#260 Lord of the Manor: Boris Yeltsin in Sverdlovsk Oblast' by Pilar Bonet

Pilar Bonet has been the Moscow political correspondent for El Pais, the largest­ circulation daily il.1 Spain, since 1984. Prior to that time, she worked as a journalist in Madrid (El Pais), Vienna (EFE, a Spanish new::; agency), and Barcelona (El Periodico). Ms. Bonet is the author of three books: Mosdi (Barcelona: Editorial Destino, 1988); Imagenes sobre Fonda Rojo (Madrid: El Pais, 1992), published in English under the title Portraits in a Red Landscape (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; and Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press/ 1993); and La Rusia Imposible. Boris Yeltsin, un provinciano en el Kremlin (Madrid: El Pals, S.A./Augil ar, S.A., 1994), published in Russian under the title Nevozmozlmaia Rossiia: Boris El'tsin - provinstial v Kremle in the Russian literary journal Ural, no. 4 (1994). A Research Scholar at the Kennan Institute during the 1991-1992 program year, Ms. Bonet is presently a member of the Institute's Academic Council. This Occasional Paper is based on excerpts from her most recent book, La Rusia Imposible, which she began to write while in residence at the Institute. The Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Smdies The Woodrow Walson International Center for Scholars

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©September 1995 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Translated by David Sperling and Peggy Mcinerny, edited by Peggy Mcinerny TABLE OF C ONTENTS I

Introduction 1 I. Sverdlovsk Oblast' 2 II. Lord of the Province 4 m. The Communist Party in the Provinces 6 rv. The Life of the Elite 15 1 v. Yeltsin in Power 19 1 Conclusion 28 LORD OF THE MANOR: B ORIS YELTSIN IN SVERDLOVSK 0 BIASI

INTRODUCflON

"Boris Yeltsin is neither the Boris Yeltsin joined the person he claims to be, nor the Communist Party of the Soviet person whom you believe him to Unionm 1961 and was elected First be." With these enigmatic words, Secretary of the Sverdlovsk obkom in Iakov Riabov tried to explain the November 1976. He came from one nature of the man who had replaced of the oldest towns in the area, him as head of the Sverdlovsk Butka, founded in the seventeenth provincial Communist Party organi­ century by Old Believers who had zation in 1976.1 Riabov left the been persecuted for having rc.fused province for Moscow w hen he was to accept the reformation of the appointed a secretary of the Central Russian Orthodox Church in accor­ Committee of the Communist Party dance with the Greek rite. ln his of the Soviet Union (CPSU), a capacity as First Secretary in charge position suitable for the top official of the third-largest industrial of an oblast' as important as Sverd­ complex of the Soviet state, Yeltsin lovsk, the province that had for w as one of the most important generations fueled the expansive regional leaders in the Soviet Union spirit of the Empire by providing benveen 1976 and 1985. cannons to the tsars and tanks and Soviet power was smart enough missiles to communist leaders of the to not entrust this province, where USSR. the- majority of the population worked for the defense indusl::r)" to Riabov recalled Yeltsin's reaction mere professional apparatchiki whose when, in 1968, Riabov announced only experience had been gained that he had decided to give him a from courses in political t->conomy at position on the Sverdlovsk obkom, the Higher Party School of the despite the reluctance of certain CPSU. The leaders of Sverdlovsk officials who did not consider him were people experienced in worthy of such a promotion. Instead industry-experts on turbines, steel of U1an.king Riabov for the honor or moldings, a.nd the strength of promising to straighten himself out, various materials. Riabov's prede­ Yeltsin immediately tried to find out ces..-.or as head of the province had the names of the people who had been Andrei Kirilenko, a military criticized him. Although Riabov did aeronautics engineer, and before not say, Yeltsin eventually came to him, Konstantin Nikolaev, who had believe he had figured out who organized the industrial evacuation these people were and did his best of the Urals d uring World War ll. to keep the suspects from being Boris Yeltsin belonged to the same promoted. "He proved to be very category as his predecessors. vind ictive, and this is a very serious As First &"Cfetary of the fault," pointed out Riabov. Sverdlovsk obkom, Yeltsin found himself at the top of a pyramid­ shaped organizational structw-e

1. Throughout this paper, the Soviet territorial administrative unit of Sverdlovsk will be referred to interchangeably as Sverdlovsk oblasl' and Sverdlovsk province.

1 found throughout the entire assassination of Tsar Nicholas II and country-a microcosm similar to the his family. Upon his instruction, many other microcosmc; that officials of the Party obkom comprised the USSR.2 Although the organized themselves into volleyball Russian provinces w ere not scaled­ teams (the First Secretary's favorite down carbon copies of the country sport). When Yeltsin left his position as a whole, the Soviet socialist at the top of the Sverdlovsk regime did use similar m odels Communis t Party hierarchy to go to throughout its territory, which was w ork in Moscow in April1985, his divided administratively into countrymen had both good and bad diverse types of units, all run by memories of him, but no one had organi7,ations of the Communist the impression that he was a unique Party These organizations were individual with whom their paths divided into lower hierarchical would again cross in a short time. organizations that were in tum subdivided further. The Soviet I. SVERDW VSK 0 BLAST' system homogenized admini­ During the era of Mikhail stration: the outward appearance of Gorbachev's reforms, the city of cities, housing, people; it introduced Sverdlovsk (between 1924 and 1991 social rituals; it unified w ays of the capital bore the same name as thinking and behaving. This process the province) w as, together with of standardization was so thorough Moscow and Leningrad (now St. that during the first few years of the Petersburg), one of the engines of post-communist era, one could take change in Russia. In September any Russian province to be a fairly 1991, by decision of the urban soviet, accurate micro-model of society as a the city took back the name of whole. Taken individually, each Ekaterinburg, v.rith which it had province or different geographic been christened upon its founding area possessed natural w ea1th to a in 1723. The province continued to greater or lesser degree, or had be called Sverdlovsk, in memory of developed industry or local a Bolshevik revolutionary by the traditions to a greater or lesser samename.3 extent. All, however, w e_re mere The p rovince of Sverdlovsk is variations on a conunon mold that located in the north central region of had been designed to shape a new the Ural mountains. Its total surface type of man at the service of a area is almost 194,800 square superpower. kilometers, more or less the size of Yeltsin was a vigorous person Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and w ho carried out the orders of his Holland combined. More than h alf · Central Committee superiors with o~ >his territory is covered with a discipline and expected the same thick forest which, in its northern­ from his subordinates. Following most areas, gives way to the swampy instructions from Moscow, he landscape characteristic of the ordered the demolition of the house tundra. Almost five million people of Engineer Ipat'ev-the site of the live in the province; 87 percent of the

2. The provincial Party committee, or obkom (oblastnai komitet), was the highest Communist Party body, or organ, in the territory of Sverdlovsk, followed by the city Party committees W trkomy) and the district Party committees (raikomy). 3. For the purposes of this article, the provincial capital will be called by the name it used during the relevant period, that is, either Sverdlovsk or Ekaterinburg.

2 population is located in urban areas around iron ore deposits, such as and the majority (94 percent in 1983) Ekaterinburg (est. 1723) and Nizhnii works in industry. Tagil (est 1725), were transformed hlhabitants of the Urals boast over time into industrial cities. Serfs that they have virtually the entire turned into factory workers and, periodic table of Mendelecv under with the advent of Soviet power, their feet. Indeed, they live .in one of assumed the official rank of the the regions richest in natural "hegemonic class." Nevertheless, for resources in all of Russia, decades they remained just as much surrounded by deposits of iron ore slaves of the enterprises that and nonferrous metals such as employed and housed them as their titanium, vanadium, chromium, forefathers had been before them. nickel, manganese, bauxite, copper, The industrialization of the and coal. In addition to gold, 1930s, the brutal collectivization of platinum, and diamonds, the agriculture, and the evacuation of province also possesses emeralds factories from the western part of and decorative stones such as the country d uring World War U malachite-the symbol of the Urals. turned the province into an urban Most equipment used in the minin~ and proletarian environment. The petroleum, natural gas, chemical, quintessential aesthetic expression and metallurgical industries of the of this duality can be seen in the USSR was produced in Sverdlovsk. constructi\r:ist buildings which, The largest tank factory in the world despite their regrettable state of ic; located in Nizhnii Tagil, the disrepatr, bestow a special character province's second largest city on Ekaterinburg-for example, the The Urals have been the House of the Czechists (1931),laid backbone of H.ussian military power out rn the shape of a hanuner and since the eighteenth century, when sickle. lnvigorated by the evacuation Tsar Peter I handed over the city of of factories from the western part of Neviansk and its surroundings to the country during the war, the blacksmith Nikita Demidov, Sverdlovsk produced tanks, rockets, who would forge the cannon.<> that ammunition, missile parts, and would enable Russia to take on the nuclear fuel. According to the Swedes and open a way to the Baltic estimates of a provincial leader of Sea. Demidov proceeded to build a Yeltsin's time, the gigantic military p ersonal metallurgic empire, industry accounted for as much as complete with its own systems of 87 percent of all industrial output in justice and administration. Neviansk the province, while production of became the spinal cord around consumer ~oods accounted for only which the vertebrae of the first 13 percen t. military-industrial complex of One of the most serious Russia would be built, a veritable problems in Sverdlovsk oblast' duster of foundries and towns of dunng Yeltsin' s years in power there industrial serfs who either worked was a rural exodus that reduced the for Denudov or directly for the state peasant population of the province at the forges of the Empire. The to less than 650,000 people. This d usty factory towns that sprang up emigration, consisting mainly of

4. "This Land in the Hands of the Managers: A Monologue," Sergei Vozdvizhenskii, Chairman, Ural Regional Committee on Economic Development Programs, Ural, no. 12 (1993).

