32 Vadim Bakatin, the last head of the Soviet KGB, and Yevgenii Shaposhnikov, the last Soviet minister of defense, both appointed with Yeltsin’s backing in August, believed Yeltsin wanted more security coordination than obtained but was unable to sell it to the other states. Vadim Bakatin, Izbavleniye ot KGB (Deliverance from the KGB) (Moscow: Novosti, 1992), 232–33; author’s interviews with Bakatin (May 29, 2002) and Shaposhnikov (May 23, 2000). See also Robert V. Barylski, The Soldier in Russian Politics: Duty, Dictatorship, and Democracy Under Gorbachev and Yeltsin (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1998), 173–225.
33 “Yeltsin News Conference with Foreign Journalists,” FBIS-SOV-91-174 (September 9, 1991), 66, 69.
34 Author’s interviews with Valerii Bortsov (June 11, 2001) and Ivan Rybkin (May 29, 2001); second interview with Sergei Filatov (May 25, 2002); second interview with Aleksandr Yakovlev (March 29, 2004); third Yeltsin interview.
35 Author’s first interview with Grigorii Yavlinskii (March 17, 2001). Yeltsin tried but failed to persuade Yavlinskii to tailor the program to Russia and not the USSR, reduce its running time to 400 days (its original length), and omit mention of price hikes. Yavlinskii feels that Yeltsin was fixated on his struggle with Gorbachev and had no intention of doing any serious reform until after his election as president of Russia.
36 Baturin et al., Epokha, 190.
37 Bill Keller, “Boris Yeltsin Taking Power,” New York Times, September 23, 1990.
38 Gwendolyn Elizabeth Stewart, “SIC TRANSIT: Democratization, Suverenizatsiia, and Boris Yeltsin in the Breakup of the Soviet Union” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1995), 280. Stewart, working as a photojournalist, taped Yeltsin’s remarks on August 24, 1990, in Dolinsk. She calls them “laissez-faire populism.” Her illustrated account of Yeltsin on Sakhalin is available at http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~gestewar/peopleschoice.html.
39 “B. N. Yel’tsin otvechayet na voprosy ‘Izvestii’” (B. N. Yeltsin answers the questions of Izvestiya), Izvestiya, May 23, 1991.
40 Anatolii Chernyayev, 1991 god: dnevnik pomoshchnika Prezidenta SSSR (The year 1991: diary of an assistant to the president of the USSR) (Moscow: TERRA, 1997), 260.
41 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 235. As several scholars have pointed out, this sentence is not in the English translation of the memoir.
42 Jonathan Sanders, interview with the author (January 21, 2004).
43 Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). Berlin thought negative freedom to be superior to positive liberty. Cf. for a different perspective Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Random House, 1999).
44 Mikhail Fridman, interview with the author (September 21, 2001). His reference is to Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
45 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 121, 235–36, 238, 392. See Dmitry Mikheyev, Russia Transformed (Indianapolis: Hudson Institute, 1996), 70–71, 89; and George W. Breslauer, Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 153–54. This therapeutic aspect has sometimes been confused with Social Darwinism, which stresses survival of the fittest and abandonment of the weak. At the societal level, Yeltsin was interested in Russia converging with the West, not competing with it.
46 “Boris Yel’tsin otbyl na otdykh” (Boris Yeltsin has left for a rest), Izvestiya, September 25, 1991.
47 Viktor Sheinis, interview with the author (September 20, 2001); V. T. Loginov, ed., Soyuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’ (The union could have been saved), rev. ed. (Moscow: AST, 2007), 325.
48 Gennadii Burbulis, second interview, conducted by Yevgeniya Al’bats (February 14, 2001). Yeltsin’s invitation to Burbulis has never been on the public record.
49 Rutskoi interview; and Mikhail Poltoranin, interview with the author (July 11, 2001).
50 Yurii Petrov, second interview with the author (February 1, 2002). Petrov had looked Yeltsin up while on leave in Moscow at the end of July and told him he was willing to work in his new government. Yeltsin showed him a staff report on organization of the U.S. White House and offered him the job.
51 G. Shipit’ko, “B. Yel’tsin pytayetsya vosstanovit’ poryadok v koridorakh vlasti” (Boris Yeltsin tries to restore order in the corridors of power), Izvestiya, October 16, 1991. Deputy Premier Igor Gavrilov resigned on October 7 and Economics Minister Yevgenii Saburov on October 9. The acting chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbulatov, accused several ministers and advisers of incompetence and demanded their resignations, whereupon one of them, Sergei Shakhrai, stated that Khasbulatov was mentally unstable. Silayev was taken care of after December: Yeltsin appointed him Russian ambassador to the European Community in Brussels.
52 The “miracle worker” reference comes from Gennadii Burbulis, third interview, conducted by Yevgeniya Al’bats (August 31, 2001). Other information is from Poltoranin interview; interview with Ryzhov (September 21, 2001); and second interview with Yavlinskii (September 28, 2001). Poltoranin came closest to acceptance and wrote up a list of possible ministers, but withdrew because he felt he did not know enough about the economy.
53 Third Burbulis interview.
54 Gaidar’s mother was from Sverdlovsk and was the daughter of Pavel Bazhov, a distinguished writer of fairytales set in the Urals. She became friendly with Yeltsin’s mother when they were patients at a Moscow hospital. Yegor Gaidar, second interview with the author (January 31, 2002).
55 My reconstruction of the enlistment of Gaidar relies on accounts by him, Yeltsin, and Burbulis. Or see Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 163–64: “Why did I choose Yegor Gaidar?… Gaidar’s theories coincided with my private determination to travel the most painful part of the route [of economic reform] quickly…. If our minds were made up, it was time to get going!” For an alternative explanation based on envy and power-seeking, for which no evidence is cited, see Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2001), 240–41: “Gaidar’s appointment served Burbulis’s purpose, because it ensured that Yeltsin would not appoint someone who was either more popular than Burbulis… or more influential with Yeltsin… thus endangering Burbulis’s position at court. One of Yeltsin’s reasons for picking Gaidar for the job of ‘leading reformer’ was that his bland and aloof manner in public made him an unlikely future contender for elective office, even if his reform package were to turn out to be successful and popular.”
56 Yegor Gaidar, Dni porazhenii i pobed (Days of defeats and victories) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 1996), 105.
57 Moscow journalist Mikhail Berger, quoted in David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs : Wealth and Power in the New Russia (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002), 180.