12 Lawrence K. Altman, “In Moscow in 1996, a Doctor’s Visit Changed History,” New York Times, May 1, 2007. Citing an interview with DeBakey after Yeltsin’s death the previous week, Altman claims that “his Russian doctors said he could not survive such surgery.” But the fullest Russian account, by Chazov, says the Russians had already decided that the bypass was necessary and survivable and that they wanted DeBakey for psychological and strategic support. “And that is what happened. Yeltsin confirmed for himself the correctness of his decision, his family calmed down, and the press and television redirected themselves to DeBakey, leaving us finally in peace.” Chazov, Rok, 262.
13 Yeltsin had communicated his intent to do the temporary transfer in a decree dated September 19. Chernomyrdin took his provisional duties to heart: “He called military specialists in and acquainted himself in detail with the automated system for controlling [Russia’s] strategic nuclear forces.” Baturin et al., Epokha, 725.
14 See on this point Chazov, Rok, 271.
15 Akchurin in “Postskriptum.”
16 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 57.
17 Interviews with family members. Khrushchev put up Vice President Richard Nixon at Novo-Ogarëvo in 1959, since at Gorki-9 “it was not possible to provide the conveniences to which guests were accustomed. For example, there was only one toilet for everyone, located at the end of the [first-floor] hall. The bath was there, too. By American standards, only people in the slums lived in such conditions.” Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower, trans. Shirley Benson (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 352.
18 See Sergei Khrushchev, Pensioner soyuznogo znacheniya (Pensioner of USSR rank) (Moscow: Novosti, 1991), 69–71.
19 Anatolii Chubais, first interview with the author (January 18, 2001).
20 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 58.
21 Madeleine Albright, with Bill Woodward, Madam Secretary (New York: Miramax, 2003), 253–54.
22 Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2002), 246.
23 In the VTsIOM tracking poll in April 1997, 3 percent of the electorate gave Yeltsin unqualified support, 7 percent gave him qualified support, 41 percent were opposed to him in one degree or another, and 39 percent were ambivalent. Yu, A. Levada et al., Obshchestvennoye mneniye—1999 (Public opinion—1999 edition) (Moscow: Vserossiiskii tsentr izucheniya obshchestvennogo mneniya, 2000), 100–101.
24 Korzhakov has said (interview with the author, January 28, 2002) that he was offered $5 million to cancel publication of the book. He thinks the source of the money was a businessman out to protect Yeltsin’s interests. I have no corroboration of this claim.
25 Yurii Mukhin, Kod Yel’tsina (The Yeltsin code) (Moscow: Yauza, 2005). Like Salii in 1997, Mukhin, a Stalinist and anti-Semite, placed great stock in photographs of hands and other body parts. He has not commented on whether the death and state funeral of the real Yeltsin in 2007 led him to revise his interpretation. One of his other contributions as an analyst is work disclaiming Soviet responsibility for the 1940 massacre of Polish officers at Katyn. A competing version of the trashy tale holds that Yeltsin was an invalid from 1996 until August 6 or 7, 1999, when he died, and that three ringers, controlled by the Yeltsin family and not the CIA, filled in for him before and after his death. “Kozly i molodil’nyye yabloki” (Goats and green apples), http://www.duel.ru/200231/?31_1_3.
26 See Vladimir Shevchenko, Povsednevnaya zhizn’ Kremlya pri prezidentakh (The everyday life of the Kremlin under the presidents) (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 2004), 106, 138.
27 Yeltsin’s office told reporters he played tennis for about ten minutes on July 11, 1997, at Shuiskaya Chupa. That seems to have been the last time.
28 Yelena Tregubova, Baiki kremlëvskogo diggera (Tales of a Kremlin digger) (Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2003), 53. Yeltsin in Stockholm was tired after a trip to Beijing. He advised the Swedes to wean themselves from coal and sign a contract with Russia for natural gas deliveries, apparently thinking back to background notes for the China visit. Sweden burns almost no coal; half of its power needs are met by atomic reactors and one-third by hydroelectric stations.
29 For a full early report, see Nikolai Andreyev, “Prezident Rossii postoyanen v svoyei nepredskazuyemosti” (The president of Russia is constant in his unpredictability), Izvestiya, May 6, 1992. Compare with Jacob Weisberg, “The Complete Bushisms,” www.slate.com/id/76886.
30 See Tregubova, Baiki kremlëvskogo diggera, 117.
31 Yelena Dikun, “Yel’tsin v Gorkakh” (Yeltsin in Gorki), Obshchaya gazeta, April 2, 1998. Kukly, the satire program on the NTV television network, had broadcast a cruel skit comparing Yeltsin to the immobilized Lenin in January 1997.
32 Of recent presidents, Jimmy Carter took the fewest vacation days, seventynine over four years. Bill Clinton took 152 over eight years.
33 Anatolii Kulikov, who replaced Viktor Yerin as interior minister in 1995, says that after his operation Yeltsin misaddressed some hand-written notes. “My accurate and delicate attempts to correct the president were not well taken,” writes Kulikov. “He would look at me and continue to write.” Anatolii Kulikov, Tyazhëlyye zvëzdy (Heavy stars) (Moscow: Voina i mir, 2002), 416–17. But most former high officials whom I interviewed, including four second-term prime ministers (Chernomyrdin, Kiriyenko, Primakov, and Stepashin), emphasized his mental acuity and exceptional memory. Primakov and Stepashin, whose tenure was in the second half of term two, also emphasized the limits on his energy. Both felt he was at his full powers for two to three hours per workday. But neither, of course, knew this from direct experience, and family members insist that days this short were the exception rather than the rule.
34 Sergei Stepashin, interview with the author (June 14, 2001).
35 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 350.
36 Tatyana Yumasheva, third interview with the author (January 25, 2007). The dilution of the wine was done with Yeltsin’s consent. Aleksandr Korzhakov claims that in 1995 he had kitchen staff secretly water down some bottles of vodka to half strength, and that Yeltsin fired several of them for the ruse. Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin, 303–5.
37 Chazov asserts that Yeltsin violated the restrictions less than a year after his operation, but that in the late 1990s “he finally came to observe the regime and recommendations of the doctors.” Chazov, Rok, 277. When Yeltsin met with Bill Clinton in Helsinki in March 1997, he was distracted the first evening and consumed a number of glasses of wine; come morning, he “had regained his color and vigor” and seized the initiative in negotiations. At their next meeting, in Birmingham in May 1998, Yeltsin gave, “in both senses of the word, his most sober performance to date.” Talbott, Russia Hand, 237–38, 269. Talbott records no drinking on Yeltsin’s part after Helsinki, and even there the amount was hardly huge and some of it may have come in the form of adulterated wine.
38 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 350.
39 Third Yumasheva interview.
40 Yel’tsin, Marafon, 82.
41 Vladimir Potanin, interview with the author (September 25, 2001).
42 Those adjustments rarely included strikes or other collective action, mostly because ordinary people could not sort out which culprits to blame for their troubles. See Debra Javeline, Protest and the Politics of Blame: The Russian Response to Unpaid Wages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). See also Padma Desai and Todd Idson, Work without Wages: Russia’s Nonpayment Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000).