3 young people, continued into the first Soviet television channel and early 1980s. Over the course of the the reception rate in the province three years 1980-83, a total of 190 c.verall was far below the Russian small towns completely emptied out Republic average of 71.4 percent. In and 162 became "extinct." Eight one of the most backward districts thousand individual family plots of the province, only 3 percent of the met the same fate.S Living homes had gas and water lines and conditions were the determining there was no television reception at factor of the exodus: there were no all? gas, sewage, or heating systems m most villages. In isol.ated areas, L . LORD OF TilE PROVINCE sanitation was practically In the summer of 1976, problems non-existent; inhabitants of certain in the Soviet Union in general and in remote regions who had never Sverdlovsk in particular were travelled to the provincial center officially non-existent. Peasants in had only "heard" about modem the province had just initiated the utilities. The small towns in the tenth five-year plan of "efficiency interior were truly removed from and quality" on the right foot by civilization: out of a total of 2,400 harvesting 300,000 tons of grain, far villages, only 1,450 had bus service, surpassing projected production with half of the buses forced to quotas. It had been a "wonderful discontinue service in the spring and fall due to the lack of paved roads.6 victory for the peasants of the The standard of living in the region" and to commemorate it, Sverdlovsk conntryside was lower Uralskii rabochii, the instrument of than the mean standard of the the provincial committee of the Russian Republic. Only 18 out of Communist Party, inaugurated a every 100 rural inhabitants had a new section entitled "Efficiency and radio, as compared to the Russian Quality" The harvest, according to Republic average of 26.6 per 100. the paper, was a success of "the The 13 physicians for every 10,000 directives of Secretary General of the rural inhabitants of Sverdlovsk CPSU Leonid D'ich Brezhnev."B province stood in sharp contrast to In early October, Bre1..hnev gave the hundreds of medical doctors at an interview to a western television Clinic No. 2 in the city of Sverd­ channel. In every institution, factory, lovsk, who served approximately kolkhoz, and sovkhoz throughout the 10,000 privileged residents of the entire country, Soviet citizens were city. The media, upon whose expressing their "support and deep propaganda the Communist Party gratitude" to their leader for his so greatly relied, did not even reach "tmtiring efforts to strengthen world a fair nwnber of peasants in peace and ensure the continued Sverdlovsk oblast'. Only 50 percent prosperity" of the USSR. Brezhnev's of the rural population received the words inspired them

5. Center for the Documentation of Social Organizations of Sverdlovsk Oblast' (Russian. acronym, TsOOOSO), fond 4, opis' 106, delo 90, listy 93-111. 6. Ibid. Most roads in the remote Russian countryside are not paved; heavy rains in the spring and fall make them impassable due to mud. -Ecf. 7. Ibid. 8. Uralskii rabochii, 1 October 1976.

4 to new feats in the name of building workers of the central Urals shall communism. The interview of the close ranks even tighter armmd General Secretary of the Central their dear Communist Party and Committee of the CPSU was met Soviet government and shall devote with enormous interest by the all their strength, knowledge, and world community.9 experience to putting the historic decisions of the Twenty-Fifth O ne-third of local press Congress of the CPSU into practice coverage was devoted to ... in the name of the triumph of commentary on different workers' communism.ll initiatives, of which aimed at all The following year, Brezhnev improving the quality and quantity once again congratulated Sverd­ of production. Awards ceremonies Iovsk for its agricultural output.12 took up a lot of space: Andrei Yeltsin, by then obkom First Secretary, Pavlovich .Kirilenko, for example, expressed his gratitude to the Soviet was decorated with no less than the leader and organized a rally under Order of Lenin and his second gold the motto, "heroism of the masses." med al of the Hammer and Sickle. In late October 1976, the Central Uralskii rabochii devoted two full Committee of the CPSU met in pages to the event as a reward to the Moscow for a routine plenary man who had been the First session to approve the economic Sc.'CI'etary of the Sverdlovsk obkom plan and the state budget for 1977. from 1955 to 1962, then a Central When the plenum elected Iakov Committee secretary, and, finally, a Riabov a secretary of the Central member of the Politburo-the very Committee, it opened the door to pinnacle of the Soviet hierarchy. the Soviet elite to him. Riabov left At the time, the province had Sverdlov.sk bound for Moscow, just approximately four million . . as every other triumphant person inhabitants, but only a small rrunonty from his province had left before worked in agriculture-all the more him. His replacement, Boris Yeltsin, reason for the feat of Sverdlovsk who was hastily being trained at the peasants not to go unnoticed back at :Higher Party School in Moscow, had the Kremlin. Brezhnev personally already been appointed. On 2 sent a message of congratulations to November 1976 the plenary session the province for having fulfilled its of the Sverdlovsk obkom echoed the "socialist obligations" of mandatory "vill of the Politburo and elected grain, potato, and vegetable sales to Boris Yeltsm its First Secretary. the state.lO The provincial leadership Otl1er things were occurring in of the CPSU organized a rally and the world. The United States elected First Secretary Iakov Riabov took to Jimmy Carter president and the streets to share his joy with the Czechoslovakia decorated Leonid people: Brezhnev with his second Hero of We assure the Leninist Central Czechoslovakia Gold Star as well as Committee of the CPSU, and you, the Order of Clement Gottwald. The beloved Leonid ll'ich, that the Sverdlovsk press had its own story

9. Uralskii rabochii, 7 October 1976. 10. Uralskii rabochii, 19 October 1976. 11. lTralskii raboclzii, 19 October 1976. The message Wcl5 ~nt to Brezhnev from the Sverdlovsk obkom of the CPSU. 12. Uralskii rabochii, 26 October 1977.

5 priorities. Carter's election was rotting, on its way to inevitable worthy only of a note from TASS, demise, while history was proving Ithe official news agency of the socialism to be superior in all areas USSR, hidden on an inside page, of life. The picture the provincial while Brezhnev's decorations were press painted of local society was a given huge front-page headlmes. carbon copy miniature of the world Somewhere in between these two image reflected in the central press. items appeared the election notice of The Communist Party and its Boris Yeltsin, the man who would gigantic swarm of officials and preside over political rituals in the propaganda-makers conjured up province from that point on.l3 this mirage and fed it with figures, To sweeten the new leader's campaigns, medals, accolades, entry in the local communist bombastic phrases, and primitive leadership, Uralskii rabochii rituals. Eventually, they became d edicated an article to the Flrst caught up in their own lies from Secretary's home town, Butka, then repeating them so much. celebrating the three hundredth anniversary of its founding m 1676 ill. T HE COMMUNIST PARTY by Ivashko Silvents and Tirezhka IN THE PROVINCES Ivane"- builders of the town's The Frame of the Pyramid wooden fort.14 The daily newspaper The organizers of this fiction said Butka was one of the oldest were divided up into a hierarchical settlements in the region (47 years ruling caste known as the older than Ekaterinburg) and an nomenklatura. The structure of this outpost of the Russian empire ruling elite could be depicted as a during the conquest of Siberia. Little system of pyramids that diminished by little it had grown to a popula­ in importance as one moved down tion of 5,000 inhabitants. !twas a from the Central Committee of the prosperous town with a tapestry CPSU-the pyramid at the top of factory (that even produced for the hierarchy. The nomenklatura did export), starch and cooking oil its best to keep its struch1re airtight, factories, and a swine-breeding sensing that truth would have the savkhoz. same pulverizing effect on its Far away from Butka and the existence as would air on pharaonic idyllic life of Sverdlovsk province in mwnmies in a freshly opened the Urals was the capitalist world. sarcophagus. According to the local press, it was The Communist Party ran conspiring against the USSR, absolutely every institution of Soviet encouraged by a "band of plotters society-absolutely nothing could and assassins" in the OAand the prosper without its approval. In western media (which was in the accordance with the p rovisions of "lie production" business).1- At the Article 6 of the USSR Constitution of time Ycltsin assumed the provincia) 1977, the CPSU performed its ruling Party leadership, one message was function through a clever system of being drilled into everyone's head networking. All positions of any day in and day out: capitalism was importance were ultimately

13. Uralskii rabochii, 3 November l976. 14. "Butke 300 let," Uralskii raoocltii, 3 November 1976. 15. Uralskii rabochii, 26 October 1976.

6 subordinate to the Communist Party oi his appointment. The appointed structure, no matter where they nomenklatura was made up of the were located or how the officeholder fixed positions of the Communist had obtained his or her position. Party apparatus, while the elected The strict rules of operation of nomenkfutura was comprised of the nomenklatura constituted one of those positions to which individuals the occult sciences of the were formally "elected" after being Communist Party. Starting from the "recommended" by the Party. bottom and moving up the To work one's way up the hierarchical ladder of power in ladder, the basic nomenklatura was order of importance were the district w hat really mattered. Although the (raionnaia) nomenklatura, followed by secretaries of the Communist Party the city or urban (gorodskaia) nomen­ organization in Sverdlovsk klatura, followed by the nomenklatura belonged to the basic nomenklatura of the provincial (oblastnaia or kraevaia) of the Central Committee, there was Party committee, and lastly, the a subtle difference among them in nomenklatura of the Central hierarchy. ·f he First Secretary of the Committee in Moscow. At the height province was appointed by the of the Gorbachev era, the Central Politburo-in other words, he Committee needed a secret manual belonged to the nomenklatura of the (of restricted circulation and highest collective organization of the numbered copies) in order to keep CPSU-while the other secretaries track of the alphabet soup of were appointed by the Secretariat of positions controlled by the CPSU.16 the CentraJ Committee-in other In addition to this vertical chain words, they were a step down. of corrunand, the nomenklatura had TI1e Communist Party other, internal divisions. These organization was like an orthopedic divisions formed a capillary device: an artificial pumping system network that penetrated every part that replaced and suppressed other, of society. The division between more natural, and more basic (osnovnaia) and management spontaneous stimuli. The (u chitno-kontrol'naia) nomenklatura organizational fever of the CPSU overlapped with the division penneated every level of the Par~ between appointed and elected that is, at the core of every nomenklatura. In this way, the Party committee there was another made sure that nothing remained committee. The situation became so outside of its network. A Commu­ distorted that when Mikhail nist Party official belonged to the Gorbachev subsequently began the basic nomenklatura of the organiza­ process of political democratization, tion that had appointed him and, at the CPSU tried to organize itself the same time, to the management inside the Supreme Soviet of the nomenklatura of the organization just USSR as n party group instead of a above it in the hierarchy, whose duty parliamentary faction,17 as Valentin it w as to confirm and make a record Falin, a secretary of the Central

16. "Nomenklatura dolz.hnostei TsK KPSS po sostoianiiu na 1 dckabria 1987 g," 333 pages. Materials from the trial of the CPSU (Moscow· Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, 1992.) 17. "0 nekotorikh voprosov raboty s narodnamJ deputatarni SSSR," Protocol No. 164, Poliburo meeting of 8 September 1989, Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i uzycheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (RTsKhlDNI), Moscow.

