Three Days in Moscow

by Bret Baier

  Bush was sympathetic, but he urged Gorbachev to look beyond that narrow view. “Your concern, your mistrust toward the united Germany are too deep, they ignore the fifty-year-old democratic experience of Germany,” he said bluntly. He added kindly, “At the same time, one can understand your fears. We also fought Hitler, but our losses do not stand any comparison with the 27 million Soviet lives sacrificed in the armed struggle with Nazi Germany.” That memory, however, could not rule policy, he said. He told Gorbachev, “As it seems to me, our approach to Germany is more realistic, and has better timing. Because the processes of German unification are unfolding faster than any of us could have imagined, and there is no force that can put a brake on them. That is why the mistrust oriented toward the past is an especially bad adviser here.”

  Aggrieved, Gorbachev bit back: “You are extremely concerned about the health of united Germany, from which you calculate the health of NATO. You are so concerned about it that you forget about the health and interests of the Soviet Union. And this, in its turn, does not help either stability or predictability at all.”

  “NATO is the anchor of stability,” Bush insisted.

  “But two anchors are better,” Gorbachev argued. “As a seaman, you should be able to understand it.”

  “And where will we find the second anchor?”

  “In the East,” Gorbachev declared but then seemed to lose his train of thought. “What it would be concretely—let our ministers think about it.”

  “Yes, let them think about it,” Bush agreed. “But we have to take into account the exceptional pace of German unification.”

  Gorbachev was arguing that NATO and the Warsaw Pact could coexist as joint stabilizing forces. Bush knew that was a fantasy. Gorbachev seemed adamant, but then, in the course of the conversation, he came to a stunning conclusion that must have surprised his foreign policy team, proposing that they leave it up to Germany to decide. He suggested this language: “The United States and the Soviet Union agree that united Germany, upon reaching the final settlement, taking into account the results of World War Two, would decide on its own which alliance she would be a member of.”

  Bush, nodding in agreement, suggested a slight—though deeply meaningful—change. “I would propose a somewhat different formulation,” he said. “The United States is unequivocally in favor of united Germany’s membership in NATO, however, if it makes a different choice, we would not contest it, we will respect it.”

  “I agree. I accept your formulation,” Gorbachev said.

  Looking on, Baker was immediately aware that that was an impossible construct. “Whatever you say, but the simultaneous obligations of one and the same country toward the WTO [Warsaw Treaty Organization] and NATO smack of schizophrenia.”

  Gorbachev brushed his concern aside. “It is only for a financier, who puts cents together into dollars. Politics, however, is sometimes a search for possible in the sphere of unfamiliar.”

  “But obligations to the [Warsaw Pact] and NATO are adversarial obligations,” Baker insisted, getting what amounted to a shrug. It was a tremendous sticking point. But in the eyes of the Americans, Gorbachev had already conceded, perhaps without fully realizing it. Given the choice, they knew which way Germany would go. And indeed, in October there was German reunification under NATO.

  The takeaway from the summit, Chernyaev wrote in his diary, was that “the USSR and the United States are no longer enemies.” Baker agreed. “The discussion that took place at the summit meeting in early June of 1990 was a turning point in world history,” he said. “For months, the president’s speechwriters had included a phrase in speeches saying ‘The Cold War is over.’ And routinely I crossed it out and crossed it out and crossed it out. After this meeting, I came to the conclusion that this time I could leave it in the president’s speeches. Why? Because the fundamental building of the Cold War focused on Germany, on the division of Germany, and the subsequent division of Europe. And nothing could be more symbolic of the end of that period of history than the unification of Germany inside NATO.”

  That was all well and good, but back home in Russia, many people viewed the summit as nothing more than a PR campaign by Gorbachev. Meanwhile, Boris Yeltsin, who had revived his power as the newly elected head of the Russian Parliament, was intent on making himself and his more radical reforms the main story.

