The Kremlin's Creature Comforts
Yeltsin, Boris
The Kremlin's Creature Comforts Welcome to the communists' party by Boris Yeltsin The party leadership is obsequious, obedient, and unchanging. An intelligent, independent-minded official of...
...As for medical treatment, the medicines and equipment are all imported, all of them the last word in scientific research and technology...
...There is also a wide choice of places at which to spend one's holidays: Pitsunda and Gagra on the Georgian coast of the Black Sea...
...The higher you climb up the professional ladder, the more comforts surround you and the harder and more painful it is to lose them...
...to the medicines packed in several layers of wrapping paper and guaranteed safe by the signatures of several doctors (only medicine certified in this way can be given to the Kremlin elite...
...My bodyguard commander, a most attentive man, was named Yuri Fyodorovich...
...Precisely at the appointed hour comes a discreet knock on the door of your office...
...As before, a wide selection of perks is being handed out to the position that a person occupies, but each "gift"—from a soft armchair with its numbered metal tag on up to the bottle of normally unavailable medicine stamped "safe" by the fourth directorate of the KGB—bears the seal of the system...
...I believe that perestroika would not have ground to a halt if only Gorbachev had been able to get rid of his reluctance to deal with the question of the leadership's privileges—if he himself had renounced all those completely useless, though pleasant, customary perquisites...
...When you are a member of the Politburo, your personal physician is obliged to examine you every day, but a lack of professional and personal freedom hangs over him like a sword of Damocles...
...These summer dachas are as luxurious as the year-round residences...
...Fortunately, they were soon reassigned...
...All are called "special": special workshops, special dry cleaners, special polyclinics, special hospitals, special houses, special services...
...Among the most elegant and coveted social events in the nation, the dinners draw celebrities from all fields...
...A specialist is supposed to be someone who has a particular training or talent...
...Even from the outside I had been overwhelmed by the size of the place...
...And it turns out that there was no need of the world revolution, maximum labor productivity, and universal harmony in order to have reached that ultimate, blissful state as prophesied by Karl Marx...
...It is perfectly possible to attain it in one particular country— for one particular group of people...
...The ZIL, however, was with me around the clock...
...And who pays for all this...
...The White House telephone operators are rightly legendary...
...An intelligent, independent-minded official of the Central Committee is a combination of words so paradoxical that one's tongue cannot even utter them...
...There are many true stories of White House staffers being located by the operators during a tryst in the wee hours of the morning...
...The Kremlin ration, a special allocation of normally unobtainable products, is paid for by the top echelon at half its normal price, and it consists of the highest-quality foods...
...Within this system nothing belongs to the individual...
...It is not simply a metaphor for an overbright communist future: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs...
...I haven't been to see a doctor for several months...
...This year it will cost taxpayers $30.2 million to run the White House office, $16.3 million of that for salaries...
...That does not count salaries for the Secret Service or the military personnel...
...There is a Volga for their use, bearing prestigious Kremlin license plates, with drivers working in shifts, taking your wife to work or the children to and from the dacha...
...I used to walk as part of my attempt to get a little exercise...
...Times have changed, but the essence of the system remains the same...
...No problem: You are brought a catalog with a choice of gifts to satisfy even the most sophisticated taste...
...My daughter and I, my assistant, and my driver played against the guards...
...Everywhere was crystal, antique and modern chandeliers, oak and parquet floors...
...As I mentioned earlier, before it was assigned to me, it had been occupied by Gorbachev, who had moved into another, specially built for him, When I drove up to the dacha for the first time, I was met at the door by the commander of the bodyguard, who introduced me to the domestic staff...
...And so on down the scale, all organized by rank...
...It is an idea of pure genius...
...How many such special people are there, one wonders, pampered by the system even in what seem like the most insignificant details...
...Lifestyles of the Red and Famous In using the word "communism," I am not exaggerating...
...They try to sneak out early...
...One of the best perks is going to a state dinner...
...In other words, you can go ahead and be poisoned, but he is sacred...
...if he had not had his dacha at Pitsunda rebuilt and then an ultramodern one put up at Thorosin in the Crimea...
...Do you want a new suit...
...Excellent sports facilities exist for "special" use only, for example on the Lenin Hills—indoor and outdoor tennis courts, a large swimming pool, and a sauna...
...Subversion of foreigners by bribery...
...Then we began our inspection of the house...
...There's the White House tennis court, the swimming pool, the horseshoe pit, the health club, the gym, the mess, the barbershop-beauty salon, the presidential box at the Kennedy Center, and the movie theater supplied with movies by the Motion Picture Association of America...
...If I drove out of town to spend the night at the dacha, the driver was put up in a special lodge so as to be ready to drive away at any moment...
...She was told that they could but that I must not...
...The deputy head of a department already has his personal Volga, while the head has another and better Volga, fitted with a car phone...
...The system could take those wives away and imprison them, just as Stalin imprisoned the wives of Kalinin and Molotov, and neither man dared to utter so much as a squeak of protest...
...It would be interesting to know, by the way, how all this expenditure is accounted for and under what heading of the KGB's budget...
...Particularly when the president is out of town...
...Soon you have an elegant new suit...