7 Committee, had proposed to The obkom structure was a Gorbachev.18 smaller version of that of the CPSU The true nerve center ot the Central Committee in Moscow. The Party was its permanent apparatus Buro and the provincial Secretariat of functionaries, who were divided were the local counterparts of the into departments that oversaw all Politburo and the Secretariat of the aspects of local life. There were five Central Committee. That is to say, secretaries at the head of this they were the organs that actually apparatus in the Sverdlovsk obknm, wielded power-they were with the First Secretary enjoying permanent and controlled the Party apparatus. Nominally a kind of highest rank. Each secretary was in internal parliament that elected itself charge of a certain number of approximately every two years in departments; together, they provincial conferences of the CPSU, comprised the obkom SecretariaL In the obkom's parliamentary function addition, there existed a Buro, an was purely for show, !united to organ in which the five secretaries confirming (generally by a show of were joined by several other hands) whatever the Buro and officials, including the commander Secretariat proposed. Despite the of the Military District of the Urab, appearance of power, the the president of the executive Sverdlovsk obkom had lo request committee of the provincial soviet permission from Moscow for even (the permanent structure of the the most trivial things. In 1984, for provincial legislature, which had example, second secretary Oleg certain executive functions), the Lobov had to address the Central provincial chief of the Committee of Committee simply to hire a cleaning State Security (KGB), and the head lady. 21 of the iabor unions in the province.l9 The five provincial secretaries' The Buro had its own, distinct duties remained quite stable during ceremonies: Yeltsin's nine years in office. Nevertheless, from time to time When meetings began, the f irst changes were introduced and Secretary shook hands with the departments were transferred from full members and bowed his the purview of one secretary to that head to the candidate members. of another. As top leader, Yeltsin Participants in these meetings oversaw the Department of were rigorously dressed in suits and ties, .no matter how hot the Organizational Party Work, the weather. Yeltsin did .not tolerate agency in charge of the personnel casual dress and if some< nc files of Communist Party members dared to arrive without a swt and the selection of personnel; the coat, he would send the person General Department, which home to change clo thes.~ guarded classified materials,

18. Letter of Valentin Falin to Mikhail Gorbachev,21 September 1990, RTsKhlDNI. 19. At the Twenty-Third Sverdlovsk Oblast' Party Conference in 1984, eleven full and five candidate members were elected to the Buro. Among the first category was a worker; among the second, the head of the local KGB. ''Protokol XXill oblastnoi partiinoi konferentsii.., 2G-21 January 1984," TsDOOSO,fond 4, opis' 107, delo 1. 20. Grigorii Kaeta in conversation with the author, Ekaterinburg, October 1992. 21. See note of Oleg Lobov to the Central Committee of the CPSU, 13 September 1984, TsDOOSO.

8 monitored documents, and industry and defense production, delivered them to the records transportation, communications, section; and the Party Commission. machinery building, ~'Conornic and In addition, Yeltsin supposedly financial matters of the CPSU, and "mana21ed" military activity in the the work of planning organs and oblast'. He was also responsible for "slliaby" (specific-action "general management" of the KGB coordinating teams) that provided in the province (in practice, this was aid to the countryside. Among the political management) and the three second secretaries with whom enterprises of Minsredmash, the Yeltsin coexisted as the highest gigantic institution responsible for government official in Sverdlovsk, wartime use of nuclear energy Oleg Lobov (who later became The CPSU organizations in the Secretary of the Security Council of secret cities involved in the atomic the Russian Federation), was closest war industry, Sverdlovsk-44 and to hun. Both were construction Sverdlovsk-45, were also directly engineers and their personal accountable to Yeltsin, as were friendship went back to 1971, when political leaders of the executive they lr avelled to Sweden and structure of the provincial soviet, Finland together. 24 labor unions, the provincial People's Next in line in the hierarchy was Control Committee (an institution the secretary in charge of ideological elected by the soviets, a sort of con­ matters. This secretary kept watch sumers' rights and state inspection agency at the same time), and the o er the departments of Propaganda and Agitation; Science and Educa­ Komsomol (Communist Youth Organization). tional Institutions; Culture; and Throughout the time he Administrative Organs. He also occupied the post of First Secretary, oversaw the local branch of the Yeltsin not only retained ali of this USSR Academy of Sciences, Party authori~ he even expanded it by archives, sports, health, and social accumulating function<; that other matters. secretaries had performed pre­ Through the Department of viously. Specifically, he awarded Administrative Organs, the "number himself the position of represen­ three" secretary maintained the tative of the State Planning ubkom's institutional relations with Committee, or Gosplan, as well as the ~GB, the ministries of Internal oversight of the Department of Affairs and Justice, the procurator's Finance and Economics.23 office, and the judiciary. It was also In descending order of this secretary's job to "maintain an tmp ortancc, the first secretary was ongoing relationship and cooperate" followed by a second secretary, who with th.e Military District of the in 1977 was responsible for heavy Urals and "other military units

22. At the time, Sverdlovsk oblast' was a ~art of the Military District (okrug) of the Urals. Yeltsin, who received the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1976 and colonel in 1978, was a member of the corresponding Military Council of the Urals. 23. Protocol, Meeting of the Secretariat of the Buro of the Sverdlovsk obkom, 28 February 1977, TSD(X)SO, fond 4, opis' 89, de/a 22, list 3; and Protocol, Meeting of Sccretanat of the Buro of the Sverdlovsk oblaJm, 1 April 1985, TsOOOSO, fond 4, opis' 111, delo 66, list 17. Both documents are signed by Yellsin. 24. Oleg Lobov in conversation with the author, Moscow, 15 December 1992.

9 located on provincial territory,"25 as of each group determined by the well as to direct volunteer militia Department of Organizational Party units.26 Independent of the obkomr Work. The body thus grouped Party organizations in military units together directors of the most located in Sverdlovsk oblast' were important factories, managers of subordinate to the Political Admini­ military enterprises, war veterans, stration of the Army, which had a anny officers, KGB officials, rank equivalent to that of a depart­ workers, and peasants. The obkom ment of the CPSU Central acted in the belief that efficient Committee. penetration of the soviets, labor The fourth obkom secretary dealt unions, youth organizations, social with construction and the organizations, factories, collective construction materials industry, farms, trade-indeed, all spheres of public works, the distribution of life-by members of the Communist housing, and the timber and paper Party would make society woik industries. During Yeltsin's time/ the according to the directives of i:l1e fifth and last secretary was in charge CPSU. of agriculture, light industry~ and the The actual number of obkom food industry (including vodka and members depended on the nwnber soft drink production), farm of active Party members in the machinery enterprises, and trade.27 oblast'. In 1984, for example, there Aside from their institutional responsibilities, the secretaries were 143 full and 59 candidate p romoted specific programs. The members of the Sverdlovsk obkom.29 secretary for ideology, for example, (Corresponding nwnbers for the directed a working group tasked total nwnber of full-fledged and with counterpropaganda; the candidate members of the secretary for agriculture, a program Sverdlovsk Communist Party for the development of small organization as a whole were vegetable gardens attached to 220,556 in 1976 and 265,524 in enterprises; the secretary for 1986.30) The combined nomenklatura construction, a plan for the of the provincial, city, and district demolition of barracks.28 Party committees of the province in Those social groups that the 1983, however, totalled almost Party considered most significant 20,000 people, including officials of were represented on the ohkvm itself, the Communist Party and the with the proportional representation soviets, as well as leaders of

25. Protocol, Meeting of the Secretariat of the Sverdlovsk obkonz, 1 April 1985, TsDOOSO,fond 4, opis' 111, delo 66, listy 18-19. The protocol is signed by Yeltsin. 26. These volunteer uni~, kn~wn as druzhinniki, ~ere a support group to the tor~es of Jaw and order who 1dentificd themselves With red arm bands. They pnne~paUy devoted their energies to ptcking up drunks. 27. in the event that direct control of all economic activity was not sufficient, the CPSU duplicated its oversight by using the provincial soviel apparatus. The soviets had no choice but to implement the decisions of the CPSU through its executive structme and accept formal responsibility for these decisions. 28. Protocol No. 18, Meeting of the Secretariat of the Sverdlovsk obkom, 1 April1985, TsDOOSO, fond 4, opis' !l1 , delo 66, Jisty 17- 20. 29. "Protokol XXIII oblastnoi partiinoi konferentsii." 30. Statistics on Communist Party Militancy, TsOOOSO.

