide-spread crisis.

  - Promote internal divisions. Rising inequality will undermine societal cohesion of the United States. History shows that most of the societal collapses and bloody revolutions have been preceded by extreme inequality. The American people may not appreciate this point because the American Revolution, unlike the French or the Russian ones, was not driven by inequality. The United States has been protected by the majority of its population belonging to the middle class that traditionally provided societal stability. As “financialization” decimates this group, its stabilizing influence will dissipate and the divides between various groups and states within the United States will increase.

  The steps described here are largely clandestine, requiring time and patience. Over time, all political systems deteriorate because organized interest groups extract ever increasing value for themselves. Our strategy should be based on United States continuing down an unsustainable path and eventually wearing itself out via societal divisions and imperial overstretch. All American strategic thinking is based on an invulnerable “fortress America.” But while it’s not vulnerable militarily, it is vulnerable economically. We think that the key element is displacement of the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency. It is impossible for us to predict exactly when such a point will be reached. Based on the likely trajectory of the rising debt, aging of the U.S. population and corresponding increase in the U.S. government’s social and medical expenditures, and faster growth of other countries, we would project this to be twenty to thirty years in the future.

  After finishing Voronezhsky’s document, I re-do my diagram. This time I start with two large, partially overlapping circles. One circle I title “Brockton’s scheme.” I place Crossmans, Khmarko, and Voronezhsky Sr. inside the circle, Brockton into the overlap part. The second circle I call “Deep embed?” and put Nemzhov and Sosnovsky inside the circle and Streltsova into the overlap part. Below the circles, I write names – Vakunin, Pemin, Saratov, Voron(ezhsky), Shoffman. And then I draw just one more circle, with Karen and Sam Baker. This diagram is much simpler now, the picture in my head is almost complete.

  When I land, my first instinct is to call Sarah. I pull out my phone as I walk through the terminal, stop, stare at it for a minute and call Jack instead. We arrange to meet for lunch on Monday.

  When I get to my apartment, I unpack, set up the father’s metronome. It fills the place with a steady click, click, click… The fridge is empty, and I go to a neighborhood grocery to pick up some food. There, while standing in front of Fuji apples, I give up and call.

  She answers on a third ring. “Pavel?” There is noise of many people in the background.

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In a grocery store.”

  “In St. Petersburg?”

  “No, here in New York. I just got back.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yes, I am fine. Are you?”

  “I am good. Look, I have to go, OK?”

  “OK.”

  What did you expect? She has to live her life. I wanted Anya for her pleasant comfort and familiarity. I wanted Karen for that instant recognition in the Lenin’s Library, the recognition that changed everything. Why do I want Sarah? It’s not familiar or spiritual. I think it’s the greed. The greed of wanting to possess her, to merge into one whole. It’s the physical, hungry relationship. The best thing I can do for her is let her go.

  Back in the apartment, I eat without noticing what, just to keep myself going. Find a bottle of Chivas Regal, pour myself a glass. I stand by an open window, listening to the sounds of New York, thinking of taking a walk to the river when the intercom rings. It’s Sarah.

  I planned to ask her about her week, explain what happened to me. Instead, when she comes through the door I push her against the wall and pull up her dress. Her mouth latches onto mine, her left arm pressing me into her face while her right hand desperately tries to unzip me. “Yes, Yes,” she sobs as I enter her against the wall, her breaths coming out in short cries. I don’t know how we ended up on the floor. I gasp and Sarah pulls me into her as hard as she can. After we climax, we lie there, breathing hard. She is dressed for going out, a sparkly little emerald green affair with a string of pearls and matching high heels. Satin red underwear is lying by the wall.

  Sarah lightly runs her hand through my hair, starts crying quietly. “Did you put some potion in my drink when we went together for the first time? I was on a date with a perfectly nice guy today, and then you called and all I could think about was how to leave without hurting his feelings.”

  I cradle her in my arms, rocking gently. “Sarah, I am so sorry. I tried not calling. But to be in the same city and not call you…I could not, I am sorry. We can go out, get dinner.”

  She gets up, lifts the dress over her head, standing there in shoes and a bra.

>   “No, not tonight. I want to stay here. But tomorrow is Sunday; promise you’ll spend a day with me.”

  I promise.

  Later in bed she says, “I feel like a character in one of those depressing Russian dramas from the 19th century, caught in a hopeless affair. Reading those back in college, I could not understand this kind of attraction to tragedy, to hopelessness, to pain. I think I do now.”

  I want to say something about the Russian soul or about the ancient Greeks inventing tragedy, but it’s just false and cliché. Instead, I simply repeat, “I am sorry.”

  Sunday, June 25

  We make love in the morning, then Sarah leaves to change with, “You stay right where you are and wait for me.”

  I am happy to obey; my inner clock is all confused with time changes. I give Sarah my second set of keys in direct violation of the rental agreement, then I fall asleep again.

  She is back in an hour with two cups of coffee, pulling off my blanket and ordering me to the shower. “Come on, you promised this is my day.”

  Sarah traded her little emerald dress and high heels for a T-shirt, jeans, and comfortable walking shoes. I wonder if her underwear is red satin; I’ll have to wait to find out.

  I like going to the East River, but Sarah leads me west. “I know it’s a cliché, but I love visiting Central Park. I’ve only lived in New York for two months now; perhaps after a few years I’ll get tired of it.”

  We walk through Central Park Zoo with its polar bears, sea lions, and leopards, eat late breakfast at Ballfields Café, then wander aimlessly through the little trails. It’s a warm day, and New Yorkers are sunbathing on the grass, happy to shed off their clothes after a chilly spring. Sarah sighs. “I wish I had my bathing suit on,” she says then finds an unoccupied patch of the Great Lawn and spreads out on the grass. I follow her lead. For what feels like an eternity, we are lying there, watching the clouds drift by. It’s simple and kitschy, but my head is clearing and stress is draining out of my body.

  “When it comes like that ... at forty ... losing myself like a teenager…I did not want it ... I did not expect it.”

  Sarah is looking at the clouds, not at me.

  “And then I can’t sleep at night while you are half a world away without calling and I practically run to get to your building when you finally show up. I wish I could, but there is nothing I can do to stop it. I should be focusing on finding a job, some stability. I run into people I know, and they offer me sympathy. ‘Let me introduce you to a nice man,’ they say. But I don’t want sympathy, and you don’t offer it. Perhaps that’s why.”

  I remain silent, watching the clouds, adding Sarah to the side of my life ledger that’s labeled “The Women I’ve Hurt.”

  “What’s going to happen to you, Pavel?” says Sarah. It’s more of a musing than a real question, she knows I am not in any condition to be certain of anything.

  “I am not sure, but I think I’ll know soon.”

  “What did you find in Russia?”

  How do I answer when I am not sure myself?

  “I brought home my father’s diary, it’s an old notebook on my desk. I found out that he was not the man I thought.”

  “Was he better or worse?”

  “Better, much better. I think he kept so much inside, not wanting to be a burden, a liability, not wanting me to feel any guilt. I was angry at him all these years because I thought he did not care about my mother dying. I did not realize how much death he’d seen during the Leningrad’s blockade when he was only a teenager. He was just letting my mother go, letting her leave the suffering and the pain behind.”

  My voice breaks and Sarah raises herself on her elbow, kisses me and caresses my face until I can continue.

  “Turns out I have a brother, Andrei. Not a biological one. During the blockade, my parents adopted a neighbor’s boy who’d been orphaned. They were barely older than he was. They saved him.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He lives in a city in the southeast of Russia. He spent many years in prison camps because of his opposition to the government. At one point, my father had to denounce him in a letter to the authorities so I could go to a special school for talented kids.”

