With Chancellor Helmut Kohl on the Berlin visit during which he attempted to conduct a police band, August 31, 1994. (AP IMAGES/JOCKEL FINCK.)
Walking beside the Kremlin wall in May 1995 with three of his most influential ministers. Left to right: Interior Minister Viktor Yerin; First Deputy Premier Oleg Soskovets; Defense Minister Pavel Grachëv. Aleksandr Korzhakov can be seen in the background. At right is Vladimir Shevchenko, chief of presidential protocol. (DMITRII DONSKOI.)
The Russian White House billowing smoke after army tanks shell it on order from Yeltsin, October 4, 1993. (AP IMAGES/ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO.)
Negotiating with Chechen rebels, May 27, 1996. With Yeltsin, left to right: Viktor Chernomyrdin; Doku Zavgayev, head of the pro-Moscow administration in Chechnya; Tim Guldimann of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, head of the Chechen delegation. (AP IMAGES/YURI KADOBNOV.)
Signing a cease-fire decree on an armored vehicle in Grozny, May 28, 1996. Yeltsin’s national security adviser, Yurii Baturin, is second from the left. Interior Minister Anatolii Kulikov (in the beret) is two persons behind. (DMITRII DONSKOI.)
Comforting an elderly woman at a campaign stop in the Klyaz’ma district near Moscow, May 1996. (DMITRII DONSKOI.)
Shaking it up with rock singer Yevgenii Osin at an election rally in Rostov, June 10, 1996. (AP IMAGES/ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO.)
Embracing the crowd in downtown Kazan, June 9, 1996. Tatarstan’s president, Mintimer Shaimiyev, a key Yeltsin ally, is third from right. (RIA-NOVOSTI/ VLADIMIR RODIONOV.)
With Viktor Chernomyrdin and Chernomyrdin’s new first deputies, Anatolii Chubais (left) and Boris Nemtsov, after a cabinet shuffle, March 26, 1997. (AP IMAGES.)
Words to the wise from his daughter and adviser, Tatyana Dyachenko, June 1997. (CORBIS/SHONE VLASTIMIR NESIC.)
Bowing during the interment ceremony for Tsar Nicholas II and the last Russian royal family, St. Petersburg, July 17, 1998. (RIA-NOVOSTI/ VLADIMIR RODIONOV.)
With business oligarchs, September 15, 1997. Left to right: Mikhail Khodorkovskii, Vladimir Gusinskii, Aleksandr Smolenskii, Vladimir Potanin, Vladimir Vinogradov, Mikhail Fridman. Yeltsin’s chief of staff, Valentin Yumashev, is beside him. (AP IMAGES.)
Boris Berezovskii, November 1997. (AP IMAGES/MISHA JAPARIDZE.)
Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko, July 1998. (AP IMAGES/MISHA JAPARIDZE.)
With Prime Minister Yevgenii Primakov and the presidential chief of staff, Nikolai Bordyuzha, February 1999. (AP IMAGES.)
Sergei Stepashin, Yeltsin’s second-last prime minister, June 1999. (AP IMAGES/ MIKHAIL METZEL.)
With Vladimir Putin at his presidential inauguration, May 7, 2000. (AP IMAGES/ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO.)
Cheering the Russian team’s victory over France in the Fed Cup women’s tennis tournament, Moscow, November 28, 2004. (AP IMAGES/MIKHAIL METZEL.)
A celebratory toast with Vladimir Putin, Lyudmila Putina, and Bill Clinton at Yeltsin’s seventy-fifth birthday, St. George’ Hall, the Kremlin, February 1, 2006. (YELTSIN FAMILY ARCHIVE.)
Yeltsin’s coffin being carried out of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, April 25, 2007. (RIA-NOVOSTI/MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV.)
Boris Yeltsin: The Man Who Broke Through the Wall, by the MishMash Project (Mikhail Leikin and Mariya Miturich-Khlebnikova), a semifinalist in the Yeltsin memorial competition, August–October 2007. (COURTESY OF THE MISHMASH PROJECT.)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Autumn of a President
President Yeltsin’s fourth proven heart attack, on June 26, 1996, was the most invasive to date and came on the heels of indication after indication that he was at the end of his rope.1 The consilium of ten physicians watching over him during the campaign had sent a letter to Aleksandr Korzhakov on May 20 warning of “changes of a negative character” in his state of health, the result of “the mounting burdens on him, physically and emotionally,” and of his sleep allotment dwindling to three or four hours a night. “Such a work regimen poses a real threat to the health and life of the president.” The Yeltsins were apprised of the findings, although Korzhakov inexplicably withheld the letter.2 El’dar Ryazanov, filming a conversation for broadcast, found Yeltsin on June 2 “a whole other man” than the last time they spoke, in November 1993: sallow-complected, careworn, and churlish. Had a rival obtained the unedited footage of the interview, Ryazanov is sure Yeltsin would never have been re-elected. “When I left, I was disheartened. I thought to myself, My God, if he wins, in whose hands will Russia find itself?”3 He still voted for Yeltsin.
The second inauguration, on August 9, was low-key, in contrast to July 1991. Plans for another inaugural address went by the boards. The event was moved indoors into the Kremlin Palace of Congresses instead of Cathedral Square, in the sunlight. Onstage, looking pudgy but frail, Yeltsin swore the oath in forty-five seconds, his hand on a bound copy of the constitution and his eyes on a teleprompter primed to help him notice the pauses. The speaker of the upper house of parliament, Yegor Stroyev, slipped the presidential chain of office around his neck.4 It was done within sixteen minutes:
Knowing his condition, Boris Yeltsin was extremely nervous. But once awareness set in that it was all behind him, that he been installed in office again, it was as if he had gotten a second wind. After the official ceremony, attendees at the state reception were surprised to see quite a different person. He entered the hall briskly, made a brief but animated toast, and even chatted up several guests. After about a half hour, he left. It was obvious to everyone who witnessed the official start to Yeltsin’s second presidential term that the ill-health of the leader was now a basic factor in Russian politics.5
On July 16 Yeltsin appointed Anatolii Chubais, his campaign mastermind, as presidential chief of staff, sending Nikolai Yegorov, a political soulmate of the demoted Korzhakov, back to Krasnodar as governor.6 The press dubbed Chubais Russia’s “regent.” For prime minister, Yeltsin stayed with the old pro Viktor Chernomyrdin, whom the State Duma confirmed uncomplainingly on August 10.
The theme of the next half year was apolitical—Yeltsin’s fight for elementary survival and recovery. Injections of a clot-dissolving drug eased unstable angina in July. After the induction, a battery of tests, beginning with the coronary angiogram he had refused in 1995 (an X-ray of the heart arteries, using iodized liquid), was done at the Moscow Cardiology Center. German surgeons tapped by Helmut Kohl advised from afar that the Russians consider an arterial bypass and have it done abroad. The conferences with the family were awkward, as Yevgenii Chazov, the director of the Moscow center, was the one who, as USSR health minister, had supervised Yeltsin’s care on behalf of the Politburo after the 1987 secret speech. Some of the medicos feared Yeltsin would not withstand a multiple bypass operation and were hopeful he could get away with balloon angioplasty. Chazov thought the risk was “colossal” but Yeltsin had to chance it.7 The blood ejection fraction from the left ventricle, a standard index of operating efficiency, was 22 percent; a healthy person’s is 55 to 75 percent. Without an intervention, Chazov and his deputies gauged the life expectancy of someone with these symptoms to be one and a half to two years. The choice, they told the family, was either bypass surgery or curtailment of Yeltsin’s activities to several hours a day and an end to most exertion and travel—diminution from governing president to a figurehead.