10 enterprises and other institutions.31 military- industrial complex. The This last figure reflected the number true nature of these ministries of provincial positions requiring the remained hidden behind long approval of the CPSU, not the group strings of syllables that supposedly directly on the Party payroll. abbreviated their names. According to former obkom Minobshchemash, for example, was administrative officials, the latter the Mrrustry of General Machine group was much smaller, Builiiing; Minaviaprom, the Ministry numbering just over 500 people at of the Aviation Industry; the end ofYeltsin's term. Minelektroprom, the Ministry of the When Yeltsin first became head Electric lndustry; and Minsredmash, of the obkom, the body had a total of the Ministry of Medium Machine 14 departments. By the end of 1984, Building, which, as previously during the finaJ months of his stay menti()ned, was actually responsible in Sverdlovsk, there were 22 organs for atomic energy These and many w ithin the obkom: 17 departments, other ministries had their own the Party Commission (a sort of people who watched out for their internal disciplinary tribunaJ32), as interests in strictly military well as a records department, the en terprises, as well as in many other Higher Party Schoot the editorial enterprises partially involved in the staff of the newspaper Uralskii military- industrial sector. 34 rnbochii, and a publishing house of the same name. The total number of Sealed File Cabinets p rovincial Party cornmi ttee Th Department of Organiza­ employees in that year was 216.33 tional Party Work, over which Yeltsin The number of employees in had direct control, ensured-to put each department, ranging from 33 in it plainly-the perpetuation of the the Department of Organizational ruling dassiu power. This Party Work to 4 in the Department department m aintained files on of Culture, did not necessarily Communist Party officials that were indicate the significance of a prepared in compliance with department's specialization. The general directives of the Central Department of Defense, for Committee. Every official of the example, formally had a very small nomer7ldatura had his or her own staff because it was limited to personnel file in this department supervising cadres dispersed which, together with secret papers, throughout local industry. These was kep t in noncombustible, or cadres were in tum managed by a metallic, cabinL-!ts that were locked group of ministries comprising the up at the end of each work day.35

31. Speech of Boris Yeltsin at SverdJovsk obkom meeting of 21 February 1983, TsDOOSO,fond 279, opis' 1, delo 236, list 26. 32. TI:Us body was known alternatively as the "Party Conunission" or the "Party Control Commission" during different periods of Soviet history. 33. "Spisok rabotnikov Svcrdlovskogo obkoma KPSS" (Svcrdlovsk: Uralskii Rabochii Publishers, 20 November 1984.) This document was a sheet of paper that listed obkom em.ployees names, positions, and telephone numbers; officials generally kept it under lhe glass on tncir desks at work. 34. In addition, the regional affiliate of the Academy of Sciences, the Polytechnic Institute of the Urals, together with other technical mstitu tions of higher education in the p rovince had both overt and covert sections that worked for the defense industry.

11 These files could not be taken out of convicted of illegal possession of the obkom and contained references firearms. concerning the Party member in The General Department­ question that were signed by the notorious for being the best obkom secretary with the proper informed-was in charge of authority. 'This file, updated no less documents, classified information, than once every five years and photocopy machines, admittance ratified each time an individual passes to the obkom building, and received a professional promotion or shifts of the security detail in the travelled abroad, was supposed to First Secretary's reception room. contain information on an This deparbnent monitored all individual's "defects" as well as movement of documents, lending comments on his or her ability to them only to those authorized to use overcome them. (In Yeltsin'sfile, or them, and acted as the custodian of kharakteristika, which rem ains stored all records and minutes of conferences, in Sverdlovsk, there appears an plenary sessions, m eetings of Party allusion to his poor character.) members, the Buro, and the In the kharakteristika, Party Secretariat. The deparbnent also members were supposed to specify ordered seals and stamps for Party their social extraction, nationality, committees, as well as Party cards and details about stays overseas, as for individual Party members. well as draft autobiographical notes Minutes of the meetings of the explaining the reasons for changes ruling organs of the CPSU were kept of domicile. These hand-written secret: it was forbidden to make documents piled up over the years copies of them, quote them in the in each Commw"list Party official's press, or even mention them in the file and reflected their hesitancy to documents of the soviets, the labor remember, their obligation to report, unions, the Komsom ol, or economic and, perhaps, their desire not to institutions. In this way, the CPSU report. 36 Communist Party could recant on decisions without m embers were also supposed to leaving any troublesome clues give information on their relatives; behind, making it impossible to that is, to indicate if they were Party prove any wrongdoing with members, their level of education, documentary evidence. and whether or not they had a The responsibilities of the chief criminal record. Yeltsin, for example, of the General Deparbnent justified did not indicate whether or n ot his his carrying a pistol. In 1981, both father belonged to the CPSU, nor the pistol and the chief, Vladimir did he mention that his father had Titov, disappeared in Sverdlovsk. It been convicted. The father of was a very unsavory scandal that Gennaclii Burbulis, however, did put eventually gave rise to suspicion of ' on record that he had a brother in alleged infiltration by foreign Iprison and another who had been intelligence services. 1itov had been

35. ''Rekomendatsii po uchotu kadrov, vkhodiashchikh v nomenklatunt obkoma, gorkomov, raikomov KPSS," 1987, TsDOOSO. 36. It is precisely in these autobiographical notes that Boris Yeltsin explained what happened to his family for two years in Kazan' after his father chang-ed jobs. Who knows why Yeltsin refers to hjs wife by the name of Anastasia on one occasion and as Naina on others? Who knows why Yeltsin made a mistake when he gave the dates of his stay in Ka7..an' as a child?

12 Yeltsin's aid from 1977 to 1979 and, people, 500 employees sat on 90 prior to that, an instructor at the di.ffc.rent commissions.38 Department of H eavy Industry His Generating more and more body appeared in a swamp many paperwork was a way to keep months later; his death, termed a everyone busy for the sake of suicide, was never cleared up. keeping busy Officials on the provincial corrunittee would, on The Paper Jungle their own initiative, often overload When Iurii Andropov came to subordinate agencies and economic power at the end of 1982, the Party institutions with countless requests began to seek out qualified for reports. In this way, the obkom professionals who could work would receive 10,000 supplementary energetically and shake off the documents each year in addition to inertia created by a bureaucratic those prepared in the normal course type who was self-complacent, of business.39 To make its way compliant, and had a taste for the through this paper jungle, the obkom bourgeois life. Alas, it wasn't easy to evenhtally requested its find the new people they needed departments to kindly provide an with the help of the Party's extract of previous orders on the personnel files because the same subject whenever they kl1arakteri.stiki contained misrepre­ proposed an initiative.40 sen tations of fact and did not reflect The study of reality was the true qualities and shortcomings replaced by a zeal to organize; the of ftmctionaries, as Yellliin himself purpose of the organizational fever acknowledged.37 The CPSU thus w as to submit the most inflated fotmd itself caught up in its own lies. statistics possible to the higher The bureaucrats themselves organs of the CPSU. were lost in a sea of redundant resolutions on the same subjects and Socialist Legality Illilde an effort to straighten out the The CPSU held the concept of mess. It w as with great satisfaction "socialist legality" over and above that the Sverdlovsk obkom in swnmer the concept of "justice" and, at the 1983 announced a drop in the number very top of the hierarchy of of instructions issued by the Buro and institutions that enforced "socialist the Secretariat fmm 120 in 1979 to 92 legality," sat the KGB. Its chief in in !984. The joy didn't appear to last Sverd.lovsk w as appointed by the for long. By 1984, Yel®n confessed Secretariat of the Central Committee that the number of instructions, of the CPSU, that is to say, he commissions, and soviets w as belonged to the basic nomenklatura m ultiplying at an alarming rate. In of the Central Committee. Although one factory that employed 1,200 politically, he was below the First

37. Boris Yeltsin, Sverdlovsk obkom meeting, 21 February 1983, TsDOOSO, fond 279, opis' l , del.o 136, listy 38 and passim. 38. ''Protokol XXill oblastnoi partiinoi konierentsii.' 39. "0 sostoianii raboty s dokumentarni, kontroha i proverki ispolneniia v apparate obkoma KPSS," note to Protocol No. 31, meeting of the Secretariat of the Sverdlovsk obkom, 15 August 1983, TsDOOSO,fimd 4, opis' 106, delo 65, !ish; 55--f>O. 40. Ibid. See also CPSV Central Committee resolution, "0 dopolnitel'nikh mera.kh po ulusheniiu raboty s dokumentami, povys.heniiu kontrolia i proverki ikh vypolneniia v apparate TsK KPSS," 10 June 1983, TsOOOSO.

13 Secretary of the oblast' Party stations, and the Commission on committee, who belonged to the Travel to Foreign Countries. nomenklatura of the Politburo, the Although the KGB was Secretariat's appointment of the perceived-correctly-as one of province's highest-ranking KGB many special institutions under the officer afforded the latter a position watch of the Department of of independence. Since this officer, Administrative Organs, it like the First Secretary, was performed investigations and subordinate to the Central surveillance through its own covert Corrunittee, he could interact with channels without recourse to the the First Secretary with a certain Party. The institutional links freedom enjoyed by none of the between the KGB and the CPSU other top provincial chiefs (the local took place at the vertex of the heads of the Procuracy, the courts, provincial Party structure: the First and the ministries of Justice and Secretary of the obkom could Internal Affairs were ail confirmed demand information on events in in their posts by lower levels of the the province fr()ffi the head of the nomenklatura hierarchy). Without KGB, who was obligated to provide understanding this crucial the information. However, the KGB information, it is impossible to chief was also subordinate to his understand the true interaction of own committee in Moscow through power inside the provincial a parallel chain of command completely outside the provincial Communist Party elite and the leader's sphere of influence. subordinate role played by law in Lower down on the hierarchical the Soviet system as a whole. ladder, the apparatus of the obkom This well-defined scheme of and the apparatus of the KGB interdependence between performed parallel tasks without apparently unlinked institutions getting in each other's way, but also was kept secret from many officials without exchanging information. of the Communist Party. Institu­ The KGB did not usually resort to tionally speaking, the provincial using the institutional mechanisms organization of the KGB, like the of the Party. One official who provincial representatives of the worked in the provincial records ministries of Internal Affairs and repository of the CPSU for decades Justice, the Procuracy, and the claimed that the KGB had not once courts, interacted with the Party come to him to check a protocol. through the Department of "They had their own investigative Administrative Organs. Under the sections," he explained to the author aegis of this agency fell, among during an interview.41 other things, oversight of the bar Although the KGB would association, notary publics, penal respond to the requests of the First institutions, fire departments, the Secretary or, on its own initiative, training academy and Party organs submit reports for his consideration, of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it did not have the day-to-day recruitment centers of the armed obligations of the local organs of the forces, paramilitary organizations, Ministry of Internal Affairs. (The civil defense, war veterans, police Department of Administrative

