7 The American Jewish Handbook for 1980 was to estimate the Jewish population of Sverdlovsk that year to be 40,000. The 1989 census officially recorded 14,300 persons of Jewish nationality in Sverdlovsk oblast, fifth place in the Russian republic of the USSR. (Jewish was listed as nationality—that is, ethnicity—on Soviet passports.) Due mostly to emigration, the number declined to 6,900 in 2002, when it was fourth in the country.
8 The institute began as part of the new Urals State University in 1920 and for most of the time from 1925 to 1948 was called the Urals Industrial Institute. Its construction division, formed in 1929, functioned as a separate institute from 1934 to 1948. UPI was to be renamed Urals State Technical University (UGTU) in 1992 and now has 23,000 students.
9 Stroitel’nyi fakul’tet UGTU–UPI: istoriya, sovremennost’ (The construction division of UGTU–UPI: history and current situation) (Yekaterinburg: Real-Media, 2004), 12–20.
10 Yakov Ol’kov, interview with the author (September 12, 2004). In Sverdlovsk Germans built a firemen’s school, the central stadium, and housing, paved roads, and refaced city hall. The last prisoners were returned in 1955.
11 The claim about reading German with a dictionary is in “Lichnyi listok po uchëtu kadrov” (Personal certificate for the register of cadres) for Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, dated June 16, 1975; in TsDOOSO (Documentation Center for the Public Organizations of Sverdlovsk Oblast, Yekaterinburg), fund (fond) 4, register (opis’) 116, file (delo) 283, 4. The Documentation Center is the official title of the Sverdlovsk archive of the CPSU. According to a usually reliable source, a Russian journalist who covered him as president in the 1990s, Yeltsin was unable to distinguish the languages at that time. See Boris Grishchenko, Postoronnyi v Kremle: reportazhi iz “osoboi zony” (A stranger in the Kremlin: reportage from “the special zone”) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2004), 159–60.
12 Lidiya Solomoniya, interview with the author (September 11, 2004); Aleksandr Yuzefovich, Komanda molodosti nashei: zapiski stroitelya (Team of our youth: notes of a builder) (Perm: Fond podderzhki pervogo Prezidenta Rossii, 1997), 35, 49. Yakov Sverdlov, who died in 1919, was Jewish, but officials never got around to changing the name of the city in the late Stalin period. It persisted until September 1991, when Sverdlovsk reverted to the original Yekaterinburg; the province is still called Sverdlovsk oblast. In July 1957 three Sverdlovskers, already expelled from the party, were arrested for distributing anti-Semitic letters; they were released in 1964. One of their proposals was that the city be renamed. See V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko, eds., 58-10: nadzornyye proizvodstva Prokuratury SSSR po delam ob antisovetskoi agitatsii i propagande (Mart 1953–1991), annotirovannyi katalog (Article 58, section 10: the supervisory files of the USSR Procuracy about cases of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda [March 1953–1991], an annotated catalogue) (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond “Demokratiya,” 1999), 345.
13 Kozlov and Mironenko, 58-10, 41. Okulov was arrested on March 5, 1953, as Stalin lay dying in Moscow.
14 A. Ye. Pavlova, a Yeltsin classmate, is quoted in a recent book of reminiscences: “We were inculcated with faith in Stalin. We deified him from afar. When he spoke on the radio, we would run to listen—on our own, no one had to force us to do it. And, when he died, we cried out loud. It seemed to us that all was lost and nothing good would happen in future.” Vladimir Sutyrin, “Boris Yel’tsin i Ural’skii politekhnicheskii” (Boris Yeltsin and UPI), http://www.ural-yeltsin.ru/knigi/knigi_elcina/document427.
15 Details from Andrei Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin: svet i teni (Boris Yeltsin: light and shadows), 2 vols. (Sverdlovsk: Klip, 1991), 1:8–10; Irina Bobrova, “Yel’tsiny tozhe plachut” (The Yeltsins also cry), Moskovskii komsomolets, February 18, 2000; and Ol’kov and Solomoniya interviews.
16 Anatolii Yuzhaninov, quoted in Anna Veligzhanina, “Pervaya lyubov’ Borisa Yel’tsina” (Boris Yeltsin’s first love), Komsomol’skaya pravda, April 26, 2007. Yerina and Ustinov moved back to Berezniki and soon divorced.
17 Sutyrin, “Boris Yel’tsin i Ural’skii politekhnicheskii.”
18 Naina Yeltsina, second interview with the author (September 18, 2007); Bobrova, “Yel’tsiny tozhe plachut.” Naina was born in the village of Titovka, outside Orenburg, but grew up in the city. She also spent some of her childhood in Kazakhstan, the nearest republic in Central Asia.
19 Sutyrin, “Boris Yel’tsin i Ural’skii politekhnicheskii.”
