74 Benjamin Forest and Juliet Johnson, “Unraveling the Threads of History: Soviet-Era Monuments and Post-Soviet National Identity in Moscow,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92 (September 2002), 532.
75 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 196. He mentions as one of the practical obstacles differences of opinion over restitution of nationalized property.
76 Vladimir Mezentsev, “Okruzhentsy” (Entourage), part 4, Rabochaya tribuna, March 29, 1995. Twenty-nine deputies abstained on the Kryuchkov vote, which was held in July 1989; six voted against.
77 Bakatin, Izbavleniye ot KGB, 120. See also J. Michael Waller, “Russia: Death and Resurrection of the KGB,” Demokratizatsiya/Democratization 12 (Summer 2004), 333–55.
78 Gennadii Burbulis, third interview, conducted by Yevgeniya Al’bats (August 31, 2001).
79 These were not misplaced fears. One of the difficulties in sorting out new responsibilities for the old KGB was that “many of its structures and functions were necessary for the preservation of a democratic society.” Waller, “Russia: Death and Resurrection,” 347.
80 Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata (Boris Yeltsin: from dawn to dusk) (Moscow: Interbuk, 1997), 175; Aleksandr Korzhakov, interview with the author (January 28, 2002).
81 Decree No. 2233, December 21, 1993, in Rossiiskaya gazeta, December 24, 1993.
82 Sergei Kovalëv, interview with the author (January 21, 2001).
83 Second Yakovlev interview.
84 “It is hard labor for me to be filmed, as it is with any regulated, forced behavior. I sweat bullets, and I hate terribly to see myself on the screen.” Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 37. In Sverdlovsk, Yeltsin shone in televised performances where he did something concrete—answering citizens’ letters.
85 Source: interviewers with former staffers. See on this general subject A. L. Il’in et al., Otzvuk slova: iz opyta raboty spichraiterov pervogo prezidenta Rossii (Echo of the word: from the work experience of the speech writers of the first president of Russia) (Moscow: Nikkolo M, 1999).
86 Sergei Filatov, Sovershenno nesekretno (Top nonsecret) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2000), 103.
87 Gorbachev’s long-windedness reminded Yeltsin of Leo Tolstoy, whose monumental novels he had not wanted to read as a schoolboy in Berezniki. Yeltsin, second interview with the author (February 9, 2002).
88 Valentina Lantseva, interview with the author (July 9, 2001).
89 Marietta Chudakova, interview with the author (April 14, 2003).
90 Mark Zakharov, interview with the author (June 4, 2002). Yegor Gaidar had a similar conversation with Yeltsin in the spring of 1992, suggesting the Kremlin set up a new unit for selling the reforms. “Yegor Timurovich,” he said, “do you want me to re-create the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee? Look, as long as I am in charge that won’t happen.” Oleg Moroz, “Kak Boris Yel’tsin vybiral sebe preyemnika” (How Boris Yeltsin chose his successor), Izvestiya, July 7, 2006.
91 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 397; Marafon, 63 (italics added). The latter passage is not in the English translation.
92 A large body of research has established the political importance of the speech of U.S. presidents, leaving in dispute whether myth or substance predominates in it. See Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Richard J. Ellis, ed., Speaking to the People: The Rhetorical Presidency in Historical Perspective (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998); and Shawn J. Parry-Giles, The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002).
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1 Boris Yel’tsin, Zapiski prezidenta (Notes of a president) (Moscow: Ogonëk, 1994), 166–67.
2 As one scholar says of constitutional politics, it is about the components of a state or would-be state coming together, keeping themselves together, or being held together. The third path applies best to Yeltsin’s Russia. Alfred Stepan, “Russian Federalism in Comparative Perspective,” Post-Soviet Affairs 16 (April–June 2000), 133–76.
3 Ibid., 165.
4 Yevgenia Albats, “Bureaucrats and the Russian Transition: The Politics of Accommodation, 1991–2003” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2004), 93.
5 For an overview, see Andrew Barnes, Owning Russia: The Struggle over Factories, Farms, and Power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
6 Boris Yeltsin, third interview with the author (September 12, 2002).
7 The auction process is analyzed in Chrystia Freeland, Sale of the Century: Russia’s Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism (Toronto: Doubleday, 2000), chap. 8; and David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002), chaps. 12 and 13.
8 Oleg Poptsov, Khronika vremën “Tsarya Borisa” (Chronicle of the times of “Tsar Boris”) (Moscow: Sovershenno sekretno, 1995), 71.
9 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 168.
10 See Stephen Holmes, “What Russia Teaches Us Now: How Weak States Threaten Freedom,” The American Prospect 33 (July–August 1997), 30–39; David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); William Alex Pridemore, ed., Ruling Russia: Law, Crime, and Justice in a Changing Society (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); and Timothy J. Colton and Stephen Holmes, eds., The State after Communism: Governance in the New Russia (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).
11 Brian D. Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 307–9.
12 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 259–60.
13 Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 440–41, citing Matthew Wyman, Public Opinion in Postcommunist Russia (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), 166–67.
14 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 153, 394. While Yeltsin never described himself as nostalgic for the USSR, his wife did in one interview in 1997: “Like everyone, I have nostalgia for the Soviet Union, when we all lived together like in a big family. And now it is as if everyone has run off. Friends of mine from the institute [UPI] live abroad—in Minsk, in Ukraine, in Kazakhstan.” Interview of March 1, 1997, on Ekho Moskvy radio, at http://www.echo.msk.ru/guests/1775.
15 Boris Yel’tsin, Prezidentskii marafon (Presidential marathon) (Moscow: AST, 2000), 62.
16 Seventy-one percent of the USSR’s 11,000 strategic warheads were based in Russia, 16 percent in Ukraine, 12 percent in Kazakhstan, and 1 percent in Belarus. Russia’s control was 100 percent for submarine-launched strategic weapons but only 62 percent for missile-delivered warheads and 24 percent for aircraft-delivered warheads. Yegor Gaidar, Gibel’ imperii: uroki dlya sovremennoi Rossii (Death of an empire: lessons for contemporary Russia) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006), 421–22.
17 Author’s first interview with Andrei Kozyrev (January 19, 2001) and second interview with Yegor Gaidar (January 31, 2002). U.S. President Clinton’s main adviser for Russia and Eurasia recalls Kozyrev as “obsessed” with the Yugoslav situation and as worrying that the use of force against the Serbs would stir up nationalist passions and bring “a Russian Milošević” to power. Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2002), 73–74.