36 See Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (New York: Norton, 1969), 125. I learned about Nikolai’s mistreatment of his wife from a number of interviews. Tatyana Yumasheva, his granddaughter, confirmed it in my second interview with her.
37 Second Yeltsin interview.
38 Irina Bobrova, “Boris bol’shoi, yemu vidnei” (Boris is a big shot, he knows better), Moskovskii komsomolets, January 31, 2007. Moskovskii komsomolets has over the years made it a specialty to present unflattering and often untrue information about Boris Yeltsin and his family. In this case, the sentiment expressed by Boris Andrianovich seems to have been accurately reported.
39 Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin, 1:6.
40 Neverov, “Otets prezidenta,” says Nikolai’s personnel file contained references to twenty-eight official punishments he had meted out to workers under his supervision—for poor bricklaying, negligence, and falsifying records. But, “He was always orderly and smart in his appearance, and I cannot remember him ever raising his voice or losing his temper.” Neverov says, without providing details, that he and Nikolai were both disciplined in January 1961 for exceeding the wage fund.
41 Second Yeltsin interview.
42 Yeltsin’s participation in approved youth activities was strongly borne out in my interview with Sergei Molchanov: “Yeltsin was in the active group.” He took part in Komsomol meetings, asked questions, and made comments.
43 Quotation from Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 24. Materials in the museum of the Pushkin School, to which Yeltsin transferred in 1945, show that thirteen of twenty-three who finished the school in June 1941 (including two girls) went straight to the army from their graduation ball. Three teachers also shipped out.
44 Quotation from second Yeltsin interview. His interest and the notebooks are reported in Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin, 1:7, from a conversation with Mikhail Yeltsin. None of this ever made Boris Yeltsin a great expert on the history of the revolution. When an American journalist tried in the late 1980s to engage him in conversation about the Mensheviks and other non-Bolshevik factions, Yeltsin was not familiar with the groups and the names of their leaders. Jonathan Sanders, interview with the author (January 21, 2004).
45 Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov, Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 374 (italics added).
46 Boris Yeltsin, third interview with the author (September 12, 2002). Aleksei Tolstoy (1883–1945), a distant cousin of Leo Tolstoy, published his novel in three parts between 1929 and 1945. Yeltsin may also have been familiar with the 1910 silent-film classic Peter the Great, directed by Vasilii Goncharov, which was often shown in Soviet cinemas with the Petrov movie. His admiration for Peter put him at odds with the Old Believer tradition, in which Russia’s first emperor was seen as the Antichrist.
47 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 21.
48 Bartsits, “Shkol’nyye gody.”
49 Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin, 1:8.
50 Verbova, “Za tysyachi kilometrov.”
51 In “Istoriya shkoly No. 1” (History of School No. 1), typescript, museum of Pushkin School, 9.
52 Unpublished bulletin for class reunion by Tatyana Babiyan, in the school museum.
53 Facts and figures from the school museum and the Berezniki Museum of the History of Education.
54 Quotation from Molchanov interview. Khonina is the only teacher Yeltsin gave by name in Ispoved’ (23), where he called her a “marvelous” mentor.
55 School records, including Yeltsin’s school-leaving certificate (attestat zrelosti). Soviet schools at the time assigned daily and weekly grades in each subject, which were then aggregated into quarterly and full-year grades. Khonina’s log for 1947–48, ninth grade for Yeltsin, contains a fair number of one-day and one-week 3s, but none lower than that. The log for 1948–49 was destroyed in a basement flood at the school. Yeltsin (Ispoved’, 25–26) misremembered his last year’s grades, saying he received only two 4s and got 5s in the rest.
56 Tsipushtanov interview.
57 Molchanov interview. The railway school, as was not uncommon in the Soviet provinces, had no athletics. “The teacher would lead out the class single file into the corridor for ‘free calisthenics.’ You would wave your hands, and that was the whole sports program.” Bartsits, “Shkol’nyye gody.”
58 Ol’ga Yevtyukhova and Yelena Zaitseva, “Rovesniki moi” (They were the same age as me), 1999 essay in the Pushkin School museum.
59 “Istoriya shkoly No. 1,” 9.
60 Aleksandr Abramov, the current Pushkin headmaster, showed me the 1948 directive in my interview with him (September 8, 2005). The class photograph and notes about future occupations are in the archive of the Berezniki Museum of History and Art.
61 Second Yeltsin interview.
62 Marietta Chudakova, interview with the author (April 14, 2003).
63 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 21–26. His book dates most of these incidents, but not the one with the grenades, where the source is Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin, 1:8.
64 Second Yeltsin interview; Molchanov interview. The bath was of the “black” variety, in which smoke from the fire escapes the steam room through a hole in the ceiling. (In a Russian “white” steambath, such as Boris Yeltsin built in his family’s yard, smoke exits through a stovepipe.) In Ispoved’, 24, Yeltsin mentions long rural hikes and a climb up the Denezhkin Stone, a scenic Urals massif north of Berezniki.
65 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 22.
66 Alya Tanachëva, interview with the author (June 22, 2004).
67 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 22–23.
68 Ibid., 25. When he fought the school’s decision on tenth-grade registration, he repeated the cycle: “The path was already familiar.” He was by then known to some city officials because of his success as an athlete.
69 Bartsits, “Shkol’nyye gody.”
70 Interviews with Abramov (jump out of the window) and Pashikhina (needles on the teacher’s chair).
71 Molchanov interview. Molchanov was an unusually reliable source, since, he said, he never read Yeltsin’s published account. In his memoirs, Yeltsin’s memories of his years at the Pushkin School are generally clearer than those of School No. 95. His studies at Pushkin were less remote in time and the school is still a going concern, whereas School No. 95 was converted into a trade school in 1964 and shut down in 1971 (a fragment of the building remains). Yeltsin, by this time Communist Party boss of Sverdlovsk province, sent a sculpture of semiprecious Urals stone for the fiftieth anniversary of the Pushkin School in 1982. He had planned to attend the celebration but could not because his opposite number in Perm, Boris Konoplëv, would not make the time to accompany him, as protocol required. His gift for the sixtieth anniversary in 1992, on display in the school museum in 2005, was a book inscribed “With thanks for the foundation.” In the 1990s Yeltsin had discretionary funds from the president’s office donated to the schools for repairs and renovations. His foundation also provided assistance to the school after his retirement.
72 His school-leaving certificate dates his entry to the school in 1945, without giving the month.
73 Zhdanov remembers nothing about pupils being required to collect scraps for the teacher’s pig or about Yeltsin attacking her at a public ceremony. When he read these things in Yeltsin’s memoirs, “I even wanted to phone him up and ask, ‘Where did you come up with that?’” Bartsits, “Shkol’nyye gody.” Conversion of the three secondary schools in town into single-sex schools was completed only in 1946, but in 1945, when Yeltsin transferred, the Pushkin School was already the only one to admit boys.