Is it true that the author of the phrase “Chubais is to blame for everything” is Boris Yeltsin?

The phrase “It’s all Chubais’s fault,” popular since the 1990s, is remembered every time one of the main organizers of privatization is mentioned. The authorship of this expression is often attributed to the first president of Russia. We decided to find out if this is so.

Yeltsin’s authorship is mentioned both in blogs and in the media. For example, in February 2022, political scientist Arkady Dubnov wrote on Facebook: “But one way or another, we will definitely find out again that “Chubais is to blame for everything,” as “Grandfather Yeltsin” almost affectionately scolded him a quarter of a century ago.” Journalists used this phrase in 2020 "Rosbalt", without any doubt about the authorship of the first president of Russia.

To be released in 2022 book Mikhail Fishman “Successor. The story of Boris Nemtsov and the country in which he did not become president” does not directly indicate the authorship of the quote, but the circumstances under which it arose are mentioned. “Dismissing Chubais (from the post of first deputy prime minister. - Ed.), Yeltsin even blamed him for the parliamentary elections he had just lost: they say, if Chubais had not been in the government, the ruling party “Our Home is Russia”, headed by Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, would have received twice as many seats - and so the famous saying “Chubais is to blame for everything” was born,” - writes Fishman. Same episode leads and the research project “The Rise of Russian Media. Yeltsin era. 1992–1999."

1995 elections The Communist Party of the Russian Federation won the State Duma, receiving 22.3% of the votes. Second place on the party lists was taken by the LDPR (11.2%), Chernomyrdin’s “Our Home is Russia” came only third with 10.13%. Changes in the power structure were inevitable; presidential elections were coming in the summer of 1996. Almost immediately after the New Year holidays, on January 16, 1996, Chubais was dismissed (formally he left at your own request).

Chubais began working in the government back in 1991, when he was appointed head of the State Property Committee, and already in 1992 he received the position Deputy Prime Minister. It was he who became the author of the privatization program, under which it was possible to buy out state property. As part of the program, vouchers were issued - privatization checks with a nominal value of 10,000 rubles. Chubais then spokethat in a few years it will be possible to get two Volga cars for a voucher. Privatization took place, enterprises were concentrated in the hands of large owners, vouchers became worthless, and the name of Chubais became a symbol of injustice.

On January 19, 1996, after the CIS summit, Yeltsin held a press conference at which he criticized the former deputy prime minister. The next day a report about it appeared in the Kommersant newspaper: “The commentary on the resignation of Anatoly Chubais was quite unusual in its harshness. He, according to Yeltsin, did a lot, but also made a lot of mistakes and even “messed up” (this is about the latest auctions for the sale of large state property). In addition, according to the president, Chubais is again to blame for the fact that “Our Home is Russia” received only 10% of the votes: “If Chubais had been removed before the elections, it would have been 20%.” That is, in Yeltsin’s presentation, Chubais is not to blame for everything, but in many ways.

The phrase about Chubais’s wine received its triumphant development a week later. On the evening of January 27, it was heard in the next episode of the weekly satirical program “Dolls” on NTV. The episode was called "Hostages" According to the scenario, almost all the main political figures were sitting on a bus under fire and looking for ways to solve the problem. A solution was never found - in the very last scene, Boris Yeltsin’s character sits in a bus that has burned to the ground and with a characteristic drawn-out intonation speaks: “It’s all Chubais’s fault! If it weren’t for this Chubais, everything would be fine with us.”

Already in 2021, “Puppets” screenwriter Viktor Shenderovich expressed doubt that he was the author of the phrase “Chubais is to blame for everything.” He wrote about this in Facebook and clarified that he does not remember at all now what the original source of the quote was, in Shenderovich’s words, “completely vulgar and banal” at the time of the creation of the “Dolls” episode. In the comments, he was reminded of the article in Kommersant and Yeltsin’s press conference. But many claimed that they personally remember how Yeltsin uttered the phrase exactly in this formulation - among them, for example, the editor-in-chief of The New Times, Evgenia Albats. As a result, journalists working in the 1990s came to a consensus: Yeltsin said about Chubais’s guilt, and Shenderovich brought it to the level of a “meme,” who owns the exact quote “Chubais is to blame for everything.” Shenderovich himself eventually agreed with this.

Cover image: Wikipedia.org

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