40 The victims were sprayed with gunfire and bayoneted. Some had to be finished off with a shot to the head because precious stones sewn into their clothing deflected the blows. Yakov Yurovskii, the chief executioner and a party member since 1905, was guilt-stricken after the killings. The story is told in Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir M. Khrustalëv, The Fall of the Romanovs: Political Dreams and Personal Struggles in a Time of Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
41 The Andropov memo and Politburo resolution, as well as Yeltsin’s speculation that the timing was connected with the anniversary of the coronation, are in Yel’tsin, Marafon, 330–31. Yeltsin does not explain why the demolition did not occur in 1975, and Ryabov makes no mention of any aspect of it in his memoirs.
42 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 124–25.
43 The restrictions on plays and films are found at TsDOOSO, fund 4, register 107, file 118, 96. This was in addition to the filtering done by the Moscow authorities. The play, Dear Yelena Sergeyevna, by Lyudmila Razumovskaya, is about secondary-school graduates who, at their mathematics teacher’s birthday party, beseech her to change their grades and threaten to rape one of their number in the process. The play was censured by the Central Committee Secretariat in April 1983. It was made into a successful Soviet film by director El’dar Ryazanov in 1988. Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya,” 103, describes the measures on photocopiers.
44 Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya,” 84.
45 Valentin Luk’yanin, interview with the author (September 9, 2004). The Nikonov text had been cleared by the local censor assigned to the magazine. This scandal, together with an earlier case where the errant writer was Konstantin Lagunov, is thoroughly discussed in Aron, Yeltsin, 118–25.
46 Matt Taibbi, “Butka: Boris Yeltsin, Revisited,” http://exile.ru/105/yeltsin.
47 Quotation from Bobrova, “Yel’tsiny tozhe plachut.” Boris Yeltsin is said to have ordered Mikhail to tear down a toolshed on his out-of-town garden plot because it exceeded the state norm by a tiny amount. But after their mother’s death he did set Mikhail up in a studio apartment in the VIP complex by the Town Pond.
48 Irina Bobrova, “Boris bol’shoi, yemu vidnei” (Boris is a big shot, he knows better), Moskovskii komsomolets, January 31, 2007, says on the basis of inquiries in Berezniki that one of the sources of tension between Valentina and her husband, Oleg, was his belief that her brother could help them out in life. “Oleg Yakovlevich constantly reproached his wife for the fact that she felt shy about asking [Boris] for material assistance.”
49 Details from Bobrova, “Yel’tsiny tozhe plachut”; Natal’ya Konstantinova, Zhenskii vzglyad na kremlëvskuyu zhizn’ (A woman’s view of Kremlin life) (Moscow: Geleos, 1999), 171–83; and various interviews.
50 Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova, Boris Yeltsin: A Political Biography, trans. David Gurevich (New York: Putnam’s, 1992), 84–85; Gwendolyn Elizabeth Stewart, “SIC TRANSIT: Democratization, Suverenizatsiia, and Boris Yeltsin in the Breakup of the Soviet Union” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1995), 95.
51 Shadrina, “Yel’tsin byl krut.”
52 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 220. In a 1996 campaign document, Yeltsin is quoted as saying the prediction was made by an astrologer and for the year 1983. Prezident Yel’tsin: 100 voprosov i otvetov (President Yeltsin: 100 questions and answers) (Moscow: Obshcherossiiskoye dvizheniye obshchestvennoi podderzhki B. N. Yel’tsina, 1996), 78.
53 Galina Stepanova, party archivist, interview with the author (September 7, 2004).
54 Manyukhin, Pryzhok, 207.
55 Quotation from Tat’yana D’yachenko, “Yesli by papa ne stal prezidentom . . .” (If papa had not become president), Ogonëk, October 23, 2000. Other details from Yel’tsin, Marafon, 337; Bobrova, “Yel’tsiny tozhe plachut”; and interviews. For background on blat, see Alena Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favors: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchanges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). There is nothing about his daughters’ failed first marriages in Yeltsin’s memoirs. It was a painful subject, although Yeltsin welcomed his new sons-in-law and embraced the children from the second marriages. Tatyana married for a third time in 2001.
56 When the boy was born, Boris Nikolayevich pressed Khairullin to have him bear the Yeltsin surname. Khairullin has said in press interviews that he agreed with reluctance but on the understanding that a second child would have his family name.