41. Interview with anonymous former Communist Party official, Ekaterinburg, August 1992.

14 Organs filed a daily report written Communist Party or Kornsomol by the local. representative of the member to go to work for the KGB Ministry of Internal Affairs, with the (such transfers were considered obkom First Secretary on the latest prestigious). Before becoming chief events in the oblast'.) of the KGB in the province, for Relations between the First example, lurii Kornilov had been Secretary and the chief of the KGB Party secretary of a district (raion) of were similar to relations between an the city of Svercllovsk. ambassador and the head of an fY. THE LIFE OF THE ELITE espionage mission under diplomatic cover: for the most part, it depended The Communist Bourgeoisie on the personal rapport between the­ " Jt's high time Party workers two. "Everyone in the Buro knew stopped parading through the obkom that he [the chairman of the local building w ith handbags, boxes, and KGB] was accountable not only to shopping bags," said Boris Yeltsin, me. We all knew that it was among addressing 175 Communist Party his duties to brief Moscow without members w ho had been assembled consulting anyone else," affirmed to examine the level of discipline Iakov Riabov, former First Secretary among oblast' leaders.43 The First of the Svercllovsk obkom. Riabov Secretary was referring to scarce never found out whether or not the consumer goods that Communist KGB had filed complaints to Party officials could purchase Moscow againc;t him or other cheaply at the obkom discount store. provincial officials. On the other Yeltsin did not censure this practice hand, he p ointed out that the chief of the privileged few, he was simply of the KGB briefed him on his concerned about what ordinary subordinates' activities. "But in citizens would think and say if they addition to briefing me, he could happened see officials carting brief Moscow without consulting around such purchases. l11e w as 1983: Andropov me, because he was obliged to do year had come to power and, with him, so," he explained.42 his camp aign for Party discipline Relations with the KGB were soc1al order had come to governed by a strict hierarchy. and Sverdlovsk. Noted Yeltsin, Although the Department of Organizational Party Work could And look w hat's happening in the request personnel files from the office of admittance on Fridays. KGB to verify the background of Starting at 5:00p.m., relatives and friends begin arriving to see our anyone within its ranks, the KGB w orkers at the latters' request. At did not necessarily provide the that hour, one finds outsiders information. Everything depended {postoronnu· liudi) here, people who on how high in the nomenklatura have come to the obkom for a stood the person requesting the recep tion or on other business. This information vis-a-vis the target of the must be p ut to a stop.44 investigation. The Buro would The Communist officials of some times give its consent for a Sverdlovsk constituted a sort of local

42. Iakov Riabov in conversation with the author, Moscow, October 1992. 43. Speech of Boris Yeltsin to Sverdlovsk Party 11bkom meeting, 21 February 1983, 1 sDOOSO,fond 279, opis' l, delo 136, Jist 49. 44. fuid., 50.

15 bourgeoisie, a relatively well-off had been dealt with in 1981, but by class with their own little vices and 1983, related Yeltsin, "new abuses" privileges that, on a smaller scale, had been detected and police mirrored the privileges of the records filed against 43leadcrs.46 He Communist bou,rgeoisie in Moscow. criticized in particular a director of a Andropov's discipline campaign construction trust who had built a upset their comfort. TI1e families of Communist bureaucrats had, for two-floor country house with a total example, grown accustomed to of 82 square meters of living using official cars for personal space--three times the regulation reasons. School principals, said size. The official later sold the house, Yeltsin, were complaining that many said Yeltsin, but thanks to his children went to school in their position, became a member of fathers' chauifeur-driven Volgas. In another coJlective garden the First Secretary's opinion, this (kollektir.myi sad) two months later practice inflicted enormous moral and began to build himself two harm on privileged and more houses with materials from his unprivileged schoolchildren alike--those who had to ride the company. Despite a warning from streetcar compared themselves with the district committee of the CPSU, those got to ride in Volgas.4S the official continued to manage the Another deep-rooted vice construction company. among the local ruling class during Whatever the official ideology, the time of Brezhnev was u dacha the apparatchiki of the Soviet system and garden sickness." According to never lacked business acumen or a Yeltsin, this sickness reached feel for the market Instead of "epidemic" proportions in putting up used state cars for sale to Sverdlovsk in 1983. The First the public, for example, as they were Secretary reprimanded those supposed to do, directors of subordinates who devoted most of enterprises would arbitrarily sell the their energy and ingenuity to thinking up ways of making Lheir vehicles or, in many cases, keep d achas, or country houses, better them for themselves. Once Yeltsin th an those of their neighbors, took stock of the whereabouts of 837 reproaching them for using their cars that had been sold within the l p ositions to obtain construction oblast'. It turned out that 160 had lnaterials at discounted prices or been bought by enterprise directors; simply for free, as well as for 264, by engineers and technicians; diverting highly qualified specialists 93, by private drivers; 31, by officials and their assistants away from theu of administrative agencies; 13, by regular jobs. It wasn't the fust time the CPSU officials of the soviets; and 10, by had discussed abuses of power and officials of the CPSU; another 10 had violations of rules goveming left the province altogether.47 A total collective garden plots and the of 488 cars-that is, more than half I construction of dachas. Such abuses the original number-never reached

45. TsDOOSO,fond 4, apis' 101, delo 86, list 45. 46. TsDOOSO, fond 279, opis' 1, dc>lo 136, ltst 33. 47. Ibid., 34.

16 the lines of people patiently awaiting Clinic No.2 their tum for just one car. 48 The caste-based society Yeltsin The Communist Party was the directed was so strictly regimented, leading force of society and and in such great detail, that it clid therefore in a privileged position not allow for the slightest chance of regarding the delivery of goods and improvisation. This regimentation services; the obkom was the first to was demonstrated by the rules for receive new cars and simultaneously O.inic No. 2, the clinic that provided turned over u sed cars to the soviets. health care for the nomenklatura of This was standard practice during the provmce.SO The roster of state Yeltsin's term as obkom First and Party p ositions entitled to Secretary. The obkom Secretariat was treatment at this clinic read exactly thoughtful enough to deem new like a chart of the local power cars fit and old ones unfit as if they hierarchy. The Communist Party were two separate, unconnected elite, which included members of categories. In one session of the the obkom Buro and the chairman of Secretariat, as if one had nothing to the provincial soviet, comprised U1e do with the other, two separate "preferred." (vne kategorii) group; the items were recorded on the agenda: remainder of those eligible to use the the delivery of "new cars" to clinic were divided into three members of different city Party categories. The first category consisted of officials who had the comm ittees of the province and the right to use the clini.c together with generous delivery to various soviets all mem bers of their families; the of cars deemed unfit for use by second, of officials who could use Party organs. Likewise, that gorkomy the clinic together with their happened to receive new cars would dependents and those family send, as if a generous gift, vehicles mem bers with whom they resided; that had been in circulation on the and the third, of officials without the p rovince's bumpy highways for six, right to bring any family member sev~, or even eight years to the whatsoever to the clinic. provincial soviet for "further use in TI1e list of social groups the national economy."41J Judging includ ed in the first category from. the number of full-time represented the innermost circle of emp loyees at the garage, the largest the local elite. Headed by the department of the obkom, the C?SU department chiefs of the obkom, this took very good care of its cars; more group included the secretaries of the than 80 people worked there, Party committee of the city of mcluding over 50 chauffeurs and Sverdlovsk, the vice-presidents and mechanics. m-embers of the executive committee

48. These examples of "awarded" cars foreshadowed a trend that would, many years later, become deep-rooted during the privatization process, a process known as "nomenklatura privatization" in post-communist Russia. The plan for diversification of Soviet property during the early stages of privatization was as easy aS the awarding of cars in Sverdlovsk oblnst': managers of public property or, in some instances, simply those who had access to this property, awarded it to themselves before it cou1d be put up for public sale or submitted to the legal process of privatization. 49. TsDOOSO,fond 4, opis' 106, delo 63. 50. "Predlozhenie po kontingentu oblastnoi bol'nili;y no. 2," 27 April1979, TsDOOSO, fond 4, opis' 95, delo 170.

17 of the oblast' soviet, the chairman of Friends of Books to the Society of the oblast' soviet of the labor union<>, the Deat appeared on more than a the chief of the provincial People's dozen of these supplementary lists. Controt the First Secretary of the The clinic staff~ which jn 1970 Komsomol, the director-generaJ of totalled almost 100 people, the Uralmash factory, the chief of gradually became larger, reaching Glavsreduralstroi, as well as the almost 750 in 1979. Yet local leaders chairman of the Presidium of the wanted still more staff, demanding a Urals Scientific Center of the USSR permanent team of m ore than 900 Academy of Sciences, the editor of people, including more than 200 Uralskii rabochii, and the oblast' doctors, to care for 10,188 patients.51 chairman of the KGB. Two groups of beneficiaries were by The second category was made their own right the largest. One, up of deputies to the Supreme comprised of 1,181 people, included Soviets of both the USSR and the members of the basic nomenklatura Russian .i.~epublic, recipients of tlte and the staff of the obkom (officials in H ero of Socialist Labor and Hero of charge of Party organizations, the USSR awards; rc'C.ipients of the soviets, labor unions, the Lenin Prize and other state prizes; Komsomol, and other institutions); leaders of social organizations; the other, made up of 2,170 people, distinguished artists, painters and consisted of chief officers of the architects-that is, the official gorkom, the executive committee of "intelligentsia;" ruling officials of the the oblast' soviet, and other apparatus of the soviets; war veterans; Commurtist Party organizations not included in the lf members with Party cards issued oblastnaia nomenklatura. one adds before 1922; and those who fell into the almost 6,000 family members of the category of "all-union state these two groups, several hundred retiree." Communist Party veterans and their The category of "republic state families, retirees of both the retiree" was of lower standmg and, all-union and republic categories together with veterans of World War who received health care at Clinic n, the bulk of the faculty of the no. 2 before retiring, plus the Higher Party School, and the technical workers of the obkom and . technicians and executive committee gorsoviet (the city soviet), one arrives I of the oblast' soviet, comprised the at the total number of people served third group. Certain additional by the clinic. privileged groups with the right to For the mere mortals of treatment at different levels were Sverdlovsk, health care was quite a included in each basic category. different story. The number of Faculty members of the Higher doctors in the oblas f' was below the Party School, members of the USSR Russian Republic average. Patients Union of Nriters, managers of lay in halls and shacks due to lack of enterprises, jownalists, reporters, space and the state of maternity and chairpersons of social organiza­ wards in the city of Sverdlovsk was tions ranging from the Society of the so poor that women would leave to

51. Letter of A Mekhrentsev, Chairman, Executive Committee, Sverdlovsk Oblast' Soviet, to USSR Minister of Health V. Trofimov; and "Spravka o kontin~ente Sverdlovskoi oblastnoi bolnitsy no. 2," 27 April 1979, TsDOOSO, fond 4, ap1.s' 95, delo 170, listy 191-8.

