Berezovsky: the last episode

Having observed and studied the post-Soviet political space-time for almost 20 years, I can say with a high degree of inner confidence: mentally healthy people very rarely go into politics. In the most literal, clinical sense of the term “mental health.” The brain of a politician is a receptacle for all sorts of manias and phobias that a so-called normal person (with all the flashy conventions of this concept) is simply not able to cope with.

I would like to immediately make a reservation that in this case I do not mean bureaucrats who, due to a misunderstanding, are mistaken for politicians - such as the majority of representatives of today's political mainstream in the Russian Federation. A bureaucrat in a political position is not at all the same as a genuine, organic politician. Although there is often confusion in determining which of them is who.

That’s why 90% of real politicians are either schizophrenic or paranoid.

Schizophrenics are creators and ringleaders, paranoids are managers and guards. The first ones are good in an era of instability, big breakthroughs and leaps. The second is when fashion appears, which is also a request for stability, and control becomes more important than development.

A schizophrenic lives purely and entirely in a world he has invented, where his own laws reign. That's why he's not afraid. He can hang by a thread and walk on a razor's edge without experiencing panic or even obsessive anxiety. The world of a schizophrenic is not at all hostile to him - if only because it is a Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass, which does not exist in the present material reality.

Being paranoid is another matter. He mentally acts in the present, earthly reality. Which is cold towards him and hostile to him. He fears a lot and suspects even more. Eternally and professionally “sitting on treason,” as they say in certain circles of post-imperial hell. His main task is to “protect himself from the wind, from the lagoon with a sacred shawl” (c).

Let’s say, if for a schizophrenic politician security is a symbol of status and generally “for fun” (it’s nice when someone opens your car door and runs to the nearest general store for whiskey), then for a paranoid person it is a reflection of his true horror of humiliation and death .

In the era of parasitism, where only sawmills and guards reign, there was no place for him.

In this sense and plan, Berezovsky was a typical schizophrenic. Putin (the second and fourth president of the independent Russian Federation) is truly paranoid. This was the main, fundamental reason for their conflict. And not in politics and especially not in money.

Well, Putin could not believe that in September 2000, BAB created a scandal around the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster, not out of hatred or secret plans to overthrow a recent protégé, but simply, as they say, without thinking. Just like Berezovsky, for a long time he did not understand what he had done so bad then. Betrayal? This word is not from the schizophrenic reserve. Excuse me.

For many years in a row I told Berezovsky:

- Borya, do you understand that it was the Yeltsin family who dumped you because they no longer needed you? And Putin is only a tool, but not the source of your problem.

“Old man, you don’t understand anything,” the disgraced oligarch answered with trademark irritation.

He agreed with me, it seems, only in 2006. Then the preliminary decision to sue Roman Abramovich as the symbol and treasurer of the notorious Family was ripe. But here, too, it was not hatred, but resentment that motivated our schizophrenic. If Abramovich had paid BAB some measly billion dollars, then there would have been no trial, and we would still have seen them all together in the exquisite company of V.V. (Posner, not Putin) on San Barthelemy.

But the process finally finished off Boris. And it’s not about five and a half billion, the chance of getting which was literally negligible - this was recognized by all the experts on Anglo-Saxon law I knew. The problem is that the judge of the High Court of London, Baroness Elizabeth Gloster, exposed BAB in a way that no one had ever exposed him before. She identified him as a schizophrenic and declared this with all the force of her case law. The baroness’s verdict contains the nightmarish word self-delusion - the court, which has no equal in recent history, recognized that B.A. He deceives not only (and, by the way, not so much) others as he deceives himself. And this is already a tragedy. Again, it is not that no one would deal with the victim of such a verdict. The fact is that after the exposure, it was already difficult for the ex-tycoon to deal with himself. How can you live with the main deceiver sitting right inside you, like an infernal Hollywood Alien?!

Superficially, it is generally accepted that Berezovsky was a great schemer, ready and able to cheat anyone he met along the way. In reality, not really. Or, rather, vice versa. I know quite a few people who professionally cheated Boris, so much so that he did not immediately understand what really happened. I have already mentioned Boris Yeltsin’s family above. There were also plenty of others who deceived the “fugitive oligarch”.

