Moscow, December 25, 1991

About the Author

Conor O’Clery lived and worked in Russia during the final years of the Soviet Union as Moscow correspondent for the Irish Times. He won journalist of the year in Ireland for his reporting from the Soviet Union, and again in 2002 for his firsthand accounts of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. In thirty years with the Irish Times he also served as correspondent in London, Beijing, New York, and Washington. He is GlobalPost’s Ireland correspondent and is the author of several books, including The Billionaire Who Wasn’t, a biography of the American philanthropist Chuck Feeney, named a 2007 best book of the year by the Economist and BusinessWeek.

About the Publisher

PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997. It is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.

I.F. STONE, proprietor of I. F. Stone’s Weekly, combined a commitment to the First Amendment with entrepreneurial zeal and reporting skill and became one of the great independent journalists in American history. At the age of eighty, Izzy published The Trial of Socrates, which was a national bestseller. He wrote the book after he taught himself ancient Greek.

BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE was for nearly thirty years the charismatic editorial leader of The Washington Post. It was Ben who gave the Post the range and courage to pursue such historic issues as Watergate. He supported his reporters with a tenacity that made them fearless and it is no accident that so many became authors of influential, best-selling books.

ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN, the chief executive of Random House for more than a quarter century, guided one of the nation’s premier publishing houses. Bob was personally responsible for many books of political dissent and argument that challenged tyranny around the globe. He is also the founder and longtime chair of Human Rights Watch, one of the most respected human rights organizations in the world.

• • •

For fifty years, the banner of Public Affairs Press was carried by its owner Morris B. Schnapper, who published Gandhi, Nasser, Toynbee, Truman, and about 1,500 other authors. In 1983, Schnapper was described by The Washington Post as “a redoubtable gadfly.” His legacy will endure in the books to come.

Peter Osnos, Founder and Editor-at-Large

Copyright

Copyright © 2011 by Conor O’Clery

Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™, a Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved.

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Excerpt from “Goodbye Our Red Flag” from Don’t Die Before You’re Dead by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Copyright © 1995 by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Permission requested.

O’Clery Conor.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-1-610-39012-5

1. Moscow (Russia)—History—20th century. 2. Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeevich, 1931—3. Yeltsin, Boris Nikolayevich, 1931-2007. 4. Soviet Union—History—1985—1991. 5. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1985— 1991. 6. Moscow (Russia)—Politics and government—20th century. 7. Moscow (Russia)—Social conditions—20th century. 8. Moscow (Russia)—Biography. I. Title.

DK601.2.025 2011

947.085’4—dc23

2011020511

,

NOTES

1

1 Palazchenko, My Years with Gorbachev and Sbevardreadze, 361.

2

2 Woolf, Nuclear Weapons in the Former Soviet Union.

3

3 Baker with DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy, 583.

4

4 Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 555.