Yeltsin, Pinkie, and the Long Road to Petersburg

Location: Offices of the Communist Party, Saint Petersburg, Leningradskaya Oblast, Russian Federation

Date: July 12th, 1996

Time: 7:20 PM

“No… No, please, I’m sorry! Get that thing away from me!”

Gennady Zyuganov, chairman of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, awoke in a cold sweat, nearly vaulting off the seat in which he had fallen asleep.

“Where is she!? Where’s the pink pony with the cannon!?” Zyuganov asked as he frantically looked all about the office. His heart pounded at the walls of his chest, and his hands shook uncontrollably. When it finally became apparent that he was alone at his desk, he sighed and reclined in his chair, realizing that the bizarre events that had just transpired were actually nothing more than a bad dream.

But it was such an odd scene... Zyuganov dreamt that the Moscow offices were under attack, and, one by one, influential politicians of the Party were being taken down with custard pies, fired with staggering velocity from the bore of a small, blue cannon. The uncanny weapon was being operated by a little pink pony with a poofy mane. This pony sought to punish the Party for what it had done to the Russian president, Boris Yeltsin. She wheeled her cannon closer and closer to Zyuganov as he backed away in fear, and just as the weapon fired, Zyuganov awoke to find that it was all in his mind.

Yes, everything was coming back to him now. He had been working since 6:00 AM and had unintentionally fallen asleep in his office. After a long day of conferences, he had spent hours alone in his office, debating the Party’s next move with respect to Yeltsin’s “pony situation.”

“All I’ve heard about for the last day and a half is Yeltsin and his talking ponies,” Zyuganov sighed. “Now, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m having dreams about them. Pink ponies, tiny cannons, and custard pies. Am I starting to lose it, too?”

The mid-90s were strange times in Russia, but Yeltsin’s recent episode was more bizarre than anything of which Zyuganov had heard in the recent years. During the early hours of July 10th, two militsiya officers found an inebriated Boris Yeltsin running down the streets of Barvikha, a village on the outskirts of Moscow that contained the presidential dacha. The president of the Russian Federation was wearing nothing but a pair of pajama pants as he frolicked about, deliriously shouting up to the sky about a pink pony. They rushed Yeltsin to the hospital, convinced that he had completely lost his mind.

All the while, Yeltsin repeatedly insisted to the doctors and officers that colorful ponies had appeared in the office of his dacha. He claimed that they could talk. He said that one had wings and could fly like the Pegasus of legend, and that another possessed a unicorn horn and used it to work some kind of magic. Naturally, no one believed him.

Everyone at Barvikha did what they could to keep the situation quiet, as Yeltsin didn’t exactly have a spotless record when it came to public episodes and drinking. Unfortunately, it did no good. Several workers at the hospital were supporters of the Communist Party, and worked quickly to provide the communists in Moscow with official documentation and photographic evidence of the scene at the Barvikha Sanatorium. Zyuganov, meanwhile, was working at the Saint Petersburg branch of the party offices, and was being informed of the situation as news came in.

If publicized, the episode had the potential to ruin whatever shreds of credibility Yeltsin had left and thwart his victory in the recent 1996 presidential election. The Pravda newspaper offices had received the information, and the drafts of the articles had already been written and sent to Zyuganov for review. All he had to do was say the word, and the street corners of Moscow would be piled high with issues of the communist gazette that could end Yeltsin’s career. If all the planets were in alignment, the Communist Party could jump from majority in the State Duma to total control of the Russian Federation. And if that happened, they would try to restore the Soviet Union.

Gennady Zyuganov adjusted his tie as he stared at the articles on his desk, among which was a photograph of a deranged-looking Yeltsin on a gurney, fighting with doctors and nurses. For some unknown reason, a nagging nervousness at the back of his mind made Zyuganov uncomfortable with the publication of the story. What would the public think? The Pravda newspaper had lost a sizeable amount of its credibility in the recent years. If they published a story about Yeltsin’s pony episode, would anyone believe it, or would they simply write it off?

Zyuganov rubbed his eyes and reached for the telephone on his desk. He punched in the number of his trusted campaign manager, Valeriya Boldireva, and waited for her to answer.

The phone was lifted from the hook, but shortly thereafter sounded as if it had been dropped. Zyuganov heard a grunt from the other end of the line and a series of clicks and thumps before the weary voice from the other end finally answered,

“Allo.”

“Comrade Boldireva. It’s Zyuganov.”

“Still at the office?” Boldireva asked.

“Yeah, and I just dozed off,” Zyuganov replied. “Listen. When you get to the offices tomorrow, I want you to call the Pravda editors and tell them put the Yeltsin story on hold.”