  “Oh, Pavel, I am so sorry. But it’s not your fault.”

  “My father hated them…the hypocritical ruling party functionaries that lived at the expense of others. All these years he kept silent in order to protect his family, but he hated them with all his heart. He wrote that letter for me, and I left him all alone. I think he killed himself so the very people that he hated couldn’t get to me through him, so that there was nothing that they would have on me. I was so selfishly blind.”

  “Are these people trying to threaten you?”

  “Sarah, I don’t know yet. I came across some ugly stuff that’s best not to discuss.” I try to say it in a please-don’t-ask-any-more voice, and she gets it.

  We get hungry, so we make our way to Gabriela’s Restaurant & Tequila Bar just west of the park. The place is loud and full of happy-looking people; I love it. Sarah’s been there before, and she does the ordering: two lime Margaritas and two Gabriela’s Brunches. We fill up on burritos, crispy tortillas, assorted tortas, and barely get up from our table. We walk it off by heading to AMC Loews on 84th Street. There, we are presented with the grand choices of X-Men, The Fast and The Furious, Cars. Sarah settles on Peaceful Warrior, which turns out to be a mix of Rocky and The Karate Kid. But Sarah looks happy, snuggles next to me munching popcorn and says, “I feel like I am on a real, old-fashioned date.”

  We eat dinner in one of our neighborhood restaurants and end the day in my apartment. I impatiently watch Sarah undress, and she gives me a curious look. “What?” I explain that I’ve been wondering all day if she has red satin underwear on. She laughs and steps out of her jeans. It’s blue satin. Sarah says, “I made you promise this day for me and you did it. Now, what is your wildest desire?”

  “Well, that would require at least two young, nubile girls dressed in a harem attire…”

  She laughs and slaps me. “They are not here, but let me see what poor old me can do.”

  She can do plenty.

  Monday, June 26

  Sarah has an afternoon interview with a private school on the Upper West Side.

  “I have enough money to get through the summer, but come September I’ll need a job,” she says. “I look forward to teaching again. Hey, do you want me to ask if they need a physics teacher? We can have a simple life.”

  She kisses me and leaves.

  I check the bank account; the money is not there yet. It’s still early, but I am anxious.

  My phone rings. Private number, unfamiliar voice speaking with Russian accent:

  “Pavel Rostin?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Greg Voron. Grigoriy Voronezhsky if you prefer.” I remain silent, so he continues after a pause, “Can we meet at the Carlyle tomorrow? Say, 11 am? You know where it is?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Excellent. Go to the front desk, there will be a message for you there.”

  Surprisingly, Jack asked to meet at one of the waterfront places on the East River. I walk there to kill time and calm my nerves after the call from Voron. Jack is already there, waiting for me, drinking. He is not wearing his tie, I am not sure I have ever seen him without one.

  “What’s going on, Jack? Are you playing hooky?”

  Jack laughs. “You can say that. I no longer work at the bank.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. The chief called me on Friday. He was honest about it. Said that while he understands my conservative approach to risk management, this is a different era, and we have to be more aggressive in order to keep up.”

  “So they don’t need to manage risk?”

  “The way he put it, ‘while the music is playing we’ve got to dance.’ They’ve been ignoring me anyway, but two weeks ago I wrote a memo directly to the CEO warning that our traders are tak
ing very dangerous positions in sub-prime CDOs. I reminded him how our bank almost went bankrupt in 1998 following the Russian crisis, and we are more leveraged now. The CEO did not like it. He needs a big bonus this Christmas to pay for the new digs in Hampton. The trading group generates the majority of the company’s profits these days, and they all hate my guts. Nobody seems to give a damn what happens after they get their bonuses. Profiting at the expense of others while claiming to do ‘God’s work.’ And as I was being escorted out, the bank’s chief counsel showed up and warned me that I have a confidentiality agreement with the bank and to keep my mouth shut or they’ll sue me until I’ll be forced to beg on the street.”

  “Jack, I am so sorry. They are idiots!”

  “You know, Pavel, we did not use to be this way. When I started thirty years ago, we made good money but not these outrageous amounts for pushing paper. We cared beyond the next bonus. You see, that’s the problem – we knew we had to keep our reputation so we could come back next year. Now a trader makes millions in one year and an executive makes tens of millions, so they don’t care if they are buying crap because they get to keep their money and someone else will foot the bill!”

  Jack’s voice is rising, heads turn, but he does not care.

  “Who was it that said ‘After me, the flood’?”

  “It was either Louis XV or Madame de Pompadour, I don’t remember.”

  “Didn’t they lose their heads?”

  “No, but their successors did twenty years later.”

  “Well, I hope our children won’t have to pay for our sins, but one can’t defy the laws of mathematics, and I am afraid we are going to take away their future and leave them a giant Ponzi scheme. I dealt with money for most of my career, and ultimately it’s just a mechanism for making the commerce simpler. It’s much better to use money than to barter – ‘I’ll give you ten goats and a hundred chickens for this used car.’ But we now attached to money some mythical power, as if it’s a magical elixir that can control and fix the economy. That’s more convenient for Wall Street and the politicians because it’s easier to create money out of thin air than to make something real. But ultimately this only creates a rigged system that serves special interests. There can be no sound economy without sound finance. Our corruption is not ideological, it’s the corruption of money, of taxing everyone in favor of those that have influence.”

  Jack finishes his drink and motions for another.

  “How’s Suzy taking it?” I break the silent pause.

  “She probably has had enough. She never seemed to buy into the notion that what’s good for Wall Street is good for the country.”

  A waiter appears and takes our orders, including more drinks.

  Jack waves his hand dismissively. “But enough about me. I am ready for retirement anyway. Did you see The New York Times story last Friday?”

  “No, what story?”

  “I guess you were pre-occupied in your travels. The story was also in the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. The U.S. government is now analyzing the international banking data, the data that was supposed to be private.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Going after terror suspects.”

  “Well, that makes sense. Come on, Jack, we are the good guys.”

  “Of course we are. You are a good person, and our waiter is a good guy, and I am mostly good, although my wife sometimes disagrees. Most of the Russians and Chinese and French are good people. Many of the Germans under the Nazis were good, too. Most people are too busy earning a living and taking care of their families to worry about their government’s activities – until it’s too late. Pavel, I think you are missing my point.”

  “What is your point?”

  Jack rattles ice cubes, sips his drink.

  “How do I explain? Only a short time ago, our Secretary of State was telling the whole world that we know for sure that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. We are in the middle of a hugely expensive war, thousands of lives have been lost already, but we have never found the weapons. You can’t just say ‘we are good’ and stop questioning. You can’t continue giving the state ever increasing power without reservations. It is precisely when we believe ourselves to be incapable of evil that we become most vulnerable to its power. Covertly, we just took for ourselves a major new capability, and we ask the world to just trust us with it. You can’t debate the morality of something that’s shrouded in secrecy. If another country did this and told us to trust them, how would we feel about it? There is a price to everything.”

  He stares at the river, then adds quietly, “The problem is not in getting the state more power, the problem is how to prevent the state from abusing the power it already has. Only too often secrecy becomes the enemy of freedom. The line between protecting people from real enemies and protecting the state from its people is too easy to cross. What will come next? Manipulating markets? Manipulating public opinion ‘for a good cause’? Asking us to give up a bit of our privacy so that they can better defend us? I am afraid that it’s the very idea of America that’s being endangered here – and by the same people that are trying to protect her.”

  I am silent, thinking of Voronezhsky’s document. He proved to be correct on this prediction as well.

  “So, are you going to tell me about your trip?” asks Jack.

