and a separate central bank and military units for the Russian republic. As for other republics like Lithuania, which were pressing for secession, let them leave the Union if they wished, he declared. This would weaken the center and give the Russian people a greater ability to decide their own fate. It would also weaken Gorbachev, who commanded the center, an outcome that Yeltsin found equally, if not more, attractive.
Greeted by wildly enthusiastic fans everywhere he went, Yeltsin was elected with 84 percent of the vote in his constituency, defeating eleven other candidates. He had drawn on a deep well of discontent with the failure of communism to feed and clothe its people adequately and on the perception that Russia was exploited by the other fourteen republics, where people lived better lives.
In response, Gorbachev resolved to strengthen and secure his own power. He persuaded the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies to select by secret ballot a president of the Soviet Union for a five-year term—himself, of course—followed by direct nationwide elections for future presidents. Gorbachev got himself selected to the presidency at a special session in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses on March 15, 1990, but with only 59 percent support—mainly because of a partial boycott. The narrowness of the vote drew gasps of astonishment. Vitaly Korotich speculated that in the secret ballot many party apparatchiks who paid lip service to perestroika had ganged up with radicals to vote against Gorbachev. The former saw Gorbachev as Allende, the latter as Pinochet.
The day after the vote, Gorbachev returned to the congress and took an oath to the constitution of the USSR at a table flanked by a ten-foot-long red flag with a golden hammer and sickle and a gold-bordered red star in its upper canton, the official emblem of the USSR. He got the briefest of standing ovations and retreated upstairs for a quiet glass of champagne with Raisa and aide Georgy Shakhnazarov. He was now President Gorbachev, head of state, the leader of the party in what was still a one-party state, commander in chief of the armed forces, and the chief executive of one of the world’s two superpowers. He ordered the KGB security service to ensure that in future the red flag be placed in a special floor holder next to him wherever he might be, in the manner of American presidents. He had the words “Sovetsky Soyuz” (Soviet Union) painted on the side of the presidential plane. He set up a presidential council to which he appointed longtime aides, including Valery Boldin, whom he also promoted to chief of staff.[92]
Paradoxically, Gorbachev had less authority than ever. He was tainted now by retaining the leadership of the discredited Communist Party, whose Stalinist institutions were proving allergic to change, and this deepened his unpopularity. He was becoming isolated in a shrinking middle ground. He was even under surveillance from his own secret police, a conclusion reached by Korotich after a bizarre incident in the Kremlin. Gorbachev summoned the editor to his office and threw a tantrum about
Gorbachev’s popularity suffered more after April 9, when Soviet troops used sapper’s spades and gas to attack a peaceful nationalist demonstration in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, resulting in twenty deaths. Gorbachev claimed that the decision to use force was made by the Georgian leadership without consulting him, and years later he would blame Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov for giving the order to a local general. Many did not believe him, especially when later that month in Sverdlovsk he hardened his stance against nationalism, vowing that he would never let the Baltics leave the Soviet Union. He also blustered in the same speech that Yeltsin was finished as a politician.
But it was Gorbachev who was in decline. The new Soviet president was humiliated on May 1, 1990, when the pro-reform Moscow Club of Electors joined the end of the official May Day parade in Red Square. After the usual disciplined march of grateful workers chanting official slogans, thousands of raucous, angry, disrespectful Muscovites appeared carrying banners reading, “Gorbachev, resign” and “Down with the cult of Lenin.” Marchers with Lithuanian and Ukrainian flags stopped in front of Gorbachev to whistle and jeer. The benign expressions on the faces of the Politburo members on the Lenin Mausoleum turned to granite.
State television always continued live coverage of Red Square parades as long as the leaders remained on the Mausoleum. Now, these mortifying scenes were being broadcast to 150 million viewers across the USSR. The transmission was only stopped when a television director ran screaming into the studio to shut it down. After a few minutes of confusion, Gorbachev led his comrades off the platform, his shoulders hunched and his fedora hat pulled down, and ordered an investigation of the “political hooligans.” His flirtation with the democrats was over.
Raisa Gorbacheva felt the anger not just of the democrats but of the party conservatives who believed her husband was destroying their careers. When she went to the district party committee to pay her dues, she was appalled at the local party secretary’s spiteful attitude towards her. “I really feel he hated us,” she confided to Pavel Palazchenko. “They will never forgive Mikhail Sergeyevich.”[94]
Yeltsin meanwhile was being carried forward on a wave of pro-Russian nationalism. On May 17, 1990, a damp, overcast late spring day, the first freely elected Russian congress since before the Revolution met in the Great Kremlin Palace. The interior was dominated by the immense, theatrical picture by Boris Ioganson,
Most of the deputies were party members, with views ranging from neo-Stalinist to radical democrat, but almost all were united in a desire to carve out greater sovereignty for Russia within the Soviet Union.
Yeltsin put himself forward for election as chairman of the presidium, in effect Russia’s head of state. Gorbachev let it be known he favored Alexander Vlasov, an uninspiring government functionary who was less threatening as a political rival. Though not an elected member, Gorbachev came to the Russian chamber to intimidate the deputies by his presence. He insisted that the president’s flag of the Union be placed beside him on a ten-foot pole to symbolize his new status. The only seat where the flag could be accommodated was in the balcony perched high above the chamber like a royal box. From there Gorbachev descended at intervals to lecture deputies on the risks of voting for his former comrade. From the podium he accused Yeltsin of abandoning socialist principles and working for the destruction of the Soviet Union.
In the congress 40 percent of deputies were solidly for Yeltsin and 40 percent against. The remaining 20 percent—known as the “swamp”—resented Gorbachev’s interference and leaned to Yeltsin. On May 29 the Siberian won a secret ballot with 535 votes, 4 more than the absolute majority required. For the first time Gorbachev had failed to get his preferred candidate elected for a leadership post in the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev learned the result while reclining in one of the leather seats of the blue and white Soviet presidential airliner midway across the Atlantic, en route to Ottawa and a summit meeting in Washington with President Bush. His aides drafted a conciliatory telegram of congratulations, acknowledging, “You have shown yourself to be a real fighter.” Gorbachev rejected it, saying Yeltsin didn’t need that kind of backhanded compliment.[95] Though he conceded that they were now going to have to negotiate with Yeltsin, he didn’t congratulate the winner for a week.
In the United States, President Bush received Gorbachev at the White House, and they traveled together by helicopter the fifty miles to Camp David. They were hemmed in by two plainclothes officers: an American air force major with a metallic Zero Halliburton briefcase in a black leather casing strapped to his wrist and a Russian colonel with a little black suitcase also attached to his forearm—the respective doomsday devices for the two presidents to launch nuclear war against each other.
At Camp David Gorbachev drove Bush around in a golf cart. His driving was on a par with Yeltsin’s: He almost overturned it to avoid a tree, as the colonels careened along behind them. Over a lunch of hot sorrel soup, Bush asked Gorbachev about Yeltsin’s new role in Soviet politics. Yeltsin is not a “serious person,” retorted the Soviet president. “He’s become a destroyer.”[96]
The destroyer was meanwhile enjoying his spoils. After his election as chairman of the Russian parliament, Yeltsin and his loyal sidekick, Lev Sukhanov, took the lift to the fifth floor of the Russian White House to occupy the office of the previous titleholder. They were amazed to find it was as big as a dance hall. “I have seen many an
