Yeltsin полностью

34 In his first book of memoirs, in 1990, he did refer to perestroika as “a revolution from above,” but mostly to convey that it did not engage the populace and was resisted by established interests. Boris Yel’tsin, Ispoved’ na zadannuyu temu (Confession on an assigned theme) (Moscow: PIK, 1990), 103.

35 “B. N. Yel’tsin otvechayet na voprosy ‘Izvestii’” (B. N. Yeltsin answers the questions of Izvestiya), Izvestiya, May 23, 1991.

36 See Yel’tsin, Marafon, 236–37.

37 “Obrashcheniye prezidenta k sograzhdanam.” The quotation is from Mayakovsky’s 1918 poem “Left March,” a celebration of the 1917 Revolution.

38 These events are described in Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 654–57. On August 23 patrolmen and deputies had to escort Yurii Prokof’ev, Yeltsin’s successor as Moscow first secretary, from the building of the city party committee adjacent to the Central Committee, after demonstrators refused to let him leave.

39 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 166 (italics added).

40 Lyudmila Pikhoya, interview with the author (September 26, 2001).

41 Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, “Russian Archives in Transition: Caught between Political Crossfire and Economic Crisis,” International Research and Exchanges Board, Working Paper, January 1993, 3; conversations with Jonathan Sanders. One mentally deranged American from the Vietnam era was discovered; he stayed in Russia.

42 Mark Kramer, “The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland: Reassessments and New Findings,” Journal of Contemporary History 33 (April 1998), 165.

43 Benjamin B. Fischer, “Stalin’s Killing Field,” https://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/winter99–00/art6.html. For some reason, the Katyn massacre had a special resonance for Yeltsin. He had tears in his eyes at the meeting with the journalists in Moscow. In Warsaw, Fischer maintains, he was likely inspired by Willy Brandt, who as chancellor of West Germany in 1970 fell to his knees after placing a wreath at a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto destroyed by the Nazis in 1943. Gorbachev acknowledged Soviet responsibility for the Katyn deaths in 1990 but said Lavrentii Beriya, the head of the secret police, made the decision. The documents given to Wałesa in 1992 verify that the decision was taken in March 1940 by Stalin and the Politburo, six of whose members signed the resolution. Soviet propaganda before Gorbachev had claimed that German troops killed the captive Poles.

44 “Beseda zhurnalistov s prezidentom Rossii” (Conversation of journalists with the president of Russia), Izvestiya, July 15, 1992.

45 In the former East Germany, all citizens were in 1991 given the right to inspect their files in the archives of the Stasi security service. Millions did so, with devastating results. “There have been countless civil suits initiated when victims uncovered the names of those who had denounced and betrayed them, and many families and friendships were destroyed.” John O. Koehler, “East Germany: The Stasi and Destasification,” Demokratizatsiya/Democratization 12 (Summer 2004), 391. But the policy did shatter the police state, which never happened in Russia.

46 This point is well brought out in Samuel H. Baron and Cathy A. Frierson, eds., Adventures in Russian Historical Research: Reminiscences of American Scholars from the Cold War to the Present (Armonk, N.Y.: Sharpe, 2003).

47 Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2002), 162. Yeltsin introduced Volkogonov to Bill Clinton at a meeting in Moscow several months before the general died of cancer. Volkogonov spoke about his work, and “Yeltsin’s face took on a look I’d never seen there before: one of unadulterated compassion, affection, admiration, and sorrow.” Ibid.

48 Aleksandr Yakovlev, second interview with the author (March 29, 2004). On the process, see Natal’ya Rostova, “Vozhdi ochen’ toropilis’” (The leaders were in a big hurry), Nezavisimaya gazeta, October 26, 2001.

49 A variation on the theme that would have been more relevant to Russia was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But it was appointed only in 1995, after the Russian debate had peaked, and I am unaware of any serious exploration of its applicability. In Latin America after military rule, there have been similar efforts in countries such as Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, and Uruguay.