43 Kulikov made his allegations about the Russian Legion in a press conference on October 16. There are more details in Kulikov, Tyazhëlyye zvëzdy, 469–75. Chubais took the charges seriously and was taken by Lebed’s statement to the media that he expected to be president of Russia before 2000, the year the second Yeltsin term was to expire. He communicated his views to Yeltsin by memorandum, since the president did not feel well enough to meet with him. First Chubais interview.
44 Quotations from Yel’tsin, Marafon, 74, 77. In addition to stylistic aspects, Lebed shared some physical features with Yeltsin. His nose had been broken repeatedly in boxing matches, and as a party trick he flattened it against his face “like a pancake.” Michael Specter, “The Wars of Aleksandr Ivanovich Lebed,” New York Times Magazine, October 13, 1996.
45 The two had a relationship. Lebed had kept up communication with Korzhakov after his dismissal. When Lebed resigned from his Duma seat, representing Tula province, in order to take up his position with Yeltsin, Korzhakov declared his candidacy. Lebed accompanied Korzhakov to Tula and introduced him as his favored candidate. Korzhakov eventually won the election.
46 Valentin Yumashev, third interview with the author (September 13, 2006).
47 Baturin et al., Epokha, 773–74.
48 Yeltsin’s chief of staff at the time, Valentin Yumashev, who was new to the job and was rarely involved in security decisions, is quite sure that Yeltsin had lost patience with Rodionov and went in intent on removing him. Third Yumashev interview. For background analysis, see Viktor Baranets, Yel’tsin i yego generaly (Yeltsin and his generals) (Moscow: Sovershenno sekretno, 1997); and Dale R. Herspring, The Kremlin and the High Command: Presidential Impact on the Russian Military from Gorbachev to Putin (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2006).
49 Rodionov lamented to journalists that the meeting was conducted “in the spirit of a session of the bureau of a [CPSU] obkom.” He had told Yeltsin a few days before, he said, that he needed thirty minutes for his report, and the president had not objected. Rodionov claimed that Yeltsin further sliced his time allotment to ten minutes after Rodionov protested the fifteen-minute quota, and then called for a show of hands on dismissing him. Rodionov tried to leave the room at that point but Yeltsin ordered him to stay. Vladimir Kiselëv, “Posle otstavki” (After retirement), Obshchaya gazeta, May 29, 1997.
50 Fragments of Yeltsin’s remarks can be found in “Yel’tsin o natsional’noi ideye” (Yeltsin on the national idea), Nezavisimaya gazeta, July 13, 1996; and Mikhail Lantsman, “Prezident poruchil doverennym litsam naiti natsional’nuyu ideyu” (The president assigned his campaign aides to find a national idea), Segodnya, July 15, 1996.
51 Stepan Kiselëv, “Georgii Satarov: natsional’naya ideya—eto nebol’no” (George Satarov says the national idea will not hurt anyone), Izvestiya, July 19, 1996.
52 Details in Bronwyn McLaren, “Big Brains Bog Down in Hunt for Russian Idea,” Moscow Times, August 9, 1997; Michael E. Urban, “Remythologising the Russian State,” Europe-Asia Studies 50 (September 1998), 969–92; Kathleen E. Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia: Politics and Memory in the Yeltsin Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 158–65; and Andrew Meier, Black Earth: A Journey through Russia after the Fall (New York: Norton, 2003), 338. The anthology is Georgii Satarov, ed., Rossiya v poiskakh idei: analiz pressy (Russia in search of an idea: analysis of the press) (Moscow: Gruppa konsul’tantov pri Administratsii Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 1997). Yeltsin did not mention the national-idea commission in his annual address to parliament, in March 1997, or in the final volume of his memoirs in 2000.
53 Andrei Zagorodnikov, “Svyato mesto pusto ne byvayet” (A holy place is never empty), Nezavisimaya gazeta, July 30, 1996.
54 First Chubais interview.
55 Smith, Mythmaking, 84.
56 Askar Akayev, interview with the author (September 29, 2004).
57 Yeltsin in Marafon, 396, mentioned one invitation, but family members in interviews said there were several.
58 Valentin Yumashev, second interview with the author (September 11, 2006).
59 S. Alekhin, “Boris Yel’tsin: sokhranit’ kul’turu—svyataya obyazannost’” (Boris Yeltsin thinks it is a sacred duty to conserve our culture), Rossiskaya gazeta, June 10, 1997; Viktoriya Shokhina and Igor’ Zotov, “Vizit” (Visit), Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 7, 1997.
60 Russians favored reburial by 48 percent to 38 percent when first surveyed in March 1997 and by as much as 55 percent to 34 percent in July 1998. In August 1999 the percentages for and against were tied at 41. A. Petrova, “Lenin’s Body Burial,” http:/bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/rus_im/zahoronenie_v_i_lenina/eof993304.
61 An American journalist aptly remarked that some on the Russian left thought communism was only slumbering and that Lenin, “lying in his glass coffin like Sleeping Beauty, is keeping the movement alive.” Alessandra Stanley, “Czar and Lenin Share Fate: Neither Can Rest in Peace,” New York Times, April 9, 1997.
62 Boris Yeltsin, second interview with the author (February 9, 2002).
63 He made this clear in conversations at the time with Boris Nemtsov, who was in charge of the reburial. Nemtsov, second interview with the author (February 6, 2002).
64 This summary does not do justice to the complexity of Russian attitudes toward the last of the Romanovs. They are well analyzed in Wendy Slater, “Relics, Remains, and Revisionism: Narratives of Nicholas II in Contemporary Russia,” Rethinking History 9 (March 2005), 53–70. The Orthodox abroad, who had always been strongly anti-communist, had control of a female’s finger which they claimed was the only true relic of the family. No tissue attributable to Nicholas and Alexandra’s hemophilic son, Aleksei, or their third daughter, Mariya, was found, which fed the suspicion of the clergy abroad. Yekaterinburg archeologists in July 2007 unearthed remains at Koptyaki that seem to be those of Aleksei and Mariya.
65 Wrote one Russian observer, “Yeltsin made a tactical move of genius, making fools out of the rivals who believed his words and refused to participate in the burial.” The observer suspected Yeltsin saw the ceremony as the first step toward another election campaign in 2000, and Luzhkov was openly eyeing a presidential run. Melor Sturua, “Puteshestviye iz Moskvy v Peterburg za tsarskiye pokhorony” (A trip from Moscow to St. Petersburg for the tsar’s funeral), Nezavisimaya gazeta, July 21, 1998. Political calculations aside, it was reported in 1998, and confirmed by Boris Nemtsov in his second interview with me, that Yeltsin resolved his doubts about participating only after a conversation about the merits of the case with Academician Dmitrii Likhachëv, a leading Russian medievalist and Gulag survivor whom he held in high regard.
66 “Vystupleniye Prezidenta RF Borisa Yel’tsina na traurnoi tseremonii v Sankt-Peterburge” (Statement of President Boris Yeltsin at the funeral ceremony in St. Petersburg), Rossiiskaya gazeta, July 18, 1998.