Timothy Colton: Yeltsin

74 “Confrontation over Pristina Airport,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/671495.stm.

75 By this time the affair had entered the sphere of theater of the absurd. The government claimed that Skuratov was being blackmailed by the prostitutes and this left him unable to serve.

76 This historical parallel is drawn in Yel’tsin, Marafon, 302. Yeltsin was most alarmed by a comment Primakov made in February emphasizing the need to free up cells in Russian prisons for persons who would soon be arrested for economic crimes. He thought it reflected Soviet-era stereotypes.

77 Ibid., 303.

78 The main indicator of favor was seen on the nightly television news on May 5. At a Kremlin meeting that day on preparations for the millennium celebrations, Yeltsin made a show of asking Stepashin to leave his seat at the table and take the chair between him and Patriarch Aleksii II.

79 Natal’ya Konstantinova, “Boris Yel’tsin poshël na politicheskoye obostreniye i otpravil Yevgeniya Primakova v otstavku” (Boris Yeltsin has gone for a sharpening of political tensions and sent Yevgenii Primakov into retirement), Nezavisimaya gazeta, May 13, 1999.

80 These maneuvers are analyzed in Aleksandr Sadchikov, “Partiinaya distsiplina ne vyderzhala ispytaniya impichmenta” (Party discipline failed the test of impeachment), Izvestiya, May 18, 1999; and Ivan Rodin, “Kak Boris Yel’tsin obygral Zyuganova i Yavlinskogo” (How Boris Yeltsin beat Zyuganov and Yavlinskii), Nezavisimaya gazeta, May 18, 1999.

81 Valentin Yumashev, first interview with the author (February 4, 2002). A number of press accounts described Aksënenko as a flunky of Berezovskii’s, but I never found any evidence that this was so. He was appointed minister in April 1997 at the initiative of Boris Nemtsov, who was as hostile to Berezovskii as any governmental leader in 1997–98.

82 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 315.

83 Yevgenii Yur’ev, “Duma odevayetsya v kamuflyazh” (The Duma is getting dressed in camouflage), Segodnya, May 13, 1999.

84 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 312, 315. Yeltsin mentioned in that account not revealing his plan to Putin. Tatyana Yumasheva (Dyachenko) told me explicitly in our third interview that her father did not ask her opinion on the selection of Putin.

85 Sergei Stepashin, interview with the author (June 14, 2001).

86 Fifth Yumashev interview.

87 A number of accounts of Yeltsin’s last months in power, citing no sources, mention Berezovskii as giving Putin a helping hand. But a journalist who spoke with Berezovskii in British exile in 2002 reports him as being a detractor of Putin even then: “Berezovsky said he first began to have his doubts about Putin in 1999, when the little-known FSB director was promoted by Yeltsin to prime minister.” John Daniszewski, “Former Russian Rainmaker Tries Role of Dissident,” Los Angeles Times, March 3, 2002.

88 Decree No. 1763, on provisions for retired presidents, was Putin’s second as acting president. It provided for retirement pay, security, healthcare, transportation, a state dacha, and other services for all former presidents; one article gave an ex-president lifetime immunity from criminal prosecution and administrative discipline. There was no mention of family members. It was dated December 31 and published on January 5, 2000. Drafts of some parts had been prepared earlier by lawyers in the Kremlin administration, the guards service, and elsewhere. “Naturally, [Yeltsin] and Putin never discussed this question in their meetings before the president’s retirement. Boris Nikolayevich would have considered this improper. As far as I know, they never discussed it after his retirement…. [Yeltsin considered himself] completely above all this.” Valentin Yumashev, personal communication to the author (October 30, 2007). The Putin decree lost effect when it was replaced by a federal statute in February 2001.

89 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 254 (italics added). Earlier in the memoir (79), Yeltsin writes of thinking that the generals and security officials with whom he had contact in the first half of the 1990s were inadequate. “I waited for a new general to appear, unlike any other general, or rather one who was like the generals I read about in books when I was young…. Time passed, and such a general appeared… Vladimir Putin.”

90 The plotters were associated with Lev Rokhlin, a retired general and Duma member who was murdered, evidently by his wife, in early July. Rumors of a conspiracy in the Moscow Military District circulated at the time and were confirmed in my fifth interview with Valentin Yumashev.

91 Fifty-two KPRF deputies voted against Putin but thirty-two voted for him. If seven of those thirty-two had voted against, the nomination would have failed.

92 Ot pervogo litsa: razgovory s Vladimirom Putinym (From the first person: conversations with Vladimir Putin) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 2000), 131.

93 “Prezident Rossii Boris Yel’tsin: Rossiya vstupayet v novyi politcheskii etap” (The president of Russia Boris Yeltsin: Russia is entering into a new political phase), Rossiiskaya gazeta, August 10, 1999.

94 Ot pervogo litsa, 133, 135.

95 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 367.

96 See Timothy J. Colton and Michael McFaul, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2003), 173.

97 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 387–88.

98 See ibid., 9–21, and Ot pervogo litsa, 185–86. Putin’s impression that Yeltsin would not be departing until the spring (conveyed to Dyachenko and Yumashev in a conversation after December 14) is referred to in the communication from Yumashev. Yeltsin met with Putin a second time, on December 29, to discuss a year-end departure.

1 Boris Yel’tsin, Prezidentskii marafon (Presidential marathon) (Moscow: AST, 2000), 397.

2 Michael Wines, “Putin Is Made Russia’s President in First Free Transfer of Power,” New York Times, May 8, 2000.

3 “Boris Yel’tsin: ya khotel, chtoby lyudi byli svobodny” (Boris Yeltsin: I wanted people to be free), Izvestiya, February 1, 2006.

4 Comment about the pneumonia in 2001 from Naina Yeltsin, second interview with the author (September 18, 2007).

5 He proudly told a journalist a year after resigning that he was getting up these days at four A.M. “Boris Yel’tsin: ya ni o chëm ne zhaleyu” (Boris Yeltsin: I am not complaining about anything), Komsomol’skaya Pravda, December 8, 2000. In later interviews, he gave the time as five or six.

6 The net worth of Deripaska, born in 1968, was estimated at $13.3 billion in 2007, putting him fortieth on Forbes magazine’s annual world list of wealthy individuals and fifth in Russia. His United Company Rusal is the largest producer of aluminum in the world.

7 A fourth great-grandson was born two months after Yeltsin’s death in 2007. Two of the boys were born to Yelena’s daughter Yekaterina and two to Yelena’s daughter Mariya.

8 Boris Yeltsin, third interview with the author (September 12, 2002). Naina Yeltsina took me through the library during our second interview. It held five or six thousand volumes at the time, and at least that many older books were stored in the Yeltsins’ Moscow apartment.

9 “Russian Tennis Remembers Yeltsin,” http://leblogfoot.eurosport.fr/tennis/davis-cup/2007/sport_sto1160667.shtml. Yeltsin first displayed his barrier-leaping technique at the Kremlin Cup tournament in Moscow in October 2003. He rushed out onto the court and embraced Anastasia Myskina, who won the women’s single title, with parental pride.

10 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 405–6.