"I will personally shoot you, general"

How Gaidar Mirril Ingush and Ossetians. Excerpt from the new biography of the reformer in the "ZhZL" series

The publishing house "Young Guard" is published by the biography of Yegor Gaidar, written by journalists Andrei Kolesnikov and Boris Minaev. We publish an excerpt from a new book in which the reformer and doctor of economic sciences appear in an unexpected role - a person who is engaged in resolving conflicts in hot spots. We are talking about the 1992 Ossetian-Ingush conflict, about the civil war in Tajikistan and many other stories. Gaidar on an armored personnel carrier, Gaidar with a gun, a guidar under bullets, hundreds of corpses around - this is not very similar to the image that remained in the people's memory. But it was in the nineties and such.

Gaidar was called up by Yeltsin to the government in order to make economic reforms. Raise the Avgia stables.

... However, what Gaidar and its ministers in those months did, irreducible only to this task.

In constant, daily mode, together with Yeltsin, they saved the country from a variety of threats. The country in these months simply torn apart, and together with other members of the government, they often rushed to the rescue.

It is worth listing a few brightest and most alarming affairs of this kind.

Gaidar describes one of them in his book in sufficient detail - this is a national conflict between the Ossetians and Ingush of 1992.

“The Law on the Repressed Peoples” (adopted by the Congress of People's Deputies) - of course, correct in essence, but completely unclear in mechanisms - created foci of gigantic tension in many places of the former Union, in particular, in the North Caucasus. It was about the earth, about houses belonging to specific families before the forced relocation of the 1940s. The suburban area of ​​Vladikavkaz was one of these points.

“A severe bench in memory is 1992, the November Ingush-Ossetian conflict. I remember well how it all started. For the first time in a few months, I decided to get enough sleep on Sunday, not to go to work. Early in the morning a call. On the border of Ingushetia and Ossetia, large -scale riots. The armament of the battalion of the internal troops was captured. There is a battle. The Ministry of Security was a brewing explosive situation brilliantly missed. We learn about what happened as a failed fact. There is a real threat to receive a new Karabakh with chronic combat operations, but already in Russia.

There is no president, he is on a trip around the country. I contact the General Staff, I ask you to urgently ensure the transfer of paratroopers. I call Viktor Erin (Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), asking at what time he can transfer additional internal troops there, I say that the military will fully help aviation. I entrust Georgy Hizhe (Deputy Prime Minister) to urgently fly to Vladikavkaz, to head the operational group of the government on the spot, give him to the aid of Sergei Shoigu, the chairman of the Emergency Situations Committee, who perfectly proven himself during peacekeeping operations in South Ossetia and Georgia, in Moldova. Having promoted the car, going to the airfield to meet Boris Nikolayevich, to report to him the situation.

There are large riots in Vladikavkaz. Huge crowds on the streets, people require weapons. Hizha and Shoigu are associated with me, report: if something does not come up with something immediately, the situation will get out of control. Weapons will simply be captured. In general, the troops act quickly enough, decisively. Open military operations can be stolen, there is clearly no new Nagorno -Karabakh. And at the same time, we make two serious mistakes. Firstly, the placement of our representative office in Vladikavkaz, the capital of one of the warring parties, which causes Ingush suspicion of the addiction of the federal center to Ossetians. Secondly, the slow actions of the leadership of the internal troops led to the fact that the Ingush villages did not enter the feds, but the Ossetian police. It is easy to imagine what trouble it turned out. In Nazran, none of the high -ranking employees of the Russian government decided to appear. Therefore, I decide to immediately fly to the place, visit both Nazran and Vladikavkaz, meet the military, deal with the situation.

First of all, I am heading for a tan. I am going on an armored personnel carrier of the internal troops. The sight is not for the faint of heart. Traces of this battle, destruction are visible, in the suburban area there are many burning houses. It is easy to guess that, first of all, the Ingush. On the border with Ingushetia, Ruslan Aushev meets. Ruslan says that on an armored personnel carrier you can’t go further in any case - they will shoot. I get in his car, he is driving. The central square in Nazran is damaged by refugees, thousands of unhappy people who became victims of politicians. On the way, Aushev is trying to find out my opinion who is behind all this terrible bloody catavasia. Unfortunately, I can’t help him with anything, the reports of the Ministry of Security are still evidence of complete helplessness. ”

So, to put it mildly, not at all economic problems had to be encountered in November 1992, acting as chairman of the government.

