8 Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire (New York: Random House, 1995), 223. At a public meeting in May 1990, someone passed Yeltsin a note asking if he thought Soviet television spent too much time on Raisa. He replied that he thought it did. “I spoke to Gorbachev about this. He was insulted.” Vladimir Mezentsev, “Okruzhentsy” (Entourage), part 3, Rabochaya tribuna, March 28, 1995.
9 Third Yeltsin interview.
10 Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire, 112, citing a conversation with Afanas’ev.
11 Grishin was already a candidate member of the Politburo when given the Moscow position in June 1967 and had to wait four years, until the 1971 party congress, before getting his full member’s seat. Yeltsin’s expectations are recounted in Viktor Manyukhin, Pryzhok nazad: o Yel’tsine i o drugikh (Backward leap: about Yeltsin and others) (Yekaterinburg: Pakrus, 2002), 59–60.
12 Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy (Life and reforms), 2 vols. (Moscow: Novosti, 1995), 1:370–71.
13 Oksana Khimich, “Otchim perestroiki” (Stepfather of perestroika), Moskovskii komsomolets, April 22, 2005.
14 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 95–96. His views on the tenacity of opposition to reform evolved rapidly. In April 1986 he discounted as “completely incorrect” the judgment “that the party has somehow cut itself off from the people.” “Vypiska iz vystupleniya t. Yel’tsina B. N. 11 aprelya s. g. pered propagandistami g. Moskvy” (Extract from the statement of comrade B. N. Yeltsin on April 11, 1986, before Moscow propagandists), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Materialy samizdata, July 18, 1986, 7.
15 Politburo transcript for January 19, 1987, in AGF (Gorbachev Foundation Archive, Moscow), KDPP (Kollektsiya “Kak ‘delalas” politika perestroiki” [The collection “How the policy of perestroika ‘was made’”]), 6 vols., 2:21–46; quotations here at 32–35, 44–46.
16 The transcript records a break in the discussion after Yeltsin’s remarks but gives no details. Yeltsin in his memoirs (Ispoved’, 97) described Gorbachev walking out of a Politburo meeting on his account, but misremembered it as occurring in October 1987.
17 In a never-printed interview in July 1988, Yeltsin said there had been an element of competition with Gorbachev in making his Moscow personnel changes. He added that he wished there had been time to do more and that additional district party secretaries were on his list to be removed. Vladimir Polozhentsev, “Privet, pribaltiitsy!” (Greetings, people from the Baltic), http://podolsk-news.ru/stat/elcin.php.
18 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 11, 97–98.
19 V. I. Vorotnikov, A bylo eto tak: iz dnevnika chlena Politbyuro TsK KPSS (But this is how it was: from the diary of a member of the Politburo of the CPSU) (Moscow: Sovet veteranov knigoizdaniya, 1995), 123. For more on Gorbachev’s reaction, see Vadim Medvedev, V komande Gorbacheva: vzglyad iznutri (In the Gorbachev team: a view from within) (Moscow: Bylina, 1994), 45–47; and V. I. Boldin, Krusheniye p’edestala: shtrikhi k portretu M. S. Gorbacheva (Smashing the pedestal: strokes of a portrait of M. S. Gorbachev) (Moscow: Respublika, 1995), 326. George W. Breslauer, Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 117, surmises that Yeltsin was unhappy that Gorbachev settled for a closing resolution by the January plenum of the Central Committee that was less radical than Yeltsin preferred. It is a good point, but the Politburo records show the men were in conflict before the committee convened.
20 Vorotnikov, A bylo eto tak, 123.
21 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 11–12.
22 Politburo transcripts, March 24, 1987 (AGF, KDPP, 2:154–55); April 23, 1987 (ibid., 241–42); April 30, 1987 (ibid., 264); May 14, 1987 (ibid., 305, 317–18); September 28, (ibid., 539).
23 Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 1:368.
24 Politburo transcript, October 15, 1987, in Volkogonov Archive (Project on Cold War Studies, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University). All quotations here are at 138–40.
25 Vladimir Gubarev, “Akademik Gennadii Mesyats: beregite intellekt” (Academician Gennadii Mesyats: conserve your intellect), Gudok, October 12, 2005.
26 Yeltsin, however, did manage to keep Ligachëv’s men at bay most of the time. At the plenum of the city committee that removed Yeltsin from his job in November 1987, one member of the bureau, N. Ye. Kislova, noted that Central Committee workers had not recently dropped in on bureau meetings and that she could not remember an instance of a formal visit by a central CPSU official even at the level of subdepartment head. “Energichno vesti perestroiku” (Energetically carry out perestroika), Pravda, November 13, 1987.
