Between Two Fires

Chapter 1

Master of Ceremonies

In the final days of 1999, just as he had each December for several years, Konstantin Ernst prepared to film the presidential New Year s address. Ernst, then thirty-­eight, with a face of cheerful, perpetual bemusement and a floppy mane of brown hair that nearly covered his shoulders, is the head of Channel One, the network with the country s largest reach, a position that grants him the stature of an unofficial government minister. He is not only the chief producer of his channel, but also, by extension, the director of the visual style and aesthetics of the country s political life ­at least the part its rulers wish to transmit to the public. The New Year s address, delivered at the stroke of midnight, is a way to do exactly that: a way for a Russian leader to impart a sense of narrative to the year past and offer some guiding clues and symbols for the year to come. The tradition took shape in the seventies, under Leonid Brezhnev, whose rule stretched on for so long that his droning, puffy-­faced New Year s addresses all blended together. Gorbachev tried to instill a sense of discipline and purpose in his New Year s appearances, even as, with each passing year, the country was in a state of slow-­motion disintegration.

Boris Yeltsin, who took power in 1991, continued the tradition. And so, on December 27, 1999, three days before the new millennium, Ernst and a crew from Channel One made their way to the Kremlin to film Yeltsin s address ahead of time, to have everything ready in advance per long-­standing practice. By the late nineties, Yeltsin, once a feisty, charismatic advocate of democratic reform, had entered a spiral of decay of both body and spirit, becoming an enervated shell of his former self. He was still capable of episodic vitality, but was largely weakened and chiefly concerned with leaving office in a way that would keep him and his family safe and immune from prosecution. The country was only a year removed

Joshua Yaffa is a correspondent for The New Yorker in Moscow. For his work in Russia, he has been named a fellow at New America, a recipient of the American Academy s Berlin Prize, and a finalist for the Livingston Award.

A wonderfully insightful book . . . It is to Mr Yaffa s credit that in general he avoids simplifying. Even when he describes people who seek cynical advantage from the powerful, the picture is never completely dark; when he portrays moral heroes, he never presents them as infallible. That is how things are in life, perhaps nowhere more so than in Russia. The Economist

A deeply reported account of what it's like to live in Putin's Russia, but it's not about Twitter bots or influencing foreign elections or even Vladimir Putin himself. . . . Yaffa gives us insight into Putin by helping us better understand the political culture that produced him. NPR
 
Superb . . . [An] excellent new book. . . . Yaffa has distinguished himself with his rigor, his acumen, and his nuanced voice. . . . His in-depth reporting consistently allows him to move beyond the headlines, revealing the deeper historical and sociological patterns that underpin that notoriously contradictory country. Foreign Affairs

Yaffa skilfully weaves together perceptive descriptions of flesh-and-blood people with a balanced evocation of the wider political and historical context. Yaffa has a good eye for colourful detail . . . and he proves attentive to the subtleties and ambiguities of Russian life. Tony Wood, Financial Times

A fascinating and nuanced account that illuminates the myriad conflicting and often contradictory forces that have shaped the Russia of today. Douglas Smith, The Wall Street Journal

[A] highly original and riveting account . . . Good and not-so-good men and women are forced to make difficult choices and Joshua Yaffa s remarkable book is a guide to the pain and pleasure of their lives in the public arena. Robert Service, Foreign Policy

Deeply reported and detailed . . . A fascinating exploration into the beliefs and psyches of Russians in many different career fields who reveal their