What Gaidar was silent about in this passage - about hundreds of corpses that lay at the entrance to the government of the government in Vladikavkaz.

He told about this only to his friends - Chubais and some others. The conflict managed to put out. Hot point - cool a little.

But more and more new ones arose.

Andrei Nechaev recalls:
“... Yegor and I were sitting in the office. The commander of the South District comes, says: “Guys, the crests are separated. Crimea is our original Russian land. This is what I came up with: I will put nuclear mines on the Perekop, let them stick. ” Yegor says: “I will personally shoot you, general. Personally. I will not even convene a three. If you do it. ” And there were a lot of such “brave” guys at that time. The strategic nuclear button was (sort of) in the presidential suitcase, and tactical nuclear weapons were smeared. ”

By the way, the phrase “I will shoot you, general” in Yegor's mouths was not such a literary metaphor. Since childhood, he knew how to hold a gun in his hands, saw a weapon in his house repeatedly. Firstly, Grandfather’s revolutionary Nagan is a relic that inherited Timur. Until now, this Nagan is hanging in Krasnovidov (the suburban apartment of Yegor’s parents), lovingly fixed on the carpet, along with the saber of Arkady Petrovich.

Secondly, the service weapon of Timur himself, which he was supposed to and which he, could not doubt it, also kept at home.

Gaidar had another gun, given to him already when he was as deputy prime minister.

“The government adopted a resolution dated November 25, 1991 No. 17 that from December 1, 1991, all previously issued oil quotas are canceled,” Andrei Nechaev recalls, “and the licenses of those organizations that previously granted the right to export oil are re -registered. It is now fully clear what danger we have exposed to. Perhaps then there was no banditism that became our daily reality in subsequent years, and maybe the inertia of respect for power was still strong. However, the fact that the decision we adopted in the last weeks of 1991 did not lead to the shooting of several ministers, today looks simply amazing success. The only serious personal consequence of this decree - I mean the consequences for the government members themselves - was that some “exporters” were greatly beaten by the First Deputy Minister of Fuel and Energy Eduard Grushenko, who prepared the draft resolution. Some unfamiliar personalities approached him in non-working hours and said that "you behave wrong." Then they were greatly beaten and almost dropped into the river.

After the story of Grusherenko, we demanded from Arkady Murashev, who then headed the Moscow Central Military District, to give us personal weapons. He did this, however, at first sending us to learn to shoot at the departmental shooting range. I remember that the Minister of Fuel and Energy Volodya Lopukhin, whose department played a key role in this story, even came to friendly meetings with the Makarov pistol. My wife, when I proudly brought my PSM pistol home, arranged a small tantrum and demanded: “So that I would never see this muck in our house.” So he lay in my safe at work before the end of my ministerial activity, after which I handed it over. In this whole story, of course, there was a large element of pure boy with personal weapons. ”

In a word, they were given weapons not in vain, and it is likely that Yegor took his pistol there, in a tan.

Gaidar had to cool hot spots and prevent armed conflicts outside of Russia. Viktor Yaroshenko recalls:

“Gaidar and I flew to the border guards to Tajikistan, and there are their wives, children, they are in the siege, it was just scary to look at it. Autumn 1992.

And then I wrote that I do not understand: why did Yeltsin sent Gaidar almost to death, to this alien war, unnecessary for us? And Gaidar says: “I read your text. You did not know, it means that it wasn’t Yeltsin who sent me, I myself asked? I chose which of the warring forces should Russia be put, which side should be taken. ” And there the civil war was already in full swing.

And then there were long negotiations there, they sat, these were sitting. And somehow we almost quarreled with him. I shouted to him: "But these are terrible people!" He says: "But I stopped the civil war."

It is characteristic that officials ... fled from an airplane ready for a flight in Dushanbe. Viktor Yaroshenko: “So that the board could fly out of Bishkek (there was a CIS summit in October 1992) and sit in Dushanbe, the president gave his plane. I will never forget how officials fled from the Yeltsin plane.

