15 The case was initially a disappearance, with no one knowing what had become of Titov. His body was found outside of town several months later, with the pistol next to it. The KGB eventually ruled the death a suicide and a personal affair with no political aspect. Source: interviews with former obkom officials.
16 Viktor Chernomyrdin, interview with the author (September 15, 2000).
17 Interview with Ryabov, Central Committee Interview Project, University of Glasgow (transcript supplied by Stephen White). Ryabov went so far as to say in this interview that Yeltsin “was fully under my influence” in the late 1970s.
18 What Ryabov said in Nizhnii Tagil, after being asked about Brezhnev, was that the Politburo and Secretariat were quite capable of “covering for an ailing leader.” The incident is described in Yakov Ryabov, Moi XX vek: zapiski byvshego sekretarya TsK KPSS (My 20th century: notes of a former secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU) (Moscow: Russkii biograficheskii institut, 2000), 129–30. He mentioned Kornilov’s likely role only in the University of Glasgow interview. In 1971 Ryabov had pushed for serial production of the T-72 main battle tank in Nizhnii Tagil; Ustinov preferred a model made in Kharkov, Ukraine. Brezhnev eventually settled the matter in Ryabov’s and Sverdlovsk’s favor.
19 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 175.
20 Alibek, Biohazard, 79. Stalin appointed Ustinov, born in 1908, as minister (people’s commissar) of the armaments industry in 1941, and he had been in high positions ever since.
21 “Boris Yel’tsin: ya ne skryvayu trudnostei i khochu, chtoby narod eto ponimal” (Boris Yeltsin: I do not conceal the difficulties and want the people to understand that), Komsomol’skaya pravda, May 27, 1992.
22 Some Western Kremlinologists interpreted Ryabov’s demotion as a reflection of a decrease in the Moscow standing of Kirilenko. I see no direct connection, but Ryabov’s account makes it clear that the incident made Kirilenko nervous. “I sat there with Kirilenko and could feel his perplexity and feeling of helplessness. I quietened him down and stated that I would not stir up a scandal in the Politburo and would make a worthy statement. He thanked me and we said good-bye until the session of the Politburo.” Ryabov, Moi XX vek, 130.
23 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 51–52.
24 Andrei Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin: svet i teni (Boris Yeltsin: light and shadows), 2 vols. (Sverdlovsk: Klip, 1991), 1:14. There is no independent confirmation of Yeltsin’s opposition to the Brezhnev museum. Brezhnev’s daughter, Galina, was born in Sverdlovsk, and in 1999 his grandson Andrei ran unsuccessfully for governor of the province.
25 There is careful analysis in Aron, Yeltsin, 58, 73–75.
26 Nikolai Tselishchev, a Sverdlovsk propaganda official at the time, interview with the author (June 23, 2004); Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 133–34.
27 Aron, Yeltsin, 45–46.
28 Press reports say the apartment sold for $200,000 in 2003 and has a net living area (not counting halls, kitchen, and bathroom) of about 1,800 square feet. I visited a unit of identical layout in the building in June 2004. By way of comparison, the median size of a single-family, detached house in the United States was 1,858 square feet in 2005, and of a house built between 2000 and 2005 it was 2,258 square feet.
29 The tower, promoted by Ryabov and sanctioned by Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin, was completed in 1980, but construction defects kept it from opening for two years. Yeltsin had supervised the first stages of the project. As first secretary, he was able to blame others for its problems.
30 Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya,” 45–47, profiles Hospital No. 2, which went from 100 staff members in 1970 to 750 in 1979. The listening devices are described in Irina Bobrova, “Yel’tsiny tozhe plachut” (The Yeltsins also cry), Moskovskii komsomolets, February 18, 2000.
31 On obkom promotion of volleyball courts, see Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya,” 82. Of the four former participants in the officials’ volleyball games with whom I spoke, none was critical. I was shown around the area and the now moldering Dacha No. 1 in September 2004.
32 Oleg Lobov, interview with the author (May 29, 2002).
33 Yeltsin later told associates he had seen the gun in a shop while heading an official delegation to Prague, but did not have the money to pay for it. Morshchakov took up a collection from the delegates, bought the weapon, and presented it to him as they boarded the return flight to the USSR. See the account by Aleksandr Korzhakov in Aleksandr Khinshtein, Yel’tsin, Kreml’, istoriya bolezni (Yeltsin, the Kremlin, the history of an illness) (Moscow: OLMA, 2006), 65.
