Vekhi Malashenko: Central Committee, NTV, Sobchak

As the creator of the cult television company, the way from the "alternative headquarters" Yeltsin to the headquarters "candidate against all"

Photo: BrokerNews.ru

“Well, finally-I understand that this was the main intrigue of these days-I am ready to introduce you to the chief of my headquarters. Tadadadam! Welcome - Igor Malashenko, ”Ksenia Sobchak said with a satisfied smile. Malashenko slowly came out from behind the curtains of the small scene of the Stanislavsky electrode and froze. “The creator of NTV, which we all loved so much in the 1990s and which we all lost, is one of the leaders of the election campaign Boris Yeltsin!” - The TV star proudly announced. She tried to invite him to her table, but the head of the headquarters silently made several apologizing passes with his hands - there was only one chair on the stage, for the candidate - and went to the hall.

The first appearance of Malashenko on the organized Sobchak scene symbolizes the scheme according to which, it seems, the relationship between them at the headquarters is formed. Several people familiar with the situation told NT that the role of Malashenko is reduced to purely representative functions. All that the head of the headquarters is usually does - from Fandraizing to the strategy - in fact, the TV presenter herself with the closer political technologists.

Central Committee, TV, NTV

In a short interview with RBC last week, Malashenko said that Sobchak invited him to head her headquarters in the morning of the same day - and that he agreed without hesitation: “There is such a book in English, which is called“ blink ”. So, it is enough to blink, just a fraction of a second so that you know the answer. Long thoughts, as a rule, are added little to your decision. ”

Reading books and periodicals in English was in due time for him an official duty. Having graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University with a dissertation about Dante's political philosophy, in 1980 Igor Malashenko came to work at the US Academic Institute and Canada. In 1989, Malashenko became the senior referent of the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and in 1990, when Mikhail Gorbachev was elected president of the USSR, was appointed consultant to his apparatus.

The position of Malashenko in Ostankino was called the "Political Director" - he had to monitor political content, "so that there was no schizophrenia"

As Forbes wrote, in fact, Malashenko was responsible for the contacts of Gorbachev with the Western press. Then, in 1991, he moved to the international affairs sector, which was engaged in the preparation of materials for Gorbachev’s negotiations with foreign leaders, the former translator of the USSR President Pavel Palazhchenko adds. Malashenko, in particular, along with other employees of this sector, was preparing a visit by George Bush Sr. to Moscow, signing the SNA agreement and the visit of Gorbachev to the meeting of the Big Seven in London.

In the same year, even before the putsch, Malashenko first got on television - to the All -Union Teleio Directorate, which was soon renamed Ostankino. She was just headed by Yegor Yakovlev, before - the editor -in -chief of the cult perestroika newspaper Moscow News. Malashenko’s position was called the “Political Director” there - he had to monitor political content, “so that there was no schizophrenia.” By 1993, he rose to the acting Chairman of the company. But the chairman was appointed Vyacheslav Bragin, with whom Malashenko did not work, and a month later he left Ostankino.

Without work, he did not remain long. Former Ostankino colleague Evgeny Kiselev recommended Malashenko to the founder of the Most group Vladimir Gusinsky, who at that time created his own television channel. As a result, Malashenko came up with everything for this television channel - from the concept to the NTV brand - and became its general director. And thanks to his lobbying efforts, President Boris Yeltsin in December 1993 signed a decree on the provision of a private television channel on the Fourth Channel Ostankino

"If I come to the Kremlin, I will throw you out of us!"

Sergey Parkhomenko, the former editor-in-chief of the Garry magazine, which was a part of the Media-Most, told Forbes that the only decoration of the desktop Malashenko was a small bust of Niccolo Machiavelli: “At night he was covered with a cloth cover, and every time Malashenko went to the office, he took off the Czecholchik with Machiavelli, and when he was going home in the evening, he put on. ” For NT, Parkhomenko specified that then he was mistaken - in fact, there was a bust of Dante (his political philosophy was the theme of the doctoral dissertation of Malashenko at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University).

