5 “Vstrecha v VKSh, 12 noyabrya 1988 goda s 14 do 18 chasov” (Meeting in the Higher Komsomol School, November 12, 1988, from 2:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M.), in RGANI (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, Moscow) (microform in Harvard College Library), fund 89, register 8, file 29, 41. Yeltsin said in this presentation that the two met twice, but it was unclear whether that was twice overall or twice during Andropov’s general secretaryship. My suspicion is that it was the former. Assuming they conferred after the anthrax incident in 1979, they likely had one meeting while Andropov was Soviet leader.
6 Ye. K. Ligachëv, Predosterezheniye (Warning) (Moscow: Pravda International, 1998), 410.
7 Arkadii Vol’skii, interview with the author (June 13, 2000); Ligachëv, Predosterezheniye, 410.
8 Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy (Life and reforms), 2 vols. (Moscow: Novosti, 1995), 1:291–92. As he often does, Gorbachev imputes to third parties the gossip about Yeltsin drinking, in this case “the observation” that he left a Supreme Soviet session on somebody’s arm. “Many people were upset—what was it? Well-wishers offered assurances that nothing special had occurred, it was just a little rise in his blood pressure. But [Sverdlovsk] natives smirked: This happens with our first secretary; sometimes he overdoes it a bit.”
9 Aleksandr Budberg, “Proigravshii pobeditel’: Mikhailu Gorbachevu—75” (Losing victor: Mikhail Gorbachev at 75), Moskovskii komsomolets, March 3, 2006.
10 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 67. While Yeltsin says he took “one or two seconds” to say no to Dolgikh, he also relates that he barely slept a wink that night and expected to hear from someone else shortly.
11 Tatyana Yumasheva, first interview with the author (July 15, 2001). When Tatyana first moved to Moscow in 1977, the only family friend her parents had there was one female classmate from UPI, who lived in a communal apartment. Boris Yel’tsin, Prezidentskii marafon (Presidential marathon) (Moscow: AST, 2000), 337.
12 Yeltsin’s favorite folk song was “Ural’skaya ryabinushka” (Urals Mountain Ash). In his third book of memoirs (Marafon, 183), Yeltsin mentioned his preference as a young man for the lilting compositions of Isaak Dunayevskii (1900–55), Mark Fradkin (1914–90), who was mainly a writer of movie scores, and the much decorated Aleksandra Pakhmutova (1929–), who was said to be Leonid Brezhnev’s favorite songwriter. The English translation of Yeltsin’s memoir, perhaps trying to make him look hipper, drops Pakhmutova from the listing and adds guitar-strumming troubadours Bulat Okudzhava (1924–97) and Yurii Vizbor (1934–84).
13 See Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 56–58. Vitalii Tret’yakov, “Sverdlovskii vyskochka” (Sverdlovsk upstart), part 3, Politicheskii klass, April 2006, 87, points out a “comradely” tradition in the Politburo of addressing one another as ty. Yeltsin was not aware of it and never ascribed this tendency to any member of the inner elite other than Gorbachev.
14 Grigorii Kaëta, a member of the bureau at the time, interview with the author (September 9, 2004).
15 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 71.
16 Ryabov, Moi XX vek, 56.
17 The city of Tomsk is 1,100 miles east of Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) and, like it, was closed to foreigners until 1990. This was because of secrecy surrounding the Tomsk-7 chemical combine, the USSR’s largest complex for producing weaponsgrade plutonium.
18 Viktor Manyukhin, Pryzhok nazad: o Yel’tsine i o drugikh (Backward leap: about Yeltsin and others) (Yekaterinburg: Pakrus, 2002), 54–56.
19 Kaëta interview.
20 Pilar Bonet, “Nevozmozhnaya Rossiya: Boris Yel’tsin, provintsial v Kremle” (The impossible Russia: Boris Yeltsin, a provincial in the Kremlin), Ural, April 1994, 105–6.
21 Stanislav Alekseyev, a party propagandist in Sverdlovsk at the time, interview with the author (June 24, 2004).
22 Manyukhin, Yeltsin’s last second secretary in Sverdlovsk, says (Pryzhok, 56) that Ligachëv at some point told Yeltsin he was going to be made a Central Committee secretary, and that Gorbachev forced the appointment to be made at the department level.
23 Gorbachev writes in Zhizn’ i reformy, 1:292, that, when the Politburo resolution appointing Yeltsin to the construction department was being drafted, the two had “a short conversation” in his office. “It has not stuck in my memory,” he adds snootily.
24 Kaëta interview.
25 Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy,1:292.
26 Yelena’s husband, Valerii Okulov, was reassigned to overseas Aeroflot flights, a nice promotion. Following Boris Yeltsin’s demotion in 1987, Okulov was not allowed to fly at all for three years.