34 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 177. Manyukhin claims Yeltsin demanded the right of first shot at the elk, but Yeltsin writes of the hunters waiting in a row for the quarry to spring, at spots paced off from the nearest hunter, with the man closest to the animal getting the shot. Boris Yel’tsin, Prezidentskii marafon (Presidential marathon) (Moscow: AST, 2000), 347.
35 Vladimir Mezentsev, “Okruzhentsy” (Entourage), part 8, Rabochaya tribuna, April 5, 1995.
36 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 66–67.
37 Ryabov, Moi XX vek, 45.
38 Source: a witness to the episode who prefers to remain anonymous. Yeltsin refers in his memoirs to a visit by another KGB deputy chairman, Vladimir Pirozhkov.
39 Summaries of these cases are in V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko, eds., 58-10: nadzornyye proizvodstva Prokuratury SSSR po delam ob antisovetskoi agitatsii i propagande (Mart 1953–1991), annotirovannyi katalog (Article 58, section 10: the supervisory files of the USSR Procuracy about cases of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda [March 1953–1991], an annotated catalogue) (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond “Demokratiya,” 1999), 720–21, 769–70, 792, 782. The Andropov memorandum may be found at http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/~kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/pdfs/sovter74/kgb70-10.pdf.
40 The victims were sprayed with gunfire and bayoneted. Some had to be finished off with a shot to the head because precious stones sewn into their clothing deflected the blows. Yakov Yurovskii, the chief executioner and a party member since 1905, was guilt-stricken after the killings. The story is told in Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir M. Khrustalëv, The Fall of the Romanovs: Political Dreams and Personal Struggles in a Time of Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
41 The Andropov memo and Politburo resolution, as well as Yeltsin’s speculation that the timing was connected with the anniversary of the coronation, are in Yel’tsin, Marafon, 330–31. Yeltsin does not explain why the demolition did not occur in 1975, and Ryabov makes no mention of any aspect of it in his memoirs.
42 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 124–25.
43 The restrictions on plays and films are found at TsDOOSO, fund 4, register 107, file 118, 96. This was in addition to the filtering done by the Moscow authorities. The play, Dear Yelena Sergeyevna, by Lyudmila Razumovskaya, is about secondary-school graduates who, at their mathematics teacher’s birthday party, beseech her to change their grades and threaten to rape one of their number in the process. The play was censured by the Central Committee Secretariat in April 1983. It was made into a successful Soviet film by director El’dar Ryazanov in 1988. Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya,” 103, describes the measures on photocopiers.
44 Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya,” 84.
45 Valentin Luk’yanin, interview with the author (September 9, 2004). The Nikonov text had been cleared by the local censor assigned to the magazine. This scandal, together with an earlier case where the errant writer was Konstantin Lagunov, is thoroughly discussed in Aron, Yeltsin, 118–25.
46 Matt Taibbi, “Butka: Boris Yeltsin, Revisited,” http://exile.ru/105/yeltsin.
47 Quotation from Bobrova, “Yel’tsiny tozhe plachut.” Boris Yeltsin is said to have ordered Mikhail to tear down a toolshed on his out-of-town garden plot because it exceeded the state norm by a tiny amount. But after their mother’s death he did set Mikhail up in a studio apartment in the VIP complex by the Town Pond.
48 Irina Bobrova, “Boris bol’shoi, yemu vidnei” (Boris is a big shot, he knows better), Moskovskii komsomolets, January 31,
2007, says on the basis of inquiries in Berezniki that one of the sources of tension between Valentina and her husband, Oleg, was his belief that her brother could help them out in life. “Oleg Yakovlevich constantly reproached his wife for the fact that she felt shy about asking [Boris] for material assistance.”
49 Details from Bobrova, “Yel’tsiny tozhe plachut”; Natal’ya Konstantinova, Zhenskii vzglyad na kremlëvskuyu zhizn’ (A woman’s view of Kremlin life) (Moscow: Geleos, 1999), 171–83; and various interviews.
50 Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova, Boris Yeltsin: A Political Biography, trans. David Gurevich (New York: Putnam’s, 1992), 84–85; Gwendolyn Elizabeth Stewart, “SIC TRANSIT: Democratization, Suverenizatsiia, and Boris Yeltsin in the Breakup of the Soviet Union” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1995), 95.
