Moscow, December 25, 1991

by Conor O'Clery

  Kravchenko denied repeated requests from Yeltsin for air time on state television in the weeks after Vilnius. Every appearance of Yeltsin made Gorbachev crazy, he recalled. “It looked childish, like little boys battling for domination, but it was based of course on the instinctive fear that Yeltsin was acquiring an authority with the people which threatened Gorbachev’s own survival.”

  He finally bowed to enormous public pressure and agreed to broadcast a live interview with Yeltsin on February 19. Gorbachev insisted that one of the two interviewers should be Sergey Lomakin, a good-looking young favorite of Raisa. Gorbachev sent Lomakin a list of hostile questions, and Lomakin asked even tougher ones. But Yeltsin managed to create a sensation for the millions of viewers who tuned in across the USSR. He called for the immediate resignation of Gorbachev, who was “lying to the people and was smeared with the blood of ethnic conflicts,” and demanded the transfer of all power to the leaders of the fifteen Soviet republics.

  Gorbachev recalled Yeltsin’s behavior with disgust. “His speech teemed with rude and offensive remarks about me,” he complained. “His hands were trembling. He was visibly not in control of himself and laboriously read out a prepared text.” In Washington, Bush watched the Russian leader’s performance on a news report and remarked to his aides in the Oval Office, “This guy Yeltsin is really a wild man, isn’t he!”[117]

  Despite everything, President Bush and other Western leaders wanted the Soviet Union to stay intact under its current leader. They preferred dealing with the sophisticated and amenable Gorbachev than the unpredictable Yeltsin. Robert Gates, deputy national security adviser and future head of the CIA, who in the early days wrote off Gorbachev as an aberration, now saw him doing “what we wanted done on one major issue after another.”[118] With some justification Yeltsin complained that Americans didn’t get it. They saw only one figure in Moscow, and that figure was surrounded by so much foreign euphoria they couldn’t see the truth.

  On a second trip to the United States that spring, Yeltsin, with his increased stature as leader of the Russian republic, asked for an official invitation to the White House. Bush hesitated, commenting to Brent Scowcroft that such a step would “drive Gorbachev nuts.” That might be just why Yeltsin wanted it, suggested his national security adviser. “Well that’s also why I don’t want to do it,” replied Bush. They agreed they would see him but would get Congress rather than the White House to issue the official invitation to Washington.[119]

  Yeltsin’s call for the resignation of the Soviet president overshadowed Gorbachev’s sixtieth birthday on March 2. He celebrated in the Kremlin with Yazov, who presented him with a saber with inlaid sheath; Pugo, who gave him an inscribed Makarov pistol; and Kryuchkov and others, who sent expensive presents straight to his dacha. Kravchenko arranged for Soviet television to broadcast a sycophantic documentary called Our First President.

  The best birthday present he got came from six pro-Gorbachev communist deputies in Yeltsin’s parliament. They secured enough votes to call a special session of the Russian congress for March 28 to have Yeltsin impeached for his television behavior. Gorbachev clutched at this straw. He told Chernyaev, “Boris Nikolayevich is done for; he’s starting to toss and turn; he’s afraid of being held responsible for what he has and hasn’t done for Russia.”

  Yeltsin raised the stakes at a vast outdoor assembly in Moscow on March 9 by declaring war on the leadership in the Kremlin, an intemperate remark he withdrew a week later.

  The hard-liners around Gorbachev decided on a display of military might to intimidate the restless populace. When the Russian congress convened on March 28 to debate Yeltsin’s future, demonstrations were banned, and armored vehicles, tanks, and several hundred troop carriers filled with conscripts were deployed nose-to-tail in streets around the Kremlin. Kryuchkov and Pugo had fed Gorbachev ridiculous warnings that radical democrats were preparing to storm the ancient fortress using ropes and grappling irons. These deployments only ensured that a pro-Yeltsin rally in the streets outside became an anti-Gorbachev demonstration. Inside, the deputies refused to debate in a state of siege and voted to adjourn. Tens of thousands of demonstrators milled around military barricades in the streets near the Kremlin as a heavy, fluffy snow coated everyone in white. The confrontation brought the country to the brink of civil conflict. Gorbachev was stunned when Alexander Yakovlev asked him to think of how Moscow would turn out for a funeral if a demonstrator should be killed. The tension was defused when Yeltsin’s collaborator, Ruslan Khasbulatov, persuaded Gorbachev at a tense meeting in the Kremlin that the idea of people scaling the Kremlin walls was outlandish. (Aides were joking among themselves that it would not be possible as there was a shortage of rope in the shops.) The president ordered Yazov to take the troops out of the city.

