Yeltsin полностью

4 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 119–21. The serving ministers on Yeltsin’s list were Nikolai Aksënenko (railways), Vladimir Bulgak (communications), and Sergei Kiriyenko (fuel and energy). To legislators and other politicians on April 7, he mentioned as serious candidates Yurii Luzhkov (mayor of Moscow), Yegor Stroyev (governor of Orël province and chairman of the Federation Council), and Dmitrii Ayatskov (Saratov governor), as well as Bulgak, but said nothing about the others whom he later mentioned in the memoir.

5 Ibid., 120–21.

6 In 1984 Nikolayev, as commander of a motorized rifle division in the Urals Military District, spoke at a meeting organized by the Sverdlovsk obkom of the CPSU. First Secretary Yeltsin liked the presentation and said he had “a brilliant future.” Igor’ Oleinik, “Andrei Nikolayev: genshtabist v politike” (Andrei Nikolayev: a General Staff officer in politics), http://www.lebed.com/1999/art997.htm. In 1997 Nikolayev submitted his resignation to Yeltsin in an attempt to gain an expression of support. Yeltsin surprised Nikolayev by accepting: “I don’t like it when people pressure me in this way.” Yel’tsin, Marafon, 121.

7 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 121.

8 Sergei Kiriyenko, interview with the author (January 15, 2001). In 1994 Kiriyenko spoke as a banker at a dinner for Yeltsin hosted by Nemtsov. Yeltsin asked if he would like to move to Moscow but Nemtsov objected. In August 1997 Kiriyenko, in Nemtsov’s company, saw the president at Volzhskii Utës and was invited to dine with the family.

9 Yeltsin’s memoir descriptions of them are similar in many ways, but in volume three (Marafon, 121–22) he contrasts Kiriyenko’s practical experience with Gaidar’s lack thereof. He exaggerates the difference and also misleads in speaking of them as being of “a different generation.” They were born only six years apart, and when Gaidar was made acting premier in 1992 he was seven months older than Kiriyenko was when Yeltsin nominated him in 1998.

10 This is the sequence as reported in my interview with Kiriyenko, whose memory I trust most on these events. In Marafon Yeltsin said he met with Kiriyenko before Chernomyrdin. A recently adopted law on governmental organization specified that only a first deputy premier could be appointed as acting prime minister. Yeltsin was unaware of this detail and, after signing his initial decree, had to retrace his steps, make Kiriyenko a first deputy premier, and then promote him.

11 Quotation from Vladimir Zhirinovskii, interview with the author (January 22, 2002). That the Kremlin paid the LDPR money is widely believed in Moscow. Two persons who served in very high official posts in 1998 said in interviews that cash was provided from pro-government businesses and from a covert item in the federal budget.

12 Ivan Rodin, “Kommunisty predlagayut reshit’ uchast’ Dumy otkrytym golosovaniyem” (The communists suggest that the Duma make its decision by open vote), Nezavisimaya gazeta, April 24, 1998.

13 Baturin et al., Epokha, 754.

14 Only twenty-five voted against; almost 200 spoiled ballots, abstained, or stayed out of Moscow; twelve sent in written declarations in favor, which were not counted in the total. Since the ballot was secret, the party breakdown is not known with certainty. But journalists estimated twenty to twenty-five KPRF deputies broke with Gennadii Zyuganov to support Kiriyenko. See Ivan Rodin, “Duma progolosovala za Sergeya Kiriyenko i prodlila svoë sushchestvovaniye” (The Duma voted for Sergei Kiriyenko and prolonged its existence), Nezavisimaya gazeta, April 25, 1998; and David Hoffman, “Third Vote Confirms Kiriyenko as New Russian Premier,” The Washington Post, April 25, 1998.

15 Kiriyenko interview.

16 Mikhail Mikhailovich Zadornov, an economist who worked with Grigorii Yavlinskii on the Five Hundred Days Program in 1990, is not to be confused with Mikhail Nikolayevich Zadornov, the stand-up comedian referred to in Chapter 13.

17 Source: interviews with two of the parties to the affair. Word of it circulated in the press around May 20. Boris Nemtsov had instituted a tender system for most other civilian agencies in 1997.

18 Alexei Goriaev and Alexei Zabotkin, “Risks of Investing in the Russian Stock Market: Lessons of the First Decade,” Emerging Markets Review 7 (December 2006), 380–97.

19 At one meeting with aides, Yeltsin interrupted to dial Chernomyrdin and ask him what the trend was with Russian treasury notes. “The premier became confused and asked for time to prepare an answer. Yeltsin hung up and remarked, ‘Well there you have our premier, and he doesn’t know. But I know.’ The president beamed: See how I have left him. He wanted to be first in everything.” Baturin et al., Epokha, 734.