Gorbachev is indignant. “I was told he had refused to come, despite our agreement,” he later recalled in his memoirs. “It turned out that Yeltsin, together with his entourage, had listened to my televised speech and flown into a rage. After a while I was told that the Russian president proposed to meet on ‘neutral territory’—in the Catherine Hall, i.e. the part of the Kremlin where talks with foreign leaders were usually held…. Thus even in the first minutes after stepping down I was faced with impudence and lack of courtesy.” He believes that this derogation from their arrangement is not an isolated backlash of Yeltsin’s feelings of revenge but part of a policy of harassment he is conducting against him.
Grachev believes the “preposterous idea” of Gorbachev going to Yeltsin with the suitcase was suggested by one of his more belligerent advisers, when it became clear that Gorbachev was leaving office with dignity and with his head held high rather than as a vanquished foe. “Yeltsin wanted to show Gorbachev he was no longer superior to him. Yeltsin’s fury related to his feeling that it should be his day of triumph. In his presentation, however, Gorbachev made everybody realize the historic shift he had achieved. He was stepping down not as one defeated. Yeltsin felt he remained a secondary figure in the aura of Gorbachev and the success of perestroika. He must have realized that never in his life would he match his opponent.”
Shaposhnikov tries to break the deadlock. He suggests that Gorbachev sign the transfer papers and that one of the colonels brings them to the Russian president, and when Yeltsin confirms he has received the documents, Gorbachev can transfer the nuclear suitcase to Shaposhnikov, who will send it across to Yeltsin.
The marshal calls Yeltsin, who has calmed down after his outburst. He agrees to the compromise. Shaposhnikov witnesses Gorbachev’s signature on the transfer agreement. An officer leaves with the papers, along with the decree of the USSR president transferring supreme command over the armed forces to the president of Russia. After a few minutes Yeltsin’s office calls to say the Russian president accepts that the documents are in order. The transfer can take place.
One of the colonels unlocks the black metal chemodanchik. Gorbachev checks the equipment inside. Everything is in its place. He shakes hands with the two men on duty who have accompanied him around the globe, thanks them for their work, and says good-bye. The brace of colonels leave the office with the nuclear device. Shaposhnikov stays behind for a final few words with his former commander in chief.
In Gorbachev’s anteroom, Chernyaev tries to make sense of the military uniforms coming and going. He sees Shaposhnikov leaving, “smiling as usual and saying ‘Hello!’” and “clearly embarrassed” about the whole affair.
He and the two Yakovlevs go in and sit at the oval table with Gorbachev. They find him red-faced and clearly upset over the way Yeltsin has behaved. They help calm him down and prepare him for the television cameras once more.
During the verbal artillery between the two Kremlin buildings, Ted Koppel of ABC has been standing by with his crew to film the ceremonial handover of the nuclear suitcase from the Soviet to the Russian president. Just before 8 p.m. he is invited back into the presidential office. Gorbachev has recovered his composure. He greets the ABC personnel with smiles. The nuclear suitcase is already with Yeltsin, he informs them, as if nothing untoward has happened. “Now it is Yeltsin who holds his finger on the nuclear button.” All that remains for him “is to clear out some personal effects, some papers.”
But Boris Yeltsin has not finished tormenting his rival.
Mikhail Gorbachev, like everyone else, expects that the Soviet flag will continue flying over the Senate dome until December 31. Russian and world media were told specifically by Yeltsin’s press secretary Pavel Voshchanov, on December 17: “On New Year’s Eve, the hammer-and-sickle flag of revolutionary red that has flown for seventy-four years over the Kremlin, the medieval brick fortress on the Moscow River, will be lowered, marking the formal end to the Soviet era.” The Russian flag would then be raised triumphantly, in a blaze of fireworks, to herald the new year and a new era, he said.