  Khasbulatov later would identify the day the state powers blinked as the day the defeat of the reactionary forces began. Alexander Yakovlev told a visiting American senator, David Boren, that mobilizing the armed forces against the people was Gorbachev’s single biggest mistake.

  For three days the Russian congress was deadlocked over whether to censure Yeltsin. In the end the “swamp” of undeclared deputies rejected impeachment rather than side with the unpopular Gorbachev. They were also alarmed by a spreading coal miners’ strike in support of Yeltsin, which began when miners coming off a shift at one mine shaft found there was no soap. Even Ivan Polozkov, leader of the communist faction, stated from the rostrum that the time was not right to destroy Yeltsin because of the ferocious backlash this could provoke.

  Fearful of the gathering momentum towards the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev organized a referendum throughout the USSR to restore popular support for stability and a new union treaty. It asked for a yes or no to the question “Do you consider necessary the preservation of the USSR as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?” (emphasis in the original). The referendum was held on March 16. Six of the fifteen Soviet republics had become so independent-minded they boycotted the poll, but in the remaining nine, 76 percent of voters responded yes. Gorbachev took this majority as a mandate to negotiate a new union treaty that would give republics a measure of sovereignty but preserve the Union of which he was president.

  Yeltsin cleverly turned the plebiscite to his advantage. On the referendum paper distributed in Russia he added an extra question: Do you support the idea of a directly elected president for Russia? The voters gave their approval. The Russian congress agreed to hold the first free presidential election in Russia, on June 12, 1991.

  Though his popularity swelled at home, Yeltsin found to his dismay that his high profile in Moscow did not impress world leaders. Dignitaries who arrived in Russia on fact-finding missions came with perceptions of an unstable and vodkaloving bully. On the other hand, they liked Gorbachev personally and felt protective towards him. When Yeltsin asked U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to call on him during such a visit to the Soviet president in mid-March, Baker saw it as an effort to “drive Gorbachev up the wall.” The American declined after consulting Gorbachev, who “naturally went through the roof” and raved about how unstable Yeltsin was and how he would use populist rhetoric to become a dictator. Gorbachev displayed similar childishness, forbidding his associates to attend a dinner Baker hosted at the embassy in protest at the presence of some of Yeltsin’s team.

  The effete British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd took a dislike to the ponderous, blunt-talking nonconformist when they met in Moscow. He suggested to Ambassador Braithwaite as they left the meeting that the Russian was a dangerous man barely under control. Still, Braithwaite concluded that Yeltsin’s analysis was correct and that Gorbachev was by now “living almost entirely in cloud-cuckoo land.”[120] Richard Nixon, visiting Moscow as an unofficial envoy of the White House, cursed the media for giving him the impression of Yeltsin as an “incompetent, disloyal boob.” Yeltsin might
not have the “grace and ivory-tower polish of Gorbachev,” he reported to Bush on his return to the United States, “but he inspires the people nevertheless.”

  Yeltsin went to France, where he believed he would at least be respected by the democratic parliamentarians of Europe. He got an unpleasant surprise. Le Monde lectured him that in Europe “only one Russian is recognized—Gorbachev.” He was greeted with an “icy shower” at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where Jean-Pierre Cot, chairman of the group of socialists, reproached him publicly as a demagogue and an irresponsible politician for opposing Gorbachev, “with whom we feel more assured.” These remarks caused outrage among ordinary Russians—even Pravda called them an insult—and only served to increase Yeltsin’s popularity.

  The Russian populist returned home chastened by the “terrible blow” of Western reaction. But there was a surprise in store for him. Gorbachev invited him to a meeting of the heads of all the Soviet Union’s republics at a dacha in the outskirts of Moscow, and what the Soviet leader had to say to him there, Yeltsin found, “exceeded all my expectations.”

