MOSCOW: They were blood brothers, tennis partners and drinking buddies. But when President Boris Yeltsin gave the boot last summer to longtime bodyguard General Alexander Korzhakov, he was asking for trouble. Now trouble has arrived in the shape of "Boris Yeltsin: From Dawn to Dusk," Korzhakov's kiss-and-tell memoir of his 11 years with Yeltsin.
But don't expect it to be much of a shocker. Other than a cover picture of a topless Yeltsin sporting a scrungy baseball cap, the book's "sensational" material is limited to the Russian President we already know: Yeltsin the Vodka-Sodden Lush, Yeltsin the Depressed Dictator and Yeltsin the Out-of-Touch Geriatric.
What there isn't is much on the ex-KGB General Korzhakov himself, which could have something to do with his less-than-salutary role in events such as the war Chechnya. Says TIME's Moscow bureau chief Paul Quinn-Judge: "Korzhakov wants to dish the dirt out, not take responsbility for it." And away he dishes, armed with immunity from prosecution (as a member of parliament) and computer disks full of memories. Move over, Danielle Steel.