  I tell him about my father and about Andrei. He knows I am holding out on him but does not probe.

  I call Jennifer as I walk back. She is worried about me, and I reassure her that everything is fine and I am safe and sound in New York.

  “Have you talked to your grandfather about changing your major?” I ask.

  “Yes, both mom and I did.”

  “And?”

  “He won’t go along with it.”

  We are about to hang up when she says in a small voice, “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think you and mom will ever get back together?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. Perhaps. We need some time to figure things out.”

  “OK.” I hear her cry.

  How do you explain that even when you love each other, all the misunderstandings, hurts and lies of many years crust over you like an impenetrable armor? I did not understand it in my twenties and I can’t explain it in my forties.

  I hear voices in the background, then Jennifer comes back. “Dad, mom heard us talking. She wants to talk to you.”

  “Of course.”

  Karen comes on the line. “Hi, Pavel.”

  “Hi.”

  “I wanted to talk to you and I overheard Jennifer…is now a good time?”

  “Yes.” As much as I expected this, I feel that I have to sit down. There is a small park with a few benches across the street, so I head there.

  “Why is it so noisy?”

  “I am on the street in New York.”

  Karen hesitates, then plunges in. “Pavel, I think we have to accept that this separation is permanent.”

  “Is your father pressuring you?”

  “Somewhat,” she admits. “He wants me in California, close to the kids. Simon really needs me; I worry about our son.”

  I am silent.

  Karen starts sobbing. “You know that I love you, Pavel. But I can’t start over. I need security.”

  “I know, baby. I am sorry, I screwed up.”

  “Pavel, do you have a poem for me? Like the first time we met? A brilliant physicist that reads poetry?”

  I feel mostly sadness, not the overwhelming sense of loss that I had when she left. Now, I understand Karen’s language: this ‘love’ she speaks of is a lingering feeling about the past, heartbreak of what was and what could have been but no longer exists. Twenty years ago we started with Pushkin; it seems appropriate to end with another bad translation of mine:

  I loved you.

  The embers of that love are glowing still.

  But don’t let it trouble you,

  I don’t wish to bring you sadness.
<
br />   I loved you quietly, hopelessly,

  Consumed with jealousy and shyness.

  My love was so true and tender,

  I hope you’ll be loved this way again.

  We are both crying, and passersby give me funny looks. I don’t care.

  I rush to the computer when I get home and log into my bank account. Zorkin has delivered, the money has arrived. Not available yet, but that’s OK.

  Sarah is excited to describe her interview, whom she met, the location, the questions. Looks like they may offer her a job. I am happy for Sarah, but my anxiety must be showing. When she asks, I tell her about my friend Jack being fired. I don’t mention the meeting with Voron or the money.

  Tuesday, June 27

  I wake up agitated, go through my routine while inside I am dying to meet them face-to-face. I head to the Carlyle, a luxury Upper East Side hotel a block off Central Park. There is a message for me at the front desk: small envelope, a piece of paper with the room number inside.

  I come to the door, take a deep breath, and knock. The door is opened almost immediately, but I don’t see anyone until I take a couple of steps inside. I recognize both men in the room: One is Greg Voron looking just like his photos in the magazine article and in the graduation book, the other is the man I’ve met as investigator Pemin. Voron is sitting on the couch while Pemin stands at the window looking straight at me. The door closes, and I see a third person, the one that introduced himself as Petr Saratov at the cemetery and later attacked me in Moscow.

  Saratov is the first one to speak. “Mr. Rostin, a small formality.”

  He extends toward me a hand holding a metal wand. I take an instinctive step back.

  Pemin raises his hands palms out toward me. “Pavel, it’s a wire detector, nothing more. We were hoping for a private discussion, without recordings.”

  I give Saratov a dirty look but allow him to buzz me with the wand. He nods, satisfied that I carry no listening or recording devices.

  Pemin continues, clearly he is the one calling the shots. “Allow me to introduce people here. You’ve already met Petr. And with the research you’ve done, you must know that this is Greg Voron, formerly Grisha Voronezhsky. Last time you saw me, I introduced myself as investigator Nikolai Pemin. I apologize for that small but necessary deception. I am Nikolai Nemzhov, colonel in the GRU. Please come into the room, make yourself comfortable. We took the liberty of ordering food and drinks.”

  The suite is not large but nicely appointed. Around a low coffee table, there is a couch where Voronezhsky positioned himself, and three large comfortable chairs. To the side, there is a table with coffee, sodas and water, and an assortment of expensive-looking food – caviar, salmon, meats, fruits. I walk over to the table and pour myself a cup of coffee. I wonder why Nemzhov so quickly showed his cards regarding his real name.

  As I sit in one of the chairs facing Voronezhsky, he smiles and says, “So, did you like my thesis?”

  “You know?” I can’t quite contain my surprise. “Was the document real?” I am feeling like an angry marionette whose strings have been pulled one time too many.

  “It is real.” Nemzhov steps away from the window, sits in a chair across from me, leans forward and continues respectfully. “It’s an important document, and we decided that it’s better for you to have it. But before we go any further, I want to say how sorry I am about your father. I swear he did not die by our hand; he killed himself.”

  “Then why did you imply that I am a suspect in his death?”

  “I apologize. It was a complex situation. In a sense, we were testing you and keeping you off balance.”

  “Why did he kill himself?”

  Nemzhov rubs his temple. “I actually would like to ask you the same question. He must have been thinking of protecting you, but I am not completely sure.”

  “What was in the envelope that he…” I point to Saratov lurking by the food table. “…took away from me in Moscow?”

  Nemzhov hesitates. “Oh, what a complex web we weave…Pavel, I wish I had a simple way of explaining, but we have multiple threads intersecting, operations that have gone wrong… Why don’t we start at the beginning? Or, at least one of the beginnings. Perhaps Grisha’s thesis would be a good starting point. Pavel, I promise we’ll get to your question – but why do you think we wanted you to have this document?”

  “I presume it explains the real role of Voronezhsky here…” I nod at the man. “…the Eastern Cottonwood fund, the Birch Grove, and many other financial companies that come up in following the trail of the Treasure Island Partnership that invested in our little fund. I also think that’s why you went after Streltsova, she started uncovering some of the information.”

  “Very good, Pavel.” Voronezhsky nods, smiling.

  “You must have been influenced by the 1998 events in Moscow?” I ask him.

  The smile disappears. “Of course I was! My father killed himself. I blamed Americans for his death. They brought us Brockton and the likes of him. But the paper was not written in revenge for my father; the key parts were finished in late 1997. You know what really made me angry?”

  Voronezhsky pauses until I shake my head to show that I don’t know.

  “It’s the hypocrisy, the constant ‘we are the good guys’ propaganda when in reality it’s just calculated, cynical behavior to perpetuate American power by any means possible. At least Wolfowitz and Brzezinski were open about it.”

  “Pavel, back in 1998 there was still an internal struggle going on in Russia between those that wanted to align with the U.S. and those believing that the U.S. remained the enemy,” chimes in Nemzhov. “I was in the second group, and Grisha’s document was invaluable in both crystallizing our argument and creating a roadmap for the ongoing war. Combined with the mismanagement and predatory oligarchy brought upon Russia by the more U.S.-aligned group, this allowed us to take over, install a president from our ranks, get rid of the worst of the oligarchs.”

  I can’t quite hide my incredulity. “Are you saying that Voronezhsky’s document changed Russia’s policy?”

  “Not quite, not quite.” Nemzhov stops me with a raised hand. “Grisha did an admirable job in gathering the information, presenting arguments, even making predictions – many of which came true. But in reality, it was the U.S. that did it. Brzezinski’s book that came out in 1997 confirmed to us that the U.S. would aggressively oppose Russia and try to take over Eastern Europe and even the Ukraine. I think the history of mankind is a tragedy of self-fulfilling prophecies. The U.S. continued to see Russia as an enemy to be contained, and that’s exactly where we ended up.”