  Chapter 14

  DECEMBER 25: MIDAFTERNOON

  By three o’clock in the afternoon of December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev is able at last to relax. Everything is ready. There is nothing more to be done in preparation for his farewell address. Ted Koppel and Rick Kaplan are brought in to the office to film more presidential thoughts for their ABC documentary. Anatoly Chernyaev and Andrey Grachev are there too.

  One of the white telephones on the desk rings, and Gorbachev picks up the receiver. It is his wife calling from the presidential dacha. This is not unusual. Raisa has long been in the habit of ringing her husband or his officials to involve herself in events. But this time it is different. She is in great distress.

  The president makes a signal to the Americans that this is a private matter. “He got a call from Raisa,” Rick Kaplan would recall. “We were ordered to leave the room.”

  Raisa is in tears. She tells her husband in considerable agitation that several of Yeltsin’s security men have arrived at their dacha to serve them notice to quit. They have also ordered the family to evacuate the president’s city apartment at Kosygin Street on Lenin Hills within two hours. The men said they had been authorized to take this action by a decree, signed by the president of Russia that morning, privatizing the apartment. They have orders “to remove her personal belongings from the premises of the government representative”—the bureaucratic term for the president’s official residences. The unwelcome visitors have already started moving some of the Gorbachevs’ family belongings out of the mansion.[121]

  Gorbachev is livid over the impudence and lack of courtesy Yeltsin’s security staff are showing his wife. It was only decided two days ago that he would discontinue his activities as president of the Soviet Union this evening, and there has been no time to prepare for moving. Moreover, he was specifically given by Yeltsin a grace period of three more days after his resignation to vacate the country residence and the presidential apartment. He does not even know if he will have the services of the Ninth Department of the KGB to provide a crew for packing and transport. The unit has been renamed and has come under Yeltsin’s control.

  Previously he could always rely on Colonel Vladimir Redkoborody to protect them from any intrusions, but the former KGB intelligence officer, who was last week responsible for the security of both presidents, is now answerable only to Yeltsin.

  This “especially vindictive act” against Raisa strikes Chernyaev as a boorish effort by Yeltsin to make the final day miserable for both Gorbachev and his wife. Grachev, too, is outraged. “Can you imagine? He was still acting president!”[122]

  Gorbachev tries to calm Raisa and promises to sort things out right away. Red blotches appear on the president’s cheeks as his fury mounts. He starts making angry calls, cursing and swearing as he demands to speak to the security officials responsible. He eventually gets Colonel Redkoborody on the line. “You’re really out of line and you’d better straighten up,” Gorbachev cries, lacing his words with profanities. “You’re talking about somebody’s home here. Do I have to report all this to the press? Please, what are you doing? Stop this madness.”

  Redkoborody blusters and promises to talk to the security men. He blames excessive zeal at lower levels but at the same time mentions he has orders from higher up. Yeltsin’s chief bodyguard, Alexander Korzhakov, later discloses that the command came directly from his boss, who ordered him to mount a campaign of daily harassment of Gorbachev’s staff at the dacha so he could move in right away. Korzhakov sees his task as making life difficult for the Gorbachevs but finds that they are not in any rush to leave.

  Gorbachev’s anger has some effect. After his heated conversation with Redkoborody, he is given more time to evacuate the dacha. But Yeltsin’s security men have also arrived at the Gorbachevs’ state apartment in Lenin Hills, where they are now rummaging around and removing their personal effects. “Everything had to be done in a rush,” Gorbachev complains, after finding the mess the next day. “We were forced to move to different lodgings within twenty-four hours. I saw the results in the morning—heaps of clothes, books, dishes, folders, newspapers, letters, and God knows what lying strewn on the floor.”

  Yeltsin has as little respect for Raisa’s feelings as he has for Gorbachev’s. Raisa was hostile to him from the start, he believes, and this played a role in her husband’s attitude towards him. Yeltsin was among the first to criticize Raisa’s high profile as Gorbachev’s wife, complaining that “she unfortunately is unaware how keenly and jealously millions of Soviet people follow her appearances in the media.” When he began highlighting Gorbachev’s privileges as Communist Party chief, Yeltsin blamed Raisa for encouraging his expensive tastes. “He likes to live well, in comfort and luxury,” he noted. “In this he is helped by his wife.” Yeltsin once tackled Gorbachev to his face at a Politburo meeting about Raisa’s “interference.”[123] This impertinence deepened the rift between them.

