How Americans bought up state property under Yeltsin

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Yeltsin government was advised by more than 300 American specialists, including CIA officers. The enormous national wealth of the Soviet Union was sold for a pittance, stolen and taken abroad - mainly to America.

US President Bill Clinton's adviser Stube Talbot did not hesitate to write: “The United States bought the USSR at a penny-to-ruble price ratio. By the own admission of Russian economists Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidarthey "did not think about the price of state property, because they wanted to rid the country of the backward legacy of socialism as soon as possible."

As of 1990, more than 30 thousand industrial enterprisesbuilt in the era of the USSR. After privatization, there were six times less of them. The greatest damage was caused during the loans-for-shares auctions. The auctions were carried out according to corruption schemes. Factory managers were bribed, blackmailed, and those who disagreed could be killed.

For example, in St. Petersburg, during the privatization of the Steel Rolling Plant, four applicants for the purchase of the enterprise were killed one by one. The Likhachev Automobile Plant in Moscow (the famous ZIL) was sold for $ 130 million. The treasury received 13 million.

As a result of the privatization of the 90s, Russia in terms of economic development was thrown back to the level of 1975 and lost one and a half trillion dollars

One of those who came to power in the 90s was Vladimir Polevanov … Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences and Advisor to the Minister of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation in our time, since 1993 he headed the Amur Region - the center of gold mining in Russia.

In 1994, Vladimir Polevanov was invited to the post of head of the Russian State Committee for Property Management. In the hands of Vladimir Polevanov were the main levers of control over the privatization process in the vast country.

However, just 70 days after the start of work, Vladimir Polevanov was fired. What happened during this period in Russia, in the world and in the Russian government itself?

About it Vladimir Polevanovand told in the program of the Arabic edition of RT “Russia under US control. Frightening testimony of the former Deputy Prime Minister of Russia .

- Why I was not like that is understandable. I had 18 years of experience in the north of the country, in Kolyma. There are difficult and harsh living conditions, so everyone knew each other, and each helped the other to work in extreme conditions, which are even difficult for many to imagine.

It is difficult to imagine what an air temperature of -63 degrees is. Gasoline freezes at this temperature and turns into oil. Steel bursts several times faster than usual. And we worked in these conditions, mined gold.

Gold mining is an industry where everyone had to be honest, it could not be otherwise! None of us knew such a thing as cheating, not keeping promises or not solving problems. If such people appeared in our midst, they were immediately expelled from the collective.

It was a great sense of responsibility. We were obliged to complete any task, following the main principles: “Do or die! There are no impossible tasks! You yourself are to blame for all your troubles! These are exceptionally correct principles with which I began my work as governor of the Amur Region.

And what did the work on the leadership of the region with the Kolyma principles mean? This meant that absolute honesty reigned in our administration. Nobody took any bribes, and nobody gave bribes.

In addition, I eliminated the security service that I was entitled to. The guards were supposed to be at my house and be with me in the car. I said that my best protection is my work and my behavior as governor.

Experts explained to me that if they want to kill me, then the snipers will not miss and no security will save me, this is useless. Therefore, I had one guard, who is also my driver.

- We have really increased gold production, this time. Second, we began to put up our gold deposits for sale, offering them at a real price. And in six months from a subsidized region, we became a non-subsidized region.

- Thanks to that, yes.

“There was nothing to blackmail me with. In addition, I personally supervised the power structures, because this is the most important industry. For example, I attended officers' meetings in the police, whenever possible. Once a week they had a meeting, and once a week I came to see them.

We solved the problems of the police together and solved them quickly enough. Therefore, the special forces and other police units, which were supervised by me personally, were provided with everything necessary. Of course, if possible.

- Why do they need the mafia? Our militia officers were then real officers, and for them there was no question of whom they served, anything else was unacceptable to them. And they, as often happened in those days, did not defend thieves with bandits, but defended state power.

- I have the following question for you. There is such an impression, not only in our country, but also abroad, that people like Anatoly Chubais or Boris Berezovsky were in those years some kind of "gray cardinals" in power … They, like an octopus, held in their tentacles all branches of power, both official and shadow.

Moreover, Boris Yeltsin, as a sick person who had suffered several heart attacks by that time, was not entirely able to control it and stop it. I must say that in one of the interviews, the head of the presidential guard Alexander Korzhakov said that Anatoly Chubais took courses in neurolinguistic programming in order to then almost hypnotically influence Yeltsin!

