78 Mikhail Poltoranin, interviewed in Prezident vseya Rusi (The president of all Russia), documentary film by Yevgenii Kiselëv, 1999–2000 (copy supplied by Kiselëv), 4 parts, part 2.
79 All quotations from “Energichno vesti perestroiku.”
80 Yurii Belyakov, the second secretary, and Yurii Karabasov, the gorkom’s secretary for ideological matters, also spoke, and were less forgiving than Nizovtseva. All three secretaries stressed the costs to them and to the Moscow organization of Yeltsin’s refusal to consult them before making his attack. Belyakov, whom Yeltsin recruited from Sverdlovsk, did credit him for his hard work and leadership, but this, Belyakov said, made the boss’s change of position even harder to take. And Yeltsin’s name was now being used by “dubious elements,” at home and abroad, to stir up scandal.
81 Comment by Naina Yeltsina during my third interview with Boris Yeltsin: “They all said, ‘Well, the system made us cripples,’ that is, they all considered this [the attack] incorrect.”
82 Poltoranin in Prezident vseya Rusi. Gorbachev’s actions are not mentioned in the official account. He said in his memoirs (Zhizn’ i reformy, 1:375) that some of the speeches at the plenum had left him with a bad taste in his mouth. He also commended Yeltsin for taking the punishment and behaving “like a man.”
83 Poltoranin in Prezident vseya Rusi. Before that, Gorbachev evidently came over and comforted him.
84 Second Yeltsina interview.
85 Poltoranin interview.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1 Boris Yel’tsin, Ispoved’ na zadannuyu temu (Confession on an assigned theme) (Moscow: PIK, 1990), 142–43.
2 Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1962), 100–101.
3 A first-mover advantage is that achieved by the first firm to offer a new product or service, or by the first player to enter into some other kind of competition for resources. There is considerable controversy over the magnitude of the advantage in specific contexts. See Herbert Gintis, Game Theory Evolving: A Problem-Centered Introduction to Modeling Strategic Behavior (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); and Martin J. Osborne, An Introduction to Game Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
4 Yu, M. Baturin et al., Epokha Yel’tsina: ocherki politicheskoi istorii (The Yeltsin epoch: essays in political history) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2001), 53. On the forgeries, petitions, and rallies, see also Andrei Goryun, Boris Yel’tsin: svet i teni (Boris Yeltsin: light and shadows), 2 vols. (Sverdlovsk: Klip, 1991), 2:7; Nikolai Zen’kovich, Boris Yel’tsin: raznyye zhizni (Boris Yeltsin: various lives), 2 vols. (Moscow: OLMA, 2001), 1:336–37; Leon Aron, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 220–22; and Lev Osterman, Intelligentsiya i vlast’ v Rossii, 1985–1996 gg. (The intelligentsia and power in Russia, 1985–96) (Moscow: Monolit, 2000), 31.
5 Mikhail Poltoranin, interviewed in Prezident vseya Rusi (The president of all Russia), documentary film by Yevgenii Kiselëv, 1999–2000 (copy supplied by Kiselëv), 4 parts, part 2; and Poltoranin, interview with the author (July 11, 2001).
6 A. S. Chernyayev, Shest’ let s Gorbachevym (Six years with Gorbachev) (Moscow: Progress, 1993), 175.
7 This point is made in Vitalii Tret’yakov, “Sverdlovskii vyskochka” (Sverdlovsk upstart), part 7, Politicheskii klass, August 2006, 103.
8 See Yegor Gaidar, Gibel’ imperii: uroki dlya sovremennoi Rossii (Death of an empire: lessons for contemporary Russia) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006), 190–97. Gaidar traces the revenue crunch to Saudi Arabia’s decision in 1981, in exchange for American military backing, to boost its oil output and thereby restrain global prices. As he shows, Soviet specialists were well apprised of this trend.
9 Aleksandr Kapto, Na perekrëstkakh zhizni: politicheskiye memuary (At life’s crossroads: political memoirs) (Moscow: Sotsial’no-politicheskii zhurnal, 1996), 192.
10 Razin, called Russia’s Robin Hood by some, was quartered alive in Red Square in 1671, by order of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich. Catherine the Great had Pugachëv beheaded in the same place in 1775. Pugachëv’s uprising began in the southern Urals and got as far as the town of Zlatoust, about 300 miles from Butka.