18 give birth in the small town.<> of the imposed on the USSR.54) The plan surrounding countryside.52 required Sverdlovsk to lay 2,000 kilometers of pipe and build 20 V. YELTSIN IN P OWER p wnping stations, all of which Construction in the Oblast' required an investment of 1.7 billion .. .The Pipeline rubles.SS Jtwas an outrageous sum Boris Yeltsin's personality as a of money at the time, especially leader was apparent first and when compared to the 85 million foremost in the sphere of rubles allocated for the development construction, a profession to which of a bauxite mine in 1982, the second his career had been linked in several most .important construction project enterprises before he became in the province. responsible for this sector of the ln order to maintain control over Sverdlovsk obkom. Construction important construction projects, an works in the province were divided obkom w ould establish so-called into several categories. -;_.arge-scale 11 Silttlby." These were groups of state plans had top priorit)j followed by prestigious works different upper-level officials (from aimed at beautifying Sverdlovsk, the Communist Party, trade unions, followed by buildings local leaders enterprises, etc.) who kept watch insisted on building at any cost, over a specific construction site and followed, finally, by housing supplied it with the required construction programs and the materials. Slttaby were based on elimination of barracks dwellings. constant surveillance of and The most important civilian individualized pressure on a construction company in the p articular construction site, serving province, Glavsreduralstroi, had more as a remforcement to the usual than 100,000 people on its payroll orthopedic device that substituted and m anufactured its own materials. for institutions and normal Beginning in 1981, the province motivation. In the swruner of 1981, of Sverdlovsk participated in the for e>:arnple, Yeltsin himself laying of five natural gas pipelines organized an aerial expedition over to connect Siberia with the European the pipeline that had been Laid from part of the USSR.53 The pipelines Urengoi. In the helicopter with constituted the main project of the Soviet state during the 1981-86 Yeltsin rode second obkom Party five-year plan and crossed the taiga secretary Leonid Bobikin and other forests in the northern part of the top obkom leaders Iurii Petrov, VIktor province. (Yeltsin regarded the Iliushin, Fedor Morshchakov, and pum ping station project as the Oleg Lobov. Except for Bobikin, who Urals' response to the sanctions later joined the campaign to A__ .r nerican President Ronald Reagan discredit Ycltsin, all these public

52. Speech of Boris Ye!tsin to the Twenty-Third Sverdlovsk Oblast' Party Conference, "Protokol XXIII oblastnoi partiinoi konferentsii." (See note 18). 53. ';h e construction of the gas pipeline was realized according to Joint Resolution no. 602 of the Central Comnuttce of the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers, 29 June 1981. 54. Speech of Boris Yeltsin to meeting of the oblast' slrtnb on capital construction, TsDOOSOJond 4, opis' 1001, delo 189, /isty 164-7. 55. r;·sDOOSO,fond 4, opis' 100, delo 74, list 24.

19 I figures ended up with offices in the who, like Yeltsin, had made his Kremlin a decade later. 56 career in construction) to go to l Before Mikhail Gorbachcv came Nizhnii Tagil and deliver a harsh 1 to power, it was also common to use reprimand to the managers of local prisoners on construction jobs in the construction companies. One of I USSR The practice was both a these builders was Eduard Rossel, remnant of the gulag system and the who years later would become response 0f an economy detached governor of the province and from ar.y material or moral stimuli. ideologue of the "Republic of the Numerous penal institutions were Urals." At the time, however, Rossel located within the territory of and other local officials were Sverdlovsk oblast', especially in the accused of parasitism and having northern region, which servt'risoners.58 Alas, soldiers were had banned the creation of new much less productive than qualified 1ipeciaJ labor contingents in light of workers because they had no 1 the tense situation in Nizhnii Tagil interest in the work. Yet local builders continued to insist that such contingents be created ... The Opera Theater I· because they were hard-pressed to On another construction front, in fulfill planned projects-no doubt December 1982 Boris Yeltsin due to a lack of manpower-.md managed to cut the inaugural ribbon were unable to use the allocations of the Opera and Ballet Theater of provided to them by the Council of Sverdlovsk according to plan and on Ministers for this purpose. time. In his speech, he honored the Tension with builders in this "great tradition of the builders of second largest city of the province Sverdlovsk [who putJ one important forced obkom secretary Oleg Lobov cultural work into operation each (a veteran Communist Party official year." A total of 23 enterprises,

56. See list of participants on the inspection flight over the Uren_goi- Nizhn.iaia Tura-Petrovsk pipeline, 26-7 August 1981, TsOOOSO, fond 4, opis 100, delo 202, fisty 79-80. 57. TsDOOSO, fond 4, apis' 106, delo 1, listy 42--6. 58. The energy enterprise wanted the CPSU to see fit to "order the provincial department of the Ministry of Interior to look into the possibility of organizing a special command team on the construction site for the pumping station of Krasnoturinsk," TsOOOSO,_fomd 4, npzs' 100, delo 202, listy 84-7.

20 including the most important in the part of the state plan, the highway province, had taken part in the was built with money from the reconstruction of the theater, a provinCL~the obkom simply building that dated from the tum of calculated the total kilometers and the century The new lighting prorated the cost of the highway fixtures came from the military among its future beneficiaries. factory Optika-Mekhanika and the In contrast to the slow pace of marble, from Uralmramor. It had the highway construction stood that been the job of a shtab of more than of the House of the Soviets in the fifty people to harass these city o.f Sverdlovsk, the building that enterprises which, as usual, had would become the headquarters of d elayed the realization of building both the Communist Party and the plans for the theater. p rovincial soviet. Ordered by Construction projects such as the Moscow, the ambitious project was opera theater entailed a certain built and managed by military degree of risk for provincial leaders construction enterprises, not the because authorities in Moscow did civilian enterprise Glavsreduralstroi. not permit appropriations from the It was m no way concerned with center to be reallocated according to functionality, but rather, prestige: it local whim. In general, Moscow was meant to be the highest and opposed initiatives of the provinces most central building in the city. that diverted funds earmarked for Yeltsin, who was secretary of the state plans. Yeltsin, however, figured oblwm when the work was planned, out how to convince local enter­ was particularly interested in prises to contribute to the general underscoring the symbolic value of w ell-being of the city without detriment to state plans. the buildjng above and beyond its functional value. ...Other Construction In mder to engage the services Not all construction projects of one of the USSR's most ended as successfully as the opera prestigious military builders, theater. When he departed the Aleksandr Stambulchik-always province, Riabov bequeathed to willmg and eager to lend a hand to Yeltsin 346 kilometers of a half-built Communist leaders-oblast' highway connectin g Sverdlovsk to authorities had to obtain the direct the city of Serov. The first permission of the USSR Minister of north-south artery in the province, Medium Machine Building, Efim the highway was considered to have Slavskii. According to Riabov, the great strategic importance. Called minister had been the managing the "little BAM/' it was as important director of an aluminum factory in to Sverdlovsk as the Baikal-Amur Svcrdlovsk during the war and railway had been to the exploitation never caused trouble for of Siberia. Yeltsin failed to finish the Stambu.lchik, always giving in to project In fact, from the time it was what he needed.59 Dedicated in 1982 begun during Riabov' s term as predsely according to plan, the new obkom First Secretary until it opened House of the Soviets was a colossal in November 1985 (during Petrov's technical mistake. As one observer tenn), the highway took 20 years to remarked, "It's completely occupied complete. Since the project was not a by elevators and there's hardly any

59. Iakov Riabov in conversation with the author, Moscow, 27 October 1992.

21 office space."60 Due to its upright metallurgical factory of Alap aevsk, silhouette, the builcling' s pop ular for example, enterprise housing nicknames became "the Party units were found to be in worse member" and "the wisdom tooth." shape than the barracks slated for As concerned housing fm demolition.62 orclinary citizens of the province, Yeltsin refused to build the five­ Of Agriculture and story panel housing complexes so the Food Situation typical of Soviet cities in the In 1983 the crisis in the supply of downtown area of Sverdlovsk, basic foods had reached such insisting that he would build only proportions in the province that a l good-quality housing. In practice, drop in the sale of margarine, eggs, this was the same as saying that the tea, macaroni, ared potatoes was obknm was refraining from building confumed.63 In order to combat the such housing in the hope that there scarcity of food supplies, the CPSU would be an opportunity to do so in stepped up political indoctrination, the future.61 Although barracks or agitprop, among store employees dwellings in the province had been and blamed the urban and district officially demolished in 1983, Party conunittees for doing a poor statistics hid the true state of affarrs. propaganda job. It also decreed that In order to cover up the scope of the the central core of the CPSU and the housing problem, official termino­ Komsomol be strengthened in the logy had created a distinction area of commerce and that the between two categories of construction of socialism be dwellings: ''barracks" and "old perfected. In this way, perhaps, the housing." Instead of demolishing stores would become filled with barracks, certain ministries, groceries. o rganizations, and even soviets Boris Yeltsin organized peasant undertook to rebuild them in order markets in Sverdlovsk and, in fall to upgrade them from the lower to 1982, even convened a produce the higher category. A group of fair.64 Markets in Sverdlovsk were barracks in the city of Sverdlovsk, held on boggy sites, without storage for example, was upgraded after or refrigeration. Most stands were being outfitted with just a partition exposed to the elements, with no ' and three new entrances. place for vendors to eat hot meals. Enterprises in the Soviet Union The provincial buro of the CPSU, its w ere paternalistic entities that buHt collective brain seemingly con­ housing and provided other goods strained by the usual orthopedk and services to their employees. This device, attributed this regrettable paternalism, however, at times scene to a lack of involvement of I verged on the absurd. At the Communist Party m embers. (Of the