  After the meetings, Bush invited Gorbachev to join him at Camp David, his first visit. Riding the president’s golf cart along the trails, they came to one of Bush’s prized locations, the horseshoe pit. Bush asked Gorbachev if he’d ever played horseshoes. Gorbachev said no. Hopping out of the golf cart, Bush asked him if he’d like to try. Gorbachev agreed and got a ringer on his first throw. That delighted Bush, who had the horseshoe mounted on a plaque, which he presented to Gorbachev at dinner that night.

  In September, the Reagans paid a visit to the Gorbachevs in Moscow. Reagan and Gorbachev beamed and wrapped their arms around each other, hugging with genuine warmth, and even Nancy and Raisa seemed glad to be together again. Remembering their last visit in May 1988, Reagan marveled, “There have been so many changes in those two years and four months that I am beginning to understand how Rip Van Winkle must have felt.”

  It might have been an effort to put a happy face on what was clearly a time of great crisis for Gorbachev. The next year unfolded with one disruption after another in the increasingly disunited Soviet Union. Ironically, Gorbachev’s perestroika paved the way for the growing strength of Yeltsin.

  Even with all the stresses of forging a new government and the blowback from hard-liners and reformers alike, Gorbachev never betrayed any discouragement. He was a problem solver, focused on solutions. His masterstroke was the creation of a Union Treaty, which would ease the way for independence for Soviet states and create a road map for going forward. But it was a heavy lift, and it didn’t help that Yeltsin was an increasingly outspoken critic. Gorbachev thought Yeltsin was excessively self-interested; he wanted to rule his own roost of Russia as if it were the whole story. Condoleezza Rice, a Soviet scholar and future secretary of state under George W. Bush, put it this way: “Yeltsin created parallel structures in the Russian republic that effectively ripped the heart out of the Soviet Union. After all, what was the Soviet Union without Russia at its core?”

  GORBACHEV WAS EXHAUSTED. HE planned a getaway on August 4, 1991, to his estate in Foros, Crimea, overlooking the Black Sea, with Raisa, their daughter, Irina, and her husband and two young children. They relaxed and read, swam and took long walks. Gorbachev found it hard to rest. Uncertainty about the signing of the Union Treaty and his growing unpopularity at home plagued him. There had even been whispers of an impending coup, which he did not believe.

  Late on Sunday afternoon, August 18, after they had been vacationing for two weeks, Gorbachev was in his office reading a newspaper when there was a tap on his door. It was his chief bodyguard, Vladimir Medvedev, telling him that a group had arrived unannounced to speak to him. They were his own people—his chief of staff, two Central Committee secretaries, the head of the KGB directorate in charge of his security, and a high-ranking general—but Gorbachev was immediately suspicious. He picked up a phone to call out, but the line was dead. He tried other phones. All the lines were dead.

  “Don’t leave me,” Gorbachev said to Medvedev, then went into his bedroom to speak to Raisa.

  “Something bad has happened,” he told her. He didn’t know why the men were there or why the phone lines had been cut, but he warned, “It may end badly for all of us, the whole family. We’ve got to be ready for anything.”

  Raisa, whose steely nature had suffered much criticism on the public stage, proved her mettle by rising from her seat and bravely vowing “Whatever you decide, I’ll be with you, no matter what.”

  By the time Gorbachev returned to his office, the group of visitors had already made themselves at home there. They told him that a committee had been set up to take over the country because it was in a stat
e of emergency. They pressured him to sign a declaration of emergency. He refused, and they demanded his resignation.

  Gorbachev was enraged. “I had promoted all these people and now they were betraying me!” he wrote indignantly about his state of mind at that moment. He tried to persuade them that they must discuss the matter in a levelheaded way and within the framework of the constitution. They were not moved. At one point his personal secretary—who worked for him!—told Gorbachev he didn’t understand the nature of the trouble the country was in. “Shut up, you asshole!” Gorbachev shouted. “Who are you to lecture me on what’s going on?”

  Gorbachev saw what was happening. It was a coup by the weak-spined hard-liners. He would not give in to them. Unable to secure Gorbachev’s compliance, the group rose to leave. As they walked out, Gorbachev’s patience was spent. He swore at them “Russian-style.” They returned to Moscow, leaving Gorbachev and his family under house arrest without access to outside communication. (His bodyguard, who had promised to stay by his side, abandoned him.) A public announcement followed from Moscow that Gorbachev was ill and the Committee on Emergency Rule was taking over.