27 Speech to Central Committee, June 25, 1987, in RGANI (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, Moscow) (microform in Harvard College Library), fund 2, register 5, file 58, 33–34.
28 Nikolai Ryzhkov, interview with the author (September 21, 2001).
29 Mikhail Poltoranin, interview with the author (July 11, 2001).
30 Yakovlev, Sumerki, 407. Plans for such a site were discussed at the August meeting of informal organizations, which Yeltsin had authorized. One delegate proposed it be located in the Arbat area, in downtown Moscow. A district-level Communist Party official in attendance opposed the idea: “Why does the Party need a Hyde Park at which it will be permitted to speak out on equal terms with you?” John B. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 74.
31 Politburo transcript, September 10, 1987 (AGF, KDPP, 2:507–8).
32 Ye. I. Chazov, Rok (Fate) (Moscow: Geotar-Med, 2001), 218–19.
33 Valerii Saikin, interview with the author (June 15, 2001).
34 Naina Yeltsina, second interview with the author (September 18, 2007).
35 All quotations from the letter are taken from Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 8–11 (italics added). An English translation, leaving out some details, is in Boris Yeltsin, Against the Grain: An Autobiography, trans. Michael Glenny (New York: Summit Books, 1990), 178–81.
36 Gorbachev made his claim to the CPSU conference in the summer of 1988, and Yeltsin made his in Ispoved’. The aide who was with Gorbachev during the phone call says Gorbachev told him after putting down the phone that Yeltsin “agreed he would not get nervous before the holidays,” which suggests partial acquiescence in Gorbachev’s preferred timing. A. S. Chernyayev, Shest’ let s Gorbachevym (Six years with Gorbachev) (Moscow: Progress, 1993), 175.
37 See Ispoved’, 13–14. Yeltsin did not bring up this point in our 2002 interview about these events.
38 Poltoranin interview.
39 Third Yeltsin interview.
40 At the October plenum, Gorbachev leveled the charge that Yeltsin had used this and similar meetings “to find accomplices” (naiti yedinomyshlennikov), but did not claim that Yeltsin had contacted Central Committee members in between plenums. “Plenum TsK KPSS—oktyabr’ 1987 goda (stenograficheskii otchët)” (The CPSU Central Committee plenum of October 1987 [stenographic record]), Izvestiya TsK KPSS, February 1989, 284. To me, Yeltsin said flatly that he did not speak to potential supporters, in person or by telephone, before the plenum.
41 Third Yeltsin interview.
42 The first interpretation of Gorbachev’s motives is stressed in the eyewitness account by the then-first deputy head of the party’s international department. Karen Brutents, Nesbyvsheyesya: neravnodushnyye zametki o perestroike (It never came true: engaged notes about perestroika) (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyye otnosheniya, 2005), 100–101. The second is favored by then-Politburo member Vitalii Vorotnikov, in A bylo eto tak, 169–70. Tret’yakov offers a variation on Brutents’s thesis, that Gorbachev had already decided to discharge Yeltsin and wanted him to fire at party conservatives on the way out the door. See Vitalii Tret’yakov, “Sverdlovskii vyskochka,” part 5, Politicheskii klass, June 2006, 99–100.
43 Vorotnikov, A bylo eto tak, 169.
44 Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 1:372.
45 In his diary of events, Anatolii Chernyayev had already likened Yeltsin’s address before the Moscow city confere
nce of the CPSU, in January 1986, to the Khrushchev speech (Chernyayev, Shest’ let, 63). But I think the October 1987 speech fits the bill much better. It had incomparably more impact, and the 1986 speech was not secret.
46 All quotations from Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 131–33.
47 The previous spring, the Moscow gorkom and government, wanting to economize on land and labor, had resolved to trim institutes from 1,041 to 1,002. When Yeltsin addressed the Central Committee, seven institutes had been liquidated and fifty-three new ones created, taking the total to 1,087, or 4 percent more than when the campaign started.
48 The phrase “cult of personality” (kul’t lichnosti) was censored out of the official transcript released in 1989 but is present in Yeltsin’s rendering of the speech in Ispoved’, 132. The official record from 1989 does, though, contain the critique by Gorbachev of Yeltsin’s use of the unprintable phrase.
49 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 133.
50 Third Yeltsin interview.
51 Chernyayev, Shest’ let, 177.
52 I have long thought of Yeltsin’s manner as feline. I am indebted to Jonathan Sanders for suggesting Gorbachev’s as canine.