From relatively minor people - for example, the owner of the newspaper “Zavtra” Alexander Prokhanov. Who in 2002 received $300,000 from BAB “for the development of the publication,” seducing the schizophrenic with vague promises of becoming an opposition presidential candidate. (Oh, how I dimly regret that I did not receive a well-deserved kickback from those funds. It was not such a small amount of money in those philistine times.) No “development of the publication” happened; instead of communism, they announced the Olympics: to develop A.A. Prokhanov decided to have his own dacha. The employees of “Zavtra” then came to me with transparent hints: why is Berezovsky greedy? Here we publish his interview in full Ivanovo, but he doesn’t say a word. Bound by an obligation of silence, I could offer them nothing on my part other than a half-intelligible grunt. Now, as combat reconnaissance veterans like to say, “we can talk about it.”

But BAB’s main mistake, in my opinion, was his key partner Badri (Arkady Shalvovich according to his passport) Patarkatsishvili. Why is B.A. drunk? considered him a financial genius, it is still unclear. The genius, it seems, deliberately made sure that Berezovsky’s property did not belong to the latter. The most spectacular deal that A.Sh. advised B.A., there was an investment of $500 million in shares of the Metalloinvest holding named after A.B. Usmanova. Moreover, just to get the right to spend half a billion dollars, Berezovsky had to (on the idea and initiative of Mr. Patarkatsishvili) give the transfer link - the junior co-owner of Metalloinvest, Vasily Anisimov - a plane. Brilliant, isn't it?

By the beginning of 2008, this BAB investment had risen in price five times - to $2.5 billion. And just then A.Sh. died in London, being a relatively young gentleman (52 years old) and not exactly very ill. The interest of certain people in this death was so obvious that I do not understand the logic of Scotland Yard: after all, it was then that it became clear that BAB could not (and never could) prove its rights to the shares of the metal holding. Why no one is investigating anything, God knows. In the end, Badri Shalvovich had complex psychedelic relationships with various intelligence services, and not only Russian ones.

And in February 2008, immediately after the strange bad death, it turned out that Berezovsky was not owed anything at all. All his expensive purchases - from the fabulous Fisher's Island near Miami to the palace in Marrakesh (Morocco) - suddenly became the property of A.Sh.'s relatives and friends, acquired through back-breaking labor. Especially B.A. regretted his Georgian assets - the Borjomi factories and the telecommunications operator Magticom . After all, Georgia was almost the last country that gave him hope of eternal return and the right to speak Russian outside his own home.

About a year ago (beginning of 2012), one of ours and B.A. a friend told me:

— Once I got on a Tel Aviv-London flight and thought I was starting to go crazy: Berezovsky was sitting in the cabin! I took a closer look: it really is him. Hmmm...

For a person who had flown only charters since 1993, the loss of status was too painful. His schizophrenic world changed from color to suspiciously black and white. It was as if something very important had been turned off in the depths of the envious eyes.

And the Ukrainian revolution of 2004, for which BAB spent $38 million? Not to mention all sorts of big brains embedded in the chest of the Maidan. The beneficiaries of the Maidan promised him the whole Ukrtelecom, and then they were afraid to even invite him to Kyiv.

What about the death of Alexander Litvinenko? Yes, yes, we have all heard a million times about polonium with fresh hamlet and bloody Russian Federation poisoners. Why doesn’t anyone think that Mr. Litvinenko worked closely with the Spanish security forces and was going to testify in court against some of Patarkatsishvili’s paracriminal partners? A? After all, it was A.Sh. foaming at the mouth, he convinced B.A. that the ex-major had been killed by the Russian secret police. And he convinced me, damn it. Berezovsky began to doubt only in the last year of his life, when Badri’s true role in his fate became clear in a sudden April sky.

“The hour of apprenticeship, but we see and know another hour - the dawn has yet lit. Blessed are you coming after him - the supreme hour of loneliness" (c).

One of the creators and symbols of a bygone era, B.A. completed a genuine apprenticeship in the last 13 years. Loneliness inevitably followed. There is only one way out - a scarf.

The historical and humanitarian law states that a person does not die from old age and/or disease. And then, when his life’s task is exhausted. Recorded in the file cabinet of the State Security Service (not to be confused with the security services).

There are creative and parasitic eras. As Berdyaev said, times are “about something” and “about nothing.” In the first case - “I dare to be Daniel, I dare one against all.” In the second - the same thing, only with a huge NOT particle.

BAB, no matter how you treat him, was a man of the first type of times. As befits a schizophrenic. In the era of parasitism, where only sawmills and guards reign, there was no place for him. Objectively. But people of this mentality (not to repeat the intrusive “schizophrenic”) are not objective. It was not a villainous plot that destroyed him, but the paranoia of these/current times.

I mourn him because it was very interesting to be with him. All night—I’m not afraid of this dark word—he and I could discuss “The Grand Inquisitor.” With which other people of his type/circle is this possible? Don't know.

Be there. I kiss you.

See you.