82 Ibid.
83 When Khasbulatov sent Yeltsin a letter in 1996 asking to be allowed to use a Kremlin medical clinic, Yeltsin agreed without hesitation. Yevgenii Kiselëv, “Plyaski na grablyakh” (Dancing on horse rakes), Moskovskiye novosti, September 30, 2003.
84 Kazannik had him released on bail pending trial due to his heart condition. Yeltsin objected (better to let him die in prison, he said) but let it be. After the amnesty, Barannikov asked Yeltsin to let him live in the apartment building in Krylatskoye in which the president’s family was to be registered, and Yeltsin was in favor, until Korzhakov talked him out of it. Petrov, “Glavnaya tema”; Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin, 143–44. Barannikov died in July 1995.
85 Ligachëv was elected in 1993. In 1995 he was joined in the communist fraction by Anatolii Luk’yanov. Nikolai Ryzhkov was also elected in 1995 and sat in an affiliated group.
86 See Paul Chaisty and Petra Schleiter, “Productive but Not Valued: The Russian State Duma, 1994–2001,” Europe-Asia Studies 54 (July 2002), 704; and Tiffany A. Troxel, Parliamentary Power in Russia, 1994–2001: President vs. Parliament (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
87 Thomas F. Remington, “Laws, Decrees, and Russian Constitutions: The First Hundred Years” (unpublished paper, Emory University, 2006). This does not count secret decrees, mostly, one assumes, in the national-security realm. The numbers refer only to “normative” decrees with wide consequences, as opposed to “nonnormative” rulings on particular cases. See also Remington, “Democratization, Separation of Powers, and State Capacity,” in Colton and Holmes, State after Communism, 261–98; and Scott Parrish, “Presidential Decree Authority in Russia, 1991–1995,” in John M. Carey and Matthew S. Shugart, eds., Executive Decree Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 62–103.
88 Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From, 168–69.
89 Giuliano, “Secessionism from the Bottom Up,” 286. The significance of Yeltsin’s triumph over his opponents at the center, and the contrast with Gorbachev’s weakness in 1990–91, is well drawn in Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From, chap. 6.
90 This had been Yeltsin’s intent all along, but the plan was upended by his dissolution of provincial legislatures in October 1993, which left half of the proposed representatives to the Federation Council without qualifying office. On the shift to direct election of governors, see Marc Zlotnik, “Russia’s Elected Governors: A Force to Be Reckoned With,” Demokratizatsiya/Democratization 5 (Spring 1997), 184–96.
91 “Mr. Yeltsin proposes that each of these homelands make a treaty with Russia ‘on an equal basis,’ agreeing on the division of power. His hope is that once they are given full responsibility for their decisions, they will see the folly of economic and political isolation, and the advantages of throwing in with Mr. Yeltsin for greater influence and efficiency. ‘I don’t know, perhaps you will decide to delegate your foreign relations to Russia,’ Mr. Yeltsin suggested. ‘Why should you keep 170 embassies in 170 countries?’” Bill Keller, “Kazan Journaclass="underline" Yeltsin’s Response to the Separatists,” New York Times, September 3, 1990. Shaimiyev has said that the evening of the Kazan speech Yeltsin asked his advice on what to do next. Shaimiyev suggested a working group to come up with a treaty, and Yeltsin agreed. Anna Rudnitskaya, “Stranno prinyali i stranno otklonili” (Adopted strangely and voted down strangely), http://www.izbrannoe.ru/6077.html.
92 Boris Bronshtein and Vasilii Kononenko, “Lidery demonstratiruyut v Kazani novyye podkhody, a okruzheniyie—ispytannyye priëmy pokazukhi” (The leaders demonstrate new approaches in Kazan, but their entourage engages in tested forms of make-believe), Izvestiya, June 1, 1994.
93 Kahn, Federalism, Democratization, and the Rule of Law, 165.
94 See especially ibid.; Matthew Crosston, Shadow Federalism: Implications for Democratic Consolidation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Yeltsin did reverse a good many decisions by provincial executives but he did not make it a practice to review provincial legislation. See V. O. Lunich and A. V. Mazurov, Ukazy Prezidenta RF (Decrees of the president of the Russian Federation) (Moscow: Zakon i pravo, 2000), 79–86.
95 “Prezident RF otvechayet na voprosy redaktsii ‘Truda’” (The president of the Russian Federation answers the questions of the editorial board of Trud), Trud, August 26, 1994.
96 Daniel S. Treisman, After the Deluge: Regional Crises and Political Consolidation in Russia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 75–79.
97 Baturin et al., Epokha, 397. A good example of toleration of socialistic policies was Lenin’s birthplace, Ul’yanovsk on the south Volga. Under the former CPSU boss Yurii Goryachev, the provincial government controlled food prices and prevented the export of foods to other areas until 1995.
98 Yeltsin, speaking in retirement about his relations with Rossel. Kirill Dybskii, “Ot pervogo litsa: vsë pravil’no” (From the first person: everything is fine), Itogi, January 30, 2006. In the Kursk election, the Kremlin supported the incumbent, Vasilii Shuteyev, whom Yeltsin had appointed in 1991. Of the four governors other than Rossel fired by Yeltsin in 1993, three—Yurii Lodkin in Bryansk, Vitalii Mukha in Novosibirsk, and Pëtr Sumin in Chelyabinsk—regained their posts through election in 1995–96. Aleksandr Surat in Amur oblast ran for election in 1997 but lost. Rossel began his comeback by being elected to represent Sverdlovsk in the Federation Council, the national upper house, in December 1993, one month after being fired by Yeltsin; in April 1994 he was chosen chairman of the oblast legislature.
99 Author’s interviews with Emil Pain (April 3, 2001), Leonid Smirnyagin (May 24, 2001), and Valentin Yumashev (several, 2006 and 2007). Prusak (born 1960) was the youngest member of this group and Matochkin (born 1931) the oldest. Yeltsin’s ties with Guvzhin, Shaimiyev, and Stroyev went back to his apparatchik roots. Mikhail Nikolayev of Sakha fell into the same category, but I omit him from the list because his relations with Yeltsin blew hot and cold. Yeltsin knew Fëdorov, Prusak, and Sobchak from the Soviet congress of deputies and the Interregional Deputies Group, and Nemtsov from the Russian parliament. Fëdorov was Russian minister of justice from 1990 until his resignation in 1993 but continued to have cordial dealings with Yeltsin after moving to Chuvashiya.
100 He made the remark at the opening of a tennis court, during a tour of Volga cities on the steamboat Rossiya. Yeltsin had asked Nemtsov to do something about the nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovskii, who was following in his wake in a rented boat, making anti-Yeltsin speeches at every stop. Nemtsov ordered the local water authorities to detain Zhirinovskii’s vessel in one of the Volga locks upriver of Nizhnii Novgorod—a peremptory resolution of the problem that Yeltsin loved and in which he surely saw a similarity to his own assertiveness. Yeltsin took Nemtsov with him to the United States and introduced him to President Clinton as a potential heir. “Boris Nemtsov—Yevgenii Al’bats o Yel’tsine” (Boris Nemtsov to Yevgeniya Al’bats about Yeltsin), Novoye vremya/New Times, April 30, 2007.