  Chernyaev, who was staying in another building on the premises, finally learned what was happening and made his way to Gorbachev’s dacha, where he found him lying on a bed making notes. He was calm and clearheaded but grim. Chernyaev wasn’t so composed. He began swearing, and Gorbachev said, “Yes, this may not end well, but I have faith in Yeltsin. He won’t give in to them. He won’t compromise. But that means blood.”

  The conspirators had told Gorbachev that Yeltsin would be arrested. In fact, Yeltsin was still nominally free at that point, holed up in the parliamentary “White House,” receiving calls from around the world, and even ordering food from Moscow’s Pizza Hut.

  Suddenly he looked out and saw army tanks rolling up outside. Infuriated, he leapt up and strode out of the building. Approaching a tank, he climbed on top of it in a bold challenge. “Soldiers, officers, generals,” he cried in his finest moment, “the clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country. They must not be allowed to bring eternal night.”

  Inspired by Yeltsin, thousands of Russians poured into the streets around the “White House” in the next couple of days, demonstrating that they were unwilling to go back to the old ways. The Gorbachevs knew nothing of that. Throughout the siege, Mikhail and Raisa thought they and their family might be murdered, or injured in some way, as Tsar Nicholas II and his family had been during the revolution that had given birth to the Soviet Union. They worried about food and vowed to eat only what they had with them, lest food from the outside be poisoned. Their deepest fears were over the fate of their daughter and her family, especially the small children, who were tucked away out of sight. Heartsick, Raisa suffered what appeared to be a ministroke and lay in bed with Gorbachev hovering beside her, wondering if it was the end of everything.

  In Washington, Bush monitored the situation as best he could. The response was muted. The United States could not afford to jump into the fray, and it would be inappropriate to do so. But he spoke to Yeltsin and eagerly waited for word from Gorbachev.

  With defiance from the population and a lack of support from the military, the coup folded by August 21. A delegation of the plotters rushed to the Crimea, hoping to provide a credible explanation to Gorbachev and save their skins. He placed them under arrest and refused to see them until communications were restored and a proper delegation arrived. He spoke to Yeltsin on the phone and then to Bush.

  “My God, I’m glad to hear you,” Bush said.

  Gorbachev was relieved, too, and his aides and guards were giddy with victory. But he knew his power was unraveling.

  Stepping off the plane, finally home, he lingered in front of the camera, saying he wanted “to breathe the air of freedom in Moscow.”

  In the aftermath of the coup, Gorbachev lost much of his influence. It was the beginning of the end. Many, including Yeltsin, turned on him, blaming him for being asleep at the wheel, for allowing so many old hard-liners to retain influence—in effect, for having made the coup possible. Meanwhile, Yeltsin, restless for power and reflecting the wave of change that was occurring, sparred with Gorbachev, even though they agreed on fundamentals. But quickly now, a massive change was taking place, leaping beyond Gorbachev’s slow and steady march for change.

  From the time he had entered office in 1985, Gorbachev had set out to transform the Soviet Union. He had always used the language of reform, not destruction. But he was not attuned to the reality that once the supporting beams of the Soviet Union were knocked down, there would be nothing to prevent the house from collapsing. “This was one of his blind spots,” Robert Gates said. “He didn’t understand the role of fear and mythology in maintaining control.”

  The final blow to Gorbachev’s stature came when Yeltsin met with leaders of Ukraine and the Republic of Belarus in early December, behind his back, announcing the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Soviet Union was dead. Gorbachev would step down. Yeltsin would assume power as president of the new Russian state. The end would come on Christmas Day.

  Ted Koppel of ABC had a camera crew waiting to film Gorbachev as he arrived at his office on the final day. “I’m feeling absolutely calm, absolutely free,” Gorbachev told him. He noted that what they were observing was a peaceful transition of power in a place where it had never occurred before. “Even in this I have turned out to be a pioneer.”