The red flag is this evening still hanging from the flagpole above the illuminated green dome as Gorbachev delivers his valedictory address, visible to the usual small crowds of strollers and tourists in Red Square. But twenty minutes after Gorbachev finishes, two workmen emerge from a trapdoor on the roof of the Senate Building and climb up metal steps on the curved side of the dome to a circular platform with a waist-high railing at the top. From there they pull down the twenty-foot-by-ten-foot flag from the tall mast. As it comes to the bottom of the pole, one of the men gathers it up, as a waiter would remove a tablecloth in a restaurant. The men then attach the white, blue, and red flag of prerevolutionary Russia to the rope and hoist it up the mast. They hold the end of the large expanse of fabric until it reaches the top, then release it so that the flag billows out triumphantly in a southwesterly breeze, helped by jets of compressed air hissing from a tube inside the flagpole.
Few people in Red Square notice what is happening. No one has alerted the public or the foreign media to expect such an act of historical significance this evening—the switching of emblems over the building where Lenin and Stalin exercised their power. Only Russian television was tipped off by Yeltsin’s aides to have a crew in position to record the event. Serge Schmemann of the New York Times recalls, “I was back in the bureau writing a piece about Gorbachev resigning; I don’t think there were any other reporters there.” However, his wife, Mary, and children, Anya, Alexander, and Natasha, were nearby. “They happened by chance to be in Red Square when the red Soviet flag came down for the last time over the Kremlin and the white, blue, and red Russian flag rose in its stead. My children noted the exact time, 7:32 p.m., and called me.”[267]
As the flag with its three horizontal stripes of white, blue, and red flaps and cracks in the artificial breeze, the bells of the Kremlin’s Savior Tower start ringing and continue for several minutes. People walking near the Kremlin look up with curiosity and some concern. Though the Savior Tower clock chimes merrily every fifteen minutes, the heavy bells ring out only rarely to mark profound events. The sound prompts more late-evening strollers and tourists to notice the tricolor. Schmemann’s family recall cheers from a handful of surprised foreigners and an angry tirade from a lone war veteran. There are a few calls of “Oh!” “Oh!” “Oh!” as Russian strollers see what is happening, and whistles and laughter from young men craning their necks upwards. One person claps.
The news quickly spreads, and foreign correspondents hurry to Red Square. Militiaman Alexander Ivanovich, one of the greatcoated guards at the Lenin Mausoleum, who had marched off to dinner while the red flag was flying and returned to find the flag of the Russian Federation in its place, tells James Clarity of the New York Times, “It was a good surprise.” An inebriated and confused Muscovite asks an onlooker near the Mausoleum, “Why are you laughing at Lenin?” He is shushed by a passerby who cautions him that a foreigner is watching. Francis X. Clines, also of the New York Times, is noting down the exchange. “Who cares?” says another Muscovite. “They’re the ones who are feeding us these days.” Uli Klese, a photographer on vacation from Germany, finds the subdued public reaction strange. “When the Berlin Wall came down, everybody was out in the streets,” he tells Michael Dobbs of the Washington. Post. “This was an event of the same kind of magnitude, but no one seemed to care.”[268]
Steve Hurst spots the switching of the flags through a window in the Kremlin from where the dome at the apex of the triangular Senate Building is visible. “I looked out the window and saw the hammer and sickle coming down. I remember what a strong visual that was.” According to Stu Loory, while the CNN crew is dismantling their equipment, someone gets word about what is happening, and a window is opened to videotape the event. Gorbachev’s security people demand the window be closed. “Tell them I will take full responsibility,” shouts Tom Johnson to his interpreter, but the guards shove him away from the window.
“Bodyguards are bodyguards everywhere in the world,” said Loory. “They couldn’t care less about the responsibility of the president of CNN!”
Andrey Grachev sees with dismay the red flag “hastily torn from the cupola of the Kremlin as if it were the Reichstag,” as he is leaving the Russian fortress to give an interview to French television in their office in Gruzinsky Lane. The flagstaff is directly above the presidential office, and “happily for Gorbachev he cannot observe this heartbreaking moment.”
A foreign television crew that has missed filming the event acquires a video cassette for 200 French francs from an enterprising Muscovite in Red Square who recorded the change of flags.
