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.”