Is it true, but bribes in the form of boxes of money were definitely carried to officials and they took! And these people considered themselves the real rulers of Russia.

So I am surprised that Boris Yeltsin invited you to the government and am surprised how these people allowed a person like you to become Deputy Prime Minister and head the State Committee for Property Management of Russia. In those years, it was the most key management structure when the country was undergoing general privatization.

- There are two points. Firstly, even as the governor of the Amur Region, I was in contact on a variety of matters with all the ministers of the country. For example, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev came to me to help open additional border crossings between China and the Amur Region, that is, with Russia.

Anatoly Chubais came, who, being the head of the Property Committee, provided the Amur Region with a number of privileges for privatization. Amur Region Chubais was not particularly interested … We had no oil, no ports.

Therefore, he did not see any benefits for himself personally. That is why he responded positively to my requests and helped to privatize the property of the region effectively, according to the law and in the interests of our region. That is, I had no problems with the central government in Moscow.

However, despite this, my appointment to the federal level came as a complete surprise to everyone! Including for me. I found out about this only two days after my appointment, when Boris Yeltsin himself summoned me to Moscow

- And Chubais didn't know ?!

- Did not know. Although later he assured me that my appointment was his initiative …

- How did it happen? Did Boris Yeltsin speak to you before your appointment?

- Not.

- How not ?!

- But like this.

- But he should have set some tasks for you?

“He said:“I have decided to appoint you to this key position. Work. I hope you will succeed."

- What did he mean?

- Everything!

- That is, you, by and large, were called into the unknown? You replaced Anatoly Chubais as head of the State Property Committee of Russia. Didn't anyone tell you on your appointment that you had to complete any necessary tasks that your predecessor had failed to do?

- Nobody said anything like that to me.

- Awesome …

- I agree.

-Wonderful! Work the way you want, do what you want.

- This is how to learn to swim. Thrown into the water and swim.

- Clear. And even Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin did not meet with you?

- Chernomyrdin already knew me.

- Didn't he say anything important?

- He also said: "Work!"

- Fine!

- No particulars. Work and that's it.

- Good. And what was the state of the State Property Committee when you got the post of its head? Was it possible to carry out privatization reforms with the help of this structure? Or was this specially created committee not fulfilling its tasks? What impressed you the most when you took this position?

- I was most struck by the fact that in the State Committee for State Property Management, as it was called, there was not a single department for specializations. That is, no one was going to manage the property!

- And what then did you have to do there?

– Provided for accelerated privatization in the country and at any cost. I immediately understood this and literally within a week was convinced that such privatization would practically lead to the destruction of the country.

- That is, if such privatization continued further, it would inevitably lead the country to an end?

- Will lead to the destruction of the country! And this same privatization laid time mines in the economy, which, as we now see, are working and causing harm to this day. These mines had to be dismantled without fail.

- And who then controlled this process?

- Chubais.

- One, alone?

- Not. With the help of the Americans … These Americans were 35 advisers who worked in the Russian department and determined what, how, and under what conditions should be privatized.

- That is, they worked with Anatoly Chubais?

- Yes. And after he left office, they remained with him.

- This means that 35 American advisers worked with the head of the State Property Committee ?!

- Yes. Of course, Russian advisers worked alongside the American staff. This group was led by US intelligence officer Jonathan Hay.

- Here it is important. This means that this group of 35 advisers was headed by a personnel …

- … scout Jonathan Hay! And that struck me the most!

- Didn't they know about it?

- Everyone knew.

- How so?!

- The fact is that at that time even some orders of the General Prosecutor's Office were ignored. I have a report from the head of the department for supervision in the field of economics of the General Prosecutor's Office Sergey Veryazov.

He wrote in this document that contrary to the order of the government and the president, Russian ports were privatized, which could not be privatized! We then had to nationalize them.

- To return?

- Back. In the same report it was written that even the privatization of the defense industry was carried out! It's hard to imagine! And at the same time, the prohibitions of the Prosecutor General's Office were ignored.

- And it was Anatoly Chubais who invited these Americans to work?

- Certainly. Or Chubais was strongly advised to hire them. There is no difference anymore.

- That is, you mean either they were imposed, or he himself invited?

- Most likely, imposed, I think, he himself could not.

Of course, he himself could not hire 35 Americans, led by a CIA officer.

This was what was most striking to me. In the State Property Committee, the Americans are in command, no one wants to manage property and no one wants to know how much property the country has!The first thing I did was, but naturally did not have time to compile a catalog of Russia's foreign property. It was a gigantic volume.

