Yeltsin

by Timothy J. Colton

  72 Even a study deeply critical of Yeltsin stresses the self-isolation of his opponents and that “none of our criticism of Yeltsin implies that a military victory by the White House forces would have set Russia on a better path than it in fact took. That seems most improbable.” Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2001), 428.

  73 “Prezident Rossii otvechayet na voprosy gazety ‘Izvestiya.’”

  74 In this sense, Yeltsin “sought to construct the presidency as the ruler of those who govern, rather than one who is himself responsible for governing.” Alexander Sokolowski, “Bankrupt Government: Intra-Executive Relations and the Politics of Budgetary Irresponsibility in El’tsin’s Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies 53 (June 2001), 543.

  75 Some court decisions indicated he should explain his vetoes, but Yeltsin complied selectively and no systematic list of vetoes was published. Yeltsin signed 752 bills from 1994 through 1998 and vetoed 216. Andrea Chandler, “Presidential Veto Power in Post-Communist Russia, 1994–1998,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 34 (September 2001), 487–516.

  76 Konstitutsionnoye soveshchaniye, 20:40, which shows Yeltsin’s stroke of the pen. This was the most important of the fourteen changes Yeltsin made in the draft transmitted to him on November 7. The final clause of Article 90 did specify that his edicts “should not contradict” the constitution and laws.

  77 Because Soviet leaders were primarily party heads, protocol was simple and arrangements were handled by the foreign ministry. Gorbachev created a protocol office in his new presidential establishment in 1990. Yeltsin hired the tactful and decent Shevchenko in January 1992 and upgraded the office. For the arrangements on everything from heraldry to the goblets at Kremlin banquets, see V. N. Shevchenko et al., Protokol Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Protocol of the Russian Federation) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2000).

  78 Gorshkov, Zhuravlëv, and Dobrokhotov, Yel’tsin–Khasbulatov, 543.

  79 Quoted in Timothy J. Colton, “Introduction,” in Colton and Hough, Growing Pains, 13. Six cabinet ministers were on the Russia’s Choice list but five, including three deputy premiers, ran for other parties and blocs.

  80 Details here from Aleksandr Petrov, “Glavnaya tema: ‘menya vosprinyali kak yel’tsinskogo palacha’” (Main theme: “they took me for Yeltsin’s executioner”), Moskovskiye novosti, September 30, 2003.

  81 The line of reasoning Kazannik pursued, and it is a debatable one, is that the government might have negotiated peacefully with the rebels on October 3, in the hours after their initial attack on the Ostankino television tower was repulsed. He knew that the trail of responsibility for “criminal orders,” if that is what they were, led back to Yeltsin as commander-in-chief, but prosecution of a sitting president was an “extremely complex” problem. Ibid.

  82 Ibid.

  83 When Khasbulatov sent Yeltsin a letter in 1996 asking to be allowed to use a Kremlin medical clinic, Yeltsin agreed without hesitation. Yevgenii Kiselëv, “Plyaski na grablyakh” (Dancing on horse rakes), Moskovskiye novosti, September 30, 2003.

  84 Kazannik had him released on bail pending trial due to his heart condition. Yeltsin objected (better to let him die in prison, he said) but let it be. After the amnesty, Barannikov asked Yeltsin to let him live in the apartment building in Krylatskoye in which the president’s family was to be registered, and Yeltsin was in favor, until Korzhakov talked him out of it. Petrov, “Glavnaya tema”; Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin, 143–44. Barannikov died in July 1995.

  85 Ligachëv was elected in 1993. In 1995 he was joined in the communist fraction by Anatolii Luk’yanov. Nikolai Ryzhkov was also elected in 1995 and sat in an affiliated group.

  86 See Paul Chaisty and Petra Schleiter, “Productive but Not Valued: The Russian State Duma, 1994–2001,” Europe-Asia Studies 54 (July 2002), 704; and Tiffany A. Troxel, Parliamentary Power in Russia, 1994–2001: President vs. Parliament (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

  87 Thomas F. Remington, “Laws, Decrees, and Russian Constitutions: The First Hundred Years” (unpublished paper, Emory University, 2006). This does not count secret decrees, mostly, one assumes, in the national-security realm. The numbers refer only to “normative” decrees with wide consequences, as opposed to “nonnormative” rulings on particular cases. See also Remington, “Democratization, Separation of Powers, and State Capacity,” in Colton and Holmes, State after Communism, 261–98; and Scott Parrish, “Presidential Decree Authority in Russia, 1991–1995,” in John M. Carey and Matthew S. Shugart, eds., Executive Decree Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 62–103.

