8 Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire (New York: Random House, 1995), 223. At a public meeting in May 1990, someone passed Yeltsin a note asking if he thought Soviet television spent too much time on Raisa. He replied that he thought it did. “I spoke to Gorbachev about this. He was insulted.” Vladimir Mezentsev, “Okruzhentsy” (Entourage), part 3, Rabochaya tribuna, March 28, 1995.
9 Third Yeltsin interview.
10 Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire, 112, citing a conversation with Afanas’ev.
11 Grishin was already a candidate member of the Politburo when given the Moscow position in June 1967 and had to wait four years, until the 1971 party congress, before getting his full member’s seat. Yeltsin’s expectations are recounted in Viktor Manyukhin, Pryzhok nazad: o Yel’tsine i o drugikh (Backward leap: about Yeltsin and others) (Yekaterinburg: Pakrus, 2002), 59–60.
12 Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy (Life and reforms), 2 vols. (Moscow: Novosti, 1995), 1:370–71.
13 Oksana Khimich, “Otchim perestroiki” (Stepfather of perestroika), Moskovskii komsomolets, April 22, 2005.
14 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 95–96. His views on the tenacity of opposition to reform evolved rapidly. In April 1986 he discounted as “completely incorrect” the judgment “that the party has somehow cut itself off from the people.” “Vypiska iz vystupleniya t. Yel’tsina B. N. 11 aprelya s. g. pered propagandistami g. Moskvy” (Extract from the statement of comrade B. N. Yeltsin on April 11, 1986, before Moscow propagandists), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Materialy samizdata, July 18, 1986, 7.
15 Politburo transcript for January 19, 1987, in AGF (Gorbachev Foundation Archive, Moscow), KDPP (Kollektsiya “Kak ‘delalas” politika perestroiki” [The collection “How the policy of perestroika ‘was made’”]), 6 vols., 2:21–46; quotations here at 32–35, 44–46.
16 The transcript records a break in the discussion after Yeltsin’s remarks but gives no details. Yeltsin in his memoirs (Ispoved’, 97) described Gorbachev walking out of a Politburo meeting on his account, but misremembered it as occurring in October 1987.
17 In a never-printed interview in July 1988, Yeltsin said there had been an element of competition with Gorbachev in making his Moscow personnel changes. He added that he wished there had been time to do more and that additional district party secretaries were on his list to be removed. Vladimir Polozhentsev, “Privet, pribaltiitsy!” (Greetings, people from the Baltic), http://podolsk-news.ru/stat/elcin.php.
18 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 11, 97–98.
19 V. I. Vorotnikov, A bylo eto tak: iz dnevnika chlena Politbyuro TsK KPSS (But this is how it was: from the diary of a member of the Politburo of the CPSU) (Moscow: Sovet veteranov knigoizdaniya, 1995), 123. For more on Gorbachev’s reaction, see Vadim Medvedev, V komande Gorbacheva: vzglyad iznutri (In the Gorbachev team: a view from within) (Moscow: Bylina, 1994), 45–47; and V. I. Boldin, Krusheniye p’edestala: shtrikhi k portretu M. S. Gorbacheva (Smashing the pedestal: strokes of a portrait of M. S. Gorbachev) (Moscow: Respublika, 1995), 326. George W. Breslauer, Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 117, surmises that Yeltsin was unhappy that Gorbachev settled for a closing resolution by the January plenum of the Central Committee that was less radical than Yeltsin preferred. It is a good point, but the Politburo records show the men were in conflict before the committee convened.
20 Vorotnikov, A bylo eto tak, 123.
21 Yel’tsin, Ispoved’, 11–12.
22 Politburo transcripts, March 24, 1987 (AGF, KDPP, 2:154–55); April 23, 1987 (ibid., 241–42); April 30, 1987 (ibid., 264); May 14, 1987 (ibid., 305, 317–18); September 28, (ibid., 539).
23 Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 1:368.
24 Politburo transcript, October 15, 1987, in Volkogonov Archive (Project on Cold War Studies, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University). All quotations here are at 138–40.
25 Vladimir Gubarev, “Akademik Gennadii Mesyats: beregite intellekt” (Academician Gennadii Mesyats: conserve your intellect), Gudok, October 12, 2005.