  He spent several hours in his office, taking calls and signing correspondence. His most emotional call was with Bush, who was celebrating Christmas with his family at Camp David. Bush said he hoped they would meet again, perhaps at Camp David, where the horseshoe pit was still in good condition.

  At last Gorbachev left his office to make his farewell address, which was poignant for a hope expressed but yet to be fulfilled. “We’re now living in a new world,” he declared. “An end has been put to the cold war and to the arms race, as well as to the mad militarization of the country, which has crippled our economy, public attitudes, and morals. The threat of nuclear war has been removed.”

  He was honest about his failings, acknowledging “Of course, there were mistakes made that could have been avoided, and many of the things that we did could have been done better. But I am positive that sooner or later, someday, our common efforts will bear fruit and our nations will live in a prosperous, democratic society.”

  He stood tall, maintaining a confident pose, but there were tears in his weary eyes.

  Across the world in California, Reagan, Gorbachev’s partner in change, had recently dedicated his presidential library in Simi Valley, joined by every living president—Bush, Ford, Carter, and Nixon—and their wives, along with Lady Bird Johnson, Caroline Kennedy, and John Kennedy, Jr. The library that day looked like a shining city on a hill, the sun beaming over the land below.

  “Eighty years is a long time to live, and yet within the course of only a few short years I have seen the world turned upside down and conventional wisdom utterly disproved,” Reagan told the gathering. “Visitors to this mountaintop will see a great jagged chunk of the Berlin wall, hated symbol of, yes, an evil empire, that spied on and lied to its citizens, denying them their freedom, their bread, even their faith. Well, today that wall exists only in museums, souvenir collections and the memories of a people no longer oppressed. It is also a reminder that a strong America is always desirable—and necessary in our world.”

  Heads craned to look at the obelisklike piece of the wall, over nine feet tall and splattered with brilliantly colored graffiti. Stripped of its ominous history, the relic of a time now gone, it was beautiful and even joyful. Afterward, many people couldn’t resist touching its ragged surface, just to make sure it was real.

  Chapter 14

  Without Firing a Shot

  One day, while Gorbachev was still in power, Dick Cheney received a visitor to his office, a young Russian activist and reforme
r, who had been involved in the prodemocracy movement. They talked for an hour about the state of things in Russia, and when the young man rose to leave, Cheney asked him where he was going next.

  “I’m going to California,” he replied. “I’m going to see President Reagan, the father of perestroika.”

  Cheney sat him back down on the couch. “Now, explain this to me,” he said. “I thought Gorbachev was the father of perestroika.”

  “No,” the man insisted, “Ronald Reagan is the father of perestroika.”

  Cheney was struck by his point. “It was his assessment,” he said, “that it was in fact the Reagan policy of firmness, the U.S. military buildup, the threat of SDI, that all of those things had precipitated the circumstances, caused the conclusion on the part of Gorbachev and those around him that they could not compete with the United States on those terms and they had to fundamentally change their system.”

  All over the world, and especially in those places most impacted by the Soviet scourge, people were waking up to their new reality and feeling grateful to Reagan. Ordinary people, released from a form of bondage in former Communist bloc countries, were moved to make personal pilgrimages to California and pay homage to him. In late 1993, an elderly Romanian woman walked into Reagan’s office, asking to see him. Without hesitation, Reagan’s assistant Peggy Grande ushered her in. “When she entered his office and saw President Reagan,” Grande wrote, “she instantly dropped to her knees and bowed at his feet. She started sobbing loudly and uncontrollably, kissing the president’s feet—literally kissing them—with tears falling on his shoes.”

  Such incidents happened again and again. So if you want to know if Reagan won the Cold War, ask the young man. Ask the old woman. Ask the people of Berlin. Ten months after the fall of the wall, on a visit to Germany, the Reagans found themselves greeted in the streets by thousands of cheering Berliners. When they walked with German chancellor Helmut Kohl through the area where the wall had once stood and used a hammer and chisel to carve out a chunk, the crowd roared, “Danke, Herr Reagan!” To this day, Berliners have a reverence for Reagan that has never dimmed.