  88 Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From, 168–69.

  89 Giuliano, “Secessionism from the Bottom Up,” 286. The significance of Yeltsin’s triumph over his opponents at the center, and the contrast with Gorbachev’s weakness in 1990–91, is well drawn in Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From, chap. 6.

  90 This had been Yeltsin’s intent all along, but the plan was upended by his dissolution of provincial legislatures in October 1993, which left half of the proposed representatives to the Federation Council without qualifying office. On the shift to direct election of governors, see Marc Zlotnik, “Russia’s Elected Governors: A Force to Be Reckoned With,” Demokratizatsiya/Democratization 5 (Spring 1997), 184–96.

  91 “Mr. Yeltsin proposes that each of these homelands make a treaty with Russia ‘on an equal basis,’ agreeing on the division of power. His hope is that once they are given full responsibility for their decisions, they will see the folly of economic and political isolation, and the advantages of throwing in with Mr. Yeltsin for greater influence and efficiency. ‘I don’t know, perhaps you will decide to delegate your foreign relations to Russia,’ Mr. Yeltsin suggested. ‘Why should you keep 170 embassies in 170 countries?’” Bill Keller, “Kazan Journal: Yeltsin’s Response to the Separatists,” New York Times, September 3, 1990. Shaimiyev has said that the evening of the Kazan speech Yeltsin asked his advice on what to do next. Shaimiyev suggested a working group to come up with a treaty, and Yeltsin agreed. Anna Rudnitskaya, “Stranno prinyali i stranno otklonili” (Adopted strangely and voted down strangely), http://www.izbrannoe.ru/6077.html.

  92 Boris Bronshtein and Vasilii Kononenko, “Lidery demonstratiruyut v Kazani novyye podkhody, a okruzheniyie—ispytannyye priëmy pokazukhi” (The leaders demonstrate new approaches in Kazan, but their entourage engages in tested forms of make-believe), Izvestiya, June 1, 1994.

  93 Kahn, Federalism, Democratization, and the Rule of Law, 165.

  94 See especially ibid.; Matthew Crosston, Shadow Federalism: Implications for Democratic Consolidation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Yeltsin did reverse a good many decisions by provincial executives but he did not make it a practice to review provincial legislation. See V. O. Lunich and A. V. Mazurov, Ukazy Prezidenta RF (Decrees of the president of the Russian Federation) (Moscow: Zakon i pravo, 2000), 79–86.

  95 “Prezident RF otvechayet na voprosy redaktsii ‘Truda’” (The president of the Russian Federation answers the questions of the editorial board of Trud), Trud, August 26, 1994.

  96 Daniel S. Treisman, After the Deluge: Regional Crises and Political Consolidation in Russia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 75–79.

  97 Baturin et al., Epokha, 397. A good example of toleration of socialistic policies was Lenin’s birthplace, Ul’yanovsk on the south Volga. Under the former CPSU boss Yurii Goryachev, the provincial government controlled food prices and prevented the export of foods to other areas until 1995.

  98 Yeltsin, speaking in retirement about his relations with Rossel. Kirill Dybskii, “Ot pervogo litsa: vsë pravil’no” (From the first person: everything is fine), Itogi, January 30, 2006. In the Kursk election, the Kremlin supported the incumbent, Vasilii Shuteyev, whom Yeltsin had app
ointed in 1991. Of the four governors other than Rossel fired by Yeltsin in 1993, three—Yurii Lodkin in Bryansk, Vitalii Mukha in Novosibirsk, and Pëtr Sumin in Chelyabinsk—regained their posts through election in 1995–96. Aleksandr Surat in Amur oblast ran for election in 1997 but lost. Rossel began his comeback by being elected to represent Sverdlovsk in the Federation Council, the national upper house, in December 1993, one month after being fired by Yeltsin; in April 1994 he was chosen chairman of the oblast legislature.

  99 Author’s interviews with Emil Pain (April 3, 2001), Leonid Smirnyagin (May 24, 2001), and Valentin Yumashev (several, 2006 and 2007). Prusak (born 1960) was the youngest member of this group and Matochkin (born 1931) the oldest. Yeltsin’s ties with Guvzhin, Shaimiyev, and Stroyev went back to his apparatchik roots. Mikhail Nikolayev of Sakha fell into the same category, but I omit him from the list because his relations with Yeltsin blew hot and cold. Yeltsin knew Fëdorov, Prusak, and Sobchak from the Soviet congress of deputies and the Interregional Deputies Group, and Nemtsov from the Russian parliament. Fëdorov was Russian minister of justice from 1990 until his resignation in 1993 but continued to have cordial dealings with Yeltsin after moving to Chuvashiya.

