Yeltsin полностью

13 Yevgenii Krasnikov, “Demokraty sozdayut izbiratel’nyi blok” (The democrats create an electoral bloc), Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 17, 1993.

14 Details here from Yegor Gaidar, second interview with the author (January 31, 2002). Gaidar was bitter that Yeltsin did not tell him man-to-man that he would not show up for the Russia’s Choice congress, but delegated the honor to Viktor Ilyushin. Government minister Aleksandr Shokhin and presidential adviser Sergei Stankevich stood with Shakhrai on the list of his Party of Russian Unity and Accord.

15 Second Gaidar interview. As it was, Russia’s Choice received 16 percent of the votes in the party-list half of the vote, 7 points fewer than Vladimir Zhirinovskii’s LDPR. Shakhrai’s miniparty received 7 percent, which if added to the Russia’s Choice vote, even without assistance from Yeltsin, would have put it into a dead heat with the LDPR.

16 Author’s first interview with Sergei Filatov (May 25, 2000) and second interview with Aleksandr Yakovlev (March 29, 2004).

17 Ivan Rybkin, interview with the author (May 29, 2001); first Satarov interview.

18 Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin, 382.

19 Boris Yeltsin, second interview with the author (February 9, 2000).

20 Yevgenii Savast’yanov, interview with the author (June 9, 2000).

21 Viktor Chernomyrdin, interview with the author (September 15, 2000). As prime instigators, he mentioned the Korzhakov-Soskovets group and Viktor Ilyushin. See also Baturin et al., Epokha, 541.

22 Oleg Poptsov, Khronika vremën “Tsarya Borisa” (Chronicle of the times of “Tsar Boris”) (Moscow: Sovershenno sekretno, 1995), 220.

23 Fifteen percent of citizens polled by VTsIOM in September 1994 said they would vote for Yeltsin if an election were held tomorrow. This number slid to 6 percent in March 1995. A poll by the same organization in October 1994 revealed that a mere 3 percent had complete trust in Yeltsin, which were fewer than trusted six other politicians. Oleg Moroz, 1996: kak Zyuganov ne stal prezidentom (1996: how Zyuganov did not become president) (Moscow: Raduga, 2006), 10–11.

24 Lee Hockstader, “Yeltsin, Communist Zyuganov Launch Presidential Bids,” The Washington Post, February 16, 1996. The Russian media reported on January 22 that Gaidar was advising Yeltsin not to run at all, saying any Yeltsin candidacy would be “suicidal” and “the best present that could possibly be given to the communists.” Yeltsin wrote him a letter on February 2 asking him to be governed “not by emotions but by the interests of Russia.” Yegor Gaidar, Dni porazhenii i pobed (Days of defeats and victories) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 1996), 357–58.

25 The most thorough tracking polls on degrees of support were done by the VTsIOM organization, but it did none of this kind between April 1994 and March 1996. Not much seems to have changed through the end of 1995, and so we can take the April 1994 results as indicative. They showed a mere 4 percent of citizens unreservedly supporting Yeltsin and 4 percent supporting him “as long as he is leader of the democratic forces.” Thirty-one percent were opposed to him in varying degrees, while a plurality of 42 percent indicated ambivalence. In March 1996 supporters of Yeltsin, by this measure, still came to only 12 percent, with 41 percent opposed and ambivalent citizens coming to 38 percent. Yu, A. Levada et al., Obshchestvennoye mneniye—1999 (Public opinion—1999 edition) (Moscow: Vserossiiskii tsentr izucheniya obshchestvennogo mneniya, 2000), 100–101.

26 Author’s interviews with family members, which directly and persuasively contradict the assertion in Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin, 316–17, that the family pushed him to run in order to preserve their style of life. Boris Yel’tsin, Prezidentskii marafon (Presidential marathon) (Moscow: AST, 2000), 23, notes Naina’s opposition.

27 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 25.

28 Mark Urnov, interview with the author (May 26, 2000).

29 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 24–25.

30 Gaidar, Dni porazhenii i pobed, 362.

31 Anatolii Kulikov, Tyazhëlyye zvëzdy (Heavy stars) (Moscow: Voina i mir, 2002), 389.

32 L. N. Dobrokhotov, ed., Ot Yel’tsina k . . . Yel’tsinu: prezidentskaya gonka-96 (From Yeltsin . . . to Yeltsin: the 1996 presidential race) (Moscow: TERRA, 1997), 94.

33 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 26. In my interview with him (March 31, 2004), Soskovets would say only that he and Yeltsin had several conversations about the succession question. But Korzhakov (interview with the author, January 28, 2002) and Andranik Migranyan (interview, June 8, 2000) explicitly recalled Yeltsin saying in their hearing that he wanted Soskovets to be president after him.