53 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 22. These words are omitted from the English-language edition of the memoir.
54 Boldin, Krusheniye p’edestala, 328.
55 “Plenum TsK,” 241.
56 Vorotnikov, A bylo eto tak, 170, records this aspect of the scene with clarity.
57 Ryzhkov interview.
58 Yakovlev, Sumerki, 406.
59 “Plenum TsK,” 257. Yakovlev’s soft criticism of Yeltsin was for “conservatism”—which he made, he says (Sumerki, 405–6) to throw conservatives off the scent and ease their alarm at the moderate changes Gorbachev was committed to making.
60 “Plenum TsK,” 242–43.
61 In a mirror image of the collective attitude toward him, Yeltsin in his account of the day (Ispoved’, 135–36) refused to give the speakers he knew well credit for any but the most ignoble motives. “We had worked together side by side and, it would seem, eaten a pood of salt together. But each one was thinking of himself and considered this a chance to earn a few points for good behavior.”
62 “Plenum TsK,” 251–52 (Konoplëv), 253–54 (Ryabov). Yeltsin was especially unkind to Ryabov in his memoir, saying he spoke “to lay down some path for himself upward, if not for his future [assignments] then at least for his pension” (Ispoved’, 135). Yeltsin saw Ryabov when he visited France in May 1990. On the Aeroflot flight back to Moscow, he asked Ryabov, in full hearing of others, why he said what he did in 1987. Ryabov answered that he had nothing to be sorry for and was sticking to his opinion. Pilar Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya: Boris Yel’tsin, provintsial v Kremle” (The impossible Russia: Boris Yeltsin, a provincial in the Kremlin), Ural, April 1994, 25.
63 “Plenum TsK,” 254–57 (Ryzhkov), 262–63 (Yakovlev), 273–76 (Solomentsev), 259 (Vorotnikov), 261–62 (Chebrikov).
64 Ibid., 280 (Gorbachev and Yeltsin), 249 (Vladimir Mesyats on immaturity), 265 (Shevardnadze), 245 (Shalayev), 244 (Manyakin), 280 (Gorbachev).
65 Ibid., 279–81. That Gorbachev was open to compromise is the interpretation of Politburo member Vorotnikov (A bylo eto tak, 169) and, without comment on the penalty to be paid, of Gorbachev himself (Zhizn’ i reformy, 1:373).
66 Politburo transcript, October 31, 1987 (AGF, KDPP, 2:648–49).
67 Details here from Aleksandr Kapto, Na perekrëstkakh zhizni: politicheskiye memuary (At life’s crossroads: political memoirs) (Moscow: Sotsial’no-politicheskii zhurnal, 1996), 185–87; Vorotnikov, A bylo eto tak, 173–74; and Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 1:373.
68 “Plenum TsK,” 286.
69 Chernyayev, Shest’ let, 176–78.
70 Third Yeltsin interview.
71 Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire, 116.
72 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 138. The medical evidence is given in Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 1:374; and Chazov, Rok, 221–23. Both are unfriendly witnesses, but Chazov is no better disposed toward Gorbachev than toward Yeltsin. The reliable Vorotnikov attests (A bylo eto tak, 174–75) that Gorbachev shared the facts of the slashing incident with members of the Politburo on November 9 and that Viktor Chebrikov of the KGB verified them. According to Chazov, Yeltsin offered the doctors the farfetched explanation that he cut himself accidentally when leaning on the scissors. Gorbachev repeats this story and another Yeltsin is said to have told about being knifed by an assailant on the street.
73 Interviews with Aleksandr Korzhakov (January 28, 2002) and Valentina Lantseva (July 9, 2001).
74 Chazov, Rok, 225.
75 Third Yeltsin interview and comments by Naina Yeltsina during it.
76 Although the Leningrad group did not want to come into conflict with the Soviet center, members of it advocated creation of a Russian branch of the Communist Party, and some advocated transfer of the capital of the RSFSR to Leningrad. See David Brandenberger, “Stalin, the Leningrad Affair, and the Limits of Postwar Russocentrism,” Russian Review 63 (April 2004), 241–55.
77 Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata (Boris Yeltsin: from dawn to dusk) (Moscow: Interbuk, 1997), 65; Chazov, Rok, 224–25; Boris Yel’tsin, Prezidentskii marafon (Presidential marathon) (Moscow: AST, 2000), 53.
