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77 Viktor Yaroshenko, Yel’tsin: ya otvechu za vsë (Yeltsin: I will answer for everything) (Moscow: Vokrug sveta, 1997), 131–32.
78 Stepankov and Lisov, Kremlëvskii zagovor, 121. The plotters’ plans for Yeltsin’s detention at Arkhangel’skoye-2 are described in ibid., 117–25, 156–57, 160–61, 165–66. In Zapiski, 97–98, Yeltsin recounts another telephone conversation with Kryuchkov, taken at Yeltsin’s initiative from the Russian White House. And Vadim Bakatin, who headed the KGB in the fall of 1991, adds that there was dissension among the Alpha commanders over whether to arrest Yeltsin: Izbavleniye ot KGB (Deliverance from the KGB) (Moscow: Novosti, 1992), 20–21.
79 Stepankov and Lisov, Kremlëvskii zagovor, 123.
80 See Brian D. Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 241–42. Several Russian sources add that at the meeting at which Kryuchkov revealed Yeltsin’s noncooperation, Oleg Baklanov, the party overseer of the military-industrial complex and one of the GKChP octet, scribbled a note to himself saying, “Seize B. N. [Boris Nikolayevich].”
81 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 68. As Yeltsin’s grandchildren prepared to leave the dacha with Naina a little later, his daughters warned them to take to the floor of the car if firing broke out, at which point his ten-year-old grandson asked if they would be shot directly in the head. Den’ v sem’e prezidenta (A day in the president’s family), interviews of the Yeltsin family by El’dar Ryazanov on REN-TV, April 20, 1993 (videotape supplied by Irena Lesnevskaya).
82 Gennadii Burbulis, “Prezident ot prirody” (A president by nature), Moskovskiye novosti, January 27, 2006; and quotation from Mary Dejevsky, a British journalist who was on the spot, interview with the author (September 14, 2007).
83 The quotation and details of his decision are taken from my third Yeltsin interview. Khasbulatov has written (Velikaya Rossiiskaya tragediya, 1:163) that he and others persuaded Yeltsin to get up on the tank, but Yeltsin’s account contradicts this. Viktor Yaroshenko, a Yeltsin adviser who was present, has said Yeltsin may have seen a young man lie down on the ground in front of another tank minutes before, and the man’s bravery may have influenced him. Friends pulled the man from the path of Tank No. 112 with a split-second to spare. The scene and Yaroshenko’s comments are captured in Prezident vseya Rusi, part 3.
84 The appeal and other major documents from August 1991 can be found at http://old.russ.ru/antolog/1991/putch11.htm.
85 Victoria E. Bonnell and Gregory Freidin, “Televorot: The Role of Television Coverage in Russia’s August 1991 Coup,” in Nancy Condee, ed., Soviet Hieroglyphics : Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 32.
86 That was the peak crowd at the White House. But there were about 200,000 pro-Yeltsin demonstrators on August 20 at Moscow city hall on Tverskaya Street, where the police and military presence was slighter, and significant demonstrations were mounted at many Russian and Soviet cities. See Harley Balzer, “Ordinary Russians? Rethinking August 1991,” Demokratizatsiya/Democratization 13 (Spring 2005), 193–218.
87 When the unassuming Lobov addressed a rally in Sverdlovsk, the commander of the local military district threatened to lock him up. Lobov then warned that he would call a general strike. The standoff was averted by the collapse of the coup. Oleg Lobov, interview with the author (May 29, 2002).
88 Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 434; Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 172. Richard Nixon thought Bush’s praise of Yeltsin grudging and that the putsch had shown that Bush had been “wrong all along” about the relative merits of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Crowley, Nixon in Winter, 64.
89 John B. Dunlop, “The August 1991 Coup and Its Impact on Soviet Politics,” Journal of Cold War Studies 5 (Winter 2003), 112–13. Bush’s decision and the “bitter protests” of the National Security Agency were first reported in Seymour M. Hersh, “The Wild East,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1994. Testified one U.S. official, “We told Yeltsin in real time what the communications were. . . . We monitor every major command, and we handed it to Yeltsin on a platter.” The NSA’s concern was about disclosure of American monitoring capabilities. President Bush decided, properly, that helping Yeltsin at a turning point was a more important stake.
90 “Throne out of bayonets” was an expression of the English theologian William R. Inge ( 1860–1954). I do not know how Yeltsin came across it.
