Yeltsin, democrat though he was, had a distinctly monarchical obsession with choosing a successor. In August 1994 he cruised into Nizhny Novgorod on a river liner sailing down the Volga and, stepping ashore to speak to the crowds, announced that he had settled on a successor: Boris Nemtsov. “I just want to say that he has grown so much that we can now set our sights on his being president,” said Yeltsin. The awkward phrasing showed that the decision was Yeltsin’s, not the younger man’s.