  “Really? Are you telling me that the U.S. and Russia would have been friends otherwise?”

  “No, Pavel, that’s not what I am saying either.” Nemzhov is very patient with me. “I don’t know whether the U.S. and Russia could have become friends. I can’t tell you what would have been in an alternate history. In this history, the one we are living, the U.S. embraced doctrines where Russia is an enemy. In this history, the U.S. broke the promises made to the previous Russian government and encircled us with NATO bases right on our borders. Look at the facts: We have practically no troops abroad, while U.S. soldiers surround us on all sides. In this history, the U.S. promoted principles of unilateralism and pre-emptive intervention. Do you need more proof than the invasion of Iraq despite a complete lack of UN support? Yes, we Russians are paranoid, but then history has taught us to be. How many horrific invasions have we suffered over the years? So when the U.S. self-declared itself an imperial power that alone decides what’s right and what’s wrong, the cast was set.”

  Nemzhov gets up and pours himself a glass of water.

  “Pavel, I am sorry I have gotten somewhat excited here,” he continues. “Somewhere deep inside, I wish it was not this way. We’ve been humiliated. For two centuries, the U.S. lived by the Monroe Doctrine, declaring that moving foreign troops anywhere near the U.S. would be an act of aggression. How do you th
ink the Americans would have reacted had we put military bases in Canada and Mexico? If the U.S. government tried to understand the Russian perspective, perhaps things could have been different. Instead, they kicked us while we were down. And they openly stated that they intend to keep us down. That’s why we are enemies. They are anti-Russian, so I am anti-American. Americans think that in aligning with China we are being a jilted lover, trying to get the U.S. back to the altar. That’s not the case at all. We are weaker, but we have our weapons. That was the main achievement of Grisha’s thesis: to focus on the American vulnerabilities, their weak points, to help us develop a plan.”

  “And who is ‘us’?”

  “You know that St. Petersburg State University is now the ideological brain center of our government. Much of the political elite, starting with Putin, were educated here. We get this cross-pollination of knowledge and ideas.”

  “Was the Palmer testimony correct?” I ask.

  “I told you he’d figure this out!” Voronezhsky beams, as if I am his pupil that solved a difficult problem.

  “Yes, Grisha, you were right,” Nemzhov compliments him. “Palmer was largely on point, but he significantly underestimated the resources involved.”

  Now this shocks me because the amounts mentioned were in hundreds of billions.

  “Underestimated?”

  “Yes…” Voronezhsky jumps up in excitement. “…over a trillion dollars have been transferred between 1986 and 1991. Real money, eh?”

  Transferred? They were stolen from the people of Russia! I keep my mouth shut.

  “The money was quite significant,” confirms Nemzhov. “And kept hidden away, with very few people having any knowledge of it. Remember, originally it was intended to provide a safety net for the high-ranking members of the Party and security services. But by 1999, as we came back to power, a new line of thinking emerged: This money could be pressed into the service of our national interests, to become our secret weapon in a guerilla financial warfare.”

  “All these funds with tree-sounding names, the Birch Grove, Kedr, others – they all come from the original movement of assets out of the Soviet Union in the late 80s?” I state more than ask.

  Chimes in Voronezhsky, “Yes. They’ve been moved and recycled many times so the origin can no longer be found. But we became a lot more aggressive in utilizing these resources. We set up new financial companies, we invested in critical technology areas, we have taken advantage of the opportunities that the U.S. financial system provided to increase our leverage. We are using America’s financialization to our benefit.”

  “So the mortgage lender, the home builder…all these companies you bought—”

  I don’t have a chance to finish, Voronezhsky enthusiastically takes over. “Is this not a beautiful thing? We keep making these real estate loans as fast as we can and sell them to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We don’t care that the supposed buyers never pay a penny; all the risks go to the U.S. taxpayers. We launder some of the money back into Russia by paying above-market prices for timber and other construction materials. When we sell a house for a million, most of that million ends up laundered away, and the U.S. holds the bag of a useless mortgage. And then we make even more on packaging these loans into these wonderful ‘synthetic’ debt obligations that Wall Street invented…”

  “But the fraud will come out! You are selling houses that have not been built yet to people that never saw them!”

  Voronezhsky laughs. “What do we care? When it comes out, perhaps some low-level locals will end up going to jail. Nobody above will be touched. Wall Street is making billions and transferring the costs to the taxpayers; do you think anything will happen to them? Meanwhile, we made over $10 billion last year just with the companies you mentioned. And there are quite a few other such operations that we are running.”

  Nemzhov laughs and waves his arms to get our attention. “OK, we wanted Pavel to get the larger context here, but you two financial wizards are putting Petr and me to sleep. While Grisha is quite excited about the money-making process, this is simply manufacturing more weapons for the coming war. It’s just that the weapons are numbers in bank accounts, not tanks or airplanes.”

  “You are not going to bring the U.S. down with your little operation!” I blurt out.

  “Of course not. We are just profiting, same as big U.S. banks, positioning ourselves for the future. Money corrupts, and we want to help the process. Pavel, the bottom line is, we are aggressively building and deploying our financial resources for the eventual end game. But we have more ground to cover, and I am sure you have other questions as well.”

  I go get a bottle of water, trying to gather my thoughts. I attempt to change the subject and take Nemzhov by surprise. “Who was the intended target in Santa Barbara – Brockton or Streltsova?”

  Nemzhov does not skip a beat. “What do you think, Pavel?”

  He is smiling as I find myself on the spot. I take a deep breath, I badly want to hit Nemzhov and wipe the annoying little smile off his face.

  “I think both.”

  “Very good!” Nemzhov continues, “As I said, very few people had any specific knowledge of the money. During his time in the Kremlin, Boris Sosnovsky found out a few things. Just enough to give someone a start. It’s like a ball of yarn, you don’t want people pulling at the end. Natalya Streltsova was a popular anchor working for Sosnovsky’s TV station in Moscow; unfortunately he gave her the information, and she started pulling. That’s when we took notice.”

  “And then you figured out that someone was acting out The Count of Monte Cristo game of revenge?” I point at Voronezhsky.

  All three of them laugh as if this is some kind of a big joke. Nemzhov shakes his head. “I wish I could take the credit, but no. We are getting close to the point where we will be continuously gathering mountains of data, running them through computers, identifying correlations…We are not there yet. We knew about the trading scheme that Brockton and the Crossman brothers concocted in the 1990s. After his father killed himself, Grisha came to me in 1998 looking to protect his family. The money that his father lost in the Brockton’s scheme was owed to some nasty characters. We wanted Grisha on our team, so we stepped in and kept those characters at bay. But I did not know about Grisha’s extracurricular activities after that.”

  Nemzhov drinks some water and goes on.

  “To Grisha’s credit, he came to us on this. Brockton was the last piece left on his board, so to speak. Grisha was a bit obsessed with completing his revenge. Streltsova was living with Brockton then, and Grisha knew enough about the Sosnovsky connection to alert me. We gave him a hard time over the whole vigilante avenger stuff, then we started working together because we had common interests at stake.”

  “But something went wrong?”