- Foreign property of the former Soviet Union?

The former Soviet Union, yes! This property was worth trillions of dollars, including land, buildings, structures. None of this was taken into account, although the new government had existed for over a year. And if you count from 1991, then it has existed for four years.

Nevertheless, such a primitive idea of how to register and draw up a register of foreign property, so that later it can be disposed of normally.

The property was not taken into account, and it brought profit to anyone, but not the Russian Federation. The Americans, who were Chubais's advisers, were pushing the process all the time, and privatization proceeded at a rapid pace. This was completely incomprehensible to me.

- And yet, was there anything else that became for you the most amazing thing that was done before you? What was the most egregious fact?

– Most egregious was the destruction of our defense industry. It went deliberately.

- What do you mean by destruction? What exactly?

– I mean that in almost all of our closed defense enterprises, 10% of the shares were owned by American or NATO enterprises.

- On the Boards of Directors?

- On the Boards of Directors. And, practically, each of these Americans knew what and how is produced at these enterprises. Even at the Komponent plant of the rocket and space industry, which fulfilled 97% of the General Staff's orders, the Americans worked.

- That is, it was enough for them to buy 10% of the shares in order to interfere?

- Yes! But the purchase of shares was banned. And then the Americans began to create subsidiaries there …

- That is the question, how was this allowed at all ?!

- Permitted! Our side turned a blind eye to this and, as owners of subsidiaries, they were members of the Boards of Directors. In those years, we were practically not a sovereign country.

- I want to comprehend all this in order to understand the mechanism. This means that the Americans, realizing that they could not legally buy our enterprises directly, began to create …

- Joint ventures…

- As if pro-Russian …

- Working in Russia

-… bought out 10%, at least.

- 10 %! Least. And that's it! On this basis, this pro-Russian enterprise was a member of the Board of Directors.

- And they got access to all the secrets, and to all the technologies that were.

- Yes.

- Good. I have the documents that you sent me. For example, a letter from the Attorney General. More precisely, the acting Prosecutor General of Russia Alexei Ilyushenko

- Exactly. About squandering state property.

- Letter from the head of the department for supervising the implementation of laws in the field of economics Sergei Veryazov. All of them…

- Right.

-… did you write a huge number of letters addressed to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin?

- Yes. So.

- Informing that destruction is actually taking place …

- Absolute …

- … the defense industry.

- And the sale of state property.

- And that no one keeps access to secrecy, which must be protected.

- Yes.

- After all, for tens of years, American intelligence has spent energy trying to at least get closer to our military secrets …

- And then suddenly I got everything at once.

- Access to all the secrets was simply opened for them …

- Moreover…

- You know, it just reminded me of the program that we did about 1945, when the Soviet Union sent its specialists to the occupied German territories to find German technology for FAU-2 missiles. It was hard work. And Russia in the 90s gave it all away just like that.

- Absolutely!

- It was a capitulatory scenario of actions.

- Undoubtedly.

- As if we really capitulated to Western intelligence.

– We capitulated. Moreover, President Yeltsin himself declared that Russia did not need an army!

Stalin's bunker in Moscow was even privatized and turned into a restaurant. When I found out about this, I was just shocked.

- It was.

- Bunker, iconic place!

- However.

- Historical site. In the event of an atomic war, it was supposed to be the main headquarters of the command of the Soviet troops. And it was converted into a restaurant!

- Yes Yes.

- When I studied it, I really was shocked.

- Everyone was shocked. Therefore, we were, in fact, a surrendered country. I had a letter signed by Yevgeny Primakov, who was then in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Service and signed by the head of the FSB of that period.

- Sergei Stepashin, in my opinion, was then.

- Yes, Evgeny Primakov and Sergei Stepashin. They wrote that American, so-called, partners are conducting a massive survey of directors of Russian defense enterprises under the guise of choosing candidates for investment.

The directors answered hundreds and hundreds of questions, and in NATO countries they accumulated such a gigantic amount of data that they created a special unit to adapt the data on defense products to Western standards.

But that's not all. Russian programming specialists were called into NATO structures, paying for these trips, so that these specialists themselves would adapt Russian data to NATO standards.

- And as I understand it, they got all this, practically, for a song?

- Just free.

- You also write that those enterprises, which cost several billion dollars, were privatized for five million dollars, and even with an installment plan for 20 years!

