Later, Yeltsin, upon assuming office as Russia’s leader in 1990, denounced all Nomenklatura privileges as his first order of business. In his book A Confession, he wrote, “As long as [Russians] are so poor and dismal, I can’t eat sturgeon and caviar, I can’t race cars, ignoring traffic lights, I can’t take imported super-pills, knowing that a neighbor has no aspirin for a child.