  “Yes. Just serves to prove that no matter how much you prepare, random chance plays a role. We worked on this operation for months. Managed to entice Brockton to install the Hardrock security system that had a ‘backdoor’ we controlled. Figured out a time when the bodyguard would be gone. Found the password to Streltsova’s computer by observing her in a local coffee shop. You see, the plan was to remove sensitive information and to install the data we wanted. Everything was going according to the plan, and then this Jeff Kron person shows up! The operation was timed by seconds, and he threw it off. A couple of minutes had been lost, there was not enough time to finish before the bodyguard returned. Our people had to leave with Streltsova’s computer, did not have a chance to clean up properly. Before Kron appeared, they grabbed some jewelry to make it look like a robbery, forgot to put it back.”

  “And they set Jeff Kron up as the killer?”

  “What other option was there? We’ve decided to leave things as they were, until your father appeared on the scene, another entirely unplanned and unexpected event. We heard that Streltsova’s brother was suspicious of the verdict against Kron and looking for a private investigator. We spread the word in the Moscow invest
igators’ community to stay away and did not give it much thought. Imagine our shock when an old Russian detective shows up in Santa Barbara asking questions! How did Bezginovich find him? Anyway, after we assessed the situation, we saw not one but two opportunities.”

  Nemzhov is looking at me, so I indulge him. “I figure one was the possibility to try the disinformation that you originally planned. What is the second opportunity?”

  Nemzhov points at me. “You, Pavel. There were lots of changes since you left; many people from Russia moved to the West, we lost track of who was where. And the vast majority were of no interest to us whatsoever. But you, Pavel, you are another story. We decided that we want to re-connect with you.”

  “Well, you expressed your interest in a strange manner.”

  Voronezhsky takes over. “You did not expect us to approach you out of the blue? We worked indirectly, through Martin Shoffman.”

  “Have you worked with him before?”

  “No. We tried to follow you and the people in your circle, found out that Martin had some points we could pressure…”

  “Like sleeping with my wife?”

  “Oh, you know?” Voronezhsky seems surprised. “Yes, that was one. Plus, he was greedy and ambitious.”

  “So you concocted the New Treasure Island ELP to fund the Grand Castle Rock hedge fund…”

  “Yes. It was done in a hurry.”

  “And you put in that little provision that gave you control, figuring that I’d trust Martin’s assurances that the agreement went through a legal review?”

  “Yes. Remember, we were handing you, a novice hedge fund manager, quite a bit of money. For that and other reasons we wanted control.”

  “So why did you pull the plug? You knew that our positions would pay off!”

  Voronezhsky shrugs guiltily. “I am sorry, I had orders.”

  Nemzhov raises his hand to take over the conversation.

  “Please allow me to interject. Pavel, remember that your father was conducting his investigation at that time. I won’t lie; a part of the reason for helping you was to gain some influence over him. We gave it a bit of time, then carefully directed him to the disinformation package.”

  “Was that the story with the key and safe deposit box in Moscow?”

  “Exactly. We waited and waited for your father to release the information, but he would not. He smelled that something was not quite right. To make things worse, he continued to work on the case. We put pressure on Bezginovich to stop the investigation, but your father persisted on his own. Then, early this year, your father traveled to Paris to meet with Sosnovsky. I truly admire your father’s persistence and investigative abilities, but the situation was getting out of hand.”

  “So you killed Sosnovsky?”

  “The official version is that Boris Sosnovsky hung himself. I’ll leave it at that.”

  “And then you pressured my father by showing him that you could destroy me?”

  Nemzhov shakes his head. “If there is any excuse, during that critical time I was in a hospital for kidney stones surgery and this bad decision was made without me. Grisha also did not have a choice, he had his orders. An attempt was made to ‘convince’ your father by destroying your fund. Foolish, foolish move, I deeply apologize for it.”

  “How did my father die?”

  “For the last month your father was under constant observation, his mail, e-mails, phone calls – everything was monitored. Frankly, he would have been killed if the powers-to-be were not afraid that he set something up to be released upon his death. One day he managed to elude his tail; that’s probably when he sent a package for you to be picked up in Moscow. I arranged to come see him very early on June 7th; at that point I was trying to work with him personally. When Petr and I got there, the door was open. We walked in. Your father was sitting at his desk facing us, with a gun in his hand. He shot himself as we were looking at him. It was devastating to me personally. I am sorry.”

  We all are silent for a minute, looking down. Then I go back to my first question. “What was in the envelope you took?”

  “To be honest, it was not as much as we were afraid of. Your father pieced together a lot of information, and it’s definitely not something that we would have wanted to become public. But we were concerned about a ‘guide to the money,’ and it was not there. It probably means that Sosnovsky did not have much. But we did not know it at the time.”

  Voronezhsky gets up, walks towards the window, comes back, takes over the conversation.

  “Pavel, this has been a complicated case. We have decided to tell you as much as we could because we hope to mend things between us. We’d like to make you a proposal.”

  Voronezhsky looks at me expectantly, but I remain silent.

  “I know it’s difficult after what happened with your father, but we did not wish it. Come work with us,” he continues. “We can set you up with a new fund or you can join the Eastern Cottonwood, whatever you prefer. We realize that you and your wife have separated, at least partly as a result of our actions. Once your position is restored, we are sure you can rebuild your family situation.”

  “Why do you want me? I am just a quant, a financial analyst.”

  “Pavel, you are much more than that. Your ideas on how to capitalize on the coming crash of the U.S. real estate market are brilliant, we are already copying them. And you are Russian, you are on our side.”

  I sit quietly for a minute, then say, “I have a couple of questions I would like to ask Colonel Nemzhov.” As everyone is staring at me expectantly, I look straight at Nemzhov and add, “Privately.”

  Nemzhov nods. “Grisha, Petr, please give us a few minutes.”

  Voronezhsky shoots me a murderous look but obediently leaves with Saratov.

  After they are gone, I ask Nemzhov, “This all has been about Sam Baker, has it not?”

  Nemzhov hesitates, bites his lip while looking at a window, then turns to me. “Yes, this was and is about Sam Baker,” he admits almost cheerfully, “I thought you’d figure it out]. Your father-in-law is poised to become one of the five most powerful people in this country. We would like to get closer to him. That’s why I was so upset when these idiots shut down your fund. They were looking to influence your father when the bar had been set so much higher!”

  “That’s your method of operation, get to someone through the people they love? That’s why Voronezhsky spoke about ‘repairing my family situation,' right?”

  “Pavel, that’s how it was throughout centuries. I doubt Sam Baker cares about you much, but he does love his daughter. We are not asking you to do anything distasteful, Karen is an attractive woman who you loved for many years and who probably still loves you. Nor are we setting up to blackmail Mr. Baker. When you are viewed as an accomplished finance person, a ‘major player’ so to speak, he will likely seek your advice on financial issues. Or perhaps you will hear about the internal legislative discussions. We are just looking for ability to influence the events a little bit. What do you think the thousands of high-priced lobbyists are doing in Washington every day? Soft power of influence runs the world.”

  Yes, that’s how they get you to do things, I think. Use the loved ones. My father knew that.

  “Colonel, do you really think you can defeat America? I am not talking militarily…Your trillion dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to the wealth of this country.”

  Nemzhov sighs wearily. “Call me Nikolai. Not any time soon and not by ourselves. During World War II, we wasted innumerous lives and resources by throwing our people into bloody frontal attacks against the Germans. And then we employed a similar strategy during the Cold War, substituting raw power for thinking. We won’t defeat America this way. We have to let America defeat itself. Let them destroy their society through financialization and rising inequality. Let them push other countries into our corner by imperial arrogance and hubris. Let them upset their allies by spying on them. Let them damage their reserve currency status through debt
and money printing. Like in any complex system, small changes will keep adding up until they turn into big dislocations.” He pauses to take a breath. “As for ‘only a trillion dollars’…It’s not only about the money, it’s about embedding ourselves into the system. The chessboard is larger than Mr. Brzezinski imagined. What he did not foresee is us taking the fight to the U.S. Not openly, of course, but clandestinely, by acquiring influence and helping the U.S. exhaust itself. Arrogance, hubris, soft corruption, influence of money – these are our allies and weapons. The more ‘financialised’ America becomes, the more it will be built on leverage. And greater leverage means greater vulnerability. All the great generals knew that it’s a matter of applying maximum force in weakest spots. The only thing I am afraid of is that we won’t have the patience to wait for the right time. We do our projections based on the growth of debt and retirement of the “baby boom” generation, I figure it’s another fifteen to twenty years before the American situation becomes unsustainable. What do you think, Pavel? Be honest.”

