34 Sergei Stepashin, interview with the author (June 14, 2001).
35 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 350.
36 Tatyana Yumasheva, third interview with the author (January 25, 2007). The dilution of the wine was done with Yeltsin’s consent. Aleksandr Korzhakov claims that in 1995 he had kitchen staff secretly water down some bottles of vodka to half strength, and that Yeltsin fired several of them for the ruse. Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin, 303–5.
37 Chazov asserts that Yeltsin violated the restrictions less than a year after his operation, but that in the late 1990s “he finally came to observe the regime and recommendations of the doctors.” Chazov, Rok, 277. When Yeltsin met with Bill Clinton in Helsinki in March 1997, he was distracted the first evening and consumed a number of glasses of wine; come morning, he “had regained his color and vigor” and seized the initiative in negotiations. At their next meeting, in Birmingham in May 1998, Yeltsin gave, “in both senses of the word, his most sober performance to date.” Talbott, Russia Hand, 237–38, 269. Talbott records no drinking on Yeltsin’s part after Helsinki, and even there the amount was hardly huge and some of it may have come in the form of adulterated wine.
38 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 350.
39 Third Yumasheva interview.
40 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 82.
41 Vladimir Potanin, interview with the author (September 25, 2001).
42 Those adjustments rarely included strikes or other collective action, mostly because ordinary people could not sort out which culprits to blame for their troubles. See Debra Javeline, Protest and the Politics of Blame: The Russian Response to Unpaid Wages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). See also Padma Desai and Todd Idson, Work without Wages: Russia’s Nonpayment Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000).
43 Kulikov made his allegations about the Russian Legion in a press conference on October 16. There are more details in Kulikov, Tyazhëlyye zvëzdy, 469–75. Chubais took the charges seriously and was taken by Lebed’s statement to the media that he expected to be president of Russia before 2000, the year the second Yeltsin term was to expire. He communicated his views to Yeltsin by memorandum, since the president did not feel well enough to meet with him. First Chubais interview.
44 Quotations from Yel’tsin, Marafon, 74, 77. In addition to stylistic aspects, Lebed shared some physical features with Yeltsin. His nose had been broken repeatedly in boxing matches, and as a party trick he flattened it against his face “like a pancake.” Michael Specter, “The Wars of Aleksandr Ivanovich Lebed,” New York Times Magazine, October 13, 1996.
45 The two had a relationship. Lebed had kept up communication with Korzhakov after his dismissal. When Lebed resigned from his Duma seat, representing Tula province, in order to take up his position with Yeltsin, Korzhakov declared his candidacy. Lebed accompanied Korzhakov to Tula and introduced him as his favored candidate. Korzhakov eventually won the election.
46 Valentin Yumashev, third interview with the author (September 13, 2006).
47 Baturin et al., Epokha, 773–74.
48 Yeltsin’s chief of staff at the time, Valentin Yumashev, who was new to the job and was rarely involved in security decisions, is quite sure that Yeltsin had lost patience with Rodionov and went in intent on removing him. Third Yumashev interview. For background analysis, see Viktor Baranets, Yel’tsin i yego generaly (Yeltsin and his generals) (Moscow: Sovershenno sekretno, 1997); and Dale R. Herspring, The Kremlin and the High Command: Presidential Impact on the Russian Military from Gorbachev to Putin (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2006).
49 Rodionov lamented to journalists that the meeting was conducted “in the spirit of a session of the bureau of a [CPSU] obkom.” He had told Yeltsin a few days before, he said, that he needed thirty minutes for his report, and the president had not objected. Rodionov claimed that Yeltsin further sliced his time allotment to ten minutes after Rodionov protested the fifteen-minute quota, and then called for a show of hands on dismissing him. Rodionov tried to leave the room at that point but Yeltsin ordered him to stay. Vladimir Kiselëv, “Posle otstavki” (After retirement), Obshchaya gazeta, May 29, 1997.
50 Fragments of Yeltsin’s remarks can be found in “Yel’tsin o natsional’noi ideye” (Yeltsin on the national idea), Nezavisimaya gazeta, July 13, 1996; and Mikhail Lantsman, “Prezident poruchil doverennym litsam naiti natsional’nuyu ideyu” (The president assigned his campaign aides to find a national idea), Segodnya, July 15, 1996.
51 Stepan Kiselëv, “Georgii Satarov: natsional’naya ideya—eto nebol’no” (George Satarov says the national idea will not hurt anyone), Izvestiya, July 19, 1996.
52 Details in Bronwyn McLaren, “Big Brains Bog Down in Hunt for Russian Idea,” Moscow Times, August 9, 1997; Michael E. Urban, “Remythologising the Russian State,” Europe-Asia Studies 50 (September 1998), 969–92; Kathleen E. Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia: Politics and Memory in the Yeltsin Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 158–65; and Andrew Meier, Black Earth: A Journey through Russia after the Fall (New York: Norton, 2003), 338. The anthology is Georgii Satarov, ed., Rossiya v poiskakh idei: analiz pressy (Russia in search of an idea: analysis of the press) (Moscow: Gruppa konsul’tantov pri Administratsii Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 1997). Yeltsin did not mention the national-idea commission in his annual address to parliament, in March 1997, or in the final volume of his memoirs in 2000.
53 Andrei Zagorodnikov, “Svyato mesto pusto ne byvayet” (A holy place is never empty), Nezavisimaya gazeta, July 30, 1996.
54 First Chubais interview.
55 Smith, Mythmaking, 84.
56 Askar Akayev, interview with the author (September 29, 2004).
57 Yeltsin in Marafon, 396, mentioned one invitation, but family members in interviews said there were several.
58 Valentin Yumashev, second interview with the author (September 11, 2006).
59 S. Alekhin, “Boris Yel’tsin: sokhranit’ kul’turu—svyataya obyazannost’” (Boris Yeltsin thinks it is a sacred duty to conserve our culture), Rossiskaya gazeta, June 10, 1997; Viktoriya Shokhina and Igor’ Zotov, “Vizit” (Visit), Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 7, 1997.
60 Russians favored reburial by 48 percent to 38 percent when first surveyed in March 1997 and by as much as 55 percent to 34 percent in July 1998. In August 1999 the percentages for and against were tied at 41. A. Petrova, “Lenin’s Body Burial,” http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/rus_im/zahoronenie_v_i_lenina/eof993304.
61 An American journalist aptly remarked that some on the Russian left thought communism was only slumbering and that Lenin, “lying in his glass coffin like Sleeping Beauty, is keeping the movement alive.” Alessandra Stanley, “Czar and Lenin Share Fate: Neither Can Rest in Peace,” New York Times, April 9, 1997.
62 Boris Yeltsin, second interview with the author (February 9, 2002).