  Slight and always elegantly dressed, Raisa is admired and envied by members of the Russian intelligentsia, and by quite a few ordinary Russians, as the first Soviet leader’s wife to show a sophisticated and humanizing face to the world.[124] She swept away the image of politburo wives as tongue-tied women whose qualification, it was said, was to be heavier than their husbands. Anatoly Sobchak’s wife, Lyudmila, thought that while she lectured people like a schoolteacher, Raisa was “the first woman who dared to violate the Asiatic custom where the wife sits at home and doesn’t show her face.”[125] Chernyaev thought she made the Gorbachevs look like “normal people” in the West. Gorbachev would say in later years that taking his educated, energetic wife with him on trips was a second revolution in addition to perestroika.

  No leader’s spouse had played a public role in Soviet life before, except Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya, who was a revolutionary and a member of the Politburo in her own right. Yeltsin trumpeted to aides that Raisa had no business going with Gorbachev on foreign trips and playing a high-profile role on the international stage. When U.S. ambassador Jack Matlock inquired of the Russian leader if he intended bringing Naina on a trip to the United States, he retorted, “No. Absolutely not! I’ll not have her acting like Raisa Maximovna!” It might be acceptable in a rich, prosperous, and contented society but “not in our country, at least not at this time.” Gorbachev had caused a rumpus years earlier when he told NBC’s Tom Brokaw that he discussed everything, including national affairs at the highest level, with his wife. As far as Yeltsin was concerned, Raisa’s influence had an adverse effect on Gorbachev’s attitude towards people, towards staff appointments, and towards politics in general, and that she was “standoffish and [put] on airs.”

  There have been several instances of Raisa taking an interest in affairs of state. Most criticism was aired in private but at the Congress of People’s Deputies a delegate from Kharkov once told an outraged Gorbachev from the podium that he was incapab
le of escaping the “vindictiveness and influence” of his wife. On one occasion she took it upon herself to explain to Fyodor Burlatsky, editor of Literaturnaya Gazeta, that the people were not ready for the market. Gorbachev’s wife is still dabbling in policy matters in the final months of the Soviet Union. Congress Speaker Ivan Laptiev complained to Rodric Braithwaite that he was rung by Raisa and it was forty-five minutes before he could get off the phone, leading the British ambassador to conclude that Gorbachev couldn’t get a word in edgewise at home.[126]

  Raisa was seen as rather frosty by the tradition-bound Kremlin wives, whom she in turn found to be “full of arrogance, suspicion, sycophancy and tactlessness.” Korzhakov claimed in his tell-all memoirs that Raisa once ordered—in front of his subordinates—the head of the KGB security department, General Plekhanov, who later became one of the August coup participants, to move a heavy bronze lamp standard. “When I heard that, I thought, that’s why he betrayed Gorbachev.”

  By contrast, Yeltsin boasted that he never discussed work with his family. If his wife and daughters bombarded him with questions about the events of the day when he came home from work, he would tell them to be quiet, saying, “I don’t need politics at home.” Naina concurred in a comment she once made to Novosti news agency: “He didn’t like it when someone began discussing political or economic issues at home. That is why we refrained from giving him advice, although we were certainly concerned over the situation in the country and wanted it to improve fast.” If she voiced an opinion he didn’t like, Yeltsin would tease Naina, a qualified sanitary engineer, by saying, “Just concern yourself with the plumbing!” She would retort, “If there was no plumbing, where would you go?”[127]

  The novelty of dealing with Raisa created a problem for the Soviet media. The liberal head of Soviet television from 1989 to 1990, Mikhail Nenashev, said she spoiled the mood of everyone when involved in a program. He perceived her as unhealthily ambitious, and he resented having to broadcast her speeches, which, like those of most spouses in her position, were often filled with empty banalities. If he cut them back, Gorbachev’s aides gave him a hard time. Her favorite correspondent, Sergey Lomakin, believed Raisa did a lot of good, such as recruiting musicians and doctors she met abroad to come to Russia. But from the beginning Yegor Ligachev warned Gorbachev about the negative effect of her overexposure on television, and even the submissive Kravchenko, who succeeded Nenashev, told Gorbachev that the shorter any item about her on television, the better. When Gorbachev protested in a pained way that other world leaders traveled with their wives, Kravchenko responded that as a rule they didn’t make declarations on television.[128]