51 Shadrina, “Yel’tsin byl krut.”
52 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 220. In a 1996 campaign document, Yeltsin is quoted as saying the prediction was made by an astrologer and for the year 1983. Prezident Yel’tsin: 100 voprosov i otvetov (President Yeltsin: 100 questions and answers) (Moscow: Obshcherossiiskoye dvizheniye obshchestvennoi podderzhki B. N. Yel’tsina, 1996), 78.
53 Galina Stepanova, party archivist, interview with the author (September 7, 2004).
54 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 207.
55 Quotation from Tat’yana D’yachenko, “Yesli by papa ne stal prezidentom . . .” (If papa had not become president), Ogonëk, October 23, 2000. Other details from Yel’tsin, Marafon, 337; Bobrova, “Yel’tsiny tozhe plachut”; and interviews. For background on blat, see Alena Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favors: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchanges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). There is nothing about his daughters’ failed first marriages in Yeltsin’s memoirs. It was a painful subject, although Yeltsin welcomed his new sons-in-law and embraced the children from the second marriages. Tatyana married for a third time in 2001.
56 When the boy was born, Boris Nikolayevich pressed Khairullin to have him bear the Yeltsin surname. Khairullin has said in press interviews that he agreed with reluctance but on the understanding that a second child would have his family name.
57 Andrei Karaulov, Vokrug Kremlya: kniga politicheskikh dialogov (Around the Kremlin: a book of political dialogues) (Moscow: Novosti, 1990), 103.
58 Naina Yeltsina, personal communication to the author (July 29, 2007).
59 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 331.
60 The idiom “compliant activism” was struck to describe aspects of grassroots politics in the Brezhnev era. See Donna Bahry, “Politics, Generations, and Change in the USSR,” in James R. Millar, ed., Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 76–84.
61 TsDOOSO, fund 4, register 101, file 105, 73. At the same time, Yeltsin took a firm line against forms of private enterprise that contravened Soviet laws and mores. For example, he condemned the informal sale of radio receivers and spare parts, which might allow citizens to listen to foreign broadcasters like the BBC or Voice of America (with the local favorite, Willis Conover’s jazz hour).
62 Aron, Yeltsin, 66.
63 B. N. Yel’tsin, Srednii Ural: rubezhi sozidaniya (The middle Urals: milestones of creation) (Sverdlovsk: Sredne-Ural’skoye knizhnoye izdatel’stsvo, 1981), 83, mentions Uralmash, the Kalinin Works, and others making washing machines, kitchen dishware, lightbulbs, vacuum cleaners, and baby carriages. The obkom drew 600 factories into a plan to increase output of consumer goods in the province by 50 percent in the 1981–85 five-year plan.
64 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 251.
65 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 30, 85.
66 Boris Yeltsin, third interview with the author (September 12, 2002); and Yurii Petrov, second interview (February 1, 2002). According to Naina Yeltsina (second interview with the author, September 18, 2007), Boris already owned a considerable number of books when they married in 1955, and they installed a bookshelf before having the chance to acquire any furniture. He did more reading when in construction than when in the party apparatus, but the reading never stopped. Visitors to the Yeltsins in Moscow in the late 1980s were taken with his collection, which sat in the entrance hall to their apartment on the same unpainted plank shelves as in Sverdlovsk.
67 Third Yeltsin interview and comments by Naina Yeltsina during the interview.
68 Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin, 2:20–21. Goryun dates the trip in 1968, after Yeltsin transferred to party work. Yeltsin, in his CPSU membership file (TsDOOSO, fund 4, register 116, file 283, 5, 300), says it was in May 1966, when he was still director of the housing combine. The file shows him taking ten foreign trips before his transfer to Moscow in 1985. Four of these were vacations and six were on business. Six of the ten trips were to Soviet-bloc countries (Bulgaria twice, Czechoslovakia twice, Rumania, and Cuba) and four were to Western countries (France in 1966 and 1974, Sweden and Finland in 1971, and West Germany in 1984). Altogether he had spent three to four weeks in the West.
69 Transcript of interview with Mike Wallace for CBS News’s 60 Minutes show of October 6, 2000 (made available by Jonathan Sanders); this piece was not broadcast. In Zapiski, 250–51, Yeltsin mentions Naina bringing him news about shortages from conversations at the office and visits to the food market.
70 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 64.