When Gorbachev learns what has occurred, he perceives it as another affront to his dignity. He believes that Yeltsin “gave instructions for the lowering of the Soviet flag and the hoisting of the flag of the Russian Federation and personally saw to it that the procedure be completed according to schedule and filmed by television cameras.” Gorbachev wants to secure the red flag as a memento but it is too late to stop it disappearing into the basement of the Kremlin.
Meanwhile, the CNN crew become the sole witnesses of the exchange of the nuclear suitcase some ten minutes later, after they have dismantled their equipment and are assembling in the Kremlin corridor.
“At 7:56 we were waiting in the hallway outside the green room for all of our party to assemble before we could leave,” said Loory. “At the other end of the corridor, near the entrance to Gorbachev’s working office, a man appeared carrying a cloth-covered suitcase with a protruding antenna. He disappeared into a doorway. We were watching the nuclear codes passing from Gorbachev’s control to Yeltsin’s.” Charlie Caudill recalled, “We are being led out by handlers down a very long corridor. All of a sudden a side door opens twenty-five feet in front of us. Armed soldiers come out. They block the way and make us halt. A door on the left opens up. A high-ranking military guy comes up, box under his arm. The opposite door opens, same looking kind of dude. He snaps to attention. They salute each other. The officers exchange the object.” The television cameras have been packed away, and an opportunity is lost to make a video record of the historic moment.
Stu Loory alone witnesses another little piece of history. He goes ahead of the CNN crew to make sure the rental vans are in place outside. “I walk around closer to where the trucks are. A Kremlin worker comes towards me holding the flag folded up in a rectangle under his arm.” Loory stops the man and takes a photograph, and thereby secures the only picture of the last flag of the USSR to fly over the Kremlin as it is carried away. He immediately regrets not offering to buy it. Tom Johnson later tries to acquire the emblem from a Kremlin official, but the offer is politely yet firmly refused.
As he leaves the Senate Building with the television crew, Johnson waves his Mont Blanc in the air and calls out, “How much do you think I can get for this?” The technicians and engineers cheer and slap each other on the back. “We did it! We did it!” cries Johnson.
They have pulled off a remarkable feat. Mikhail Gorbachev abdicated on television with an inscription in the lower right-hand corner of the screen informing 153 countries of the world that they are seeing it courtesy of CNN. “In the annals of competitive journalism, this was an unprecedented victory,” claimed Loony.[269]
In Washington President Bush’s aides show him the text of a statement they have drafted praising Gorbachev for liberating the Soviet people from the smothering embrace of a totalitarian dictatorship. After looking it over, the president holds a conference call with his advisers on whether this is a proper response. Scowcroft suggests that Gorbachev’s resignation is too important “to kiss off with a statement” from the press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater.[270]
Bush decides to take Marine One from Camp David to Washington and address the nation from the Oval Office on the historic significance of what has just happened in the Kremlin. The networks and cable television companies suspend their scheduled programs at 9 p.m. EST on Christmas Day to allow the president to make his own television address from the Oval Office. While sparing Gorbachev’s sensitivities by not declaring outright that the fall of the Soviet Union is a victory for the United States in the Cold War—for two years he prohibited his staff from depicting events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as a triumph for the United States—Bush uses the word “victory” a number of times, clearly implying that America is the winner. The nuclear threat is receding, he says, Eastern Europe is free, and the Soviet Union itself is no more. “This is a victory for democracy and freedom. It’s a victory for the moral force of our values. Every American can take pride in this victory.”
After paying tribute to Gorbachev, the U.S. president acknowledges the new reality. He announces that the United States recognizes and welcomes the emergence of a free, independent, and democratic Russia, “led by its courageous president, Boris Yeltsin.” He declares that the U.S. embassy in Moscow will in future be the embassy to Russia. He says he supports Russia’s assumption of the USSR’s seat as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. And from today America will recognize the independence of Ukraine, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan. Bush had delayed formal recognition of Russia until after Gorbachev resigned as a personal courtesy to his deposed friend and his partner in ending the Cold War. His administration has already recognized Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the Baltic republics that completed the makeup of the original Soviet Union.