60. Sergei Vozdvizhenskii in conversation with the author, Ekaterinburg, 3 February 1994. 61. Speech of Boris Yeltsin on Sverd.lovsk oblast' television, TsDOOSO, fond 4, opis' 101, delo 86, list 34. 62. TsDOOSO,fond 4, opis' 107, de/o 102, listy 67-9. 63. TsDOOSO, fond 4, apis' 106, delo 65, /isty 66--72. 64. Years later, he tried to repeat. this rnitiative in Moscow, when he had truckloads of vegetables brought into the capital in what proved to be an economjc disaster, as the trucks rode empty for thousands of kilometers on their way home.

22 50 directors of kfJlkhoz markets in the mechanism that turned a blind eye province, only 10 were active Party to reality. members.65) Instructions of the day were to find the enemy and, accordingly, The Vigilant Eye this w as done. Yeltsin found the In the summer of 1983, no one enemy in the person of Valerian expected the thaw that would Morozov, a man who tried to send accompany Mikhail Gorbachev's abroad his bulky Marxist revisionist arrival in power. That summer, Boris book. Morozov was a dangerous Yeltsin returned to Sverdlovsk after fetlow who had tried to meet attending a CPSU ideological personally with the well-known plemun convened by Iutii Andropov. anti·Sovtet Andrei Sakharov and He proceeded to set forth the had even traveled to Gorkii (today Kremlin's new policy guidelines to Nizhnii Novgorod) to see the the local elite. Declared Yeltsin 21t the dissident scientist living in exile in meeting, that city on the banks of the Volga. We must decidedly unmask Moro7ov died at a clinic of the contemporary two-faced Jan uses Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1989. and not allow them to get to young By that time, however, the people-our most valuable capital. communist elite of Sverdlovsk had ... The Party obkom understands that we are obliged to guard our already forgotten this victim of theoretical and ideological compass Soviet psychiatry, whose only sin vigilantly and keep it firmly in vie~ had been a wish to perfect Marxism. not permitting foreign hands to At the height of Andropov's undermine it with the hatchet of brief rule, Yeltsin perceived an political indifference and ideological vacuity in an attempt to divert us ideological tiu·eat among citizens from our proper Leninist course.66 who had succumbed to "the poisoned ideas of bourgeois The language of the time was nationalism." These citizens were quite convoluted. These high-flown being transformed into "spokesmen paragraphs were most likely the of the enemy," forgetting that the work of the department of Adm..ini­ USSR was their country and that in strativc Organs, charge of they had been educated by Soviet relations with the institutions of law society. Among such citizens were enforcem ent. In fact, each of the two workers from a local factory obkom departments made contri­ who were charged with anti-Soviet butions to the speeches of the First Secretary Yeltsin's aides would then agitation in 1982. "Blinded by rewrite the fragments so as to give Zionist prop aganda," these enemies them a uniform style. Yeltsin himself of the S viet system made an always took a look at them and, 18-kilometer-long magnetic tape before taking the podium, usually recording of hostile commentary by added his own ideas in spirited pen foreign broadcasters in an attempt to strokes. This so-called ideological organize a discussion group for activity generated floods of words, Zionist study and propaganda. Did complex work "systems," and the sek.:.ct group of Party officials in numerous reports, yet constituted a the auditorium know how many

65. TsDOOSO, fond 4, opis' 106, d.elo 22, list 18. 66. TsDOOSO, fond 4, opis' 106, d.elo 8, list 11.

23 sentences fit on 18 kilometers of three foreign movies in 1982, four in magnetic tape? 1983, and increased the proportion Yeltsin also condemned the of Soviet films in movie program­ aspiration of Soviet citizens of ming. Boris Yeltsin publicly confirmed Jewish origin to emigrate, an the right of the obkom to ban films aspiration that, according to him, that demonstrated a "lack of was equally pronounced among ideological principle." At the end of citizens of German origin: "Wlth 1982, the First Secretary emphasized deceit and false promises, specially that created ideological centers­ so-called 'fraternal associations'­ [t]he oblast' Party committee intends to become more rigorous are attracting German Soviets to the in its selection of foreign films supposed promised land."67 "The shown on the territory of enemies of socialism arc not gjving Sverdlovsk oblast'. All of this up the hope of reaching their goals banditry, murder, and drunken­ through ideological aggression," ness have a bad influence on our said Yeltsin, who contended these youth.... We have the right to cancel a showing-the right of a enemies were using such western Party organ.69 radio stations as the BBC for this purpose. Fortunately for the Coinciding with the death of ideological hygiene of the oblast', Andropov, the CPSU Central "customs" confiscated a letter sent Committee even required an to the BBC by a local journalism increase in the production of student and thus prevented the consumer goods with patriotic Idissem ination of harmful ideas. Tile symbois.70 Sverdlovsk obeyed, and ideological enemy could even be Yeltsin was able to report that in Ifound in barbershops and beauty 1984, industry in the province had parlors. Yeltsin urged Party created eight goods (tights or committees to pay special attention teakettles, he didn't specify) with to these and other small enterprises patriotic symbols and that twenty­ such as small offices, stores~ and five more were planned for the dining halls, as "it is precisely there following year. Eight of the symbols where immature judgments are commemorated the fortieth frequently made and all t~ of anniversary of Soviet victory in rumors begin to spread." wwn.n Andropov's orthodox ideological campaign tightened the Dialogues with the filters that separated the province First Secretary from the rest of the world and In the midst of Leonid reactivated Soviet patriotism. The Brezhnev's decline, some of the less obkom cultural department banned lethargic Communist leaders made

67. Ibid., 14. A significant ethnic German colony had lived in Sverdlovsk p rovince since the 1940s, consisting prin:arily of people wh? had been dep?rted From the Repubhc of the Volga. Stilln diSSOlved the republiC after the Na2.1 attack CH~ the USSR 68. Ibid., 15. 69. TsDOOSO, fond 4, apis' 107, dele 86. 70. Resolution of the Secretariat of the O 'SU Central Committee, 8 February 1984. Tur.ii Andropov died on 9 February 1984. 71. TsDOOSO,fond 4, apis' 107, delo94, lisly 151-3.

24 timid attempts to take the pulse of Modern teclmology was put at the their compatriots. Boris Yeltsin in service of the residents of Sverd­ Sverdlovsk and Eduard Shevard­ lovsk and the presence of Yeltsin in nadze in Georgia were two such front of the television cameras leaders. Yeltsin began to meet served as an excuse for a broad systematically with different social mobilization. First, questions were groups. With tea cup in hand, the gathered, next, answers were First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk prepared, and finally, the promises obkom knew how to make jokes with made byYeltsin were followed up. stern milkmaids who led a rough The question-and-answer life and were poorly paid. He could program was announced in October, also spend more than five hours at a befor Leonid Brezhnev's death in time with students, as he did in May early November. Yeltsin received 906 1981 when he gave a speech before letters, some of which were between an auditorium of 1,700 people. ("The twenty and thirty pages long. The essence of these meetings wasn't the entire obkom apparatus sat down to meetings themselves. A great deal of work on the two thousand questions preliminary work was done that hnd been gathered, questions beforehand," emp hasized Viktor that represented a survey of Iliushin, whose first important society's concems?4 The apparatus assignment on the Yeltsin team had did a thorough job on the television been to organize the latter's meeting dialogue. Once synthesized, the with students?2) questions were arranged in forty The obkom reported the always categories with Yeltsin's answer next hopeful and constructive results of to each one, together with an such meetings to the Central indication of the obkom section in Committee in Moscow. The students, charge of keeping his promises. a cross section from sixteen institu­ E\'en though it wasn't exactly a tions of higher education, had been direct dialogue, which would have given "open, documented, and been too much to expect in those convincing information" and days, Yelts:in's appearance before the expressed their "ardent approval" public became the symbol of a new and "total support of the foreign era. Iurii Andropov had just come to and domestic policies of the p ower and his idea of moral and Communist Party, the Soviet state, ideologtcal renewal was reflected in and the decisions of the XXVI Yeltsin's initiative. On screen, the Congress of the CPSU." Out of a Firsl Secretary addressed many of total of 1,074 notes received from the his fellow citizens by first and last students, only 12 expressed negative name and managed to answer their opinions about the country's banal questions. In some instances, situation?3 the answers were a masterful Yeltsin's stellar moment in the display of his imaginative powers, art of cornnnunication,howeve~ in others, a timid foreshadowing of came on 18 December 1982, when he future political changes or a veiled appeared on television to answer reproach of the center for the questions from his fellow citizens. p roblems of Sverdlovsk. Yeltsin, for

72. Viktor lliushin in conversation with the author, Moscow, 16 November 1992. 73. TsDOOSO,fond 4, opis' 100, delo 115,94-7. 74. TsDOOSO,fond 4, opis' 101, delo 86.