“What?” Boldireva was in disbelief. She thought she had misheard Zyuganov.

“Look, I’ve been doing some thinking, and I’m not entirely sure that we should publish anything about Yeltsin’s ponies just yet,” Zyuganov continued. “Let the editors know that all bets are off until my comrades and I return to Moscow and meet with the rest of our constituents.”

“But we’ve already arranged plans with the distributors,” Boldireva explained.

“Then cancel the plans with the distributors. Tell them there’s no green light until we get back to Moscow.”

“But Gennady Andreyevich… so many people are expecting-”

“I don’t care who’s expecting what,” Zyuganov snapped, cutting her off. “If they question anything you tell them to do, let them call me here in Petersburg and I’ll set them straight.” Valeriya Boldireva hesitated on the other end of the line. “Look, I know that everyone wants to jump on top of Yeltsin and this pony thing, but… I’ve got this nagging feeling about it. If we get too cocky, the whole thing might explode right back in our faces.” Valeriya’s sigh came through the receiver.

“Alright. I’ll take care of it when I get to the office.”

“Thank you, comrade Boldireva,” Zyuganov responded. “I’ll let you go, then. Goodnight.”

“Night.”

Zyuganov put the phone back into its cradle and  turned to the window. The skies over Moscow were surely dark by now, but far north in Saint Petersburg, the White Nights of the summer months made darkness an impossibility. The courtyard of the apartment block next to the communist party offices appeared almost as bright as it did during the day beneath an almost unworldly blue and white sky.

“Ugh. It makes you feel like you’ve accomplished nothing,” Zyuganov said aloud as he thought about the neverending daylight of the summer months. “You work for twelve hours, see it’s still light outside, and it seems like the day is only half-done, yet you’re ready to collapse into your bed.”

Zyuganov pushed the chair back from his desk and rose to his feet. With his arms folded across his chest, he slowly made his way toward the painting of Lenin that hung in the far corner of the room.

“What do you think, Vladimir Ilyich?” Zyuganov jokingly asked the painting. “What do you make of everything that’s happened to Yeltsin? You know. Thinking he saw talking ponies and everything.” The painting, of course, remained silent. “Hey, I don’t blame you,” Zyuganov laughed. “I’m speechless, too. Yeltsin was never the brightest bulb in the box, but now it looks like that feeble, peanut-sized brain of his just tore itself in two. Unicorns, magic and rainbows… What has he been drinking lately?”

At that moment, Zyuganov felt an odd sensation overcome him as a mysterious sound was heard from the hallway outside his office. The building shook, albeit gently, and a couple of books were knocked off Zyuganov’s shelves. The door leading into the corridor was closed, but a strange light suddenly began to emanate from underneath.

“What the hell’s going on now?” Zyuganov asked, watching the strange glow from under the door.

He marched over, grabbed the doorknob, and threw open the door to the hallway, but was forced to bring up his hand and shield his eyes from the blinding light in the corridor. Though Zyuganov could barely see it, a figure was walking toward him through the unearthly glow. It drew nearer and nearer, causing the communist to stagger back toward his desk as he muttered,

“Sweet mother of Lenin…”

*    *    *

Location: Горки-9 Presidential Dacha, Barvikha, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation

Date: July 12th, 1996

Time: 8:20 PM

“...so my counterparts and I cough up millions of roubles, lend support from our television networks, and put our blood, sweat, and tears into your goddamned election campaign. And you know what? It worked. By some act of God, it worked, and we brought you back up from nothing!” Boris Berezovskiy roared as he strode angrily around president Yeltsin’s office. “But now, everything we did is going to be destroyed from the ground up. And why? Because of goddamned talking ponies?”

Yelstin, seated across the room behind his desk, was frozen on the spot as he watched the angry oligarch pace around in rage.

“I don’t have much hair left on my head, Yeltsin,” Berezovskiy growled as he pointed at his balding scalp, “but I’ll be lucky if I have any left by the end of the week!”

“Boris Abramovich… you have to believe me!” Yeltsin begged from across the room. “I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried! The ponies were real! And they were here, in this office! On the same spot where you’re standing right now!”

“You were pumped full of vodka, Yeltsin. Hell, I’d bet that there was more liquor in your veins than blood!” Berezovskiy shouted as he charged over to the president’s desk. “It was the drink! Don’t you get it?”

“It wasn’t the drink…” Yeltsin stuttered as he shakily rose to his feet. “They appeared before I drank anything… The purple one with the unicorn horn… the golden one with the pegasus wings… and the pink one, the carefree little pink pony that made me happier than I’ve been in years...”

