51 G. Shipit’ko, “B. Yel’tsin pytayetsya vosstanovit’ poryadok v koridorakh vlasti” (Boris Yeltsin tries to restore order in the corridors of power), Izvestiya, October 16, 1991. Deputy Premier Igor Gavrilov resigned on October 7 and Economics Minister Yevgenii Saburov on October 9. The acting chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbulatov, accused several ministers and advisers of incompetence and demanded their resignations, whereupon one of them, Sergei Shakhrai, stated that Khasbulatov was mentally unstable. Silayev was taken care of after December: Yeltsin appointed him Russian ambassador to the European Community in Brussels.
52 The “miracle worker” reference comes from Gennadii Burbulis, third interview, conducted by Yevgeniya Al’bats (August 31, 2001). Other information is from Poltoranin interview; interview with Ryzhov (September 21, 2001); and second interview with Yavlinskii (September 28, 2001). Poltoranin came closest to acceptance and wrote up a list of possible ministers, but withdrew because he felt he did not know enough about the economy.
53 Third Burbulis interview.
54 Gaidar’s mother was from Sverdlovsk and was the daughter of Pavel Bazhov, a distinguished writer of fairytales set in the Urals. She became friendly with Yeltsin’s mother when they were patients at a Moscow hospital. Yegor Gaidar, second interview with the author (January 31, 2002).
55 My reconstruction of the enlistment of Gaidar relies on accounts by him, Yeltsin, and Burbulis. Or see Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 163–64: “Why did I choose Yegor Gaidar? . . . Gaidar’s theories coincided with my private determination to travel the most painful part of the route [of economic reform] quickly. . . . If our minds were made up, it was time to get going!” For an alternative explanation based on envy and power-seeking, for which no evidence is cited, see Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2001), 240–41: “Gaidar’s appointment served Burbulis’s purpose, because it ensured that Yeltsin would not appoint someone who was either more popular than Burbulis . . . or more influential with Yeltsin . . . thus endangering Burbulis’s position at court. One of Yeltsin’s reasons for picking Gaidar for the job of ‘leading reformer’ was that his bland and aloof manner in public made him an unlikely future contender for elective office, even if his reform package were to turn out to be successful and popular.”
56 Yegor Gaidar, Dni porazhenii i pobed (Days of defeats and victories) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 1996), 105.
57 Moscow journalist Mikhail Berger, quoted in David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs : Wealth and Power in the New Russia (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002), 180.
58 “Obrashcheniye Prezidenta Rossii k narodam Rossii, k s”ezdu narodnykh deputatov Rossiiskoi Federatsii” (Address of the president of Russia to the peoples of Russia and the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Russian Federation), Rossiiskaya gazeta, October 29, 1991.
59 On November 3 and 4, Yeltsin remained in contact with Yavlinskii about the possibility of him taking the job. Gaidar says when he heard of it he felt “as if he had just jumped out from under the wheels of an onrushing train.” Yavlinskii broke off the negotiations and Gaidar was given the position. Gaidar, Dni porazhenii i pobed, 110.
60 Lyudmila Telen’, “Izbiratel’ Boris Yel’tsin” (Voter Boris Yeltsin), Moskovskiye novosti, October 21, 2003. This revealing interview is translated as “Boris Yeltsin: The Wrecking Ball,” in Padma Desai, ed., Conversations on Russia: Reform from Yeltsin to Putin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 79–94. Burbulis, born in 1945, was senior in the new group. Gaidar was born in 1956, Anatolii Chubais (the minister for privatization) in 1955, and Aleksandr Shokhin (labor minister and deputy premier) in 1957. As early as the summer of 1990, Yeltsin had promoted several men in their thirties into high economic posts in the RSFSR—Grigorii Yavlinskii (deputy premier), who was born in 1952, and Boris Fëdorov (finance minister), born in 1958.
61 See Chernyayev, 1991 god, 265; Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 99–102; and Sergei Filatov, Sovershenno nesekretno (Top nonsecret) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2000), 80. Ruslan Khasbulatov writes that Yeltsin was more upset at Gorbachev than at his Supreme Soviet: Chechnya: mne ne dali ostanovit’ voinu (Chechnya: they did not allow me to halt the war) (Moscow: Paleya, 1995), 20–21.