We were seven people on the presidential aircraft: Gaidar, the head of the Gaidar Secretariat Nikolai Golovnin, the head of the Roskhleboprodukt, Cheshinsky, Minister for CIS Affairs Vladimir Machits, two officers of the presidential protection service and I. ”

In his book, Gaidar wrote about this much more dryly, concisely: “Another place that requires the constant attention of the Russian authorities is Tajikistan. In 1992, chaos was growing there, gradually turning into an open civil war. Two forces are opposed to each other; One of them with a large degree of conventionality can be called communists, the other - Islamists. Islamists are stronger in Garma, Nagorno -Badakhshan, the Communists in Kulyab. Both sides are trying to draw into the conflict a 201th division deployed in Tajikistan, at least take possession of its weapons. The serious problem is that the division is mainly equipped with Russian officers and local soldiers. It is precisely them that they want to involve in conflict from different sides.

... Information is received about the readiness of the most radical wing of the Islamists to use Russians living in the republic as hostages. The trouble is that we cannot rely on our sources of information about the situation in Tajikistan ... After the meeting of the presidents of the CIS states in Bishkek, where the critical situation that developed in Tajikistan was discussed in detail, I fly right in Dushanbe.

In the city, the atmosphere is gloomy, tense. The government guard who meets is not clear, or they are going to shoot us, or each other ... We fly a helicopter over the burning mound-Tyube, where there is a fight, to a detachment of border guards. ”

Of course, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev visited Tajikistan much more often than Gaidar and risked his life more than once. Of course, Minister of Defense Pavel Grachev had a huge impact on the situation in Tajikistan - it was he who first of all conducted business with the military. Of course, in the end, Yeltsin himself made all the main decisions.

But after that business trip to Gaidar in Tajikistan, a power was established, which still leads the republic.

It was established bad, but the world. What would be the fate of Central Asia in another case, we do not know.

We do not know that, Gaidar, for example, would have managed to prevent the Chechen war.

But he opposed this war.

... Gaidar more than once or twice wrote that the space of the former USSR stuffed with nuclear weapons poses a terrible threat to the whole world. In early childhood, he visited the most acute focus of a potential nuclear war - in Cuba during the Caribbean crisis. His father, Rear Admiral Timur Gaidar, told him a lot about the dangers of nuclear war. Egor was, as they say, deep in the topic from an early youth.

Therefore, he reacted very sharply to the threat of “sprawling” nuclear weapons.

The fact that Gaidar made for a program of non -proliferation of nuclear weapons is a separate story. This was one of the terms of the achieved Belovezh agreements (on the formation of the Union of Independent States).

From an interview with Gennady Burbulis
“On December 21, in Alma-Ata, we signed a four-sided agreement between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan for nuclear weapons. It stipulated that only Russia will have nuclear weapons and all it should be moved to its territory.

- Who was doing this? Burbulis, Kozyrev or Gaidar?

- We all did this. Gaidar was engaged in the economy of the issue because it was very complicated. I can say that Yegor not only found a scheme, but also created such tempting and obliging opportunities for our partners, so that they do not yawn and that they would not have a temptation to leave at least one ammunition for themselves for a minute.

“Did they part with nuclear weapons?”

- It is easy enough, because they were more worried about what to do with it than how they would live without him. Although there were more positional difficulties with Ukraine, because there we still had a Black Sea Fleet, strategic aviation. They were more than others, let’s say, they are interested in bargaining.

Here in these subtle conversations - how much, when and to whom - Yegor was always strong. He did it great, he is well done. It seems to me that the way we could correctly and correctly dispose of the nuclear arsenal shows the correctness and indispensability of the CIS idea. ”

The huge work done by Gaidar (and other ministers of the then government) so that the nuclear arsenals smoothly flow from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine to Russia, still expects its researcher. In fact, this was a work to save the world, done as soon as possible and in difficult conditions. It is difficult to imagine today how the former republics of the Union have ordered the nuclear arsenal, if it has been with them now. I don’t even want to think about it.