18 Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 92.
19 First Kozyrev interview.
20 Ambassador Strauss provided informal feedback on a draft of Yeltsin’s speech to Congress. Yeltsin asked how members of Congress would question him at the session and was relieved to hear that foreign guests were not interrogated. Author’s interviews with Strauss and James F. Collins (both on January 9, 2006). Collins was Strauss’s top deputy in the embassy.
21 “Russian President’s Address to Joint Session of Congress,” The Washington Post, June 18, 1992. Richard Nixon, Yeltsin’s great admirer, watched the speech on television. “When Yeltsin made statements that Nixon believed were not getting a properly enthusiastic response, he yelled to the Congress through the television, ‘Cheer, you jerks!’” Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter (New York: Random House, 1998), 97.
22 Niall Ferguson and Brigitte Granville, “‘Weimar on the Volga’: Causes and Consequences of Inflation in 1990s Russia Compared with 1920s Germany,” Journal of Economic History 60 (December 2000), 1061–87.
23 James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2003), 94.
24 Nigel Gould-Davies and Ngaire Woods, “Russia and the IMF,” International Affairs 75 (January 1999), 7–8. The IMF announced $1 billion in external support to Russia in July 1992, $3 billion in June 1993, and $6.8 billion in April 1995.
25 Talbott, Russia Hand, 286. Clinton made this statement to U.S. government officials on a flight to Russia the night of August 31–September 1, 1998.
26 Goldgeier and McFaul, Power and Purpose, 54.
27 Talbott, Russia Hand, 32, 63.
28 Ibid., 115, 145.
29 Reginald Dale, “Clinton’s ‘Preposterous’ Suggestion,” http://www.iht.com/articles/2000/06/09/think.2.t_0.php.
30 Russia requested the Council of Europe seat in May 1992. In May 1998 it ratified the council’s Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and anti-torture protocol and recognized the right of petition of its citizens to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Russians today file more suits with the court than any other nation. To conform to European norms, Yeltsin established a moratorium on executions in 1996 and in June 1999 commuted the sentences of 713 death-row prisoners. Three post-Soviet states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) joined the EU in 2004; seven other post-communist countries joined in 2004 and 2007.
31 A. L. Litvin, Yel’tsiny v Kazani (The Yeltsins in Kazan) (Kazan: Aibat, 2004), 71.
32 CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, “The Politics of Russian Nationalisms,” SOV 91-10044 (October 1991), 13; declassified version obtained at http://www.foia.cia.gov.browse_docs.asp?
33 The republics numbered sixteen until 1991, when four lesser ethnic entities (autonomous oblasts) were reclassified and the Chechen-Ingush republic broke in two, bringing the total to twenty-one. One surviving autonomous oblast and ten “autonomous districts” remained of inferior standing after the reshuffle; three of the eleven voted for sovereignty. The process is well laid out in Jeffrey Kahn, Federalism, Democratization, and the Rule of Law in Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 102–23.
34 Elise Giuliano, “Secessionism from the Bottom Up: Democratization, Nationalism, and Local Accountability in the Russian Transition,” World Politics 58 (January 2006), 295; Rashit Akhmetov, “Provody” (Sendoff), http://tatpolit.ru/category/zvezda/2007-05-04/285.
35 See Dmitry Gorenburg, Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 125. As many as 20,000 protested during the October session of the Tatarstan Supreme Soviet, and more than fifty were injured in clashes with the police. Altogether, 142 nationalist rallies were held in Tatarstan between 1987 and 1993.
36 Aleksandr Tsipko, “Drama rossiiskogo vybora” (The drama of Russia’s choice), Izvestiya, October 1, 1991. Four of Russia’s ethnic republics and twenty-nine of its other territories exceeded the population of Estonia, whose separation from the USSR Yeltsin recognized in August 1991.
37 M. K. Gorshkov, V. V. Zhuravlëv, and L. N. Dobrokhotov, eds., Yel’tsin–Khasbulatov: yedinstvo, kompromiss, bor’ba (Yeltsin–Khasbulatov: unity, compromise, struggle) (Moscow: TERRA, 1994), 130.
38 See especially Kahn, Federalism, Democratization, and the Rule of Law, 123–32, 153–54 (story about Burbulis at 153); Akhmetov, “Provody” (Shaimiyev’s feats); Dmitry Gorenburg, “Regional Separatism in Russia: Ethnic Mobilisation or Power Grab?” Europe-Asia Studies 51 (March 1999), 245–74; and Giuliano, “Secessionism from the Bottom Up,” 276–310.
39 On August 21, 1991, Yeltsin removed by decree the chief executives of three provinces (Rostov, Samara, and Lipetsk). He first appointed individuals to this office on August 24. But on August 22 Yeltsin asserted the right to name “presidential representatives,” who were there independent of the holders of the local office.
40 Outside of war-torn Chechnya, the only republic where Yeltsin ever stepped in to name a president was Karachayevo-Cherkessiya in September 1995, at the request of the local parliament.
41 Secondary accounts mention republic proposals in the provinces of Arkhangel’sk, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Orël, Primor’e, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Vologda, and Voronezh. For comparisons, see Philip G. Roeder, Where Nation–States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 192–93; and Yoshiko M. Herrera, Imagined Economies: The Sources of Russian Regionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 194–244.
42 Timothy J. Colton and Cindy Skach, “A Fresh Look at Semipresidentialism: The Russian Predicament,” Journal of Democracy 16 (July 2005), 113–26.
43 Khasbulatov heard about the agreement from news reports while on a visit to South Korea. He wanted to talk about it with Yeltsin by telephone but had to settle for Naina Yeltsina. Rutskoi was informed about the deal by one of Khasbulatov’s deputies. Author’s interviews with Khasbulatov (September 26, 2001) and Rutskoi (June 5, 2001).
44 Josephine T. Andrews, When Majorities Faiclass="underline" The Russian Parliament, 1990–1993 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 26.
45 Gorshkov, Zhuravlëv, and Dobrokhotov, Yel’tsin–Khasbulatov, 201.
46 Khasbulatov interview.
47 Yu, M. Baturin et al., Epokha Yel’tsina: ocherki politicheskoi istorii (The Yeltsin epoch: essays in political history) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2001), 265. Chernomyrdin had declared in December, when appointed premier, that he intended to work closely with the congress. This prompted Yeltsin’s press secretary, Vyacheslav Kostikov, to write a sarcastic pseudonymous article about him in a newspaper. Chernomyrdin complained to Yeltsin, who told Kostikov his criticism was fair but he should keep it to himself, and “I will sort things out with Chernomyrdin myself.” Ibid., 322–33.