71 Lidiya Solomoniya, interview with the author (September 11, 2004).
72 Lobov interview.
73 Vladimir Polozhentsev, “Privet, pribaltiitsy!” (Greetings, people from the Baltic), http://podolsk-news.ru/stat/elcin.php. This interview was given in July 1988 but never published. The Russian is idiomatic and not the easiest to translate: brezhnevskaya sistema postoyanno sverbela v mozgu, i vnutri ya vsegda nës kakoi-to vnutrennii uprëk.
74 Karaulov, Vokrug Kremlya, 111.
75 Sergei Ryzhenkov and Galina Lyukhterkhandt-Mikhaleva, Politika i kul’tura v rossiiskoi provintsii: Novgorodskaya, Voronezhskaya, Saratovskaya, Sverdlovskaya oblasti (Politics and culture in the Russian provinces: Novgorod, Voronezh, Saratov, and Sverdlovsk oblasts) (Moscow: Letnii sad, 2001), 160. On the UPI group, see Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya,” 123. After the singer Yulii Kim gave an unauthorized concert at UPI in the late 1970s, a music club at the institute was closed and the teacher who invited him was fired. See also Anita Seth, “Molodëzh’ i politika: vozmozhnosti i predely studencheskoi samodeyatel’nosti na vostoke Rossii (1961–1991 gg.) (Youth and politics: the possibilities and limits of student amateurism in the east of Russia [1961–91]), Kritika 7 (Winter 2006), 153–57.
76 TsDOOSO, fund 4, register 100, file 116, 119.
77 Sverdlovsk’s was the fifth subway to be started in the USSR’s Russian republic. Yeltsin’s conversation with Brezhnev is described in Ispoved’, 54. But Kirilenko played a key role before then in getting the Soviet railways minister, Ivan Pavlovskii, to agree in a single telephone conversation. Although he misnamed the project—calling it the metr (meter) rather than metro (subway)—Uncle Andrei came through for Sverdlovsk. Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 130.
78 Second Petrov interview. Overcentralization was also rampant within the CPSU. Lobov, Yeltsin’s second secretary from 1982 to 1985, had to ask the Central Committee to let him add a cleaning lady to his staff chart (Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya,” 41).
79 Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 395.
80 Second Yeltsin interview.
81 Comments by Naina Yeltsina during third Yeltsin interview.
82 Second Petrov interview. On the pursuit of regional autonomy, see James R. Harris, The Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); and Yoshiko M. Herrera, Imagined Economies: The Sources of Russian Regionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
83 See on this point Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 54–59.
/>
84 There is film of the ceremony in Prezident vseya Rusi, part 1.
85 Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya,” 78.
86 Rossel, interviewed in Prezident vseya Rusi, part 1. According to what Yeltsin told Rossel, he and Brezhnev met on work matters on Yeltsin’s birthday—it would 4 have had to be February 1, 1977, his forty-sixth—and an aide informed the general secretary of the birthday. Brezhnev gave him the watch at that point. The funny thing is that Brezhnev had a reputation among foreign diplomats for asking if he could trade their watches for one of his, usually a mass-produced Soviet model.
87 Second Yeltsina interview.
88 Kaëta interview.
89 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 50.
90 Kaëta interview. Beside the public-relations and morale-building side of these forays, Yeltsin could have a soft heart for those in need. Kaëta remembered an episode in the town of Severoural’sk when Yeltsin was approached by a female construction worker with four children, who said she was unable to feed her family on her wages. Yeltsin volunteered in front of the group to give her 100 rubles a month from his own salary. Kaëta doubted the woman ever received any of this cash, but suspected that Yeltsin found some other way to help her out.
91 Plans for the meeting with the students are contained in TsDOOSO, fund 4, register 100, file 275, and the questions and answers are in file 116 (quotation about capitalist competition at 136). Aron, Yeltsin, 87–92, gives a good account of the meeting.
92 Yel’tsin, Srednii Ural, 101–2; Aron, Yeltsin, 78–80.
93 TsDOOSO, fund 4, register 101, file 106, 3.
94 Ibid., register 107, file 118, 39.
95 Ibid., 37–42.
96 Ibid., register 101, file 105, 116.
97 Anatolii Kirillov, interview with the author (June 21, 2004).
98 Ryabov, Moi XX vek, 56.
99 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 53.
100 Ibid., 22.
101 Second Yeltsin interview. Compare to Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 53: “We found ourselves working, practically speaking, in almost total self-reliance [samostoyatel’nost’].”
Yeltsin Page 67