91 Ryabov, Moi XX vek, 54–55; Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 48–49. Yeltsin mentions Ryabov attending some of the meetings, but breathes not a word of his sponsorship.
92 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 49–50.
CHAPTER FOUR
1 “Law-and-order prefects” and “developmental prefects” (below) are taken from Jerry F. Hough, The Soviet Prefects: The Local Party Organs in Industrial Decision-Making (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 5.
2 The instructions, signed by Yeltsin in November 1981 and stamped “Top Secret,” are in TsDOOSO (Documentation Center for the Public Organizations of Sverdlovsk Oblast, Yekaterinburg), fund 4, register 100, file 119, 135–36. On Yeltsin and Kornilov, see Viktor Manyukhin, Pryzhok nazad: o Yel’tsine i o drugikh (Backward leap: about Yeltsin and others) (Yekaterinburg: Pakrus, 2002), 71–73.
3 Boris Yel’tsin, Ispoved’ na zadannuyu temu (Confession on an assigned theme) (Moscow: PIK, 1990), 60.
4 That figure, coming to 32.5 percent of industrial employment in the oblast, was inferred from classified data for 1985. It does not include personnel in R&D or defense-related tasks done in plants subordinated to civilian ministries (Uralmash, for example). Brenda Horrigan, “How Many People Worked in the Soviet Defense Industry?” RFE/RL Research Report 1 (August 21, 1992), 33–39.
5 On Compound No. 19, see Anthony Rimmington, “From Military to Industrial Complex? The Conversion of Biological Weapons Facilities in the Russian Federation,” Contemporary Security Policy 17 (April 1996), 81–112; Jeanne Guillemin, Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); and Ken Alibek, with Stephen Handelman, Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World (New York: Random House, 1999), chap. 7. Some analysts have charged the United States with making as much use of Japanese technology as the Soviets did. See Sheldon H. Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–45, and the American Cover-Up, rev. ed. (London: Routledge, 2002).
6 A. D. Kirillov and N. N. Popov, Uraclass="underline" vek dvadtsatyi (The Urals: the twentieth century) (Yekaterinburg: Ural’skii rabochii, 2000), 180.
7 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 55.
8 Bobykin was transferred to a Central Committee department in 1978. He returned to Sverdlovsk as obkom first secretary in June 1988, when Yeltsin was in political disfavor, and was removed in February 1990.
9 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 32.
10 Grigorii Kaëta, who at this point was an official in the obkom’s propaganda department, interview with the author (September 9, 2004). Mekhrentsev, a war veteran, had been a party member since 1946. He was a deputy in the Supreme Soviet and had been awarded two Orders of Lenin and a USSR State Prize. He died in January 1985 at the age of sixty and rated an obituary in Pravda. Yeltsin was one of the officials who signed it, as a mark of respect. Mekhrentsev’s replacement as chairman of the province’s government was Oleg Lobov.
11 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 37–39.
12 This last phenomenon is reported in Kaleriya Shadrina, “Yel’tsin byl krut: soratniki perezhidali yego gnev v spetsbol’nitse” (Yeltsin was gruff: his brothers-in-arms thought about his anger in the special hospital), Komsomol’skaya pravda, November 25, 1997.
13 Pilar Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya: Boris Yel’tsin, provintsial v Kremle” (The impossible Russia: Boris Yeltsin, a provincial in the Kremlin), Ural, April 1994, 100. This incident seems to have happened in 1984.
14 Rossel, interviewed in Prezident vseya Rusi (The president of all Russia), documentary film by Yevgenii Kiselëv, 1999–2000 (copy supplied by Kiselëv), 4 parts, part 1. Rossel was appointed head of a more important building organization in 1981 and deputy head of the construction directorate for the oblast in 1983.
15 The case was initially a disappearance, with no one knowing what had become of Titov. His body was found outside of town several months later, with the pistol next to it. The KGB eventually ruled the death a suicide and a personal affair with no political aspect. Source: interviews with former obkom officials.
16 Viktor Chernomyrdin, interview with the author (September 15, 2000).
17 Interview with Ryabov, Central Committee Interview Project, University of Glasgow (transcript supplied by Stephen White). Ryabov went so far as to say in this interview that Yeltsin “was fully under my influence” in the late 1970s.
18 What Ryabov said in Nizhnii Tagil, after being asked about Brezhnev, was that the Politburo and Secretariat were quite capable of “covering for an ailing leader.” The incident is described in Yakov Ryabov, Moi XX vek: zapiski byvshego sekretarya TsK KPSS (My 20th century: notes of a former secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU) (Moscow: Russkii biograficheskii institut, 2000), 129–30. He mentioned Kornilov’s likely role only in the University of Glasgow interview. In 1971 Ryabov had pushed for serial production of the T-72 main battle tank in Nizhnii Tagil; Ustinov preferred a model made in Kharkov, Ukraine. Brezhnev eventually settled the matter in Ryabov’s and Sverdlovsk’s favor.
19 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 175.
20 Alibek, Biohazard, 79. Stalin appointed Ustinov, born in 1908, as minister (people’s commissar) of the armaments industry in 1941, and he had been in high positions ever since.
21 “Boris Yel’tsin: ya ne skryvayu trudnostei i khochu, chtoby narod eto ponimal” (Boris Yeltsin: I do not conceal the difficulties and want the people to understand that), Komsomol’skaya pravda, May 27, 1992.
22 Some Western Kremlinologists interpreted Ryabov’s demotion as a reflection of a decrease in the Moscow standing of Kirilenko. I see no direct connection, but Ryabov’s account makes it clear that the incident made Kirilenko nervous. “I sat there with Kirilenko and could feel his perplexity and feeling of helplessness. I quietened him down and stated that I would not stir up a scandal in the Politburo and would make a worthy statement. He thanked me and we said good-bye until the session of the Politburo.” Ryabov, Moi XX vek, 130.
23 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 51–52.
24 Andrei Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin: svet i teni (Boris Yeltsin: light and shadows), 2 vols. (Sverdlovsk: Klip, 1991), 1:14. There is no independent confirmation of Yeltsin’s opposition to the Brezhnev museum. Brezhnev’s daughter, Galina, was born in Sverdlovsk, and in 1999 his grandson Andrei ran unsuccessfully for governor of the province.
25 There is careful analysis in Aron, Yeltsin, 58, 73–75.
26 Nikolai Tselishchev, a Sverdlovsk propaganda official at the time, interview with the author (June 23, 2004); Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 133–34.
27 Aron, Yeltsin, 45–46.
28 Press reports say the apartment sold for $200,000 in 2003 and has a net living area (not counting halls, kitchen, and bathroom) of about 1,800 square feet. I visited a unit of identical layout in the building in June 2004. By way of comparison, the median size of a single-family, detached house in the United States was 1,858 square feet in 2005, and of a house built between 2000 and 2005 it was 2,258 square feet.