Yeltsin Casts a Dry Eye Backward

Now we know: It was dust.

On New Year’s Eve, when Boris N. Yeltsin raised a chubby finger and wiped his eye while reading his resignation speech, many wondered whether he might be shedding a tear, perhaps for his presidency, perhaps for his country.

But no. According to excerpts from Yeltsin’s new memoirs, the soon-to-be former president was brimming with excitement and jubilation, and the cause of the gesture was no more than a stray mote of dust.

“I tried to read my inner emotions, what I was feeling, what kind of mood I had,” Yeltsin wrote in excerpts published Wednesday by the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty. “And with a little surprise, I realized I was in a good mood. Very good, even jolly.”

The memoirs, titled “A Presidential Marathon,” are Yeltsin’s third and presumably final volume of recollections. The book will be released this weekend in Russia; international editions are scheduled for release Oct. 18.

The lengthy extract details Yeltsin’s last hours as president--down to sips of water, the ticking of clocks, the color of folders and the New Year’s decorations at the Kremlin.

But woven through the minutiae is a clear political message: that Yeltsin was not the bumbling, incapacitated president he appeared to be for most of his second term, and that he was not in the thrall of powerful advisors who pressed him to resign.

On the contrary, according to the excerpts, Yeltsin made the decision on his own and carried it out largely in secret, taking great pleasure in surprising even his closest aides.

“No one should think that I’m resigning because of illness or that someone forced me into this decision,” Yeltsin recalls thinking as he reviewed the draft text of his speech. “I simply understood--I must do this, and I must do it now.”

The excerpts include little introspection and shed little light on crucial questions, such as why Yeltsin settled on dour former KGB chief Vladimir V. Putin to be his successor. The 69-year-old ex-president doesn’t even comment on the most remarkable aspect of his resignation speech, an apparently humble apology for the mistakes of his volatile eight-year tenure.

Instead, Yeltsin depicts his resignation as a kind of political joy ride. For instance, he seems to take great glee in having refused a phone call from President Clinton, asking the most powerful man in the world to call back later.

“I can let myself do such things now,” Yeltsin writes. “Now I’m just a retiree.”

But perhaps unwittingly, the excerpts appear to confirm that in his final days as president, Yeltsin was closest to just a trio of advisors, key members of what was often referred to as “The Family.” They were his daughter Tatyana Dyachenko; his cunning chief of staff, Alexander S. Voloshin; and his biographer and aide, Valentin B. Yumashev. With the exception of Yeltsin’s wife, Naina, other people play inconsequential roles. At least in the excerpts, the former president’s doorman gets more ink than his defense minister.

Yeltsin writes that he made the decision to resign even before parliamentary elections Dec. 19 demonstrated swelling support for Putin, who was his prime minister. Yeltsin says he informed Putin of his plans Dec. 14--and that no one else knew until much later. The excerpts appear to suggest that he kept his decision a secret even from “The Family” until Dec. 28, and from his wife until the morning of Dec. 31.

It will be up to historians to evaluate the worth and veracity of Yeltsin’s version of events. But in the meantime, political analyst Leonid A. Radzikhovsky said he doubts the book will become a bestseller, at least in Russia. Most citizens here, weary of Yeltsin’s erratic leadership, greeted his resignation with unfettered relief.

“The public at large is sick and tired of Yeltsin posing as a reckless clown,” Radzikhovsky said. “[‘The Family’] must have designed this book as a toy for Yeltsin to play with and prove primarily to himself that he is still alive.”