...He eats what ordinary mortals only dream of, takes his holidays in places where the proletariat are not even allowed to come near the surrounding fence...
...the Valdai Hills, a beautiful region midway between Moscow and Leningrad...
...If you wanted to go to the cinema, the theater, a museum, indeed any public place, a whole squad of heavies was sent there in advance...
...It may be a somewhat controversial opinion of mine, but I do believe that perestroika would not have ground to a halt, despite the tactical mistakes that have been made, if only Gorbachev had been able to get rid of his reluctance to deal with the question of the leadership's privileges—if he himself had renounced all those completely useless, though pleasant, customary perquisites...
...Prized are corner offices and big windows or great views, offices with history (getting an office where somebody famous once worked is a big high), and those with unscratched furniture...
...The rationale for the perks is the long hours most top staffers at the White House work...
...In short, I tried my best to introduce something human, competitive, and energetic into that oasis of artificial communist perfection...
...There was a time when a highly skilled craftsman really was a specialist...
...The higher he goes, the more special are the delights handed out to him...
...There was a dining room with an incredible 30-foot-long table and behind it a kitchen big enough to feed an army, with a refrigerator that constituted a separate underground room...
...Here are some examples of the privilege system, based on my own experience...
...We went up the steps of a broad staircase to the second floor...
...And just as the system has given them, so can it take them away...
...Or perhaps a more romantic heading, such as satellite intelligence in space...
...What a cynical use of the word...
...Yet in Sverdlovsk I was looked after by one general practitioner, Tamara Kurushina, who knew me inside and out, always made a precise diagnosis in any situation, and prescribed the treatment herself, whether it was for a headache, a cold, or just general debility...
...Another big but rare perk is going to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains...
...The life of a party leader is beneath its unsleeping, all-seeing eye, and it satisfies his every whim...
...Again there was a vast hallway with an open fireplace, and a door opened into the solarium, furnished with rocking chairs and chaise longues...
...Meanwhile, back at the White House —by Ann McFeallers‘, Scripp.s...
...When the elite want to go on vacation, they can choose virtually any place in the warm south...
...And stupid Ivanov doesn't realize that it is not he who is being thus favored by the position he occupies, and that if he suddenly stops serving the system faithfully, Petrov or somebody else will instantly be put in his place...
...The dacha is a story in itself...
...The joke is that none of these riches belong to those who enjoy the special privileges...
...Boris Yeltsin, a member of the People's Parliament, is the author of Against the Grain from which this article is excerpted by permission of Summit Books © 1990 by Boris Yeltsin...
...Silk flowers add to the cheery office of the president's chief of staff, whose allergies rule out the fresh bouquets that decorate White House offices daily...
...Party favors Sometimes this essentially cynical system will exhibit an equally cynical lapse where the immediate family members of the head of the clan are concerned...
...There virtually any place in the warm south...
...This is the kind of job that almost consumes you," she said...
...All you have to do is choose...
...When, for instance, the chief bodyguard was instructing my wife and children that they must not feed me fruit and vegetables bought in the market because they might be poisoned, one of my daughters asked timidly whether she and my wife might eat market-bought produce...
...Obsequiousness and obedience are rewarded in turn by privilege: special hospitals, special vacation retreats, the excellent Central Committee canteen, the equally excellent service for home delivery of groceries and other goods, the Kremlin telephone system, the free transportation...
...Bush, and a White House parking space are highly coveted and reserved for only a few dozen people...
...There are whole sections of GUM—the huge department store that faces the — Kremlin across Red 4291W PAY 'Mb Square—closed to the public and specially reserved for the highest of the elite, while for officials a rung or two lower on the ladder there are other special shops...
...But if you have climbed all the way to the top of the establishment pyramid, then it's full communism...
...The big ZIL, of course, is reserved for the father of the family...
...Combating spies...
...I lost count of the number of bathrooms and lavatories...
...They can find anyone within minutes...
...Soon Ivanov begins to think he is an important person...
...It was almost impossible to meet anybody or do anything in the ordinary, normal way...
...Therefore, the more obedient and dependable you become...
...Then, as he rises higher, another class...
...I entered a hall measuring about 30 by 15 feet, with an enormous fireplace, marble paneling, parquet floor, large carpets, chandeliers, and luxurious furniture...
...Even at my level as a candidate member of the Politburo, my domestic staff consisted of three cooks, three waitresses, a housemaid, and a gardener with his own team of assistant gardeners...
...The rooms in the Kremlin hospital are huge suites, also surrounded by luxury: porcelain, crystal, carpets, and chandeliers...
...The lights are green all the way, the car races ahead without a stop, and you drive quickly and pleasantly...
...One is driven to the beach by car, even though the distance is no more than a couple of hundred yards...
...We went on, passing through first one room, then a second, a third, and a fourth, each of which sported a television set...
...Then there are the personal airplanes, an IL-62 or a TU134, in which a Central Committee secretary, a candidate member, or a full member of the Politburo flies alone, except for his bodyguard and the cabin crew...
...And so it is for those at the top of the party pyramid...
...Bush has a special travel budget of $100,000 by law, but that does not count the cost of operating Air Force One, which is $6,000 an hour and part of the military budget...
