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.
13 In 1960 the Kremlin transferred Molotov to Vienna as ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency. It recalled him in 1961 and excluded him from the party. His ally, Georgii Malenkov, another former prime minister, was given internal exile as director of a hydroelectric station near Ust-Kamenogorsk, in northern Kazakhstan. “He and his wife were removed from the train twenty-five miles west of Ust-Kamenogorsk (lest he receive a warm greeting there) and driven directly to the tiny settlement of Albaketka, where they lived in a small dark house until the summer of 1958. At that point . . . Khrushchev dumped him even deeper into exile in the town of Ekibastuz, where police observed every move, shadowed his children when they came to visit, and even stole his party card and then accused him of losing it so as to threaten him with expulsion from the party.” Lazar Kaganovich, a confederate of Molotov and Malenkov, was sent to manage a potash plant in Solikamsk, in Perm oblast just north of Berezniki. William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003), 369.
14 Boris Yeltsin, third interview with the author (September 12, 2002).
15 Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy,1:374–75.
16 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 140–41.
17 Georgii Shakhnazarov, interview with the author (January 29, 2001). Jerry F. Hough, Democratization and Revolution in the USSR, 1985–1991 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1997), 326, also plays up the overconfidence variable.
18 Mikhail Shneider, quoted in Michael E. Urban, “Boris El’tsin, Democratic Russia, and the Campaign for the Russian Presidency,” Soviet Studies 44 (March–April 1992), 190.
19 Assignment of the KGB to monitor Yeltsin is described in the memoir by Gorbachev’s former chief of staff: V. I. Boldin, Krusheniye p’edestala: shtrikhi k portretu M. S. Gorbacheva (Smashing the pedestaclass="underline" strokes of a portrait of M. S. Gorbachev) (Moscow: Respublika, 1995), 334. I heard of details in interviews.
20 Aleksandr Muzykantskii, interview with the author (May 30, 2001).
21 The only place I have been able to find this memo is in Aleksandr Khinshtein, Yel’tsin, Kreml’, istoriya bolezni (Yeltsin, the Kremlin, the history of an illness) (Moscow: OLMA, 2006), 527–58. It was never sent to Ryzhkov.
22 Quotation from “Vstrecha v VKSh, 12 noyabrya 1988 goda s 14 do 18 chasov” (Meeting in the Higher Komsomol School, November 12, 1988, from 2:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M.), in RGANI (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, Moscow) (microform in Harvard College Library), fund 89, register 8, file 29, 5.
23 Lev Sukhanov, Tri goda s Yel’tsinym: zapiski pervogo pomoshchnika (Three years with Yeltsin: notes of his first assistant) (Riga: Vaga, 1992), 40.
24 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 143; Boris Yel’tsin, Zapiski prezidenta (Notes of a president) (Moscow: Ogonëk, 1994), 31.
25 Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata (Boris Yeltsin: from dawn to dusk) (Moscow: Interbuk, 1997), 152.
26 M. S. Solomentsev, Veryu v Rossiyu (I believe in Russia) (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 2003), 510.
27 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 151–57; “Vstrecha v VKSh,” 27; Boldin, Krusheniye p’edestala, 335–36. KGB guards tried unsuccessfully to lure Yeltsin into the vestibule behind the stage, with the aim, one supposes, of cutting off his appeal to the audience and perhaps of preventing him from speaking.
28 Quotations from XIX Vsesoyuznaya konferentsiya Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza: stenograficheskii otchët (The 19th conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: stenographic record), 2 vols. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988), 2:56–61.
29 Vitalii Tret’yakov, “Sverdlovskii vyskochka,” part 6, Politicheskii klass, July 2006, 106.
30 Chernyayev, Shest’ let, 218–19. Zaikov’s involvement is described in Yurii Prokof’ev, Do i posle zapreta KPSS: pervyi sekretar’ MGK KPSS vspominayet (Before and after the ban on the CPSU: a first secretary of the Moscow gorkom remembers) (Moscow: Algoritm, 2005), 209–10. Ligachëv’s statement about Yeltsin being wrong was omitted from the official transcript of the conference.