Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin (91 page)

141
. Grachev,
Final Days,
pp. 56–9.

142
. Gorbachev,
On My Country,
p. 148; Yeltsin,
View,
pp. 111–15.

143
. On the briefcase itself, which is one of three, see Shevchenko,
Povsednevnaia,
pp. 59–60.

144
. El’tsin,
Zapiski Prezidenta,
pp. 160–61.

145
. Grachev,
Final Days,
p. 181.

146
. Yeltsin,
View,
p. 121.

147
. Cited in Gorbachev,
On My Country,
p. 157.

148
. The photograph was printed all over the world. See
Izvestiia,
26 December 1991.

149
. Grachev,
Final Days,
p. 191. Grachev later moved to Paris, so the figure he actually quoted was 200 French francs.

12 NORMALITY

1
. A. Grachev,
Final Days: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Soviet Union,
trans. Margo Milne (Boulder, Colo., 1995), p. 194; V. Shevchenko,
Povsednevnaia zhizn’ pri prezidentakh
(Moscow, 2004), p. 42; Boris Yeltsin,
The View from the Kremlin,
trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (London, 1994), p. 12.

2
.
Izvestiia,
2 January 1992.

3
. The shortages and high prices had begun before Yeltsin took power. See Otto Latsis,
Izvestiia,
2 January 1992. On foreign aid, and the reasons for it, see ‘IMF Approves Stand-by Credit for Russia’, IMF Press release for 11 April 1995, available at
https://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/1995/pr9521.htm
(accessed 26 Aug. 2011).

4
. Paul Klebnikov,
Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia
(New York and London, 2000), p. 33.

5
. Klebnikov,
Godfather,
p. 36. The collapse of the Russian population was the subject of several international colloquia in the mid-1990s. For an analysis, see N. G. Bennett et al., ‘Demographic implications of the Russian mortality crisis’,
World Development,
26 (1998), pp. 1921–37.

6
. On the Bank of New York scandal in particular, see ‘Russia misled IMF on loan’,
Washington Post,
1 July 1999.

7
. For detailed statistics, see Richard Sakwa,
Russian Politics and Society,
4th edn (Abingdon and New York 2008), pp. 36–8.

8
. Again, these matters are outlined in Sakwa,
Russian Politics,
p. 30.

9
. See Otto Latsis and also Sergei Taranov, both writing in
Izvestiia,
4 May 1993.

10
. The old Communist Party paper,
Pravda,
was a so-called ‘red-brown’ in its own right, as witness its reportage of the 1 May demonstrations.

11
. Viacheslav Kostikov,
Roman s Prezidentom: zapiski press-sekretaria
(Moscow, 1997), p. 173, citing the editor of
Argumenty i fakty,
Vladislav Starkov. For an account of the events themselves, see Sakwa,
Russian Politics,
p. 52.

12
. Vladimir Snegirev, writing in
Rossiiskaia gazeta,
3 October 2003.

13
. For the composition of these crowds, and their motives, see Michael Urban, ‘The politics of identity in Russia’s postcommunist transition: the nation against itself’,
Slavic Review,
53, 3 (Autumn 1994), p. 734. The liberal press referred to them as ‘hoorah-patriots’. See
Izvestiia,
21 September 1993, pp. 1 and 4.

14
. The highest counts are in the low thousands. The figure of 147 is cited in Sakwa,
Russian Politics,
p. 52, and is on the low side, as even the Procurator’s office gave a total amounting to 249 (148 inside the White House and 101 on the streets).

15
.
Izvestiia,
5 October 1993, p. 1.

16
. Yeltsin,
View,
p. 241; on the issue of medical services, see David Satter,
Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 2003), p. 61. An entirely different view of events, from the red-brown perspective, was presented in
Pravda,
25 September 1993 (‘Rossiia protiv diktatura’).

17
. Cited by Robert Conquest,
Washington Post,
10 October 1993.

18
.
Washington Post,
16 October 1993.

19
. Cited by Lilia Shevtsova, in A. Brown and L. Shevtsova, eds.,
Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin: Political Leadership in Russia’s Transition
(Washington, DC, 2001), p. 69.

20
. As Vasily Pribylovsky put it, ‘The idea of power was the ideology that he supported.’ See David Satter,
It Was a Long Time Ago, And It Never Happened Anyway
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 2011), p. 158.