...But the dacha had its own cinema, and every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday a projectionist would arrive, complete with a selection of films...
...The first time a guest rides Air Force One under the current president, he gets a certificate signed by the pilot...
...this man is his aide-de-camp and organizes his life...
...But everybody who works in the White House gets some perks...
...The KGB...
...The attitude toward families is most considerate...
...For the rest of the year these dachas are empty...
...The unfortunate part is that lower-echelon staffers rarely get to go, but a few top aides must go to each one...
...meetings...
...Senior party officials have forgotten that there are such things as traffic jams and red lights...
...I was surrounded by extra guards...
...They do not watch out of any great respect for the occupant of the car but because it is really an impressive sight...
...Their needs are so great that so far it has only been possible to create real communism for a couple of dozen people—communism is created for them by the ninth directorate of the KGB, and this all-powerful directorate can do anything...
...Muscovites usually stop and watch whenever a government ZIL flashes past, with a hiss of tires, at great speed...
...Do you need a present for your wife for March 9, International Women's Day in the USSR...
...One of his chief duties was to see to the fulfillment of any wish that might be expressed by his . . . I almost said lord and master, for whose safety and comfort he was responsible...
...This is so the individual (who, as before, is no more than a little cog in the machine) will never forget to whom all this really belongs...
...Connie Gerrard, who was assistant to the press secretary under five presidents, retired recently even though she is only in her forties...
...I regarded those faceless groups of consultants with great suspicion, and since I have gone back to my usual polyclinic, my head has stopped aching and I have begun to feel much better all around...
...When White House aides are asked about the best perks of working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they invariably include "the switchboard" on the list...
...Stalin cunningly brought this machinery to such a state of perfection that even the wives of his immediate colleagues did not belong to them...
...When I received a number of threatening letters, I was allotted a Volga to accompany me...
...Also on the ground floor was an enormous veranda with a glass roof, and a small movie theater-cum-billiard room...
...if he had not built a new house for himself on the Lenin Hills and a new dacha outside Moscow...
...Bush says weekends at Camp David are the best perk of being president, but few White House employees have ever been there...
...A man—Ivanov, say, or Petrov—climbs his way up the career ladder, and the system gives him one class of special privileges...
...It may be coincidence, but it is also symbolic...
...Every Central Committee secretary, every member or candidate member of the Politburo, is assigned an officer in charge of his bodyguard...
...It is applied to the excellent food products that are prepared in special kitchens and are subjected to special medical tests...
...In walks a tailor, who takes your measurements and returns the next day for a fitting...
...Even before the ZIL has driven out of your gateway, the police all along your route have been notified...
...A dacha behind a high green fence encircling spacious grounds alongside the Moscow River, with a garden, tennis courts, and playing fields, a bodyguard under every window, and an alarm system...
...Another perk is a daily compendium of major news stories from newspapers and television so staffers who leave home before their newspapers arrive won't look "out of the loop" when they go into 7:30 a.m...
...The Kremlin's Creature Comforts Welcome to the communists' party by Boris Yeltsin The party leadership is obsequious, obedient, and unchanging...
...And then, to cap it all, at the Congress of People's Deputies he announced with pathos that he has no personal dacha...
...All these marvelous things—dachas, tions, a stretch of seaside fenced off from everyone else —belong to the system...
...Afraid of taking responsibility, an individual physician never makes an independent decision, and diagnoses and treatments are invariably agreed upon by a group of 5 to 10 doctors, sometimes including the most highly qualified specialists...
...Politburo members are escorted by an additional car, a Volga...
...Nowadays in our country the word "special" has a specific meaning, of which we are all too well aware...
...There are other opportunities to go on leave too, because a two-week winter holiday supplements the summer break...
...Surprisingly, all this luxury was incapable of producing either cornfort or convenience...
...After that came the study, the bedrooms, two more rooms intended for I know not what, more lavatories and bathrooms...
...There is a definite hierarchy to who gets what—a fireplace, an office near Mr...
...Thus for a while it became impossible to kill me...
...Doesn't he realize how hypocritical that sounded...
...Riding Air Force One and getting a notebook and matches with the logo are nice perks...
...In Moscow, a total of some 40,000 people enjoy the privilege of these special rations, in various categories of quantity and quality...
...Lighted fires and customized flowers are just two of the many perks and benefits of working at the White House...
...The summary is prepared by a young staff that arrives in the middle of the night...
...Hotivai News ,Cerv On chilly mornings, a cozy fire is burning in John Sununu's office when he arrives at work next to the Oval Office...
...Wherever I might be, the car and its radio were always near...
...They, too, belonged to the system...
...It has all been most carefully devised: A section chief does not have a personal car, but he has the right to order one from the Central Committee car pool for himself and his immediate staff...
...the Crimea...
...There is bound to be a special dacha there...
...They would check and cordon off the whole place, and only then could you go yourself...
...I also organized two volleyball teams...
...I have already mentioned their abilities, which, alas, are not outstanding...
...They were young, strong, and fit, but even so we often won...
...But their needs...
Vol. 22 • May 1990 • No. 4
