Today he must disport himself on global television as a statesman and show that the world has nothing to fear from him—and, indeed, owes him esteem. Before the day is out, he will have his hands on the nuclear suitcase now in Gorbachev’s possession, and the world will know that his are a safe pair of hands. He will appear presidential, magisterial, and generous to the man he is casting into the political wilderness.
He will also have to deal in the next few hours with a number of crises in his own ranks that threaten the stability of his government and his radical plans for a newly independent Russia.
Usually Yeltsin manages to snatch a few more hours’ sleep before rising, dressing in T-shirt and shorts, and breakfasting in the kitchen on thin oatmeal porridge and tea followed by eggs, onions, and tomatoes fried in butter. His wife, Naina, and thirty-year-old daughter, Tanya, prepare the meal. They have no servants in the state apartment they occupy on the fourth floor of a nine-story block at 54 Second Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street in north central Moscow, overlooking the abandoned monastery of the Transformation of the Savior in a busy district near Belarus Station. At its center is a spacious sitting room with silver-and gray-striped wallpaper and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves weighed down with sets of blue-, brown-, and green-bound volumes of Russian classics, including Yeltsin’s favorites: Chekhov, Pushkin, and “village writer” Sergey Yesenin, whose poetry no self-respecting Russian family would be without. The room has a large rubber plant and is decorated with landscapes from the Urals and a muchadmired oil painting of wild daisies. There are piles of audiotapes of Yeltsin’s favorite singer, Anna German. He likes the Polish artist so much that when he listens to her performing her popular number, “Once a Year Orchards Blossom,” his normally stern face assumes a lyrical expression.
The apartment also has a roomy hallway, two large bedrooms with separate bathrooms, a tiny guest bedroom, a sizeable kitchen with balcony, and a small office crammed with files from Yeltsin’s time as Moscow party chief and with room only for an armchair and desk. A small heap of copies of his autobiography,
The residence was allocated to Yeltsin when he came to Moscow from Sverdlovsk six years ago as a rising member of the
The furniture is solid and durable, made in Sverdlovsk—or Yekaterinburg, as it is now called, since the prerevolutionary name was restored three months ago. Yeltsin boasts that it is “much better quality, and sturdier too, than Moscow-made junk.” Nonetheless, Naina, or Naya as he calls her, has been known to give a cushion to visitors so they do not rip their clothes on the spring poking out through a hole in the sofa, and one of the kitchen stools has a nail protruding. They have three phones. The one for incoming calls is working again—it was turned off after the Yeltsins lost their phone bills in the confusion of the coup in August.
Alexander Korzhakov, Yeltsin’s beefy security chief and drinking partner, constantly worries that Tverskaya Street is not a secure location for the president. “It is easy to shoot at the entrance, easy to block his car, and easy for neighbors to see everything through the windows if the curtains are not drawn.” Tanya was once assaulted by a man who watched her dial the security code in the main door, then followed her inside, and “jumped at her.”[17] Like Gorbachev, the Russian leader also has a state dacha, Arkhangelskoye- 2, off the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway, on the banks of the Moscow River some twenty miles outside Moscow. But he prefers to reside in the city apartment during the week, despite the limited space and the noisy polluted streets outside, and the family only goes to the dacha on weekends.
Yeltsin, too, is preparing to move. He and his family will take possession of the presidential dacha when the Gorbachevs move out, and give up their smaller country home, which belongs to the Russian Federation. He has decided that the Soviet leader’s mansion should become the future residence of the Russian president. Not being on good social terms, Yeltsin has never been invited to the Gorbachevs’ city apartment on Lenin Hills, a choice suburb next to Moscow University (since renamed Sparrow Hills), and he does not know whether he will appropriate it as well until he makes an inspection and decides whether he would prefer it to the one he has now.
After Yeltsin showers, Naina blow-dries and combs his hair and helps him dress in an expensive white shirt, blue patterned tie, and smart, dark-colored made-to-measure suit. He sits down for his wife to lace his shoes, a chore he finds difficult because of his bulk. His black shoes are, as always, buffed to a mirror-like sheen.[18]
When Yeltsin was elected president in June of the Russian republic, the largest of the fifteen republics that made up the Soviet Union, his vice president, Alexander Rutskoy, a former air force colonel, decided Russia’s top official should dress with greater elegance. Rutskoy used his own military coupons to purchase an expensive new suit and several high-quality shirts. Yeltsin accepted the gifts but insisted on meeting the cost. Rutskoy used to embarrass him like that. One day he came into Yeltsin’s office and said with a horrified look, “Where did you get those shoes? You shouldn’t be wearing shoes like that. You’re the president.” And the next day he appeared with six pairs of Italian shoes.[19]
Before going out into the hallway the bear-like Russian chieftain meekly subjects himself to a final inspection by his wife and daughter. Every morning Naina makes sure that her Borya’s tie is straight, that there are no flecks of dust on his shoulders, and that his splendid helmet of hair is perfectly in place. After the grooming, she always puts a ten-ruble note in his breast pocket so Yeltsin can pay for his own snacks or lunch.
Boris runs Russia, but Naina runs the household. She is the
In the evening the ceremony is performed in reverse. The women line up to welcome him home, take off his clothes up to his underwear, and put on his house slippers. “The only thing he does is raise his arms and legs,” observed Korzhakov. In the opinion of his assistant, Lev Sukhanov, Naina is the most long-suffering wife in the country. “What she had to experience in connection with her husband no one else has experienced. She felt all the effects of his struggle with the party machine, which I can affirm was absolutely ruthless and fought dirty.”[22]
At nine o’clock Yeltsin leaves the hallway, where a golf club rests among the umbrellas, given him by the Swedish ice hockey player Sven Tumba when he opened Moscow’s first golf course two years ago. Yeltsin does not play golf but is passionate about tennis and volleyball, and he likes to tell foreign visitors he was a member of the Russian Federation volleyball team. This isn’t true, but he has apparently come to believe it himself.
After descending in the small elevator of the apartment block, he steps outside and enters a black Niva with the engine running. Yeltsin used a modest Moskvich sedan when campaigning for votes seven months back—it was useful for his image as a man of the people—but since he was elected president, Korzhakov has insisted on the chunky four-wheel drive for better security. Yeltsin sits on the right-hand side in the back, with Korzhakov in the passenger seat in front of him, cradling an automatic weapon. The two other bodyguards in the car also nurse sidearms. The Niva is preceded and followed by cars carrying militia guards. The city has been awash with rumors of a second coup attempt by diehard pro-Soviet elements in the military in a last ditch effort to preserve the Soviet Union. As head of Yeltsin’s personal security, Korzhakov is taking no chances.
The Niva crosses Tverskaya Street, where the police have stopped the traffic, and proceeds along Great Gruzinskaya Street, through the grounds of the decrepit city zoo and onto Kopushkovskaya Street. In five minutes it reaches its destination, the marble and concrete skyscraper on the Moscow River embankment known as the Russian White House. The car descends into the basement garage. For now, this building is Yeltsin’s power base. Very soon it will be the Kremlin.
Chapter 3
HIRING THE BULLDOZER