“This is a day of great hope for all Americans,” concludes President Bush. “May God bless the people of the new nations in the Commonwealth of Independent States. And on this special day of peace on earth, good will toward men, may God continue to bless the United States of America. Good night.”
Now that the Soviet Union is history, White House officials feel free to express the opinion that Gorbachev clung on too long to power. Gorbachev “is leaving at a level that’s a lot lower than he would have had a month ago,” an administration official tells the New York Times. “He’s taken away from his own currency and cost himself a bit of his place in history by letting events pass him by. It’s sad to see a man of such stature and historical importance misjudge events that way.”[271] The anonymous spokesman claims that Bush privately wrote off Gorbachev after the Middle East conference in October in Madrid, at which the penniless Soviet delegation had to ask the Spanish government to pick up their hotel bills.
Current and former world leaders shower Gorbachev with praise. In London John Major notes that it was given to very few people to change the course of history, but that was what Gorbachev has done, and whatever happens today, his place in history is secure. Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany, which achieved unity under Gorbachev’s watch, expresses the view that his place in the history of the century will not be challenged by anyone. NATO secretary-general Manfred Wörner says that Europe is grateful to Gorbachev for his essential contribution toward a Europe whole and free. Ronald Reagan declares that Gorbachev will live forever in history, and Margaret Thatcher expresses gratitude to him for doing “great things for the world… without a shot being fired.”
One of the few discordant notes comes from the People’s Republic of China, which is ruled by the Communist Party of China, now the largest single political party in the world. China’s communist leaders have dealt with their own people’s demands for democracy and the end of corruption by massacring hundreds of students and workers in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. China’s foreign ministry acknowledges that the demise of the Soviet Union heralds the end of the East-West conflict and the dawn of a new multipolar age. But seeking to justify the bloody path the Chinese party has taken to remain in power, it complains that Gorbachev got it wrong. Gorbachev’s “new thinking, glasnost, and political pluralism,” states the Chinese government, “have brought only political chaos, ethnic strife, and economic crises.”[272]
In Minsk, Stanislau Shushke
vich does not watch Gorbachev’s final address on television. He has better things to do. Late in the evening the Belarus leader hears that the red flag has come down and the Soviet Union he helped dismantle has come to an end, almost a week before its official sell-by date of New Year’s Eve. Asked twenty years later what was his reaction when he was told, Shushkevich replies with one word: “Pravilno!” Translated roughly it means “Just right!”[273]
Chapter 26
DECEMBER 25: LATE NIGHT
It is nine o’clock in the evening and a ghostly silence has descended on the Kremlin. Andrey Grachev returns there from his interview with French television studios in Gruzinsky Lane. He has received a call on his car phone telling him Gorbachev wants him back in the Kremlin as soon as possible. Outside the Senate Building there are only a couple of drivers and guards. Gorbachev’s press secretary finds the corridors and offices on the third floor deserted. He locates Gorbachev in the Walnut Room, sitting at the oval table with his closest aides. For once his boss has called him not to work but to socialize. A bottle of Jubilee cognac has been opened and glasses passed around.
Gorbachev is in a melancholy mood. He is despondent about the casual manner in which he has been dispatched from office, without even a farewell ceremony, “as is the custom in civilized countries.” He is hurt that not a single one of the leaders of the republics—former communists with whom Gorbachev has had comradely relationships over the years—has called to thank, congratulate, or commiserate with him on the termination of his service. He ended repression, gave people freedom of speech and travel, and introduced elections that put them in power, but they stay silent. They are all in a state of euphoria, busily dividing up their inheritance, thinks Gorbachev bitterly. “Yesterday hardly anyone had heard of them, but tomorrow they will be heads of independent states,” he says. “What did it matter what fate they were preparing for their nations?”
Moscow, December 25, 1991 Page 31