Malashenko fell the chance of becoming Russian Machiavelli in 1996. In winter, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, oligarch Boris Berezovsky agreed with his competitor to Gusinsky about the ceasefire during the Eltsin election campaign. Malashenko, along with Anatoly Chubais and daughter of President Tatyana Dyachenko, became the co-leader of the analytical group-in fact, an alternative election headquarters, who competed with the official, where the security forces were refuel: the head of the presidential security Alexander Korzhakov, the director of the FSB Mikhail Barsukov and the Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets.

“Malashenko was responsible for the most important section of the analytical group - for everything that was connected with the media,” recalled Evgeny Kiselev in a column for Forbes. - To begin with, he asked to prepare two sets of photos. In one-pictures taken in the late 1980s-early 1990s. Yeltsin at the peak of popularity is a youthful, fit, surrounded by pretty supporters from among the new generation politicians, representatives of the intelligentsia, reporters, giving out autographs, smiling broadly. In the second set - photos taken a few days ago during Yeltsin’s failure trip to Krasnodar: a stubborn president with a stopped look, in a luxurious fur cap, surrounded by thick men of the Soviet species with senseless physiognomies, slowly walks along a completely empty street, numb by a large guard. ” When Malashenko, according to Kiselev, laid out these photos in front of Yeltsin, he did not look at them for long, and then said: “Well, everything is clear to me,” “and after that he was replaced.”

Further is already history: thanks to active trips around the country, meetings with voters and dashing dance of Yeltsin at campaign concerts, the candidate’s rating has grown from 3% to 50% in several months. The headquarters of the security forces suffered Fiasco. In July 1996, Yeltsin won the election in the second round.

Immediately after the victory, the president suggested that Malashenko lead his administration. “Honestly, the pope had no doubt that Igor would agree, especially since the work was clear and clear for Malashenko,” Tatyana Dyachenko recalled in her blog on Livejournal. - ... Igor, firmly and without hesitation, refused. Immediately. " When Gusinsky and Berezovsky came to Malashenko with the same idea, he barked at them: “Why are you persuading me, you don’t understand if I come to the Kremlin, I will do the first thing I will do, I will throw you out of everywhere, and your foot will not be in the Kremlin or in the White House!” The head of the administration became Chubais.

Later, Malashenko also rejected the proposal of Valentin Yumashev to change Viktor Chernomyrdin as prime minister. In the end, this position went to the “Mladoreformer” by Sergei Kiriyenko, who now oversees domestic policy as deputy head of the Presidential Administration - including the presidential election.

Political error

In early 1997, Malashenko received a good reward from Gusinsky-10% of the Media-Most shares-and began to prepare the NTV television channel for NASDAQ. The Credit Suisse First Boston investment bank, which worked on an IPO, estimated the total value of the company's assets of at least $ 1 billion.

However, the Asian financial crisis began largely to get rich from Gusinsky with Malashenko, and in August 1998 there was a default for statebooks in Russia and the devaluation of the ruble at the same time (and Kiriyenko had to be responsible for all this). Due to the sharp collapse of the advertising market, it became unprofitable and NTV. By the end of 1999, the company bogged down in debt to Gazprom’s structures to the same billion dollar in more than $ 200 million with annual revenue. At that moment, Malashenko made his main political mistake.

In the summer of 1999, he was introduced to Vladimir Putin - the presidential administration wanted NTV to support the successor of Yeltsin. Malashenko refused to consider the candidate impassable due to experience in working in the KGB. As a result, NTV supported the former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who had long favored Gusinsky (it was enough to say that since the early 1990s the Media Most’s office with Machiavelli in the Czech Republic has been located in the Moscow government building on New Arbat).

But Putin won. In June 2000, criminal cases were instituted on Gusinsky, he spent several days in a pre-trial detention center and left the country in exchange for the sale of his Gazprom media assets at a symbolic price-in fact, the Media Most retreated a gas monopoly for debts. He left Russia and Malashenko, although his new authorities did not pursue.

Until 2009, he lived in New York, Spain, often visited Kyiv. As president of Overseas Media Productions, the former general director of NTV managed the RTVI television channel, which was originally called NTV-Internet and stayed with Gusinsky after the deal with Gazprom, and then advised the management of the Ukrainian channel TVI. At the same time, he remained the minority shareholder of Echo of Moscow and Newsru.com through the American company Gusinsky. In 2011, he sold RTVI to the former general director of the Zvezda television channel Ruslan Sokolov. Malashenko at this time, according to him, had no attitude to RTVI.