91 The Yeltsin speech and the comments about the Kremlin are in Stepankov and Lisov, Kremlëvskii zagovor, 163–64, 179. In his interview with me (May 22, 2000), Shaposhnikov said he prepared a written order on shooting up the Kremlin and discussed implementation with local officers.
92 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 114.
93 Quotation from Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata (Boris Yeltsin: from dawn to dusk) (Moscow: Interbuk, 1997), 115–16. See also Robert V. Barylski, The Soldier in Russian Politics: Duty, Dictatorship, and Democracy Under Gorbachev and Yeltsin (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1998), 131–34. Yeltsin had known Bakatin, the former party boss of Kirov province, for some time and had considered him as a vice-presidential running mate. But he never met Shaposhnikov before demanding that Gorbachev appoint him—they had spoken by telephone only. Author’s interviews with Bakatin (May 29, 2002) and Shaposhnikov.
94 Dejevsky interview.
95 I. Karpenko and G. Shipit’ko, “Kak prezident derzhal otvet pered rossiiskimi deputatami” (How the president answered the Russian deputies), Izvestiya, August 24, 1991.
96 Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 438.
97 See on this point Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 423–25.
98 As paraphrased by Gorbachev’s chief negotiator, Shakhnazarov (S vozhdyami i bez nikh, 462).
99 Yurii Baturin, “Kak razvalili SSSR 15 let nazad” (How they pulled down the USSR fifteen years ago), Moskovskiye novosti, December 8, 2006; Baturin, “Pochemu 25 noyabrya 1991 goda tak i ne sostoyalos’ parafirovaniye Soyuznogo dogovora” (Why the union treaty was not initialed on November 25, 1991), Novaya gazeta, December 12, 2006.
100 Bakatin, Izbavleniye ot KGB, 223, describes meeting with Yeltsin in early December to ask for cash to pay the KGB’s bills until the end of the year.
101 Baturin et al., Epokha, 167. Gorbachev did not give up entirely on November 25. At the press conference, skipped by all of the republic leaders, he expressed the hope that a treaty would be signed on December 20.
102 Transcript in V Politbyuro TsK KPSS, 724–28.
103 Quoted in Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From, 185.
104 Kravchuk told Richard Nixon in 1993 “that Boris Yeltsin’s drive for Russian sovereignty led him to believe for the first time that secession from the USSR was a credible option for Ukraine.” Simes, After the Collapse, 55.
105 In an account published in 1994, Kravchuk claimed that he first thought of the meeting and sold Shushkevich on the idea. Shushkevich has consistently claimed authorship, and Yeltsin always agreed. See Loginov, Soyuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’, 432–45. A quirky line in Shushkevich’s biography was that he taught Lee Harvey Oswald Russian in 1960–61 while chief engineer at a Minsk electronics plant.
106 Stanislav Shushkevich, interview with the author (April 17, 2000); Jan Maksymiuk, “Leaders Recall Dissolution of USSR,” http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2001/520104.shtml. Yegor Gaidar, Dni porazhenii i pobed (Days of defeats and victories) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 1996), 149, says the source of the confusion was that Kozyrev put the draft under the wrong door.
107 Leonid Kravchuk, “Kogda Belovezhskiye soglasheniya byli podpisany, Yel’tsin pozvonil Bushu” (When the Belovezh’e accord was signed, Yeltsin phoned Bush), http://president.org.ur/news/news-140783.
108 Details from ibid.; Leonid Kravchuk, “Nekontroliruyemyi raspad SSSR privël by k millionam zhertv” (An uncontrolled dissolution of the USSR would have led to mill
ions of casualties), http://news.bigmir.net/article/worldaboutukraine/724174; Bush and Scowcroft, World Transformed, 554–55; and Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 2:601.
109 Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 2:600.
110 James A. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War, and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: Putnam’s, 1995), 569–70 (italics added); Strobe Talbott, “America Abroad,” Time, October 26, 1992.
111 Andrei Grachëv, Dal’she bez menya: ukhod prezidenta (Go ahead without me: the exit of a president) (Moscow: Progress, 1994), 247–48; Shaposhnikov interview. There were reports after the August coup that Gorbachev was consulting Yeltsin on control of the nuclear force. Dunlop, Rise of Russia, 269.
112 Aleksandr Yakovlev, second interview with the author (March 29, 2004); Shakhnazarov, Popov, and Shaposhnikov interviews; and Loginov, Soyuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’, 473 (concerning Shevardnadze). In a memoir, Popov says Yeltsin could have combined the Russian and the Soviet presidencies, and regrets he did not try to convince Yeltsin to do so. Gavriil Popov, Snova v oppozitsii (In opposition again) (Moscow: Galaktika, 1994), 260, 269.
