The scenario of a tabula rasa hanging there, waiting for change to be written on it, was overdone from the beginning. It faded in Yeltsin’s first term—in fact, in the initial months of his first term—as resistances to change and to the agents of change multiplied. While no one resistance was an absolute, together they pushed Russia toward compromise though not desertion of the Great Leap Outward. They were twofold: external to Yeltsin, that is, located in his environment of operations; and internal, or dictated by his preferences and his perceptions of where he and Russia stood.
Exogenous constraints started with the fact that Yeltsin was nowhere near the sole winner from the dismemberment of communist authoritarianism. The Soviet collapse unshackled and energized actors who had come out of the woodwork with him and now clamored for their share of the spoils. As standard procedures were overwhelmed, the leader also had trouble employing institutional resources to attain his goals. The consummate resource for any politician in government is the state. In Yeltsin’s Russia, indiscipline, uncertainty, and decolonization demoralized and corrupted this resource and converted quotidian chores into an ordeal. The irony was superb. As with transitional leaders in many places and times, it dawned on Yeltsin that “the fluidity of the situation both empowers and weakens individuals,” hampering satisfaction of the very aspirations the environment has stirred up.5
Up to the 1991 watershed, Yeltsin as a communist heretic and then an anti-communist insurgent held a card none of his rivals had—the trust and affection of the powerless. This is not to say they were with him unanimously or unreservedly. In July of that year, the best-known polling organization in the Soviet Union, Yurii Levada’s VTsIOM (Center for the Study of Public Opinion), plumbed societal attitudes toward him. Confidence in Yeltsin, the survey showed, was unevenly distributed and was for millions contingent on other considerations. Twenty-nine percent of the interviewees were emotive supporters (“I fully support Yeltsin’s views and positions”), while another 11 percent assented “as long as he is leader of the democratic forces” in the country. This core constituency of 40 percent was well short of a majority and nearly 20 percentage points less than his vote total in the June presidential election. Eleven percent of Russians gave Yeltsin the most unfavorable evaluations (they were not supporters of his or would support anyone other than him). Many more than opposed him outright, and almost as many as supported him, gave ambivalent answers. They either were disappointed former aficionados (7 percent), found him unappealing but hopefully “useful to Russia” in the future (16 percent), or supported him “due to the absence of other worthy political figures” (15 percent). Yeltsin had climbed the heights of power only with the consent of a host of crosspressured citizens.6
Later studies using the same method traced a hemorrhaging of support. By March 1992, barely two months into his market reforms, the VTsIOM respondents placing Yeltsin in the topmost category had been sliced to 11 percent and his core constituency to 20 percent, or half what it was in July 1991. Those solidly against him were up to 18 percent, and those voicing ambivalence were now a plurality of 37 percent. By January 1993, only 5 percent of Russians were fully with him, 11 percent gave him qualified support, 22 percent were opposed, and a majority, 51 percent, were on the fence.7
In political terms, the most shocking thing about shock therapy was that it laid bare the limits of the nationwide consensus. Russians were united on the necessity of doing something about the economy and about instability in all things political and constitutional; on what was to be done, they were disunited. Bearish economic news and the whittling down of Yeltsin’s mass base emboldened elite players who had principled objections to his reform program, or who found it expedient to take up arms. The first yelps of criticism came even before price liberalization took effect, and some were from members of the president’s winning coalition, not from unreconstructed communists. Aleksandr Rutskoi, the running mate to Yeltsin a half-year before and now his vice president, spoke against headlong marketization on a tour of Siberian towns in late November 1991. In an interview with the newspaper Nezavisimaya gazeta on December 18, he declared that the government had been turned over to amateurs, “lads in pink trunks and yellow boots” who were hurling Russia toward disaster. Ruslan Khasbulatov, just chosen as parliamentary chairman, chimed in several weeks into the new year, and the Supreme Soviet adopted resolutions attacking the government.
In February and March of 1992, as a second planned miniwave of decontrol of prices drew nigh, this one aimed at oil and the energy sector, factory directors and bureaucrats from state industry campaigned to preempt it. Gaidar, elevated to first deputy premier by Yeltsin on March 2, cringed: “Powerful pressure mounted on the president. He was deluged daily by foot-messengers reporting to him what a fearful misadventure, if not perfidy, these monetarists were starting.”8 The Congress of People’s Deputies took up the mantra when it convened in April and considered a motion to dismiss four economic ministers. Gaidar took Yeltsin off guard by standing up on April 13 to inform the deputies the entire cabinet was stepping down if the motion passed. Khasbulatov and his legislators did a volte face the next day. Yeltsin wrote in Notes of a President that the Gaidar move was unwelcome news to him, but he gave high grades to his understudy’s theatrical sense: “Yegor Timurovich grasped the nature of the congress as a political spectacle, a big circus, where only the most unexpected and abrupt thrusts would carry the day.”9 Gaidar recalls that Yeltsin, who was still officially prime minister, “shook his head in pique and doubt yet accepted the decision.” Gaidar’s sponsor, Gennadii Burbulis, whom Yeltsin demoted in April from first deputy premier without explanation (he stayed on as state secretary), was dubious about the threat. Says Gaidar, “Gennadii Eduardovich, who had worked with Boris Nikolayevich much longer than me and knew him better, understood that our demand was addressed not only to the congress but to the president.”10
The reprieve lasted only a few weeks. In a preview of what he would do again and again, Yeltsin spoke to Gaidar about introducing armaments specialist Yurii Skokov or Sverdlovsk partocrat Oleg Lobov into the cabinet “for equipoise” (dlya ravnovesiya). The suggestion “was proudly rejected.”11 On May 30, at a Kremlin meeting on energy policy, Yeltsin announced that he was relieving the young minister for the branch, Vladimir Lopukhin, who was in favor of laissez-fire and was one of the four on the congress’s blacklist. Writes Yeltsin: “I think back to two faces: one was scarlet, almost vermilion—that was Gaidar; the other was pale as a sheet—that was Lopukhin. It was difficult to look at them.”12 Appointed in Lopukhin’s stead and awarded the rank of deputy premier was Viktor Chernomyrdin, an engineer and red director from the Urals; two other experienced managers, Vladimir Shumeiko and Georgii Khizha, were brought in as deputy premiers in mid-June.
Yeltsin did not consult Gaidar on the Lopukhin firing. He knew, Gaidar says, that Gaidar would have resigned if given early warning. Gaidar considered quitting but was talked out of it by friends. The promotion to acting prime minister on June 15 was little solace. Anyone could see he and Burbulis had been taken down a peg.13 There was further evidence one month later when Yeltsin nominated, and the Supreme Soviet confirmed, Viktor Gerashchenko as chairman of the Central Bank of Russia. Gerashchenko, the last head of the USSR’s state bank, was at odds with the Gaidar brain trust’s tight-money policy and flooded industry and agriculture with cheap credits. Inflation, having subsided in the spring, took off again that autumn.14