"It just became bored"

“The appointment of Malashenko (the head of the headquarters of Ksenia Sobchak) was really news for everyone. But for me, this situation was more comfortable for everyone, ”the political strategist Alexei Sitnikov reasoned on October 31 in an interview with Vedomosti. “We are friends with him from the“ Dolls ”program.” The day before the press conference, at 10 pm, we sat together at the Tatler magazine ball. I did not even have a reason to be offended by him, he did not know about his appointment. That is, I was surprised by his appointment, but not upset. "

Sitnikov gave this interview immediately after he left the headquarters Sobchak with his team. By that time, not even a week has passed, as it was publicly presented at a TV star’s press conference as a signature manager, surveys and other “very important offline work”.

According to one version that was expressed that day in political circles, Malashenko achieved the dismissal of Sitnikov, who initially claimed the position of head of the headquarters (and quite suited the presidential administration in this capacity). But the political strategist himself denied this: “The fact that Igor took responsibility could only please me. It was a relief for me. In a not very well -organized design, it is not a great pleasure to be the leader, especially with incomprehensible financing. ” According to Sitnikov, Sobchak’s friends, the readiness of which she referred to her press conference to the readiness to finance the campaign, did not give her anything: “After the press conference, she received several SS, but did not receive money. I am not lying when I say that on the last trip we took off from pockets on a ticket to the photojournalist. ”

"The fact that the presidential elections in 2018 are turning into a farce, the presidential administration is quite satisfied"

Last year, in an interview with Novaya Gazeta, Malashenko noticed: “Trump, by the way, won a lot because he has a GUT FEELING - he sensed public opinion with an interpretation. Not polls, but real public opinion. By the way, this is related to politics and television. ” He himself, however, was now thrown out of both elements - and quite a long time.

And with the old Yeltsin team, after the elections of 1999–2000, he does not connect anything at all - for the people from the encirclement of Tatyana Dyachenko, he remained a traitor. “Stories about my accounts, castles, London estates, etc. They did not leave the NTV screen, ”recalled the daughter of the first president of Russia on her blog. -A nasty aunt appeared in the “dolls”, in my opinion, little like me, and built intrigues at her pope behind her back. Probably, the young journalists who prepared these programs could believe what they talked about-well, she could have a castle in the beautiful German town of Garmeshpartenkirhen, or why not steal something from the money of the International Monetary Fund, since she influences the president, well, and in general, since she turned out to be there, if she did not use. But Igor Malashenko knew everything perfectly, he knew that it was a impudent lie. It was such a strong human shock for me, a kind of vaccine from naivety for life. Since then, I have not met Igor. ”

True, Kiselev claims that Malashenko eventually reconciled with Dyachenko and Yumasheva, advised them to create the Yeltsin Center and even conducted an excursion there

Malashenko’s previous connections in business can hardly be somehow useful to Sobchak headquarters. “Former partners on the“ bridge ”dispersed both in life and business,” says Evgeny Kiselev. In his opinion, “Vladimir Alexandrovich Gusinsky has long been rooted in the United States and Israel, has been doing more and more business at all related to the media, and does not make special plans related to Russia - in any case, it seemed to me when we recently met and talked in a large company of common friends and acquaintances.”

“I can assume that Malashenko was just bored,” says political scientist Leonid Gozman. -This is actually a very serious psychological problem for former leaders who used to solve something in Russian politics. Exactly for the same reason, my good acquaintance (political strategist) Anton Bakov at one time established the Monarchical Party of Russia, and recently announced his intention to run for president - along with Anfisa Chekhova, Andrei Bogdanov and Ksenia Sobchak. The fact that the presidential elections in 2018 are turning into a farce, the presidential administration is quite satisfied. ”

Malashenko himself, apparently, does not scare. “When I hear concerns today that it will be a farce, a carnival and God knows that, I say:“ Well, excellent! ” Do you understand? - he said the other day on the air of the Rain TV channel. -As a person who once launched the “Dolls” program on NTV, I think that we must laugh at politicians. And those who go through this test are really more expensive than those who begin to say that this is an unacceptable concussion of the foundations. ”