2 Lev Sukhanov, Tri goda s Yel’tsinym: zapiski pervogo pomoshchnika (Three years with Yeltsin: notes of his first assistant) (Riga: Vaga, 1992), 241.
3 Yu, M. Baturin et al., Epokha Yel’tsina: ocherki politicheskoi istorii (The Yeltsin epoch: essays in political history) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2001), 78.
4 Lyudmila Pikhoya, interview with the author (September 26, 2001). Kharin died in 1992, but Il’in stayed with Yeltsin until 1998 and Pikhoya until 1999.
5 Michael McFaul, Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 81.
6 V. I. Vorotnikov, A bylo eto tak: iz dnevnika chlena Politbyuro TsK KPSS (But this is how it was: from the diary of a member of the Politburo of the CPSU) (Moscow: Sovet veteranov knigoizdaniya, 1995), 342–43, 348, 362–63.
7 The book was widely distributed in other Soviet republics. The CPSU first secretary in Ukraine, Vladimir Ivashko, told the Politburo it had made Ukrainian coal miners question their party dues: “The miners say, Why should we pay money so that someone else can live in luxury?” Politburo transcript, April 9, 1990 (Volkogonov Archive, Project on Cold War Studies, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University), 356.
8 “Yeltsin’s RSFSR Election Platform Outlined,” FBIS-SOV-90-045 (March 7, 1990), 108–9; L. N. Dobrokhotov, ed., Gorbachev–Yel’tsin: 1,500 dnei politicheskogo protivostoyaniya (Gorbachev–Yeltsin: 1,500 days of political conflict) (Moscow: TERRA, 1992), 173 (italics added).
9 For example, in January 1990, Yeltsin, building on discussions in the Sverdlovsk years, advocated the creation of seven “Russian republics” within the RSFSR, which apparently would have been controlled by ethnic Russians and would have been equal in powers to, but much larger than, the non-Russian republics. He repudiated this formula for confusion and conflict in August 1990. In an equally problematic statement, he said to the Russian congress in May 1990 that he favored “the sovereignty of the raion [district] soviet,” which would have subjected Russia and its provinces to centrifugal forces at the most local level. He never repeated the phrase. See V. T. Loginov, ed., Soyuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’ (The union could have been saved), rev. ed. (Moscow: AST, 2007), 135, 156, 166.
10 Vyacheslav Terekhov, interview with the author (June 5, 2001). It is a confused comment, for in the Bible Jesus goes to the hill of Golgotha to be crucified. Yeltsin believed that in the forthcoming struggle it was his opponents who would lose out.
11 Politburo transcript, March 7, 1990 (Volkogonov Archive), 356.
12 Polling figures are given in John B. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 28–29; Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 203, 270–71; and Matthew Wyman, Public Opinion in Postcommunist Russia (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), 85.
13 Politburo transcript, March 22, 1990 (Volkogonov Archive), 219; Sergei Filatov, Sovershenno nesekretno (Top nonsecret) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2000), 40–41.
14 Politburo transcript, March 22, 1990, 207–8.
15 In Loginov, Soyuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’, 147–48.
16 Boris Yel’tsin, Zapiski prezidenta (Notes of a president) (Moscow: Ogonëk, 1994), 175; Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins, 1993), 803–4.
17 Journalist Vladimir Mezentsev, interview with the author (September 26, 2001). Mezentsev had worked for Yeltsin until just before the event and was present at it.
18 Georgii Shakhnazarov, S vozhdyami i bez nikh (With leaders and without them) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2001), 367.
19 Vladimir Mezentsev, “Okruzhentsy” (Encourage), part 9, Rabochaya tribuna, April 7, 1995.
20 Nuisance candidates took thirty-two votes in the first round and eleven in the third. The remaining deputies not included in the totals here crossed off the names of all the candidates entered.
21 Aleksandr Budberg, “Proigravshii pobeditel’: Mikhailu Gorbachevu—75” (Losing victor: Mikhail Gorbachev at 75), Moskovskii komsomolets, March 3, 2006.
22 Korzhakov, Yeltsin’s bodyguard and confidant, had had his wages covered by three business cooperatives. Lantseva, his main press spokesman until July 1991, first received a salary in February 1991. Neither Lantseva nor Bortsov, who wrote speeches for Yeltsin until 1995, had Moscow residency until 1991. Author’s interviews with Lantseva (July 9, 2001), Bortsov (June 11, 2001), and Mezentsev. See also Vladimir Mezentsev, “Okruzhentsy,” part 3, Rabochaya tribuna, March 28, 1995.
23 Mikhail Bocharov, interview with the author (October 19, 2000).
24 The delegates “took into account that if they voted for [Lobov] it would be a kind of linkup between the party and Yeltsin.” Yurii Prokof’ev, Do i posle zapreta KPSS: pervyi sekretar’ MGK KPSS vspominayet (Before and after the ban on the CPSU: a first secretary of the Moscow gorkom remembers) (Moscow: Algoritm, 2005), 218.
25 XXVIII s”ezd Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza: stenograficheskii otchët (The 28th congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: stenographic record), 2 vols. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1991), 1:472–75.
26 Author’s interviews with Gavriil Popov (June 1, 2001) and Sergei Stankevich (May 29, 2001).
27 Baturin et al., Epokha, 93. See also Sukhanov, Tri goda, 338–39.
28 An early draft of the announcement called on legislative leaders and President Gorbachev to follow his example. A copy, with corrections in Yeltsin’s handwriting, is in Aleksandr Khinshtein, Yel’tsin, Kreml’, istoriya bolezni (Yeltsin, the Kremlin, the history of an illness) (Moscow: OLMA, 2006), 543; it was obtained from the widow of Lev Sukhanov.
29 Viktor Sheinis, Vzlët i padeniye parlamenta: perelomnyye gody v rossiiskoi politike, 1985–1993 (The rise and fall of parliament: years of change in Russian politics, 1985–93) (Moscow: Moskovskii Tsentr Karnegi, Fond INDEM, 2005), 357.
30 Naina Yeltsina, personal communication to the author (July 29, 2007).
31 Anatolii Chernyayev, 1991 god: dnevnik pomoshchnika Prezidenta SSSR (The year 1991: diary of an assistant to the president of the USSR) (Moscow: TERRA, 1997), 37.
32 Politburo transcript, May 3, 1990 (Volkogonov Archive), 516, 533.
33 Pervyi s”ezd narodnykh deputatov SSSR, 25 maya–9 iyunya 1989 g.: stenograficheskii otchët (The first congress of people’s deputies of the USSR, May 25–June 9, 1989: stenographic record), 6 vols. (Moscow: Izdaniye Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, 1989), 2:48.
34 Hough, Democratization and Revolution, 385. On this general issue, see also Edward W. Walker, Dissolution: Sovereignty and the Breakup of the Soviet Union (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003).
35 Most accounts leave out this last detail. The congress in fact rejected an amendment that would have had the declaration of primacy click in immediately. Gwendolyn Elizabeth Stewart, “SIC TRANSIT: Democratization, Suverenizatsiia, and Boris Yeltsin in the Breakup of the Soviet Union” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1995), 272–73. Once the provision was in effect, though, it was reminiscent of the theory of nullification put forth to defend states’ rights in the United States by John C. Calhoun in the 1820s and 1830s.