21
. Cited in Andrew Jack,
Inside Putin’s Russia
(London, 2004), p. 227.

22
. Brown and Shevtsova,
Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin,
p. 76.

23
. The Russian constitution is available online at
www.constitution.ru
.

24
. The decisions are reviewed in Shevchenko,
Povsednevnaia,
pp. 52–62.

25
. The proposal’s sponsor was Yury Luzhkov. See Kostikov,
Roman s Prezidentom,
p. 263.

26
. For a discussion, see Brian D. Taylor,
State Building in Putin’s Russia
(Cambridge, 2011), esp. pp. 294–8. See also Edward Lucas,
The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West
(London, 2008), p. 43.

27
. On Gorbachev and John Major, see Rodric Braithwaite,
Across the Moscow River: The World Turned Upside Down
(London, 2002), p. 217.

28
. Boris Yeltsin,
Midnight Diaries
(London, 2000), p. 160; I am grateful to K. A. (Tony) Bishop, CMG, OBE, for the other side of the story, related to me in July 2006.

29
. The BBC reported this in detail. See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/133725.stm
(accessed 31 Jan. 2013).

30
. Yeltsin,
Midnight Diaries,
p. 304.

31
. Iu. A. Bychkov et al., eds.,
Petr Baranovskii: Trudy, vospominaniia sovremennikov
(Moscow, 1996), p. 142.

32
. Ruslan Armeev, ‘Kazanskii sobor vozrozhden!’,
Moskovskii zhurnal,
1 (1994), p. 2.

33
. For an analysis of the fairy-tale element in Moscow’s reconstruction at this time, see Benjamin Forest and Juliet Johnson, ‘Unravelling the threads of history: Soviet-era monuments and post-Soviet national identity in Moscow’,
Annals of the Association of American Geographers,
92, 3 (September 2002), pp. 524–47.

34
. L. G. Georg’ian, ed.,
Podgotovka k prazdnovaniiu 850-letiia osnovaniia Moskvy: sbornik statei opublikovannykh v gazetakh Moskvy i podmoskov’ia v 1995–1997 gg.
(Friazino, 1997), p. 53.

35
. Dmitri Sidorov, ‘National monumentalization and the politics of scale: the resurrection of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow’,
Annals of the Association of American Geographers,
90, 3 (September 2000), p. 561.

36
. Sidorov, ‘National monumentalization’, p. 561.

37
. Y. Luzhkov,
My deti tvoi, Moskva
(Moscow, 1996), p. 193.

38
. Aleksandr Korzhakov,
Boris El’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata. Posleslovie
(Moscow, 2004), p. 456.

39
. Zoe Knox, ‘The symphonic ideal: the Moscow patriarchate’s post-Soviet leadership’,
Europe-Asia Studies,
55, 4 (June 2003), p. 586.

40
. Sidorov, ‘National monumentalization’, p. 565.

41
. This is the first criterion for the selection of cultural sites, and was specifically mentioned in the Kremlin’s case. For a full list, see
http://whc.unesco.org.en/criteria/
.

42
. The resolution by UNESCO was taken at its 14th session in December 1990.

43
. The contrast with nearby Kolomna, whose Kremlin walls have been rebuilt in finest pastiche, is striking.

44
. Konstantin Mikhailov,
Unichtozhennyi Kreml’
(Moscow, 2007), p. 245.

45
.
www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/13604
(
Nauka i zhizn’,
4 (2008), the recollections of A. Grashchenkov, a former member of the Kremlin museum team, accessed 25 Aug. 2011).

46
. Mikhailov,
Unichtozhennyi,
p. 244.

47
.
New York Times,
16 September 1999.

48
.
The Economist,
16 September 1999.

49
.
New York Times,
27 August 1999.

50
. A fact bemoaned by its former director in conversation in Moscow in September 2007.

51
. Yeltsin,
Midnight Diaries,
p. 96.

52
. Shevchenko,
Povsednevnaia,
p. 38.

53
. The companies involved included Martolini and Maioli, based in the historic artisan quarter of Florence.

54
.
Nezavisimaia gazeta,
17 November 1998.

55
. The story is repeated in the
New York Times
profile of Borodin, 1 July 2001.

56
. There is a good account of this in David Satter,
Darkness at Dawn,
pp. 57–9.