  100 He made the remark at the opening of a tennis court, during a tour of Volga cities on the steamboat Rossiya. Yeltsin had asked Nemtsov to do something about the nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovskii, who was following in his wake in a rented boat, making anti-Yeltsin speeches at every stop. Nemtsov ordered the local water authorities to detain Zhirinovskii’s vessel in one of the Volga locks upriver of Nizhnii Novgorod—a peremptory resolution of the problem that Yeltsin loved and in which he surely saw a similarity to his own assertiveness. Yeltsin took Nemtsov with him to the United States and introduced him to President Clinton as a potential heir. “Boris Nemtsov—Yevgenii Al’bats o Yel’tsine” (Boris Nemtsov to Yevgeniya Al’bats about Yeltsin), Novoye vremya/New Times, April 30, 2007.

  101 “Prezident RF otvechayet na voprosy redaktsii ‘Truda.’

  102 The 350,000 Chechens affected were part of the 2 million Soviet citizens deported during the war. In the North Caucasus, four other groups—the Balkars, Ingush, Kalmyks, and Karachai—were also deported en masse, and none of them was to reject Russian authority in the 1990s.

  103 See Emil Souleimanov, An Endless War: The Russian-Chechen Conflict in Perspective (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2007), 24–26.

  104 Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 107.

  105 Thomas Goltz, Chechnya Diary: A War Correspondent’s Story of Surviving the War in Chechnya (New York: St. Martin’s, 2003), 52.

  106 Undated statement shown in Prezident vseya Rusi (The president of all Russia), documentary film by Yevgenii Kiselëv, 1999–2000 (copy supplied by Kiselëv), 4 parts, part 4.

  107 Gall and de Waal, Chechnya, 150–51; John B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 158–60.

  108 V. A. Tishkov, Ye. L. Belyayeva, and G. V. Marchenko, Chechenskii krizis: analiticheskoye obozreniye (The Chechen crisis: an analytical review) (Moscow: Tsentr kompleksnykh sotsial’nykh issledovanii i marketinga, 1995), 33.

  109 Ibid. This conversation with Shaimiyev has been dated variously in March or May of 1994. But Gall and de Waal, Chechnya, 146–47, relying on interviews, refer to a conversation on June 10. See also the references to Dudayev’s rhetoric in Taimaz Abubakarov, Rezhim Dzhokhara Dudayeva: zapiski dudayevskogo ministra ekonomiki i finansov (The regime of Djokhar Dudayev: notes of Dudayev’s minister of economics and finance) (Moscow: INSAN, 1998), 167.

  110 Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 69.

  111 Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin, 371.

  112 Sergei Yushenkov, chairman of the Duma’s defense committee at the time, quoted in Gall and de Waal, Chechnya, 161. The statement is reported a little differently in S. N. Yushenkov, Voina v Chechne i problemy rossiiskoi gosudarstvennosti i demokratii (The war in Chechnya and problems of Russian statehood and democracy) (Moscow: Semetei, 1995), 75. Here Lobov is quoted as observing that Clinton’s ratings went up after the Haiti operation but not as advocating that Yeltsin intervene in Chechnya for that reason.

  113 Oleg Lobov, interview with the author (May 29, 2002).

  114 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 88. George W. Breslauer, Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), chap. 9, maintains that Yeltsin began the war as much to recoup lost popularity as to negate the threat to Russia’s unity. The argument is well put, but there is no hard evidence to support it.

  115 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 69.

  116 Muzhskoi razgovor dva (Male conversation two), interview of Yeltsin by El’dar Ryazanov on ORT-TV, June 16, 1996 (videotape supplied by Irena Lesnevskaya).

  117 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 69.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  1 The phrase is from Arnold M. Ludwig, King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), 172–74.

  2 Quotations from Sergei Filatov, Sovershenno nesekretno (Top nonsecret) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2000), 418–19; Vyacheslav Kostikov, Roman s prezidentom: zapiski press-sekretarya (Romance with a president: notes of a press secretary) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 1997), 163; and Tatyana Malkina, interview with the author (June 13, 2001).

