It was not predetermined that Yeltsin would be a candidate for re-election upon expiration of his five-year term. He told Aleksandr Korzhakov in the spring of 1992 that he would “not be able to bear up under a second term” and needed to find a successor, and in May he said in a press interview that there was “a limit to a person’s physical and other abilities” and his first term would be his last.1 Richard Nixon, dropping in on him in June 1992, called his disclaimer a fiendishly clever strategy—“a masterstroke” that transmitted his fearlessness as a reformer “and would be to Yeltsin’s advantage even should he eventually decide to run again.” Yeltsin gave a knowing smile and said that “of course” he would benefit politically; how he would was impossible to make out.2 He commented to Bill Clinton, still a U.S. presidential candidate, in Washington that same month that taking himself out of the running had already had “an important psychological impact” and that people appreciated “that I’m not fighting to stay in office but to ensure that the reforms become irreversible.”3
Yeltsin soon second-guessed the decision. He declared, the week after dissolving the Supreme Soviet in September 1993, that he would be willing to proceed with a presidential election, and to be a candidate, in the summer of 1994—a statement he revoked just as suddenly that November. In March 1994, when an article in Izvestiya maintained that he would participate in the next election “only in his capacity as a voter,” Yeltsin had his press secretary persuade the paper to print a new article saying he was agnostic about standing. Later in 1994 there was a different iron in the fire: the idea of postponing, in the interests of political stability, the Duma election slated for 1995 and/or the presidential election slated for 1996. Gennadii Burbulis, no longer a member of the government but still influential in the liberal beau monde, wanted Yeltsin to extend his term by decree for two years and not to seek re-election. Although these and related proposals bristled with constitutional complications, Yeltsin was content to leave them in play. Aides were kept in the dark about his true intent but formed the impression by the summer of 1994 that the president meant to run, be it in 1996 or 1998, and they should begin to clear the decks. This was also the burden of remarks he made to staffers in 1995.4
Reconnecting with the electorate was going to take some doing. Entranced by the Kremlin and high politics, Yeltsin had long since let his reputation as “people’s president” lose its luster. To be sure, he continued to escape Moscow and accept bread and salt, the customary token of Russian hospitality, in the provinces. A hobby project of his in 1992–93 was to circuit through every subunit of the federation. He dug in against staffers who urged him to prioritize the populous regions and align his peregrinations with the Moscow political calendar.5 When out in the field, he could still gladhand with the best of them. Unlike Gorbachev, who invariably initiated group conversations, Yeltsin’s way was to wait for someone else to lead off and to make a retort, and one that frequently contained a nonverbal element. In May 1992, for example, he held court at the Omsk Oil Refinery in west Siberia. Hearing out one disgruntled worker, Yeltsin gave him a light slap on the forehead and cried “Mosquito!” after which the two men swapped jokes. To the refinery employees, it was a playful and egalitarian gesture.6 In June 1994 Yeltsin descended on Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva, the mountain republic of shamanistic and Buddhist heritage on the border with Mongolia. Decked out in the national costume at a concert by Kongar-ool Ondar, Tuva’s renowned throat singer, he mounted the stage, hummed along, and quaffed arakar, a potent beverage from fermented goat’s milk.7
Russians after 1991 rarely accorded Yeltsin an abusive reception. Correspondents in the advance party would see the eyes of local residents light up when the president’s blue Mi-8 chopper landed on the tarmac, especially if he shushed his bodyguards and waded into the throng: “We would stand around [beforehand] and ask people what they made of Yeltsin. They would do nothing but denounce him something fierce: ‘As soon as he gets here we are going to tear him to shreds,’ that type of thing. Then Yeltsin showed up, perhaps not in the best of form, and did a walkabout. And suddenly these very same people would be saying, ‘Oh, Boris Nikolayevich, may you be healthy, you are one of us.’”8 These swooning scenes speak volumes about the Russian tradition of deference to leaders. Members of the crowd often came up and asked Yeltsin to intercede on a family or community problem; adjutants took down the requests and referred them to central or local functionaries.
Nonetheless, as the first term wore on, Yeltsin communed person-to-person with his fellow citizens less and less. Security tightened during the 1993 constitutional conflict and when the Chechen war made him an assassination target. Some governors discouraged him from making appearances when in their regions. A tour in the spring of 1995 was aborted after one stop because of lack of interest in the events.9 Yeltsin’s extemporaneous contacts with the masses, the press corps noticed, were getting to be more perfunctory. “He preferred to go up to the crowd, slap it on the back… and get away,” is how Tatyana Malkina, a beat reporter for the newspaper Segodnya, recalls it. Yeltsin, she said, was losing sight of “people” (lyudi) and starting to see only “the people” (narod).10
As the 1995–96 election season approached, it was equally apparent that Yeltsin lacked a key resource that leaders and aspiring leaders have in the retail politics of mature democracies: an effective party. Post-Soviet Russia was a petri dish for political parties and protoparties (there were 273 of them registered in 1995), and they were found in every ideological hue, from fascist to feminist. Quality, admittedly, did not match quantity, and many of these organizations were jerry-built, personality-driven, and transient.11 Nonetheless, a party or mass movement of his own would have given Yeltsin a chance to advance positions, build organizational capacity in the parliamentary election arena, and utilize them in a presidential campaign.
There had been no want of schemes for hatching a Yeltsin party. Early on in his administration, advisers Gennadii Burbulis, Sergei Stankevich, and Galina Starovoitova pushed a broad-based national party—an August Bloc, they suggested calling it, in honor of the turning back of the coup. In March 1992 Yeltsin received the representatives of several dozen liberal organizations and said he was for creation of a pro-reform Assembly of Russian Citizens. All that came from it was a charter meeting in April, chaired by Burbulis. The plan revived in June 1992 as an Association in Support of Democracy and Reforms, bracketing forty-three reformist groups. In consultations, Yeltsin gave it his imprimatur, said that in principle he might lead it, and even expressed a preference for a name with the words “people’s” or “democratic” in it. This endeavor, too, trailed off into nothingness. Then, after the April 1993 referendum, Burbulis and Stankevich thought they had won Yeltsin over to an overarching League of the Twenty-Fifth of April or an April Alliance in the same mold. All over again, they were unable to get him to act.12
Russia’s Choice in the 1993 Duma election was a Yeltsin-friendly electoral formation that did get into the air. Without his assistance, it gathered together government ministers and reformist intellectuals, all in the hopes of a symbiosis with their hero: “Our bloc makes no bones about who is its leader—it is President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.”13 Yeltsin indicated to Yegor Gaidar, who headed up the list of candidates, that he would throw his weight behind them. On his journey to Japan in October, he promised Gaidar to address the bloc’s convention and back its list. But he never did. Pouring all of his energies into making and ratifying the constitution, Yeltsin determined at the eleventh hour not to attend the meeting, withheld sanction, and did not take issue when cabinet minister Sergei Shakhrai formed a separate electoral list, the Party of Russian Unity and Accord. A planned post-Tokyo meeting with Russia’s Choice panjandrums became a presidential soliloquy on Asian affairs.14 Gaidar estimates that a Yeltsin statement would have swung 10 percent of the vote to Russia’s Choice and made it the undisputed winner of the election.15