48 Ibid., 293.
49 Gorshkov, Zhuravlëv, and Dobrokhotov, Yel’tsin–Khashulatov, 324–25.
50 Boris Yeltsin, first interview with the author (July 15, 2001).
51 Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata (Boris Yeltsin: from dawn to dusk) (Moscow: Interbuk, 1997), 158–59. He says the agent to be used was chloropicrin, which causes lachrymation and vomiting; in high enough doses, it can lead to serious injury or death.
52 Gorshkov, Zhuravlëv, and Dobrokhotov, Yel’tsin–Khashulatov, 369–71.
53 The Constitutional Court had ruled that the results on the third and fourth questions would be binding only if a majority of the entire electorate came out in favor.
54 Dmitri K. Simes, “Remembering Yeltsin,” http://www.nationalinterest.org/BlogSE.aspx?id=14110.
55 Leon Aron, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 514.
56 Baturin et al., Epokha, 345.
57 I owe this point to Valentin Yumashev, who knows Yeltsin’s political thinking as well as anyone. Yeltsin describes his conversations with Grachëv about the constitutional crisis, and his confidence in Grachëv’s support, in Zapiski, 350–51. On September 16 Yeltsin paid a call on the Dzerzhinsky Motorized Rifle Division, which reported to the MVD.
58 Previously undisclosed details from the author’s second interview with Vladimir Bokser (May 11, 2001) and interview with Vitalii Nasedkin (June 9, 2001).
59 Baturin et al., Epokha, 357.
60 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 347.
61 Ibid., 375; Gorshkov, Zhuravlëv, and Dobrokhotov, Yel’tsin–Khasbulatov, 526.
62 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 347.
63 Ibid., 384–86, describes the scene with Grachëv, as does Sergei Filatov, Sovershenno nesekretno (Top nonsecret) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2000), 317. On the allimportant responsibility question, see Robert V. Barylski, The Soldier in Russian Politics: Duty, Dictatorship, and Democracy Under Gorbachev and Yeltsin (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1998), 260–62; and especially Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army, 295–301.
64 Louis D. Sell, “Embassy Under Siege: An Eyewitness Account of Yeltsin’s 1993 Attack on Parliament,” Problems of Post-Communism 50 (July–August 2003), 61.
65 This act is described in Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin, 198.
66 Some opposition sources put the death toll much higher, at 500 or even 1,000.
67 Yeltsin’s chief of staff, Sergei Filatov, proposed the plebiscite to him on October 5, having fielded a suggestion to this effect from Yurii Ryzhov, the Russian ambassador to Paris (who had heard it from the Sorbonne law professor Michel Lesage). Yeltsin agreed immediately, says Filatov (Sovershenno nesekretno, 325–26). But Yeltsin had consistently favored putting a new constitution to the electorate, and so was returning to this idea rather than discovering it.
68 Valerii Zor’kin had favored a “zero option” whereby Yeltsin and parliament would face election at exactly the same time. Yeltsin was never for it, although it would probably have yielded better electoral results for him than those realized in December 1993.
69 “Prezident Rossii otvechayet na voprosy gazety ‘Izvestiya’” (The president of Russia answers the questions of the newspaper Izvestiya), Izvestiya, November 16, 1993.
70 Unnamed speaker on October 23, in Konstitutsionnoye soveshchaniye: stenogrammy, materialy, dokumenty (The Constitutional Conference: stenographic records, materials, documents), 20 vols. (Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1996), 19:163.
71 Timothy J. Colton, “Public Opinion and the Constitutional Referendum,” in Timothy J. Colton and Jerry F. Hough, eds., Growing Pains: Russian Democracy and the Election of 1993 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1998), 293. Fifty-five percent of the electors voted on the constitution. A Yeltsin decree had set the bar for confirmation at a 50 percent turnout and a 50 percent positive vote. This was much lower than the absolute majority of the entire electorate required by the Russian law on referendums, adopted in October 1990.
72 Even a study deeply critical of Yeltsin stresses the self-isolation of his opponents and that “none of our criticism of Yeltsin implies that a military victory by the White House forces would have set Russia on a better path than it in fact took. That seems most improbable.” Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2001), 428.
73 “Prezident Rossii otvechayet na voprosy gazety ‘Izvestiya.’”
74 In this sense, Yeltsin “sought to construct the presidency as the ruler of those who govern, rather than one who is himself responsible for governing.” Alexander Sokolowski, “Bankrupt Government: Intra-Executive Relations and the Politics of Budgetary Irresponsibility in El’tsin’s Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies 53 (June 2001), 543.
75 Some court decisions indicated he should explain his vetoes, but Yeltsin complied selectively and no systematic list of vetoes was published. Yeltsin signed 752 bills from 1994 through 1998 and vetoed 216. Andrea Chandler, “Presidential Veto Power in Post-Communist Russia, 1994–1998,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 34 (September 2001), 487–516.
76 Konstitutsionnoye soveshchaniye, 20:40, which shows Yeltsin’s stroke of the pen. This was the most important of the fourteen changes Yeltsin made in the draft transmitted to him on November 7. The final clause of Article 90 did specify that his edicts “should not contradict” the constitution and laws.
77 Because Soviet leaders were primarily party heads, protocol was simple and arrangements were handled by the foreign ministry. Gorbachev created a protocol office in his new presidential establishment in 1990. Yeltsin hired the tactful and decent Shevchenko in January 1992 and upgraded the office. For the arrangements on everything from heraldry to the goblets at Kremlin banquets, see V. N. Shevchenko et al., Protokol Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Protocol of the Russian Federation) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2000).
78 Gorshkov, Zhuravlëv, and Dobrokhotov, Yel’tsin–Khasbulatov, 543.
79 Quoted in Timothy J. Colton, “Introduction,” in Colton and Hough, Growing Pains, 13. Six cabinet ministers were on the Russia’s Choice list but five, including three deputy premiers, ran for other parties and blocs.
80 Details here from Aleksandr Petrov, “Glavnaya tema: ‘menya vosprinyali kak yel’tsinskogo palacha’” (Main theme: “they took me for Yeltsin’s executioner”), Moskovskiye novosti, September 30, 2003.
81 The line of reasoning Kazannik pursued, and it is a debatable one, is that the government might have negotiated peacefully with the rebels on October 3, in the hours after their initial attack on the Ostankino television tower was repulsed. He knew that the trail of responsibility for “criminal orders,” if that is what they were, led back to Yeltsin as commander-in-chief, but prosecution of a sitting president was an “extremely complex” problem. Ibid.