The nominee had to be confirmed by an absolute majority of 226 votes in the State Duma. The deputies were of no mind to oblige. The constitution’s Article 111 stated that if they rejected the president three times in the two weeks allowed, he was to disband the house and call a parliamentary election. Were there to be an initial turndown, it did not lay down whether he was free to resubmit the name of his preferred candidate. After Kiriyenko took only 143 votes on April 10, Yeltsin unflinchingly asserted that right and renominated him; in the second ballot, on April 17, Kiriyenko sank to 115 votes. Yeltsin pulled out all the stops on a third try. He hosted a roundtable for politicians in Catherine’s Hall of Kremlin Building No. 1, importuned leaders of the Duma factions, and got the Federation Council to sanction Kiriyenko. Vladimir Zhirinovskii of the nationalistic LDPR, with the third largest bloc of Duma votes, swung them to Yeltsin and Kiriyenko—to ensure political stability, he said (“A bad government is better than no government”), and for pecuniary benefit, it was widely believed.11 Nikolai Ryzhkov, Yeltsin’s old foe and now the kingpin of a small socialistic caucus, helped by rationalizing a positive vote as a strike “against the destruction of the Duma.” The Duma speaker, Gennadii Seleznëv of the KPRF, came out solidly in the affirmative and warned that dissolving the Duma for the first time ever would endanger the unity of Russia. “The president,” he said for good measure, “is tightening the screws on us and we have no alternative.”12 Seleznëv got the chamber to conduct the third ballot anonymously, enabling many communists and others to elude party discipline. Unpopular though Yeltsin was, he was able to play on fears by rank-and-file deputies that in a new election they might not secure nominations and seats, would have to campaign without their Duma office base, and would be blamed for economic side effects. As icing on the cake, Yeltsin went on television to say he had asked Pavel Borodin of the Presidential Business Department “to tend to the deputies’ problems” if they took a “constructive” approach to the confirmation vote—the problems being those of housing and perks. “One can only guess whether this should have been understood as responding to their material needs or as classic bribery.”13
The Duma knuckled under on April 24. When the division bells rang, 251 deputies voted to confirm Kiriyenko as head of government.14 Yeltsin showed him around his new office in the Russian White House. For them both, it was all downhill from here.
Yeltsin could not resist the temptation to make a few balancing ministerial changes, notably the removal of Chubais and of Anatolii Kulikov, the relatively conservative interior minister, and to insist that his ex-favorite Boris Nemtsov be retained as a deputy prime minister. That done, he gave Kiriyenko as much latitude in selecting cabinet members and defining program initiatives as Gaidar and Gennadii Burbulis had enjoyed in 1991–92. Passionately wanting him to succeed, Yeltsin conferred with Kiriyenko in the Kremlin or at Gorki-9 two or three days a week until his summer break.15 Vigorous young ministers took over finance (Mikhail Zadornov),16 economic coordination (Viktor Khristenko), tax collection (Boris Fëdorov), and labor (Oksana Dmitriyeva). Draft bills on economic liberalization were submitted to the Duma. In May Kiriyenko and Yeltsin’s chief of staff, Valentin Yumashev, seconded by Tatyana Dyachenko, asked Yeltsin to dismiss Pavel Borodin and get to the bottom of allegations of corruption in the Kremlin business directorate, and they had him almost sold on the idea. After a heart-to-heart with Borodin, the president ordered him to institute competitive bidding for future contracts but kept him in the job.17