78 Mikhail Poltoranin, interviewed in Prezident vseya Rusi (The president of all Russia), documentary film by Yevgenii Kiselëv, 1999–2000 (copy supplied by Kiselëv), 4 parts, part 2.
79 All quotations from “Energichno vesti perestroiku.”
80 Yurii Belyakov, the second secretary, and Yurii Karabasov, the gorkom’s secretary for ideological matters, also spoke, and were less forgiving than Nizovtseva. All three secretaries stressed the costs to them and to the Moscow organization of Yeltsin’s refusal to consult them before making his attack. Belyakov, whom Yeltsin recruited from Sverdlovsk, did credit him for his hard work and leadership, but this, Belyakov said, made the boss’s change of position even harder to take. And Yeltsin’s name was now being used by “dubious elements,” at home and abroad, to stir up scandal.
81 Comment by Naina Yeltsina during my third interview with Boris Yeltsin: “They all said, ‘Well, the system made us cripples,’ that is, they all considered this [the attack] incorrect.”
82 Poltoranin in Prezident vseya Rusi. Gorbachev’s actions are not mentioned in the official account. He said in his memoirs (Zhizn’ i reformy, 1:375) that some of the speeches at the plenum had left him with a bad taste in his mouth. He also commended Yeltsin for taking the punishment and behaving “like a man.”
83 Poltoranin in Prezident vseya Rusi. Before that, Gorbachev evidently came over and comforted him.
84 Second Yeltsina interview.
85 Poltoranin interview.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1 Boris Yel’tsin, Ispoved’ na zadannuyu temu (Confession on an assigned theme) (Moscow: PIK, 1990), 142–43.
2 Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1962), 100–101.
3 A first-mover advantage is that achieved by the first firm to offer a new product or service, or by the first player to enter into some other kind of competition for resources. There is considerable controversy over the magnitude of the advantage in specific contexts. See Herbert Gintis, Game Theory Evolving: A Problem-Centered Introduction to Modeling Strategic Behavior (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); and Martin J. Osborne, An Introduction to Game Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
4 Yu, M. Baturin et al., Epokha Yel’tsina: ocherki politicheskoi istorii (The Yeltsin epoch: essays in political history) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2001), 53. On the forgeries, petitions, and rallies, see also Andrei Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin: svet i teni (Boris Yeltsin: light and shadows), 2 vols. (Sverdlovsk: Klip, 1991), 2:7; Nikolai Zen’kovich, Boris Yel’tsin: raznyye zhizni (Boris Yeltsin: various lives), 2 vols. (Moscow: OLMA, 2001), 1:336–37; Leon Aron, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000),
220–22; and Lev Osterman, Intelligentsiya i vlast’ v Rossii, 1985–1996 gg. (The intelligentsia and power in Russia, 1985–96) (Moscow: Monolit, 2000), 31.
5 Mikhail Poltoranin, interviewed in Prezident vseya Rusi (The president of all Russia), documentary film by Yevgenii Kiselëv, 1999–2000 (copy supplied by Kiselëv), 4 parts, part 2; and Poltoranin, interview with the author (July 11, 2001).
6 A. S. Chernyayev, Shest’ let s Gorbachevym (Six years with Gorbachev) (Moscow: Progress, 1993), 175.
7 This point is made in Vitalii Tret’yakov, “Sverdlovskii vyskochka” (Sverdlovsk upstart), part 7, Politicheskii klass, August 2006, 103.
8 See Yegor Gaidar, Gibel’ imperii: uroki dlya sovremennoi Rossii (Death of an empire: lessons for contemporary Russia) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006), 190–97. Gaidar traces the revenue crunch to Saudi Arabia’s decision in 1981, in exchange for American military backing, to boost its oil output and thereby restrain global prices. As he shows, Soviet specialists were well apprised of this trend.
9 Aleksandr Kapto, Na perekrëstkakh zhizni: politicheskiye memuary (At life’s crossroads: political memoirs) (Moscow: Sotsial’no-politicheskii zhurnal, 1996), 192.
10 Razin, called Russia’s Robin Hood by some, was quartered alive in Red Square in 1671, by order of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich. Catherine the Great had Pugachëv beheaded in the same place in 1775. Pugachëv’s uprising began in the southern Urals and got as far as the town of Zlatoust, about 300 miles from Butka.
11 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 140; Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy (Life and reforms), 2 vols. (Moscow: Novosti, 1995), 1:374–75.
12 Gorbachev recounted his comment to Yeltsin in response to a question from the author during a visit to the Gorbachev Foundation by a Harvard University study group, September 11, 2002.
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