  “Frankly, Nikolai, I think America won the Cold War because they were a more dynamic society, while the Soviet Union has always been a monstrous bureaucratic state run by a small political elite. And I think that America is still the more dynamic society. So, I am not sure you can defeat them.”

  “Pavel, I actually agree with you about the past, but you are looking into a rear-view mirror. America, by now, has evolved a privileged political and financial elite similar to ours. We have our oligarchs, they have theirs. A hundred years ago America broke up their oligarchies and that made the 20th century the American one. But now, they allowed the oligarchs, especially the financial ones, to take over. Do you know that the heads of the 25 largest hedge funds made more money than the management of the 500 largest companies of the S&P 500 index altogether? And these in turn make obscene amounts of money compared to their workers. Money talks, and money drives politics. There will be more market blow-ups, more financial crises, more debt leveraging until they reach the point of no return. Imperial hubris never ends well. History is not linear, it always repeats itself. Pavel, don’t bet on the wrong horse.”

  But I’d rather bet on them. Because there is still hope for them but there is none for you.

  I take a deep breath and ask the one question that I could not figure out:

  “Why didn’t you just arrest me after I picked up the package that my father sent? You could have told me everything then. Why make me figure things out on my own?”

  “No, we couldn’t,” replies Nemzhov. “We were puzzling over your father’s suicide and not sure whether he told you anything. I had to find out without torturing you.” He says this casually, to torture-or-not being a simple business decision. “More importantly, we had to learn about you, Pavel. We used your weaknesses against you. We wanted to learn your strengths before we could trust you with this conversation.”

  I change the subject. “Nikolai, what about Jeff Kron?”

  Nemzhov squints in puzzled incomprehension:

  “What about him?”

  “An innocent man is in jail for many years.”

  “He put himself into this situation. He was going there with a gun, intending to kill John Brockton.”

  “But he did not kill anyone.”

  “OK, Pavel, why are you asking this?”

  “I want him released.”

  “Not a good idea,” Nemzhov shakes his head. “That case has been closed; who knows where re-opening it would lead?”

  “I’ve met him, he is on my conscience now. That’s my price. It’s not negotiable.”

  He who saves one life saves the world.

  Nemzhov rubs his chin. “I don’t like it, but if it’s important to you…we can arrange for some killer-for-hire to admit to murdering Brockton and Streltsova. We have plenty of those in our jails, should be able to find one that fits the profile. People will bring up the old story of Streltsova reporting on the 1999 bombings in Moscow being the work of the FSB and the GRU.”

  “Was it?”

  “No, but if some people want to think that, that’s fine. Keeps them chasing the wrong scent. OK, I can’t promise tomorrow, but before the week is over there will be a story that should free Jeff Kron. So, Pavel, any other requests?”

  “No, that’s the only one.”

  “Then I have one question. The same one I asked earlier: Why did your father kill himself? I am sorry, but this haunts me.”

  Because you did not see the whole diary, you don’t know how much he hated people like you. He’d been forced to play your game his whole life, but no longer. I simply reply, “I think he did not want you to be able to pressure me through him.”

  Nemzhov nods, unconvinced.

  Sarah has an interview in Boston on Thursday. She’s going to leave tomorrow and come back Thursday evening, spend a day with her sister who lives there.

  “It’ll be good for me to go, clear my head a bit,” she says sadly. “I’ll try to survive a day without seeing you.”

  I show her my father’s diary and read the first few pages. I don’t think I am doing a good job translating.

  We make love as if this is the last time we’ll see each other.

  Wednesday, June 28

  I take care of business in the morning. First, go to the notary to complete my will. Then, to the local Kinko’s to make copies. Lastly, back to my apartment, prepare e-mails and two packages to the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. There is not much else to do but wait.

  My phone wakes me up at half past one in the morning. The caller ID says it’s from somewhere in Russia. A heavily accented voice tells me to check the news. I go to my computer and here it is: A man serving a life sentence in a Moscow jail confesses to killing John Brockton and Natalya Streltsova in Santa Barbara. The police confirmed that the man was in California during that time. The reason is given as contract killing, revenge for a business gone wrong between Brockton and one of the Russian mafia chiefs, since killed in another dispute.

  I call Sal Rozen. “Sal, this is Pavel.”

  “Do you look at your watch before you call?”

  “Go to your computer, search the news for Brockton.”

  I hear some swearing and footsteps as Rozen carries the phone with him, clicking of keys, then, “Holy shit! What did you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t BS me, if this is not your work, I am the Pope!”

  “Sal, is this enough to get Jeff Kron out?”

  He thinks, then I almost hear him nod. “Yeah, this should work. I’ll start tomorrow. You know Melissa Kron will turn heaven and earth with this.”

  “Thank you, Sal.”

  “No, thank you. But you still did not tell me what you had to do.”

  “Sorry, Sal, I can’t.”

  Thursday, June 29

  I wake up to a beautiful sunny morning. I’ve lived here for twenty years, and I never liked the East Coast summers. Give me the heat of California or the rain of Canada, but please spare me New York’s humidity. But sometimes we get these wonderful June mornings when the air is clear and crisp and the sun is bright and not too hot and the city feels like it just arose from the ocean like Botticelli’s Venus, and you feel like you might just get that second chance at life.

  I know what I have to do but I prolong it, go for a nice leisurely breakfast with an extra cup of coffee. I wonder if Julius Caesar hesitated before crossing Rubicon. Perhaps took a few hours, sat down for a nice lunch? No, I am sure he just plowed through.

  “Enough!” I say out loud, spooking a nice tourist family at the next table. I push myself away from the table and quickly walk home. I read through one of the e-mails I prepared yesterday to make sure I got it right, then quickly hit “Send” on all of them afraid that if I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it. Then I grab the envelopes for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, walk over to a mailbox on the corner and quickly push them in.

  Now that the deed is done
, for the first time in many months I feel light and happy. The way one feels when a difficult task has been completed. I think of Sarah coming back tonight. Later, I will go buy some flowers and get us a nice dinner and a good bottle of wine.

  I arrange things on my desk. Make sure the removed pages are in their proper places in the diary. I turn on the old metronome, the way my parents did when I was a child. I listen to its sound, tuning out the noise of a busy New York street and imagining my parents as teenagers, huddled around a wooden crank radio, hungry and cold, armed only with their will to live.

  I know it's too soon. I know both Sarah and I should take our time. My logical, reasonable self knows this. But my other self is not listening. Too often have I been a careless rogue. I blew it with Anya and Karen. I don’t deserve it, but here it is, another chance. I am afraid to lose it. Simplify: go back to physics, teach, be with Sarah. I know she wants a child, perhaps we can have one.

  EPILOGUE

  Monday, July 3

  The brief service has ended. With short notice and the holiday weekend, not many have attended.