  3 Boris Yel’tsin, Zapiski prezidenta (Notes of a president) (Moscow: Ogonëk, 1994), 308; “Proshchaniye s mamoi” (Farewell to mama), Argumenty i fakty, March 24, 1993.

  4 Oleg Poptsov, Khronika vremën “Tsarya Borisa” (Chronicle of the times of “Tsar Boris”) (Moscow: Sovershenno sekretno, 1995), 55.

  5 Yeltsin holding his breath is taken from Shamil Tarpishchev, interview with the author (January 25, 2002). For the swims, see Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata (Boris Yeltsin: from dawn to dusk) (Moscow: Interbuk, 1997), 77–78; Lev Sukhanov, Tri goda s Yel’tsinym: zapiski pervogo pomoshchnika (Three years with Yeltsin: notes of his first assistant) (Riga: Vaga, 1992), 306–7; and Aleksandr Lebed’, Za derzhavu obidno (I feel hurt for the state) (Moscow: Moskovskaya pravda, 1995), 380.

  6 Shamil’ Tarpishchev, Samyi dolgii match (The longest match) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 1999), 300. The transferability of Yeltsin’s volleyball skills to tennis makes sense in light of history. William G. Morgan of Holyoke, Massachusetts, invented volleyball in 1895 as a mix of tennis, basketball, and handball.

  7 Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter (New York: Random House, 1998), 111. Yeltsin canceled a fourth meeting in 1994 out of unhappiness with Nixon having first met opposition politicians.

  8 Tatyana Yumasheva, third interview with the author (January 25, 2007).

  9 Muzhskoi razgovor (Male conversation), interview of Yeltsin by El’dar Ryazanov on REN-TV, November 7, 1993 (videotape supplied by Irena Lesnevskaya).

  10 Boris Yel’tsin, Prezidentskii marafon (Presidential marathon) (Moscow: AST, 2000), 337.

  11 Natal’ya Konstantinova, Zhenskii vzglyad na kremlëvskuyu zhizn’ (A woman’s view of Kremlin life) (Moscow: Geleos, 1999), 136.

  12 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).

  13 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 350. I learned about the philanthropy from my interviews with Irena Lesnevskaya (January 24, 2001) and Galina Volchek (January 30, 2002). Two of the actresses Naina Yeltsina aided were Sof’ya Pilyavskaya (1911–2000) and Marina Ladynina (1908—2003).

  14 Konstantinova, Zhenskii vzglyad, 225.

  15 Kozyrev 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.

  16 Vladimir Shevchenko, third interview with the author (July 15, 2001).

  17 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 340–41. Yeltsin’s declared hard-currency book
royalties peaked in 1994 at $280,000. He first made disclosures about his income and property during the 1996 election campaign. See A. A. Mukhin and P. A. Kozlov, “Semeinyye” tainy, ili neofitsial’nyi lobbizm v Rossii (“Family” secrets, or unofficial lobbying in Russia) (Moscow: Tsentr politicheskoi informatsii, 2003), 106–9.

  18 Boris Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (New York: PublicAffairs, 2000), 314–15. The original is in Marafon, 340.

  19 Author’s interviews with family members. In the late 1990s, for tax purposes, Yeltsin declared the value of the city apartment and the land and dacha at Gorki-10 at about $210,000. In today’s prices, the Gorki-10 land alone would be worth many times that. Unverifiable and, to me, implausible claims about the Yeltsins enriching themselves at the public trough can be found at http://compromat.ru/main/eltsyn/a.htm; and http://www.flb.ru/info. Many were originally published in the newspaper Moskovskii komsomolets.

  20 Yu, M. Baturin et al., Epokha Yel’tsina: ocherki politicheskoi istorii (The Yeltsin epoch: essays in political history) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2001), 473.

  21 Yeltsin’s displeasure at Rutskoi that day has been well documented. In one of his press interviews after the death of Yeltsin in 2007, Rutskoi said how impressed he was by the fact that Yeltsin never swore!

  22 Aleksandr Korzhakov, interview with the author (January 28, 2002).

  23 Vladimir Shevchenko, Povsednevnaya zhizn’ Kremlya pri prezidentakh (The everyday life of the Kremlin under the presidents) (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 2004), 126–27.

  24 Matt Taibbi, “Butka: Boris Yeltsin, Revisited,” http://exile.ru/105/yeltsin.

  25 Viktor Manyukhin, Pryzhok nazad: o Yel’tsine i o drugikh (Backward leap: about Yeltsin and others) (Yekaterinburg: Pakrus, 2002), 178.