“Damn it, Yeltsin, do you realize how idiotic you sound? You’re lucky that they let you out of the sanatorium after only one day!” Berezovskiy shouted. “If it were up to me, I’d have kept you locked up for a month!”

“I know it’s crazy… but it’s true,” Yeltsin mumbled as he came around the desk and grabbed Berezovskiy by the shoulders. “I didn’t believe my eyes when I first saw them. But then they touched things around the room… the pink one started to eat my kasha… I could feel changes in the air when the purple one waved her horn around... Boris Abramovich… they were all real, as real as you and I.”

“The only thing that’s real is the impending consequence of all this bullshit!” Berezovskiy seethed, shoving Yeltsin back. “At least six of the hospital’s employees were loyal to Zyuganov and the communists. At least six. Maybe more. They hand-delivered all the juicy details about your psychotic breakdown to the communist party!”

“You told me a thousand times!” Yeltsin cried as his hands caressed his temples.

“I expected to wake up this morning to find Zyuganov having a field day, delivering a speech about this whole mess! I expected to see stacks of Pravda gazettes with your face on the front page. It’s a goddamned miracle that an entire day went by without any mention of your crazy-ass pony-psychosis on any communist media outlet. It’s mind-boggling as to why he didn’t jump on the issue. If I were in his shoes, I sure as hell would have. But how much time do we have left before he does?”

“We’ve got a few guys talking to the communists,” Yeltsin said. “They’ve threatened that if the story is released, we’ll start publicizing some of the dirt we’ve got on Zyuganov.”

“We don’t have any dirt on Zyuganov!” Berezovskiy screamed.

“It’s a bluff.”

“And what if they call the bluff?”

“I don’t know, Boris Abramovich! I don’t know!” Yeltsin cried as he leaned against one of the office windows.

“Listen to me, Yeltsin,” Berezovskiy called to him from across the room. Boris Yeltsin turned to find the oligarch at the door that lead to the upper-story vestibule. There was no knob to grab - Yeltsin had destroyed it during his frenzy. Boris Abramovich Berezovskiy pointed menacingly at the Russian president. “When your first term tanked, we saved your miserable ass. But if the whole of the Russian Federation becomes convinced its president is a lunatic, I’m not sure we’ll be able to save you again. We’re not miracle workers.” Berezovskiy opened the door and was about to step out, but instead hesitated and looked back at Yeltsin with a smirk. “But that’s okay. You don’t need miracles. After all, you can just ask your unicorn friend to wave that horn of hers and work a little magic. She’ll fix everything.”

The Russian president could not find the words to reply.

“Shape the hell up,” Berezovskiy ordered before leaving the office and slamming the door.

Yeltsin sighed and looked around his office, still in disarray from his intoxicated breakdown that had transpired two days prior. The books from his shelves littered the floor. The painting of Alexander Nevskiy on the far wall was still covered with globs of custard from where Yeltsin had pied it in the face. A wooden board had been taped in place over the pane of a window that the president smashed in his fit of inebriated rage. He looked through the good pane of the glass at the street below, where an enraged Boris Berezovskiy, one of the key backers of Yeltsin’s campaign, was storming over to his car.

Once again, it seemed that things were falling apart, and the stress wasn’t helping Yeltsin’s poor state of health.

“Just when things start getting better, they break down again,” Yeltsin told himself as he unsteadily made his way back to his desk chair. “He’s right. It is a miracle that the communists haven’t already publicized anything.”

Yeltsin leaned on his desk and buried his head in his arms.

“I’m on borrowed time. But what am I supposed to do now?” he said into the desk. After a moment, he picked his head up. “Hey, I could just blame it on the pensioners! That always worked before! It’s not like those morons would vote for me either way.”

But before Yeltsin could devise a way to effectively blame the situation on Russia’s pensioner voting block, a bright flash suddenly filled the office. The president squinted through the blinding light as it faded, and before he could reopen his eyes wide enough to see anything, he heard a someone speak.

“Twilight! You did it! We’re back in the office!”

“My God…” Yeltsin gasped.

He knew that voice. It belonged to a little pink pony with a poofy mane and a spring in her step. Slowly, Boris Yeltsin was able to open his eyes. And there they were, three little ponies in the office of the Gorki-9 Presidential Dacha, just as they had been two days earlier.

“Oh no…” moaned the wide-eyed Russian president, sitting straight up in his office chair as he clutched the arms of the seat with trembling hands. He wasn’t sure if he was excited or terrified. “The ponies… they… they’re back again…”