  Two men are standing to the side, talking. The older one, in his fifties, wearing a nicely dark suit, is short and overweight but otherwise not particularly noticeable. Not so the younger one with sunken cheeks, deep-set eyes, and thin lips, dressed in a leather jacket and speaking with a heavily accented, high-pitched voice:

  “There was never any danger of him being able to send the materials out. When he was in St. Petersburg, we got to his computer and changed the e-mail settings. Anything he sent would go first to our servers where we would check it before forwarding.”

  “What about other communication? Did he mail anything or tell anyone?” asked the older man.

  “He was followed for some time. It was an effort to keep him safe, the damn fool kept walking into dangerous situations. The two envelopes he put in a mailbox were removed immediately. And of course his apartment was bugged and his phone tapped. We think he did not want to jeopardize others so he never shared anything of importance with them.”

  “And this is being treated as a suicide for sure?”

  “Oh, yes. We’ve been careful to leave no marks. Newspapers reported that he killed himself because he was depressed over the failure of his fund and the recent suicide of his father. His girlfriend found him in a bathtub and called 911. Officially, he took a bunch of sleeping pills and cut his wrists to be sure. He made a new will just a day prior and left it right on top of his desk, which showed that he was in a suicidal state of mind.”

  “Nicely done, nicely done. I actually was not convinced about the wisdom of this operation. It has not succeeded, but you handled it well.”

  “Thank you. We were never sure about Rostin, but the colonel was interested in finding a connection to Baker and, with us in control, thought that the risk was worth it.”

  “That’s OK. We’ll find another, more conventional way of getting to Baker,” said the older man. “Campaign contributions, I know a few lobbyists he is friendly with.”

  The younger one continued, “To be on the safe side, we’ll be closing Greg Voron’s fund and the associated partnerships. We’ve been looking to do this anyway. Our people think that the scheme he’s been running is coming to an end and it’s time to cover our tracks.”

  “And what was in Rostin’s will?”

  “Pretty much all of his assets were the proceeds from the sale of the apartment on Malaya Sadovaya. He left half to his wife Karen, and the rest was split between Andrei Rostin, his daughter Jennifer, his girlfriend Sarah, and Anya Weinstein from Moscow.”

  “Who is that Anya?”

  “A daughter of his old professor and, we think, Pavel’s girlfriend before he met Karen Baker.”

  “Were there any instructions?”

  “Only that Andrei Rostin should use the money to visit Paris and that Jennifer should study what she wants and not what others tell her.”

  “You are not going to try to hold back the money?”

  “No, don’t want to attract any more attention. This is not our money anyway. The neighbor purchased the apartment and paid for it.”

  “And that Jeff Kron affair?”

  “Let him be released, who cares now? It’s an old case, nobody’s interested.”

  People started leaving. A group of three women were moving past the two conversing men, when one of them, a nice-looking blond in her early forties, stopped and walked over to a black-haired woman standing by herself. The two women stood for a few seconds looking at each other, then embraced and cried. The brunette reached into her bag and gave the other woman a notebook.

  When the blonde woman then rejoined the other two, the oldest one said sharply. “Karen, why are you hugging that slut? Is it not enough that he left her money? You should contest the will!”

  “Oh, shut up, Mother,” replied the blonde woman. “She is not my enemy and nobody is going to contest anything. And tell father, since he did not show up in person, that I will be moving out and taking the kids.”

  The youngest of the three asked, “Mom, what did Sarah tell you?”

  “She said that she does not believe that your father killed himself. And she gave me the notebook that he brought from Russia. She said you should have it.”

  “I presume that was Karen Baker?” asked the older man.

  “Yes, it was her with her mother and daughter. Sam Baker and Pavel’s son did not make it.”

  “And the woman she embraced?”

  “Sarah Shoffman, Pavel’s lover that found him.”

  “And who is that?” the older man nodded toward a young Asian woman, standing by a tall blond man.

  “Oh, that’s Suzy Yamamoto. She did a bit of research for Pavel. Don’t worry about her, she is totally irrelevant.”

  Almost three thousand miles away, four people, three men and a woman, sit around a small table in a private room of a U.S. penitentiary. A tall, blond man in his early 20s wears an orange jumpsuit of an inmate. A slightly older woman in a business suit on the man’s right bears a family resemblance to him. The man next to her is dressed casually in a blue open-collared shirt and jeans. His pose is relaxed, almost leisurely, left-hand dangling, but fierce dark eyes betray the intensity. The last one, a short, bold man in khaki pants and a poorly matched jacket with a chessboard black and gray pattern leans forward and gently drums his fingers against the table.

  “Jeff,” said the woman to the inmate, “This is Mr. Adrian Cronby, he is an attorney with the Innocence Program organization. He will help me and Detective Rozen to overturn your conviction.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Kron,” replied the man in a blue shirt. “Mr. Kron, nice to meet you. You can call me Adrian.”

  “Please call me Jeff.”

  Adrian nodded, “Jeff, your chances of being released are excellent. Admission of guilt by a known hired killer is a powerful exculpatory material. In addition, Detective Rozen briefed me on a number of inconsistencies in your case that were swept under the rug in the rush to convict.”

  “Do you know why the killer suddenly made his admission now?” wondered Jeff.

  “Frankly, Jeff, I don’t know,” shrugged Adrian. “Perhaps his conscience caught up with him. Does it really matter?”

  Jeff turned to the man in a checkered jacket:

  “Detective, I am sure you had something to do with this. That man that you brought here to see me not long ago …”

  “Jeff, I don’t know,” interrupted the detective. “Let’s focus on getting you out of here.”

  COMMENTARY

  The people described in this book are fictional. But most of the historical events and characters have been reproduced faithfully. This Commentary is intended to help the reader distinguish between fact and fiction.

  The Leningrad Blockade

  While the Rostin family is fictional, the story of the siege is as described: mass starvation, freezing temperatures, constant bombardment, cannibalism. The estimates of the human to
ll range from seven hundred thousand to a million and a half. Almost half a million are buried in 186 mass graves of Piskariovskoye memorial cemetery.

  It is also true that the military leadership wasted countless lives in senseless frontal attacks and that the leadership and those in the food supply chain did not suffer from lack of food.

  Illustrative sources:

  “The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad” by Harrison Salisbury.

  “Leningrad – State of Siege” by Michael Jones.

  The Financial Crisis of 2008

  The roots of the crisis are represented faithfully. The bank that Mikulski and Rostin worked for is modeled after Lehman Brothers but truly could have been any of the large Wall Street banks.

  It’s well known that the real estate bubble and subsequent collapse was the immediate origin of the crisis. In a greatly simplified picture, three distinct forces combined to lead to this trouble:

  1) “securitization” of mortgage obligations where residential mortgages were “pooled” together to create consolidated debt instruments that could be sold to investors,

  2) government’s policies that, in the name of encouraging home ownership, pressured quasi-government organizations such as Fannie Mae to purchase lower-quality (subprime) mortgages, and

  3) ratings agencies’ (S&P, Moody) inability to property rate the risk of such debt instruments or unwillingness to antagonize their Wall Street clients.

  As the result, financial institutions were able to obtain high ratings for pools of low-quality mortgages and sell them to investors that relied on these ratings. Essentially, these collections of bad loans were marketed like high-quality AAA corporate debt in mistaken belief (or intentional lies by those that understood the real hazard) that combining multiple loans reduces the overall risk. Such risk reduction would have been true if these loans were not highly correlated – but they were correlated because they all depended on constantly rising market prices. The lenders could make loans without worrying about such loans actually performing because they could package and sell the loans to someone else. Given the human nature and lack of oversight, creation of such moral hazard was bound to lead to a disaster.

  It is not the book’s intent to create an impression that the Russian security services created the crisis. In the book, Voronezhsky is smart enough to take advantage and profit from the bubble and the financial chicanery that went with it, but the crisis was manufactured entirely within the US.

