Russian-American Confessions: Jamison Firestone on Putin’s Russia and a Criminal American Dad

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody, I'm just back from Poland, where I did a series of interviews about how Poland, Polish intellectuals, Polish writers are falling out of love with America. One distinguished journalist told me that we no longer dream of the United States. Others talk about the best and the worst things about America, and another Polish academic talks about how we can save democracy by using the Polish example from what he calls deplorables. Falling out of love with America, of course, is not unique to Poland. We're talking today about another big country in Eastern Europe and another kind of love affair, although it doesn't really centrally involve the United States. Jamison Firestone is a very well-known activist lawyer who showed up in the then Soviet Union in the 1990s. He's written a book about his experience, Rule of Lies, My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption and Murder in Putin's Russia. Jamison is joining us from London where he lives. Jamison, congratulations on the new book. Speaking of love stories, is it a love story about how you fell in and out of love with Russia, or with Putin, or with the promise of Russia?

**Jamison Firestone** (1:54)
Yeah, I would say I never fell out of love with Russia, but I certainly fell out of love with Vladimir Putin, and I'm horrified at what he's doing to the Russian people.
It was this country of incredible opportunity, and look at what it's become. It's awful.

**Andrew Keen** (2:12)
Well, tell me more, Jamison. How has it become awful?

**Jamison Firestone** (2:16)
Look, when I went over there in the 1990s, it was the very end of the Gorbachev days, and it was all about, let's have greater openness and do business, and it really seemed like the place to be. Now, unfortunately, when I arrived in Russia, within days, hardliners rolled tanks into the streets, kidnapped Gorbachev and said the reforms are over.

**Andrew Keen** (2:42)
Yeah, you write in the book, euphoria was in the air. I couldn't believe what happened, nor could anyone else. The people had stood up, Soviet tanks had backed down.

**Jamison Firestone** (2:51)
That's exactly it, and it was just amazing. Russian people couldn't believe they had actually forced the government to back down. But the interesting thing was that when they released Gorbachev, the hero of the day was Yeltsin. Gorbachev and the whole Soviet Union became irrelevant, and the Soviet Union, in fact, dissolved within months.
And so I was living in this, what was supposed to be a hopeful atmosphere during this transition to a free market. And what happened was democracy somehow got lost in all of that. We were so concentrated on making money, and the business opportunities, that when the government had a standoff with its own Congress, it was resolved by Yeltsin shelling his Congress. I mean, the equivalent would be rolling up tanks to the Capitol and shelling it. And when that was over...

**Andrew Keen** (3:46)
So far from unimaginable as it used to be.

**Jamison Firestone** (3:50)
Unfortunately not.
And unfortunately, when this was over, everybody, including myself and the US government, we all saw this as a great triumph for the free market, that these reforms would continue. But we didn't really recognize what an undemocratic move that had been. And for the next several years, Russia tried to, it's more or less a disorderly democracy, which became so dysfunctional that the people were kind of just left to the wolves and all these mafia groups were running around. And it was only at the end of the 90s when Yeltsin realized he was never going to get re-elected, that he did something spectacular. He got on nationwide TV on New Year's Eve and wished everybody a Happy New Year's and resigned and gave the country to Vladimir Putin in exchange for a pardon. That's how we got Vladimir Putin for a pardon.
And if you think it was downhill, I think it was bad before, at least before under the Yeltsin years, you knew who the bad guys were. I mean, there was the government which basically left you alone and was corrupt. And there were mafia groups running around, I mean, guys thugs with head shaved flat, wearing gold chains with guns, making everybody pay protection. And that was a hairy period. I mean, I used to fire protection rackets for my clients.

**Andrew Keen** (5:16)
Yeah, you came over as a lawyer.
We're talking with Jamison R. Firestone. For those of you who are curious, the R stands for Reed, that's his middle name. And it perhaps rather ironic, given that another very famous American called Reed, John Reed went to Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, wrote his famous 10 Days That Shook The World, the book behind the movie Reds. Did you go to Russia, Jamison like John Reed, looking for drama, for romance? Were you in the mood to fall in love when you went, when you were a young man in the 90s?