A related topic was Russia’s right to act in world affairs. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker was in Moscow on March 14–16, 1991, and refused to meet with Yeltsin privately; Yeltsin then refused to come to the embassy dinner party. Ambassador Matlock thought his handling of Baker “petty and selfdefeating.” 51 In mid-April he got a chilly reception at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, leaving after several days of snubs, and was unable to get President François Mitterrand to meet with him at the Élysée Palace.52 After France, he tried again in the United States. Through Ambassador Jack Matlock, he stated his wish to visit Washington a second time and be guaranteed that he would be properly received by the president. He went shortly before his swearing in as Russian president, but at the bipartisan invitation of Senators Robert Dole and George Mitchell, not of George Bush. Hosting Yeltsin in the Rose Garden on June 20, Bush stressed relations with the Soviet government and mentioned Gorbachev’s name more often than Yeltsin’s. Strasbourg and Washington were both reminders “that the West only had eyes for Gorbachev.”53
Or at least most of those in authority in the West did. Margaret Thatcher had been an admirer since their meeting, and John Major, her replacement, took a like view. They were joined by Richard Nixon, the thirty-seventh president of the United States. Nixon went to Moscow right after Baker and paid a call on Yeltsin. Yeltsin had been misinformed by staff members about the family history of his guest and held forth about Nixon’s grandfather having lived for a time in Yekaterinburg. Nixon’s grandfathers had never traveled outside the United States; he listened without comment, and they moved on to the current political situation.54 Nixon, who had traded observations about the future of communism and capitalism with Nikita Khrushchev in the celebrated Kitchen Debate of July 1959, liked what he saw and heard in 1991. The Russia trip had held but one surprise, he told an assistant back in New Jersey. “What was that?” she asked:
He pointed a finger in the air. “One word. Yeltsin.”
Several long moments went by before he continued. “Goddamn the press! If you listen to them, you’d think Yeltsin was an incompetent, disloyal boob. The only reason the press have treated him as badly as they have is because he has some rough edges. He doesn’t have the grace and ivory-tower polish of Gorbachev.” Nixon shuddered with self-recognition. “He moves and inspires the people despite what the Western press says about him.”
Yeltsin’s defiance fed into his own. “The guy has enormous political appeal. He has the potential to be a great revolutionary leader, charging up the people, his own Silent Majority,” he said, making the parallel explicit. “He is very direct. He looks you straight in the eye. He has core convictions that no longer involve communism. He is infinitely better for the United States than Gorbachev. But I don’t think he wants Gorbachev’s job.”
“Do you mean that he doesn’t want to lead the Soviet Union, but he may want to lead an independent Russia?” I asked.
“Right, because he knows that there’s no future for the Soviet Union. None. . . . If Russia has any future, Yeltsin is it.”55
Nixon made the point in a meeting with President Bush and in public articles and interviews.
American audiences got a peek at Yeltsin’s ability to cut to the chase in the June visit to Washington. At one dinner, he made it about two minutes into his prepared speech and told his interpreter to give it in English. “This cut the delivery time in half, and when it was over the crowd responded with a standing, cheering ovation.”56 Desk analysts for the Central Intelligence Agency began giving Yeltsin respect right at this time. A secret assessment by the Office of Soviet Analysis circulated on June 1 argued that too much attention had been lavished in the government and the press on Yeltsin’s quirks, lust for power, relationship with Gorbachev, and tactics—“his larger-than-life persona and remarkable political odyssey invite this.” But that was not the whole picture, and it was high time to say so. “Contrary to the stereotype, Yeltsin does have goals that he has been consistently pursuing, and strategies for realizing them. These are important not only because they drive his actions, but also because they reflect in broad outline a coherent Russian democratic alternative to the imperial authoritarianism of the traditionalists.” The CIA team was especially impressed by Yeltsin’s ability to keep up with changes in the Soviet environment and by his “appreciation of the interdependency of goals.”57
Yeltsin considered his parliamentary position the stepping stone to a Russian presidency. Most of his associates were more interested than he in legislation and were less vociferous on policy toward the Soviet center. Even Vladimir Isakov, the chairman of the Council of the Republic, one of the two halves of the Supreme Soviet—a professor of jurisprudence from Sverdlovsk and a centrist—was upset by his propensity for playing the lone hand. Yeltsin would listen intently to advice, agree in principle, and then act “as if the conversation had never taken place.”58 Comity within the group dissipated in February–March 1991, and agitated sessions of the Supreme Soviet and congress were accompanied by pro-Yeltsin street demonstrations of up to 300,000 people, penned in by soldiers and riot police. Yeltsin’s salvation was to induce the legislature to piggyback a question on institution of the office of president onto an all-USSR referendum on the future of the union on March 17. Seventy percent of Russians endorsed the federation and 71 percent an elected Russian presidency. In a masterpiece of brinkmanship, Yeltsin got parliament to schedule the election for June 12, the anniversary of the 1990 sovereignty declaration, before agreeing on presidential powers—something it got to on May 24, with only three weeks to spare. The Communists for Democracy faction headed by Colonel Aleksandr Rutskoi, a mustachioed hero of the Afghan war, provided the requisite congressional votes.
Rutskoi was named Yeltsin’s vice-presidential running mate, at Lyudmila Pikhoya’s suggestion, and two members of Democratic Russia and the Interregional bloc, Gavriil Popov and Anatolii Sobchak, ran parallel campaigns for mayor of Moscow and Leningrad. Management of the Yeltsin campaign was entrusted to Gennadii Burbulis, an owlish professor of dialectical materialism from Sverdlovsk (born in the oblast town of Pervoural’sk), who was admitted to Yeltsin’s circle in 1990 and had hoped to be the vice-presidential nominee. An RSFSR television channel, one of the first inroads in the tussle over sovereignty, went on the air on May 13, in time for the race.
Of the five candidates who vied with Yeltsin in this, his third anti-establishment election in two years, only the former Soviet premier Nikolai Ryzhkov, the nominee of the Russian communists, was a serious contender. The party’s beetle-browed leader, Ivan Polozkov, impossible to get elected, would resign his post in August. Yeltsin ducked the all-candidates’ debates and did two rambles out of Moscow, formally on parliamentary business, presenting himself as statesmanlike and not grubbing for votes. If Vladimir Zhirinovskii, the windbag Russian nationalist who came in third, is speaking the truth, Gorbachev’s office, working through the KGB, implored him to visit the same cities as Yeltsin and covertly gave 3 million rubles (about $2 million) to his vice-presidential candidate, Andrei Zavidiya, to buy his cooperation. But Zavidiya, Zhirinovskii says, did not bring Zhirinovskii in on the scheme and skimmed off 90 percent of the money; Zhirinovskii did not alter his travel plans.59