The first half of the 1970s were the last time the economy of the Soviet Union, buoyed by high world oil prices, met its growth norms. The fledgling party worker met his in spades. Yeltsin prided himself, as in SU-13 and the DSK, on an orderly work environment. Making a sales pitch to a young engineer, Oleg Lobov, to sign on as his deputy in 1972, he called the department “a structure in which discipline has been maintained,” not disguising that he viewed it as wilting elsewhere.82 Yeltsin would work nonstop as a troubleshooter, as he did in 1973 during completion of a cold-rolling mill (a mill for reprocessing plate and sheet metal to make it thinner and harder) at the Upper Iset Works. For this exploit, which involved 15,000 workers and intercessions with head offices in Moscow, he won an Order of the Red Banner of Labor, his second. Yeltsin “worked conscientiously and responsibly,” Ryabov was to relate—no mean encomium in a book written a decade after the two fell out.83
Yeltsin also had a nose for publicity. In 1970 he had builders retread his earlier experiment of putting up an apartment house in five days, and went one better by organizing a national conference on “the scientific organization of labor” around the project.84 He butted into projects to be commissioned and was at Nikolayev’s or Ryabov’s side when the ribbon was cut. Yeltsin even listened to advice from Ryabov on softening his manner. “He changed tactics in his bearing and started to foster sociable ties with his colleagues in the obkom [staff] and to put out feelers to the members of the bureau, the obkom secretaries, the oblast executive panel, and other well-placed cadres.”85 Yeltsin was not on a particularly fast track. He occupied the same departmental position in the obkom apparatus for seven years, which was as long as it took him to progress from foreman to chief of SU-13.
Here a providential event interceded. In the spring of 1975 Eduard Shevardnadze, the party boss in the Caucasus republic of Georgia, asked for and received the Politburo’s permission to hire away Gennadii Kolbin, the second secretary in Sverdlovsk and heir presumptive to Ryabov, as his second-ranking secretary in Tbilisi. Ryabov’s preferred candidate for second secretary, Vyacheslav Bayev, the head of the obkom’s machine-building department, was happy where he was and not tempted by the offer. Ryabov then approached Yevgenii Korovin, the secretary for industry, a diffident and sickly official from Kamensk-Ural’skii, who recommended Yeltsin—a mere department head—for the position. “He told me he could not handle it, it would be hard on him, but Boris Nikolayevich was high-powered and assertive, and I would be good in a secondary role.” Ryabov thought Yeltsin lacked the experience, and accepted a compromise recommended by Kolbin: that Korovin be made second secretary and Yeltsin be made one of the five obkom secretaries. Yeltsin may have expected more, but accepted. His new portfolio took in the forest and pulp-and-paper industries as well as construction, and he was given a seat on the bureau, the obkom board comprising ten to twelve party and state officials.86
Speculation was rampant that Ryabov himself was going to graduate to other duties. Yeltsin smelled an opportunity for the taking. Ryabov shuddered when he described the situation twenty-five years later:
So the step was taken and Boris Nikolayevich became the obkom’s secretary for construction. This gave him more independence and scope in dealing with the issues he was responsible for, and as a member of the obkom bureau he could be bolder in addressing them. There was gossip galore that I was going to be moved up or transferred, and people even drew up various scenarios. Boris came to understand the subtleties and knew how to conduct himself, in view of the fact that . . . Korovin was not a competitor for him and was not spoiling for power. Boris understood he had to position himself closer to me, as he had already been doing in recent years, which is what earned him the promotion to secretary. He kept his head down. As before, we went together to important construction sites. He could still not do without me, because for [the projects] to be completed he needed additional construction manpower and the use of workers from the factories. Many of the oblast’s problems had to be taken care of in Moscow, and for that you couldn’t manage without the first secretary of the obkom. As I figured out only later, Boris, in trying so hard to carry out all my wishes, was behaving like a sycophant and careerist. But I was impressed and did not suspect that for him this was a tactic to achieve a breakthrough in his career. On the contrary, I considered that this fine fellow Boris had at long last come to understand the oblast’s needs and was doing everything he could to satisfy them. We and our families continued to be on amiable terms.87
