Word: sverdlovsk
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...Urals, for example, to talk to individuals who knew Yeltsin in his poverty-stricken childhood. One finding: a grandfather of Yeltsin's was persecuted as a rich peasant when Stalin imposed agricultural collectivization. Colton also spoke to acquaintances from Yeltsin's period as Communist Party boss in Sverdlovsk. He justifiably concludes that Yeltsin was already a rambunctious politician before Gorbachev promoted him to head the Moscow City Party in 1985. Yeltsin was like a bull in a china shop in the Soviet capital. As Colton points out, Gorbachev had ignored warnings that his protégé would smash...
Such visible hardening has increased speculation that a military coup might be in the offing. Some Western experts and even some Soviets argue that a de facto coup has taken place. The reactionaries were shocked when radicals took control of city councils in Moscow, Leningrad and Sverdlovsk and several republics began talking of secession. Those developments apparently mobilized the army and its allies in the giant military-industrial production network. After 46 representatives of eight defense-related ministries signed an open letter last September warning that new laws threatened to destroy the defense industry, Gorbachev changed course. He dropped...
...Despite his father's imprisonment and Yeltsin's own record of rebelliousness, the youth proved bright enough to earn an engineering degree, join the Communist Party and launch a career as an industrial apparatchik. After a stint as head of an engineering plant in Ekaterinburg - then called Sverdlovsk - he moved into full-time party work in 1968 and became head of the regional party organization by 1976. His record as a tough and effective administrator attracted the attention of Gorbachev, who in 1985 invited him to Moscow, where Yeltsin was promoted to head of the city's party organization...
...city's 33 district party secretaries and berated officials for wearing imported watches, suits and shoes. When, in a meeting, one of them asked truculently where he bought his own shoes, a furious Yeltsin yanked off a well-worn oxford, held it in the air and shouted: "In Sverdlovsk, locally made at the Ural Shoe Factory for 23 rubles. I recommend them - they will last you a five-year plan...
...enough to drive him to drink. He had to struggle back into political power without the help of the party that, though verging on collapse, still wielded considerable power until the failed 1991 coup attempt. In typical truculent fashion, he ran for parliament in Moscow instead of his old Sverdlovsk home base, taking on the party establishment directly, and winning a seat in 1989. With that as a political base, he fought successful campaigns for the chairmanship in 1990 of the Russian Supreme Soviet, the former parliament, and then the newly created presidency in June 1991. Once in office...