The qualifying examinations Yeltsin took in August 1949 were considered relatively easy, as a chemistry portion was not required for the construction division—many students had not taken it in secondary school, although Yeltsin had. He had to pass a twenty-five-meter swimming test and a timed 100-meter run, neither of which gave him difficulty. Originally in the class of 1953, he was to finish the industrial- and civil-engineering stream in June of 1955, one of forty-nine (thirty-three men, sixteen women) to get out that year. The course of study was lengthened by one year in 1951, as the education ministry, wanting to improve engineering cadres, upped the time spent in all Soviet technical institutes from four years to five. Yeltsin lost more ground in the spring of 1952 when tonsillitis and rheumatic fever caused him to drop out of his third year; he was readmitted that fall and completed the year’s courses in 1952–53. The construction curriculum emphasized mathematics, physics, materials and soil science, and draftsmanship. The seven or eight hours of lectures per day were mandatory, as was a diploma project.
The polytechnic’s boarding students got by on measly stipends of 280 rubles a month—the price of a pair of men’s shoes—but there was no tuition and the residence halls, in a first for Yeltsin, had tap water and flush toilets. The canteen food was edible; if you had the rubles to spare, you could dine in a smart café where young women waited on the tables in starched white aprons and peaked caps. The discontinuation of wartime rationing and the efflorescence of “the spirit of victory” over Germany, a reminder of which was the POWs slaving away on the Sverdlovsk streets, kindled optimism in the student body. “There was confidence in the future, confidence that things would work out okay,” a schoolfellow of Yeltsin’s recounted. “We were not that demanding toward life, that is, it took little to satisfy us.”10 Fifteen percent of the students’ time was earmarked for military drills (Yeltsin’s specialty was tank operator) and 20 percent for instruction in the recondite science of Marxism-Leninism. Yeltsin met the foreign-language requirement by continuing to study German. It had little effect: He was to write in his Communist Party file that he read German and translated it with a dictionary, but in conversation he could not tell it and English apart.11
Although national politics did not seep much into the student life at UPI, this was not always so. In 1949–50 Stalin’s xenophobic propaganda campaign against “rootless cosmopolitan”—read, Jewish—influence made a stir, and several students of Jewish descent were expelled from UPI or forced out of dormitories.12 In 1953 the police arrested a twenty-year-old UPI student and Komsomol member, V. L. Okulov, for making disrespectful comments about Stalin. He was found guilty of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda in April 1953 and imprisoned for a year.13 March 9, 1953, the day of Stalin’s funeral, was a day of mourning at UPI. Classes were canceled and students and faculty, many of them weeping, gathered in front of the main building to hear eulogies.14 UPI students had one outlet for sometimes fairly risqué expression,
The costume Yeltsin donned almost every day of his first several years at the institute bespoke his origins: waterproofed canvas boots, hirsute wool trousers, and a velveteen jacket. He got an irregular allowance from his parents and potatoes and vegetables from their garden plot. Only once a month could he treat himself to the café. For pocket money, he unloaded railcars and did other menial jobs; during most summer breaks, he took paid internships. The puritanism breathed in at Berezniki had begun to mellow. Yeltsin entered into wagers about not cussing for a year at a time, and always collected, but he now drank beer and vodka in moderation. A fun-loving companion, he was disposed to gestures and the gifts his budget allowed. He was a practical joker and the life of the party at the “Komsomol weddings” into which many Soviet students, barely out of their teens, entered in the year or two before graduation. To impress a group of acquaintances, he dove clothed into a swimming pool. On a students’ steamer cruise on the Kama, he led three of his male friends in a knockabout
