control of the president of Russia.
On Saturday, December 21, in Alma-Ata, Yeltsin and the heads of state from ten other republics of the original fifteen signed on to the Commonwealth of Independent States. They ignored a long letter from Gorbachev offering to play a unifying role. The eleven presidents signed documents declaring that the Commonwealth was not a state or a quasi-state entity.
Yeltsin arrived back in Moscow the next day and told reporters that they had discussed Gorbachev’s future. In the past leaders had been removed from politics and society, consigned to oblivion, and then either reburied after death or vilified, he said. But they were above that. They would allow Mikhail Sergeyevich to continue to play an active role in society, and they would give him financial security.
Gorbachev was furious when he was told the republic leaders had acted so condescendingly. “For me, they have poisoned the air, they have humiliated me,” he fumed.[229] The former general secretary of the Communist Party, who once had tsar-like powers over the republics, declared himself “shocked by the treacherous behavior of those people, who cut the country in pieces in order to settle accounts and establish themselves as tsars.” Gorbachev’s contempt for the republics’ leaders was shared by his aides. Alexander Yakovlev growled that their intellectual level was so low that “you yourself become dumber talking to them.”[230]
Yeltsin called President Bush once more, to inform him that the Commonwealth had been created, “so the center will simply cease to exist.” Bush immediately telephoned Gorbachev again.
He found the Soviet president in a foul mood, furious at Yeltsin and the way events were rushing past him. Yeltsin had done a deal behind his back to dismantle the Soviet Union, he said bitterly. “In politics anything can happen, especially when one deals with such politicians.” The American president calmed him down. “I am thinking of you professionally and personally,” Bush assured him. He thought Gorbachev was “stunned about what was happening to him as a person and as the president of the Soviet Union…. His authority was slipping away.”
Chernyaev was exasperated with Gorbachev for clinging to the Kremlin and furious with Yeltsin for the way he was treating Gorbachev. “Nicholas II at least received a delegation from the Duma with a request for him to resign,” he wrote in his diary. “He had the courage to give up the crown after three hundred years of dynasty. Gorbachev was simply rudely toppled.”[231] Alexander Yakovlev marveled at how Gorbachev continued to nurse for so long the forlorn hope that he could rescue the Soviet Union. “The train had left and Gorbachev was running after it, as if he didn’t notice that history was going the other way.” Yakovlev himself knew well how happy the republics were to break away from the center. One president had told him crudely, “It is better to be the head of a fly than the arse of an elephant.” But Gorbachev couldn’t imagine they would think this way. Was he being too critical? Yakovlev asked himself. No. Both felt deep pain at their many unrealized hopes.
“Criticism can only be fair,” he concluded, “if it recognizes that Gorbachev was at the forefront of one of the biggest events in the history of Russia.”[232]
Chapter 22
DECEMBER 25: EVENING
With ten minutes to go before Mikhail Gorbachev’s address to the now almost extinct empire he inherited more than six years back, his stylist and makeup artist comes to his office to prepare him for the cameras. She expertly dabs powder on his birthmark, the vascular malformation on his bald dome that is commonly referred to as a port-wine stain because of its purplish color. The first official portraits of Gorbachev were issued with the birthmark airbrushed out. That was before the communist leader introduced glasnost.
The Soviet president wonders where the CNN and Russian television cameras are. He assumes he will be making his stepping-down speech at the desk where he works as president. “Where are they going to be filming?” he inquires. As director of the television coverage, Yegor Yakovlev tells him that everything has been set up in the sham office, Room Number 4. “Why not in my office?” asks Gorbachev. Yakovlev explains that there are so many technicians, photographers, and journalists involved, not to mention equipment, that they would have had to take over the real office for two hours to prepare for the broadcast. It is too late to change anything. CNN has set up its broadcasting operation down the corridor. They must go there.[233]
“CNN broadcasts to 153 countries,” remarks Yakovlev, emphasizing the importance of the network’s worldwide coverage of the resignation.
“And the eleven countries of the CIS as well,” notes Gorbachev. “Well, let’s not take the risk of changing the location.”
He rises abruptly, puts the farewell address and the resignation decrees into his soft leather document case, and leaves the office for the last time as president of the Soviet Union.
The mock office is already brightly lit with arc lights as Gorbachev and his aides enter. Setting up and connecting the cameras and cables and communications equipment has just been completed. A last-minute change of location would have caused consternation among the television crews.
Milling around the confined space and spilling out into the corridor are twenty-seven CNN staffers, plus a score of Russian technicians and some official photographers. Filmmaker Igor Belyaev is supervising Russian cameras for his own documentary.
The room has been arranged to resemble the real thing as closely as possible. The floor is covered with a green floral carpet similar to that in his office. Beside the desk is a bank of four telephones, though they have never been connected. Behind the chair, on the left from the camera’s perspective, the Soviet flag droops from a ten-foot pole in front of a gold-framed painting of the Kremlin. The wall to the right is draped with scalloped white curtains. Overhead hangs a large chandelier identical to the one in the president’s office. However, instead of a high-backed leather chair there is a velvet shield-back chair, so that Gorbachev’s profile is clearly outlined for the cameras against the soft oyster green of the damask silk background.
Among the still photographers looking for a good position is Liu Heung Shing, a staff member of the Associated Press bureau in Moscow.[234] Hong Kong—born, Liu was driving around Moscow looking for picture opportunities when Tom Johnson called him on his portable telephone and told him to get round to the Kremlin as quickly as he could. Johnson, besides being president of CNN, is also a director of AP. No foreign news agencies have been able to get a pass into the Kremlin to see history made, but Johnson has added the names of Liu and AP reporter Alan Cooperman to his crew so he can smuggle them in.
At first Liu doesn’t have a clear idea of what is happening. “When I entered the ornate chandeliered room, I knew something big was going on. However, I saw there was no presence of any Russian journalists or TASS photographers. Neither were there any other Western journalists. Tom greeted me and said to please hang around as Mikhail Gorbachev would talk to CNN after the televised speech. I soon found out it was going to be his resignation speech.”
Liu squats in front of the tripod supporting a large first-generation Soviet TV camera and prepares to take the definitive picture of Gorbachev giving up power.
Making his way through the melee, Gorbachev shakes hands with Tom Johnson and takes his seat behind the walnut desk. The room clears quickly, apart from a handful of CNN and Russian personnel. Chernyaev, Grachev, Palazchenko, and both Yakovlevs, Alexander and Yegor, hang around out of camera shot.
Gorbachev opens the green folder containing his speech and two decrees. One is his resignation as president of the Soviet Union and the other the transfer of command and control of the armed forces to Boris Yeltsin. An aide comes and places a cup and saucer on the desktop to his right containing milky coffee. Gorbachev straightens his papers and says in a quiet voice, his head down as if talking to himself, “If you have to go, you have to go. It’s that time.”
With two minutes left Gorbachev holds a whispered consultation with Chernyaev and Grachev. He asks again should he sign the texts now or after the resignation. They decide after is better.