25 example, cleverly brushed off exactly the same. Yeltsin, who had responsibility for the slow looked into the problem, promised construction of a metro line the production of 700,000 teapots in intended to connect downtown 1983 and 1 million in 1985. "I believe Sverdlovsk with the Ura1mash a million teapots a year will be factory. The pace of the job, he said, enough to satisfy demand," he was dependent on the resources remarked. There was also a shortage provided by the government and of scissors. Yeltsin said that he h ad the State Planning Committee already secured a verbal commit­ (Gosplan). ment from a machinery construction I Yeltsin knew how to transform factory for 50,000 pairs of scissors by 1 himself into the ally of his fellow 1983. citizens when a problem stemmed The problem of housing, from outside factors. Supply priori- however, was more serious. ! ties thus accounted for the lack of Television viewers asked Yelt.:;in for ! cotton fabric and bedclothes in the province. Social organizations, apartments but, as he noted, he I which received 23 million meters of wasn't a "magician." Even though cloth, were at the top of the list; then he had the power to distribute I came industry, supplied with 20 apartments, he could not break million meters; the general public Soviet laws because he was a came only at the bottom of the list, communist, a First Secretary, and no for whc,m a mere 4 million meters matter how much he wanted to help remained. Yeltsin claimed the someone, waiting lists had to be problem could not be solved in the respected. Citizen Zhdanova, for short term and recommended that example, had no reason to complain I workers in stores put pressure on about discrimination. Comrade the central organs to obtain m ore Zhdanov, her husband, was a goods for the province. lumberjack who had been passed I Yeltsin also assured his fellow over on the waiting list for housing citizens that the general scarcity of at his enterprise as a punishment for I goods }·,ad diminished. "It would be having broken work discipline. difficult for you to tell me it hasn't," Yeltsin felt sony for his fellow he affirmed with all the sangfroid in citizen Zhdanova, but approved of the world. According to the First the lumberjack's punishment and Secretary, there were now more recommended that he do a better job. refrigerators, vacuums, washing In another case, the First Secretary machines, color televisions, took the side of the kindergarten furniture, bath soap, detergent, tooth principal of the Pa>dsion Mechanics 1 brushes, tooth paste, feminine Factory (zavod Toclmoi Mekhanila) toiletries, and lipstick on the m arke t. who, despite her place at the top of Two ceramic factories in the province produced tea services, but the waiting list for three years, had there were no teapots in the stores. not received an apartment because The First Secretary explained to his her enterprise gave preference to television viewers that the tea pot p eople who worked directly on the was the first thing to break in the set production line. With apparent and that once broken, it was impos­ sincerit)j Yeltsin was capable of sible to buy a replacem ent because it recognizing abuses of power on the wasn't profitable for enterprises to part of leaders and even gave p roduce teapots by themselves. statistics (although never sufficiently They wer.e three times as hard to specific) on the camp aign against make than the saucers and cost corruption, the abuse of official cars, 26 and the illegal construction of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme country houses?S Soviet. Together with such common Even a meeting with social euphemisms of the times as science professors could tum into a "constant disproportion," the detailed discourse on the hardships professors openly used the word teachers endured in order to prepare "inflation." They also wanted to their classes and tend to students in know "to what extent inertia had tiny apartments, or on the scarcity of taken over the CPSU" and suggested ballpoint pens?6 Professors, however, that perhaps the time had come to were not only concerned about men's develop forms of internal underwear or pens; their questions on democracy.77 At the time, First the political system foreshadowed the Deputy Chairman of the USSR debate that would follow during the Council of Ministers Geidar Aliev first years of perestroika. These people, appeared to be the standard-bearer charged with passing on the of the fight against corruption; one ideological legacy of the regime, were of the questions posed to Yeltsin clearly dissatisfied with the status quo concerned the extent to which he d uring the last months of Brez.lmev's though t Sverdlovsk suffered from life. They wanted to know why the the same faults of which Aliev had Twenty-Sixth Congress of the CPSU spoken-bribery, corruption, had flattered U.>Qnid I3rezhnev; why protectionism, and abuse of powcr?8 Yeltsin had not reacted to the inordinate praise of Krasnodar Party Prcmo11itions ofthe Future leader Sergei Medunov; why the head The very manner in which of Uzbekistan, Sharaf Rashidov, had issues were discussed on the eve of been decorated, despite the fact that the de.ath of Andropov in 1984 his republic had not fulfilled its cotton demonstrated the contradictions of production goals. Could such prizes the Soviet system. Yeltsin wanted to really be valued as a stimulus for avoid mobilizations of workers to work and productivity? (Medunov the countryside, but if he renounced and Rashidov were among such mobilizations, the crops would Andropov's first victims when he go unharvested. He had given his came to power.) assurance that the CPSU did not The professors asked why there want to interfere in the job of the was no Communist Party of the soviets, but by order of the Central Russian Federation and how it was Committee the obkom created a possible that the Twenty-Sixth department of the economy and a Congress of the CPSU had not department of agriculture, which debated the wisdom of giving one only w orsened its meddling in single person the positions of both economic affairs. Yeltsin demanded Secretary General of the CPSU that the obkom use "convincing Central Committee and Chairman of arguments" and delve deeply into

75. "Vstrecha s pervym sekretarem," Sverdlovsk local teievision broadcast, 18 December 1982. 76. Queshons submitted to Boris Yeltsin at a meeting Wlth chairmen and teachers of social science departments in Sverdlovsk oblilSI ', TsDOOSO, fond 4, opis' 101, delo 87, lishj 7- 21. 77. Ibid., Iisty 11-14. 78. Boris Yeltsin, Central Urals: The Borders ofCrm.twn (Sverdlovsk: Uralskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1981.)

27 the analysis of reality. At the same Uralmash factory were a result of time, however, he criticized the local this victory, but the local supply newspaper Vechernii Sverdlov£

79. Speech of Boris Yeltsin to 1 wenty-Third Sverdlovsk Oblast' Party Conference, "Protokol x:m oblastnoi partiinoi konferentsii." 80. Boris Yeltsin, "Chern sil.en rukovoditel'," UraLskii rabochii, 28 October 1980; reprinted from Pravda, 26 October 1980. 81. Boris Yeltsin, "Videt' i p redvidet'," UraLskii ra.bochii, 14 August 1981; reprinted from Pravda, 13 August1981. 82. Mikhail Rutkevich in conversation with the author, Moscow, 16 November 1992. 83. Yeltsin's transfer was ratified by the seventh plenum of the Sverdlovsk obkom of the CPSU on 19 April1985. f11DOOSO, fond 4, apis' 111, delo 4.

28 Splintering the pencil he held in fully integrated into the Moscow his hand, Yeltsin bid farewell to the milieu. Tt was precisely in this failure workers of the Party apparatus of to adjust, in the preservation of his the obkom. His old acquaintance Iurii provincial character, that lay the Petrov, who had become First strength of this man who, in 1987, Secretary of the Nizlmij Tagil gorkom would trigger the first major crisis of and later a secretary of the Mikhail Gorbachev's pro-reform Sverdlovsk obkom, returned from a team. Between 1988 and 1991, stay in Moscow (where he had been Yeltsin would use Sverdlovsk in w orking in the Central Committee's particular (and the Russian Department of :Jrgani::ational Party provinces in general) as a Work since 1982) to take over for springboard for taking the Kremlin him. Petrov anived in the province and conquering Russia. with a message from Gorbachev: In 1991 Yeltsin moved into the "acceleration" (uskorenie). Such was .Kremlin a:nd handed out important the slogan of the day. position<; to people from the Urals. The official who left for Moscow Having reached the upper echelon in April1985 was a cor.vinced, of the state hierarchy through although undogmatic currununist. personal ties to the president, these 'frue, he had occasionally lauded natives of Sverdlovsk became a very Brezhnev, although perhaps less important p art of post-corrununist profusely than others because he Russia, making decisions about its wasn't a person given to habitual destiny, diamonds, secrets, the flow praise. Being the same type of "man of Information to the president, and of action'' as Gennadii Bogomiakov, the extent to which Russians would leader of neighboring Tiumen' have access to their own history. oblast', only Yeltsin knew in his heart The Boris Yeltsin who now of hearts how strong was his faith in controls Russia's destiny is a different the system he represented and the man from the OJSU obkom secretary ability of that system to change for who controlled the destiny of Sverd­ the better. Together with people like lovskob/a.st'. Yeltsin has undergone a Egor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, profound personal evolution: he Boris Yeltsin was part of the "A" quit the CPSU in 1990, defended team of perestroika carefully selected democratic values during the by Mikhail Gorbachev during the attempted coup d'etat in August ephemeral term of Konstantin 1991, committed himself to radical Chemenko. All these men were economic reform later that fall, and united by a desire for change and brought about the demise of the the conviction that it was possible to USSR in a conspiratorial rendezvous achieve without altering the basis of in the Belorussian forest in December the system they knew so well, 1991 Despite his transformation, the forged as they had been in the system of relationships that melting pot of the Party itself-that prevailed during the communist era is, in the hierarchical structure of has left its mark on the Russian Communist Party corrunittees that presiden t: many of his personality constituted the pyramid of power in traits, w ork habits, and ways of the USSR. relating to subordinates and Yeltsin was an outsider from the colleagues were formed long ago in provinces who arrived in Moscow the heart of the Urals. Traces of the the usual way, by climbing the old svstem remain alive and well ladder of political promotion in the amo~g a political elite that, for the Soviet system. The difference with most part, comes from the provinces Yeltsin, however, was that he never of Ruc::sia and whose members act 29 intuitively out of a desire for change measured by one's proximity to the without having completely leader-one's ability to influence his overrome their background and decisions and steer his hand toward schooling in a totalitarian system. one decree or another. little by little, Upon coming to power, the a stifling symbiosis began to emerge. rebels on the periphery who had The Kremlin assumed the coorcl.ii1ates opposed the center lost touch with of a province and the locals their fellow citizens. They soon ensconced there assimilated into the integrated into and adapted them­ system of the Soviet I

30