113 Second Yeltsin interview; interview with Ruslan Khasbulatov (September 26, 2001). Yeltsin writes in Zapiski, 154–55, that he had a mental aversion to replacing Gorbachev: “This path was barred for me. Psychologically, I could not take Gorbachev’s place.” Gorbachev observed to Shevardnadze on December 10 that if Yeltsin had been willing to take over in August, the decision could have been imposed on him. Loginov, Soyuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’, 473.
114 Yevgenii Shaposhnikov, Vybor (Choice), 2nd ed. (Moscow: PIK, 1995), 138 (quotation); Shaposhnikov interview.
115 Hough’s thesis in Democratization and Revolution, 465, is that it was all about power: “Yeltsin’s temptation to get rid of Gorbachev by abolishing his job must have been irresistible.” This ignores the fact that the disappearance of the Soviet Union downsized Gorbachev’s “job.” Gorbachev, in his memoirs, portrays Yeltsin at the time as greedy for power and two-faced, but also under the influence of dogmatically anti-USSR advisers such as Gennadii Burbulis.
116 This could not have been the only condition for Yeltsin, since he had accepted treaty drafts that would not have been signed by all the republics. He seemed to assume that Russia’s cornucopia of resources, to be sold to nonsignatories at world market prices, would induce them to cooperate. Stewart (“SIC TRANSIT,” 322) calls this “the cash and carry solution.”
117 These categories were introduced by Roman Szporluk in “Dilemmas of Russian Nationalism,” Problems of Communism 38 (July–August 1989), 16–23. John Dunlop (Rise of Russia, 266–67) says Yeltsin acted like a “velvet imperialist” in the fall of 1991, but I do not find this a helpful label. Yeltsin’s vision was centered on the core Russian state, although he hoped it would retain influence in the former Soviet republics.
118 Chernyayev, 1991 god, 259–60.
119 Boris Yel’tsin, Prezidentskii marafon (Presidential marathon) (Moscow: AST, 2000), 31.
120 This phrase comes from Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State.
CHAPTER NINE
1 CIA, Director of Central Intelligence, “The Deepening Crisis in the USSR: Prospects for the Next Year,” NIE 11-18-90 (November 1990), 15–18; declassified version obtained at http://www.foia.cia.gov.browse_docs.asp?
2 Ibid., 17–18. The 1990 NIE assumed, as almost all forecasts did, that the Soviet state in some form would have to survive for light at the end of the tunnel to be feasible. It did warn that economic difficulties “would make unilateral steps by the republics to assert their economic independence more likely.” But, of course, by the end of 1991 events had far outrun this possibility.
3 Vyacheslav Terekhov, interview with the author (June 5, 2001).
4 “Yeltsin Criticizes ‘Half-Hearted’ Reforms,” FBIS-SOV-90-049 (March 13, 1990), 74.
5 Boris Yel’tsin, Zapiski prezidenta (Notes of a president) (Moscow: Ogonëk, 1994), 163. In his June 1991 visit to Washington, Yeltsin told President Bush there was no way a military or police coup against Gorbachev would succeed or be attempted. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), 505.
6 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 33.
7 Pavel Voshchanov, interview with the author (June 15, 2000). Voshchanov was present at the celebration.
8 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 34.
9 Oleg Poptsov, Khronika vremën “Tsarya Borisa” (Chronicle of the times of “Tsar Boris”) (Moscow: Sovershenno sekretno, 1995), 75.
10 Yu, M. Baturin et al., Epokha Yel’tsina: ocherki politicheskoi istorii (The Yeltsin epoch: essays in political history) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2001), 148. I will cite this source often in the coming chapters. The coauthors are four former presidential assistants (Yurii Baturin, Mikhail Krasnov, Aleksandr Livshits, and Georgii Satarov), four former speech writers (Aleksandr Il’in, Vladimir Kadatskii, Konstantin Nikiforov, and Lyudmila Pikhoya), and a former press secretary (Vyacheslav Kostikov). I also interviewed six of the coauthors (Baturin, Kostikov, Krasnov, Livshits, Pikhoya, and Satarov).
11 The renaming occurred when the Russian Supreme Soviet was debating ratification of an agreement among CIS members concerning the nuclear arsenal. A deputy noted that Yeltsin had signed as president of “the Russian Federation,” and not of the RSFSR. Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov moved that the name be changed (with “Russia” as an alternative), and the motion passed unanimously.
