31 Sukhanov, Tri goda, 57.
32 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 166–67. On the letters and telegrams, see also the testimony of a journalist who saw stacks of them in a side office at Gosstroi: Vladimir Polozhentsev, “Privet, pribaltiitsy!” (Greetings, people from the Baltic), http://podolsk-news.ru/stat/elcin.php.
33 Ivan Sukhomlin in Khinshtein, Yel’tsin, Kreml’, istoriya bolezni, 136–37.
34 Memorial was founded in 1987. The Nineteenth Conference had agreed to the idea of the monument, but Memorial soon broadened its agenda to human rights in general. Yeltsin attended one meeting of the board and communicated with Memorial leaders. Nanci Adler, Victims of Soviet Terror: The Story of the Memorial Movement (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993), 54–67; and personal communication to the author (November 13, 2006).
35 Jonathan Sanders, interview with the author (January 21, 2004).
36 Sukhanov, Tri goda, 71–73.
37 “Vstrecha v VKSh,” 66–67.
38 Aleksei Yemel’yanov in L. N. Dobrokhotov, ed., Gorbachev–Yel’tsin: 1,500 dnei politicheskogo protivostoyaniya (Gorbachev–Yeltsin: 1,500 days of political conflict) (Moscow: TERRA, 1992), 338.
39 See on this process Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 291–96.
40 “Vstrecha v VKSh,” 56.
41 Pavel Voshchanov, “Ne zabudem o cheloveke” (Let us not forget about the person), Komsomol’skaya pravda, December 31, 1988.
42 Naina Yeltsina, first interview with the author (February 9, 2002).
43 “Vstrecha v VKSh,” 56.
44 See the perceptive discussion in Vitalii Tret’yakov, “Sverdlovskii vyskochka,” part 5, Politicheskii klass, June 2006, 104–5. So as not to provoke Gorbachev, Yeltsin avoided using the Russian word for oppositionist, oppozitsioner. At dinner with the American ambassador as late as June of 1989, “there was not the slightest hint that Yeltsin thought of himself in competition with Gorbachev.” Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire (New York: Random House, 1995), 223.
45 Georgii Shakhnazarov, S vozhdyami i bez nikh (With leaders and without them) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2001), 365.
46 Sukhanov, Tri goda, 68.
47 “Vstrecha v VKSh,” 28–29.
48 The archival transcript of the January plenum duly records Yeltsin’s historic abstention. In March dozens of negative votes were cast as Gorbachev led the members through the list of official nominees, one at a time. The number but not the identities of the nays was noted in each case. Yeltsin said in public that he was one of the seventy-eight in March to vote against sending Ligachëv to the congress, which was by far the largest number of nay votes. Since Yeltsin’s disgrace in October 1987, the Central Committee had convened in February, May, July, and November of 1988, and on each occasion he added his vote to the unanimous support for motions from the leadership.
49 Boldin, Krusheniye p’edestala, 339.
50 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 16–17. Valentin Yumashev, then a young journalist who had made the acquaintance of Yeltsin and his family, recalls that Yeltsin in the autumn of 1988 never displayed any doubt that he would run for the congress. Yumashev, first interview with the author (February 4, 2002).
51 Muzykantskii interview.
52 David Remnick, “Boris Yeltsin, Adding Punch to Soviet Politics,” The Washington Post, February 18, 1989.
53 Author’s interviews with Valerii Bortsov (June 11, 2001) and Valentina Lantseva (July 9, 2001).
54 On this important group, see Marc Garcelon, “The Estate of Change: The Specialist Rebellion and the Democratic Movement in Moscow, 1989–1991,” Theory and Society 26 (February 1997), 55–56.
55 Bill Keller, “Soviet Maverick Is Charging Dirty Tricks in Election Drive,” New York Times, March 19, 1989.
56 Yeltsin had addressed Ipat’ev House, and admitted to his role in the destruction of the landmark, at the Higher Komsomol School in November 1988. He said more in the first volume of his memoirs, published in 1990.
57 Vitalii Tret’yakov, “Fenomen Yel’tsina” (The Yeltsin phenomenon), Moskovskiye novosti, April 16, 1989.
58 Michael McFaul, Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 70–71; Brendan Kiernan and Joseph Aistrup, “The 1989 Elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies in Moscow,” Soviet Studies 43 (November–December 1991), 1051–52; Sergei Stankevich, interview with the author (May 29, 2001).
59 V. A. Kolosov, N. V. Petrov, and L. V. Smirnyagin, Vesna 89: geografiya i anatomiya parlamentskikh vyborov (Spring of 1989: the geography and anatomy of the parliamentary elections) (Moscow: Progress, 1990), 225.
60 Ibid., 218–20.
61 Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire, 210.
62 All quotations from Tret’yakov, “Fenomen Yel’tsina” (italics added).
63 Muzykantskii interview. In Yeltsin’s absence, reformist candidates distributed materials playing up their links with him.
64 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 170; V Politbyuro TsK KPSS . . . (In the Politburo of the CPSU) (Moscow: Gorbachev-Fond, 2006), 482. Ligachëv told the Politburo he would be happy to speak out against Yeltsin at the party plenum or the congress, but other members counseled against it. Gorbachev sounded nervous about a confrontation.
65 V Politbyuro TsK KPSS, 489.
66 On the agreement by Yeltsin’s unnamed representative, see Sukhanov, Tri goda, 84. Vitalii Tret’yakov, who has excellent sources of information, is convinced Yeltsin all the while hoped to challenge Gorbachev for the position. Tret’yakov, “Sverdlovskii vyskochka,” part 7, 106–9.
67 Popov describes his intervention, without mentioning Gorbachev’s waffling, in Snova v oppozitsii (In opposition again) (Moscow: Galaktika, 1994), 66. The other details are in Alexei Kazannik, “Boris Yeltsin: From Triumph to Fall,” Moscow News, June 2, 2004.
68 As an alternative, Gorbachev offered him the chair of the People’s Control Committee of the USSR, a monitoring organization most reformers considered superfluous. It would have required Yeltsin to give up his parliamentary seat. He declined, preferring, Gorbachev says, “to take upon himself the functions of leader of the opposition in the parliament” (Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 1:458). The job went to Yeltsin’s former Sverdlovsk colleague, Gennadii Kolbin.
69 Andrei Karaulov, Vokrug Kremlya: kniga politicheskikh dialogov (Around the Kremlin: a book of political dialogues), 114–15. Another mark of the committee’s low status was that until December 1989 its offices were in the Moskva Hotel, not in a government building.
70 Vladimir Mezentsev, “Okruzhentsy” (Entourage), part 3, Rabochaya tribuna, March 28, 1995.
71 “Yeltsin Discusses Candidacy, Issues, Rivals,” FBIS-SOV-91-110 (June 7, 1991), 61.
72 Andrei Sakharov, Gor’kii, Moskva, daleye vezde (Gorky, Moscow, after that everywhere) (New York: Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova, 1990), 169. Sakharov (170–71) writes of Yeltsin hogging the microphone at a rally organized by the dissident group Moscow Tribune.