33 Andrei Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin: svet i teni (Boris Yeltsin: light and shadows), 2 vols. (Sverdlovsk: Klip, 1991), 1:8. Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana does not find the story of the siblings being sent to the restaurant a credible one, and surmises that Goryun misunderstood Klavdiya Yeltsina in their interview. Tatyana heard many stories about hardship from her grandparents but never this one. Asking neighbors for help would have been much more acceptable conduct. Tatyana Yumasheva, second interview with the author (September 11, 2006). Since Valentina Yeltsina was born only in 1944, she could not have been active in the search for food during the war years.
34 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 21. The hay mowing was one of many behavioral ties to village life. Fifty years later, as president of Russia, Yeltsin still owned two scythes (Den’ v sem’e prezidenta).
35 Verbova, “Za tysyachi kilometrov.”
36 See Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (New York: Norton, 1969), 125. I learned about Nikolai’s mistreatment of his wife from a number of interviews. Tatyana Yumasheva, his granddaughter, confirmed it in my second interview with her.
37 Second Yeltsin interview.
38 Irina Bobrova, “Boris bol’shoi, yemu vidnei” (Boris is a big shot, he knows better), Moskovskii komsomolets, January 31, 2007. Moskovskii komsomolets has over the years made it a specialty to present unflattering and often untrue information about Boris Yeltsin and his family. In this case, the sentiment expressed by Boris Andrianovich seems to have been accurately reported.
39 Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin, 1:6.
40 Neverov, “Otets prezidenta,” says Nikolai’s personnel file contained references to twenty-eight official punishments he had meted out to workers under his supervision—for poor bricklaying, negligence, and falsifying records. But, “He was always orderly and smart in his appearance, and I cannot remember him ever raising his voice or losing his temper.” Neverov says, without providing details, that he and Nikolai were both disciplined in January 1961 for exceeding the wage fund.
41 Second Yeltsin interview.
42 Yeltsin’s participation in approved youth activities was strongly borne out in my interview with Sergei Molchanov: “Yeltsin was in the active group.” He took part in Komsomol meetings, asked questions, and made comments.
43 Quotation from Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 24. Materials in the museum of the Pushkin School, to which Yeltsin transferred in 1945, show that thirteen of twenty-three who finished the school in June 1941 (including two girls) went straight to the army from their graduation ball. Three teachers also shipped out.
44 Quotation from second Yeltsin interview. His interest and the notebooks are reported in Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin, 1:7, from a conversation with Mikhail Yeltsin. None of this ever made Boris Yeltsin a great expert on the history of the revolution. When an American journalist tried in the late 1980s to engage him in conversation about the Mensheviks and other non-Bolshevik factions, Yeltsin was not familiar with the groups and the names of their leaders. Jonathan Sanders, interview with the author (January 21, 2004).
45 Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov, Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 374 (italics added).
46 Boris Yeltsin, third interview with the author (September 12, 2002). Aleksei Tolstoy (1883–1945), a distant cousin of Leo Tolstoy, published his novel in three parts between 1929 and 1945. Yeltsin may also have been familiar with the 1910 silent-film classic Peter the Great, directed by Vasilii Goncharov, which was often shown in Soviet cinemas with the Petrov movie. His admiration for Peter put him at odds with the Old Believer tradition, in which Russia’s first emperor was seen as the Antichrist.
47 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 21.
48 Bartsits, “Shkol’nyye gody.”
49 Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin, 1:8.
50 Verbova, “Za tysyachi kilometrov.”
51 In “Istoriya shkoly No. 1” (History of School No. 1), typescript, museum of Pushkin School, 9.
52 Unpublished bulletin for class reunion by Tatyana Babiyan, in the school museum.
53 Facts and figures from the school museum and the Berezniki Museum of the History of Education.
54 Quotation from Molchanov interview. Khonina is the only teacher Yeltsin gave by name in Ispoved’ (23), where he called her a “marvelous” mentor.