12 “Minnoye pole vlasti” (The minefield of power), Izvestiya, October 28, 1991.
13 Valentina Lantseva, interview with the author (July 9, 2001).
14 Aleksandr Tsipko, “Drama rossiiskogo vybora” (The drama of Russia’s choice), Izvestiya, October 1, 1991.
15 Details in Marc Zlotnik, “Yeltsin and Gorbachev: The Politics of Confrontation,” Journal of Cold War Studies 5 (Winter 2003), 159–60. Gorbachev has bitterly reported that the day Yeltsin took over in the Kremlin, December 27, was three days ahead of the agreed-upon date, and that he held uncomely festivities there that morning with Gennadii Burbulis and Ruslan Khasbulatov. Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy (Life and reforms), 2 vols. (Moscow: Novosti, 1995), 2:622.
16 Years later, in January 2000, Vitalii Tret’yakov, as editor of the elite newspaper Nezavisimaya gazeta, put out a piece about Yeltsin called “Sverdlovsk Upstart.” He had been working on a book on Yeltsin’s career which was never published (some draft chapters were serialized in 2006 and have been cited in this book). Gorbachev rang him up with congratulations on the title. Tret’yakov, interview with the author (June 7, 2000).
17 Robert S. Strauss, interview with the author (January 9, 2006).
18 Baturin et al., Epokha, 226. Yeltsin described Gorbachev as having made a promise about nonparticipation, in “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.
19 It was Yeltsin who had the ban eased to allow Gorbachev to fly to Berlin for the funeral of Willy Brandt, the former German chancellor. He phoned the court chairman, Valerii Zor’kin, to press the case. Jane Henderson, “The Russian Constitutional Court and the Communist Party Case: Watershed or Whitewash?” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 40 (March 2007), 7.
20 Yeltsin actually took the initiative to repair relations with Yegor Ligachëv. He had a staffer telephone Ligachëv in 1994 or 1995 and offer to enlarge his pension. Ligachëv hotly refused. Oksana Khimich, “Otchim perestroiki” (Stepfather of perestroika), Moskovskii komsomolets, April 22, 2005.
21 Aleksandr Rutskoi, interview with the author (June 5, 2001).
22 Voshchanov interview.
23 Alexei Kazannik, “Boris Yeltsin: From Triumph to Fall,” Moscow News, June 2, 2004. Cinema director El’dar Ryazanov filmed an interview with Yeltsin and his wife and daughters in the apartment in April 1993. Yeltsin stayed clear of the kitchen stool because it had a nail prot
ruding from the seat; it was one of a set given him by friends in Sverdlovsk on his fortieth birthday in 1971. Den’ v sem’e prezidenta (A day in the president’s family), interviews by Ryazanov on REN-TV, April 20, 1993 (videotape supplied by Irena Lesnevskaya).
24 Tat’yana D’yachenko, “Papa khotel otprazdnovat’ yubilei po-domashnemu” (Papa wanted to celebrate his birthday home-style), Komsomol’skaya pravda, February 1, 2001.
25 Zavidovo staff reported that Yeltsin’s retinue occupied it “in the spirit of conquerors.” He first inspected it with Yurii Petrov and Korzhakov in November of 1991. Yurii Tret’yakov, “‘Tsarskaya’ okhota” (The tsar’s hunt), Trud, November 20, 2003. Such a perception was inevitable, given the magnitude of the change. The provincial locales all had public park land and commercial facilities as well as a secured compound for the president and other officials. Volzhskii Utës is primarily a healthcare facility. Facilities for the Soviet leadership outside Russia, notably Foros in Ukraine and Pitsunda in Georgia, were, of course, not available to Yeltsin.
26 Boris Yeltsin, third interview with the author (September 12, 2002).
27 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 35.
28 Boris Yel’tsin, Prezidentskii marafon (Presidential marathon) (Moscow: AST, 2000), 335. He switched back to a ZIL briefly in 1997, during a campaign against use of expensive foreign vehicles, then went back to the Mercedes. The Ilyushin-62 was replaced in 1996 by a larger Ilyushin-96.
29 Yurii Burtin, “Gorbachev prodolzhayetsya” (Gorbachev is continuing), in Burtin and Eduard Molchanov, eds., God posle avgusta: gorech’ i vybor (A year after August: bitterness and choice) (Moscow: Literatura i politika, 1992), 61.
30 Muzhskoi razgovor (Male conversation), interview of Yeltsin by El’dar Ryazanov on REN-TV, November 7, 1993 (videotape supplied by Irena Lesnevskaya).