The Nineties: A Book

by Chuck Klosterman

As leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Yeltsin had won big in Russia’s inaugural democratic election in ’91, but his nation was experiencing the quagmire of chaos one would expect from a geographically gigantic landmass rapidly converting from state-controlled communism to capitalistic sovereign democracy. The Russian parliament tried to impeach Yeltsin in ’93, but Yeltsin deployed the military to remain in control. Some half-jokingly claimed Yeltsin’s approval rating was lower than that of Stalin, a tyrannical dictator who’d been dead for forty years. It appeared Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Russian Communist Party, would win the ’96 election, perhaps easily. From the U.S. perspective, any halfhearted return to communism was a step backward. Yeltsin (who’d sunk to the bottom of preelection polls) was the opposite of perfect, but he was the best option available and Clinton liked him personally.[*] Clinton helped him get a $10.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. But the more intriguing (and less verifiable) aspect to Yeltsin’s comeback was the work of three American consultants secretly living in Moscow’s President Hotel and “Americanizing” the Yeltsin campaign strategy. The U.S. operatives—Richard Dresner, George Gorton, and Joe Shumate—presented themselves as harmless sales representatives, transferred to Moscow with the aim of selling flat-screen TVs. What they were really doing was assisting Tatiana Dyachenko, Yeltsin’s thirt...