36 Boris Yeltsin, first interview with the author (July 15, 2001).
37 Ivan Silayev, interview with the author (January 25, 2001). Agreements were reached with Lithuania in the Baltic and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, but the general arrangement stayed put.
38 Bill Keller, “Boris Yeltsin Taking Power,” New York Times, September 23, 1990.
39 “Trusy Yel’tsina” (Yeltsin’s trunks), http://www.channel4.ru/content/200205/10/112.trus.html.
40 A. L. Litvin, Yel’tsiny v Kazani (The Yeltsins in Kazan) (Kazan: Aibat, 2004), 70–71; Loginov, Soyuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’, 165–66.
41 “Yeltsin Continues Russian Tour to Bashkir ASSR,” FBIS-SOV-90-156 (August 13, 1990), 82.
42 Dobrokhotov, Gorbachev–Yel’tsin, 198.
43 Ibid., 194.
44 Shakhnazarov, S vozhdyami i bez nikh, 373; Aleksandr Yakovlev, first interview with the author (June 9, 2000). Yakovlev said that with him Gorbachev was at first somewhat receptive to the vice-presidential initiative, but went solidly against it after discussion with Politburo members.
45 Boris Yeltsin, second interview with the author (February 9, 2002).
46 At the Politburo meeting hours after Yeltsin attacked Gorbachev, the Kremlin chief of staff, Valerii Boldin, said it was time “to part with illusions with relation to Yeltsin…. He will never work together with us. He is a not entirely healthy person and sees himself only in confrontation.” Prime Minister Ryzhkov concurred, saying Yeltsin was only interested in power and would not rest until he had Gorbachev’s job. V Politbyuro TsK KPSS… (In the Politburo of the CPSU) (Moscow: Gorbachev-Fond, 2006), 618–19.
47 Yelena Bonner, interview with the author (March 13, 2001). Yeltsin made the comment as Bonner stood with him on the balcony of the Russian White House, at the conclusion of the putsch of August 1991. She had told him several months before that Gorbachev had made him look foolish over the Five Hundred Days plan.
48 Vyacheslav Chornovil, “Yel’tsin vnis duzhe konstruktyvnyi moment u politychnu real’nist’ v Ukraini” (Yeltsin injected a very constructive note into Ukrainian political reality), Za vil’nu Ukrainu (Ukrainian-language newspaper, L’viv), November 23, 1990; reference supplied by Roman Szporluk. Despite the implicit recognition of the border, Chornovil did say Yeltsin’s attitude toward the Crimea issue gave him some concern.
49 Chernyayev, 1991 god, 76.
50 Karen Brutents, Nesbyvsheyesya: neravnodushnyye zametki o perestroike (It never came true: engaged notes about perestroika) (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyye otnosheniya, 2005), 108.
51 Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire (New York: Random House, 1995), 488.
52 Yeltsin was invited to Strasbourg by the International Politics Forum, a Parisbased organization linked to European Christian Democratic parties. When he arrived, he mistook dignitaries at the airport, waiting for another visitor, for a welcoming group for him. The city mayor, Cathérine Trautman, recognized the situation for what it was and organized a dinner the next day with local officials and businessmen. “These people were impressed by him for presenting so dignified a face.” Yeltsin flew out of Strasbourg when it became clear he would not be allowed to participate in the assembly’s deliberations. Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, French scholar and parliamentarian, interview with the author (September 11, 2007).
53 John Morrison, Boris Yeltsin: From Bolshevik to Democrat (New York: Dutton, 1991), 252.
54 Dmitri K. Simes, After the Collapse: Russia Seeks Its Place as a Great Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 89.
55 Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter (New York: Random House, 1998), 43. Nixon said to another associate (Simes, After the Collapse, 89) that in American terms Gorbachev was “Wall Street” but Yeltsin was “Main Street.” In his last book (Beyond Peace [New York: Random House, 1994], 45), Nixon said Gorbachev was better suited to “drawing rooms” and Yeltsin to “family rooms.”
56 Dan Quayle, Standing Firm: A Vice-Presidential Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 171.
57 CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, “Yeltsin’s Political Objectives,” SOV 91-10026X (June 1991), 1, 7; declassified version obtained at http://www.foia.cia.gov.browse_docs.asp? On interdependency, the report acknowledged Yeltsin’s “awareness of the multistranded interweaving of goals and analysis.” He understood, for example, that, “One cannot promote Russian welfare without (a) dropping the burden of empire, (b) marketizing the economy, and (c) cutting military expenditures.” He realized that, “One cannot marketize if one does not (a) dismantle the Stalinist system and create a climate of legality, (b) cut back the military-industrial complex, (c) resolve societal problems peacefully, and (d) gain Western economic collaboration.” And it had sunk in that, “One cannot achieve nonviolent solutions to societal problems without (a) eliminating totalitarian structures, (b) gaining voluntary resolution of ethnic conflicts, and (c) improving living standards.”
58 Vladimir Isakov, interview with the author (June 4, 2001). For details, see V. B. Isakov, Predsedatel’ Soveta Respubliki: parlamentskiye dnevniki, 1990–1991 (Chairman of the Council of the Republic: parliamentary diaries, 1990–91) (Moscow: Paleya, 1996).
59 Vladimir Zhirinovskii, interview with the author (January 22, 2002). On CPSU and KGB backing for the formation of Zhirinovskii’s party, and the financial sum provided, see Aleksandr Yakovlev, Sumerki (Dusk) (Moscow: Materik, 2003), 574—75.
60 “Yeltsin Gives Speech in Moscow,” FBIS-SOV-91-106 (June 3, 1991), 75.
61 On spatial distribution of the vote, see Gavin Helf, “All the Russias: Center, Core, and Periphery in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1994); and Scott Gehlbach, “Shifting Electoral Geography in Russia’s 1991 and 1996 Presidential Elections,” Post-Soviet Geography and Economics 5 (July–August 2000), 379–87.
62 Aleksei Yemel’yanov in Dobrokhotov, Gorbachev–Yel’tsin, 339.
63 “My mozhem byt’ tvërdo uvereny: Rossiya vozroditsya” (We can be certain that Russia will be reborn), Izvestiya, July 10, 1991.
64 Filatov, Sovershenno nesekretno, 84–87; Baturin et al., Epokha, 122; Shakhnazarov, S vozhdyami i bez nikh, 377.
65 Of the two main office buildings in the Kremlin, No. 14, dating from the 1930s, when Stalin razed a monastery, a convent, and a small palace to make room for it, was much the inferior, although Brezhnev had his office there. Building No. 1, completed in 1790, housed the imperial Senate before 1917 and was mostly for the USSR Council of Ministers after 1917.
66 Gorbachev at first tried to work on a new union treaty in negotiations within USSR institutions. His switch in April to negotiations among and with the Soviet republics was a sign of how much his position had weakened, and opened him up to pressure for concessions on issue after issue. Philip G. Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 178–80.