  Illustrative sources:

  “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” by Michael Lewis.

  “All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis” by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.

  The Quants of Wall Street

  In the book, Pavel Rostin is a physicist that goes to work on Wall Street as a quantitative analyst, or a “quant” in the Street’s lingo. A quant is a person that applies mathematical and statistical methods to financial problems, usually in derivatives pricing, statistical arbitrage and risk management. Career jumps from physics to Wall Street were not entirely uncommon in the 1980s and 1990s, with one of the better-known examples being of Emanuel Derman, physics PhD from Columbia that joined Goldman Sachs in 1985.

  One of the most successful theories in finance is that of Black-Scholes formula that applied some of the theory behind thermodynamics to options pricing. While Black-Scholes theory was developed in 1970s, it was not until 1990s that Wall Street kicked off the era of exotic options and derivatives. The complex formulas began to be used extensively in ‘financial engineering’ where ever more complex ‘synthetic’ financial instruments were being created. For example, in 2000 quant named David X. Li proposed a solution to value so-called ‘collateralized debt obligations’ or CDOs using the Gaussian coppola. This formula was used to price tranches of mortgages.

  But the problem with these attempts to apply the laws of mathematics and physics to financial markets is that financial markets are different – they highly depend on the actions of others. As Nasim Taleb warned, investors are “fooled by randomness” and don’t expect deadly volatility jumps that occur in financial markets. Mathematical and physical problems are right in typically assuming the famous bell-curve distribution in the natural world. But this distribution, as originally pointed out by Mandelbrot, does not work in finance.

  The perils of quantitative finance are perhaps best illustrated by Robert Merton and the history of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM). Merton received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1997 for his contributions to the Black-Scholes-Merton formula. He was a co-founder of LTCM which earned fabulous returns for its investors for four years by using high leverage. But in 1998 the volatility turned against their positions, the fund lost almost $5B and had to close soon thereafter.

  One can argue that the same recipe of excessive leverage and high volatility brought down the markets in 2008. The profits generated prior to the crash have remained private, while the losses were born by everyone.

  Illustrative sources:

  “The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It” by Scott Patterson.

  The Financialization of America

  The deregulation milestones and various statistics are reproduced faithfully. While there were many voices calling for tighter restraints of financial markets after the 2008 crisis, in reality nothing have changed. In 2014, the financial institutions are bigger than ever. New and improved rackets, such as high-frequency trading and creative derivates, are being created as regulators turn a blind eye. The finance industry continues to be by far the Number 1 in campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. In 2012, the average Wall Street salary was $363K. In comparison, the average salary in New York was under $68K and median for US households only $50K.

  Illustrative sources:

  “How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly and the Stark Choices Ahead” by Dambisa Moyo.

  And many others.

  On the Russian Financial Crisis of 1998

  Under Yeltsin, the Russian government had been funding itself by taking on short-term debt at high interest. The situation could not continue. On August 17, 1998, the Russian government defaulted on its domestic debt, let the ruble exchange rate plummet. And froze all bank accounts. Almost half of Russian banks went bankrupt. The Russian middle class lost most of its savings. Domestically, it resulted in halting some of the economic reforms, and revitalized secret police took power and wealth from the original oligarchs and replaced them with “their” oligarchs. One of the losing oligarchs was Boris Berezovsky who had to escape Russia; in 2013, he was found dead on the floor of his bathroom.

  One of the international consequences was international market turmoil that brought down LTCM, probably the best known quant hedge fund of the time. The Federal Reserve stepped in to organize a rescue. Debatably, this has started the Federal Reserve on a dangerous road of ever-increasing market interference. In August of 2014, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet stands at almost $4.5 Trillion, leveraged at over 70:1 (more than twice the leverage of Lehman Brothers when the famous bank collapsed). Since the 2008 crisis, the Federal Reserve has been buying 60-70% of the U.S. debt every year.

  Illustrative sources:

  “How Capitalism Was Built” by Anders Aslund.

  “The Sale of the Century: Russia’s Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism” by Chrystia Freeland.

  The Voronezhsky Document

  The document is fictional. The closest equivalent that the author is aware of is in writings of Igor Panarin. Igor Panarin is a Russian professor and diplomat, currently the dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry School for future diplomats. In 1997, he was awarded Doctorate in Political Sciences for a thesis titled “Informational-Psychological Support of the National Security of Russia”. In 1998, Panarin formulated his hypothesis of the eventual breakup of the U.S.

  In 2014, it is hard to ignore increasing signs of emerging China-Russia axis to oppose what t
hese countries view as “American hegemonism”. Besides closer economic and military cooperation, both countries are actively trying to move away from using the US dollar in international transactions. In particular, China is positioning renminbi as another ‘reserve currency’.

  On Russian Claims That the Promises Made to Gorbachev in 1989 Have Been Broken

  Numerous participants in the Malta summit of 1989 and in subsequent discussions confirm that there was a promise to not expand NATO to Russia’s borders.

  Illustrative sources:

  “Superpower Illusions” by Jack F. Matlock, Jr., 2010 by Yale University.

  “NATO Enlargement: Illusions and Reality” edited by Galen Carpenter and Barbara Conry, 1998 by the Cato Institute. Especially “The Perils of Victory” by Susan Eisenhower.

  The Statement of Richard Palmer on Infiltration of Western Financial System

  This is factual. The hearing took place on September 21, 1999. The statement has been reproduced faithfully. It is widely believed that very substantial assets have been transferred out of the collapsing Soviet Union and hidden in the West. How much, where this money are now and who controls them, we don’t know.

  See, for example:

  https://democrats.financialservices.house.gov/banking/92199pal.shtml

  On Financial Warfare

  On June 23, 2006, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times published articles about the U.S. government sifting the international banking data, the data that has been viewed as private.

  Illustrative sources:

  “Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare” by Juan Zarate, 2013.

  The Wolfowitz Memorandum

  The concepts of the memorandum have been reproduced faithfully. See, for example,

  https://work.colum.edu/~amiller/wolfowitz1992.htm.

  Zbignew Brzezinski’s Book

  The concepts of the book have been reproduced faithfully.

  Russian Poets and Writers

  Anna Akhmatova: the pen name of Anna Gorenko (1889-1966), one of the most acclaimed Russian poets of the 20th century. Suffered greatly from the Stalinist terror: personally condemned and censored, while her husband was executed by the secret police and her son spent many years in the Gulag. She was in Leningrad during the most horrible part of the siege. In 1946, Andrei Zhdanov banned her poems and had her expelled from the writers’ union.

  Olga Berggoltz: a Russian poetess that spent the whole blockade in Leningrad and became famous for working on the only functioning radio station of the city. Day in and day out, she read poetry and delivered news, urging the people to hold on to hope. Her husband died of starvation in 1942. She was arrested and imprisoned in 1938, released in 1939.

  Marina Tsvetayeva: a renown Russian lyrical poetess. After living abroad, she came back to Russia in 1939. After her husband was executed and her daughter arrested, Tsvetayeva killed herself in 1941.

  Osip Mandestam: a Russian poet and writer. Mandestam refused to conform to the Stalinist regime and at one point wrote and read a poem highly critical of Stalin. He was arrested multiple times and died in the Gulag in 1938.

  Alexander Lebed

  Popular Russian general and politician that placed third in the 1996 Russian presidential election. In 1991, during the communist putsch, he was ordered to send tanks against Boris Yeltsin and the parliament but Lebed refused to obey the order and the putsch collapsed. Lebed served as Russia’s Secretary of the Security Council until 1998, when he left Moscow. He opposed NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders. Died in a helicopter crash in 2002.