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
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.
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.”
