44 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 239–40.
45 These trends are summarized in Goohoon Kwon, “Budgetary Impact of Oil Prices in Russia,” http://www.internationalmonetaryfund.org/external/country/rus/rr/2003/pdf/080103.pdf; and Philip Hanson, “The Russian Economic Recovery: Do Four Years of Growth Tell Us That the Fundamentals Have Changed?” Europe-Asia Studies 55 (May 2003), 365–82.
46 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 232.
47 Michael R. Gordon, “A Rough Trip for Yeltsin Adds to Worries about Health,” New York Times, October 13, 1998.
48 Yekaterina Grigor’eva, “Vladimir Shevchenko: za rabotu s Yel’tsinym ya blagodaren sud’be” (Vladimir Shevchenko: I am grateful to fate for the chance to work with Yeltsin), Izvestiya, May 21, 2007.
49 Maksim Sokolov, “Zhenikhi v dome Yel’tsina” (The bachelors in Yeltsin’s home), ibid., June 17, 1999, 2.
50 Talbott, Russia Hand, 350.
51 Quotation from Yelena Dikun, “I prezident imeyet pravo na miloserdiye” (The president, too, has the right to charity), Obshchaya gazeta, October 15, 1998. Dikun, reporting on Yeltsin’s abbreviated trip to Central Asia, said he had come to resemble Brezhnev and Konstantin Chernenko, and urged family members to take matters into their own hands: “You have nothing to explain, you know perfectly well what is going on. Every person is entitled to grow old, anybody can get unwell—there is nothing in this to be ashamed of. But to turn the process of a person’s dying away into a public spectacle or attraction is inhuman and un-Christian.”
52 Mikhail Margelov, a then-official in the executive office, interview with the author (May 25, 2000).
53 Yeltsin reclaimed first place in the April poll and held it until September 1999, when Vladimir Putin took the lead.
54 On the phone conversation, revealed to the press by Samuel Berger, Clinton’s national-security adviser, see David Stout, “Yeltsin Dismisses Graft Allegations,” New York Times, September 9, 1999. Pacolli said in 2000 that he had arranged for credit cards for Yeltsin’s daughters in 1995; his guarantee expired in two months, and Mabetex paid no bills on their behalf. Carlotta Gall, “Builder in Yeltsin Scandal Discounts Its Gravity,” ibid., January 21, 2000. The Swiss case was closed in late 2000.
55 If anyone doubts the downward spiral in Chechnya, read as follows: “There was violation of human rights on a mass scale…. A slave market openly operated in the center of Grozny, with hundreds of people (mainly Chechens) held captive as hostages and subjected to violence. Kidnapping people for exchange acquired epidemic proportions, with more than 3,500 Chechens ransomed between 1996 and 1999. Bandits and terrorists killed thousands…. Not only did Chechnya become the criminal cesspool of the CIS countries; it also became a base for international terrorism. Terrorists from many different countries became active on its territory, with their activities financed by foreign extremist centers.” Dzhabrail Gakaev, “Chechnya in Russia and Russia in Chechnya,” in Richard Sakwa, ed., Chechnya from Past to Future (London: Anthem, 2005), 32.
56 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 253.
57 Yelena Dikun, “Bol’shaya kremlëvskaya rodnya: anatomiya i fiziologiya Sem’i” (The great Kremlin clan: anatomy and physiology of the Family), Obshchaya gazeta, July 22, 1999.
58 A hypercritical treatment of Russian politics in the 1990s, for example, writes of Berezovskii both buying the favors of the Yeltsins and blackmailing them. The former assertion rests largely on the testimony of Aleksandr Korzhakov, which is unreliable on the question of Berezovskii’s personal favors and presents. The latter assertion is not backed up by hard evidence and does not square with the impression in the book that Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana respected Berezovskii’s advice and sought it out. Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2001).
59 Leonid Dyachenko first came to public attention when an American investigation into money laundering discovered that he had two sizable bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. No charges were laid. Yurii Skuratov, the procurator general whom Yeltsin forced out of office in the spring of 1999, doubted that the president was informed about Dyachenko’s actions. Robert O’Harrow, Jr., and Sharon LaFraniere, “Yeltsin’s Son-in-Law Kept Offshore Accounts, Hill Told,” The Washington Post, September 23, 1999.
60 It was widely reported, for example, that Berezovskii favored the removal of Chernomyrdin in March 1998. But as replacement he advocated Ivan Rybkin, the former Duma speaker, and not Kiriyenko. Berezovskii, no more consistent in this regard than Yeltsin, was all for the reinstatement of Chernomyrdin in August 1998, and one American journalist wrote at the time that, “More than anyone else, Berezovskii brought back Chernomyrdin to power” (David Hoffman, “Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia,” The Washington Post, August 28, 1998). As we know, though, Chernomyrdin never came back to power because the Duma refused to confirm him. Primakov, who was confirmed, viewed Berezovskii as a schemer.
61 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 109–10. Yeltsin grumbled openly about Berezovskii’s pushiness at a ceremony for Russian cosmonauts in April 1998 (Hoffman, Oligarchs, 409–10).
62 Yeltsin says in his memoir that he had “several” meetings with Berezovskii. Berezovskii told me (interview, March 8, 2002) there were two conversations during the 1996 campaign and “very few” after that, three or four at most, plus a handful of larger gatherings at which both he and Yeltsin were present.
63 Berezovskii interview.
64 This statement is in Boris Berezovskii, Iskusstvo nevozmozhnogo (The art of the impossible), 3 vols. (Moscow: Nezavisimaya gazeta, 2004), 2:250.
65 “Berezovskii said to me that he had a program for psychological influence on Tanya. He could tell her for hours at a time how I, for example, was a scoundrel… and, since she was impressionable… she in the end had come to hate me fiercely.” Second Nemtsov interview. Berezovskii made the claim about meeting Dyachenko every two or three months in a press interview in 1999 (Berezovskii, Iskusstvo nevozmozhnogo, 1:142). It is possible that he was exaggerating.
66 Quotations from Berezovskii interview and third interview with Tatyana Yumasheva (January 25, 2007).
67 Valentin Yumashev, fourth interview with the author (January 22, 2007), and third Yumasheva interview; Reddaway and Glinski, Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms, 606. Dikun, “Bol’shaya kremlëvskaya rodnya,” reports yet another example tending in this direction: that Yumashev as Kremlin chief of staff led the opposition to the Sibneft-Yukos merger in 1998. But Yumashev has assured me there is not an ounce of truth to this story.
68 “Pravo pobedilo emotsii” (Law has beaten emotions), Rossiiskaya gazeta, November 6, 1998. The Duma brief was not as clear-cut as one might think. In neighboring Ukraine, where the constitutional wording and the status of the incumbent were almost identical, the court ruled in December 2003 in favor of President Leonid Kuchma. He chose not to seek re-election in 2004.
69 Naina Yeltsina, second interview with the author (September 18, 2007).