- In fact, in those 90s of the last century, the privatization of 50 percent of the industry of such a giant country as Russia was kept within only one trillion rubles.

- How much will it be in dollars? Seven-eight, in my opinion, you wrote? Seven to eight billion.

- About this.

- At a cost of about four hundred to five hundred billion …

- Yes! While a country like Hungary, which privatized 30% of its enterprises, earned more. That is, we gave everything for free.

- Hungary and the Soviet Union cannot even be compared. Different scale!

- The distribution of property went for a song! Moreover, in my report on the current situation, I wrote that the prices of vouchers were reduced by almost 150 times. Vouchers are securities for the acquisition of a share of state property; in Russia they should have cost not ten thousand rubles for the money of that period, but at least one and a half million rubles, even two.

In those years, people sold their vouchers for the amount that could buy a bottle of vodka or a couple of kilograms of sugar.

And if the voucher was worth two million, you must admit that everyone would get the opportunity for a serious share of state property and could reasonably dispose of it. Nobody would sell it for sugar.

Anatoly Chubais is lying when he says now that they did not care how to privatize, and that the main task was to distribute state property as quickly as possible in order to “drive a nail,” as he pathetically says, “into the lid of the coffin of communism”.

“He also said that“we broke the Russians, but imposed wild capitalism on the country.” That is, he flaunts it.

- Flaunted, yes. In fact, privatization was needed in order to sell property between their own people. And that was what the Americans wanted.

- That is, all the auctions for the sale of enterprises were held between the close associates of Anatoly Chubais?

- Those close to Chubais, who worked entirely on the instructions of the Americans. It was the Americans who set the rules of the game, so all the best from the enterprises fell to them.

There was a period, for example, when 90% of our metallurgical industry belonged to the West, then they tried to take over all the oil companies.

- Just during your work in the government, were there any attempts?

- Yes, yes, just then.

- Attempts to privatize the metallurgical and oil industries in the interests of the West.

- Why was the YUKOS company liquidated? It was absolutely correct. Yukos was already ready for sale. In fact, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested a week before he was about to transfer all Yukos assets to the Americans. After that, it would be much more difficult to return the shares to the Russian state.

- And what happened then? That is, the Russian owner, who owned it all, periodically …

- Periodically sold shares to the West. And this, in principle, is unacceptable. I specially analyzed the state of affairs in the oil industry in the world.

All oil-producing countries, without a single exception, have state-owned oil companies. Norway, the Middle East, Venezuela, practically everything. I even have a complete list. The only major exception is the United States. But, in the US, 85% of oil is located on federal lands, which is already a limitation for owners

The oil companies are monitored by three distinctly different divisions. The Ministry of the Interior, the Securities Service and the Ministry of Mines.

Companies are heavily restricted. And in this they differ from our state-owned companies, which do not have such restrictions.

In particular, the US Securities Service requires every private company to prove the existence of the inventory. This service conducts an independent audit and if it does not suit it, then the Service removes all shares from the exchange trading, without exception, and there are no indulgences in this case. And no less requirements for oil companies are made by the state in which this structure is located.

In fact, the company makes a maximum of 10-12% of the profit and is happy about it! I am happy that they give her to work and do not liquidate her. Therefore, oil is the main asset. How weak Algeria was, how it freed itself from the colonialism of France, but the first action carried out the nationalization of industry.

- Yes, and Libya also nationalized …

- And Libya, yes. Why is Venezuela being terrorized now? Because Venezuela is one of the five largest oil countries in the world, and it also nationalized its industry.

“But gradually the Americans are appropriating everything for themselves. They took it in Libya, they took it in Iraq.

- In Libya and Iraq, they succeeded, but Venezuela is holding on.

- They want to regain their influence in Iran.

- It won't work in Iran!

- Will not work. But in Venezuela it is likely that it will.

- Venezuela may well be suppressed by the Americans. Iran is not. Iran is a super-consolidated country with a stable ideology, a strong army, and a good geographical position.

- Well, there is also, and without five minutes, the creation of nuclear weapons.

- Nuclear weapons in five minutes! They will instantly create an obstacle for the whole world. They have more than two thousand, if I'm not mistaken, guns along the shores of the Strait of Hormuz. Conventional weapons that will sink any tanker and cannot be destroyed.

- Thank you very much, Vladimir Pavlovich! It was very interesting to listen to you, thank you for this conversation. Thank you.

- Thank you and goodbye.