Moscow, December 25th, 1991 (32 page)

Gorbachev would later give some credit for his decision not to ask the military to intervene to his reading of Margaret Mitchell’s novel
Gone with the Wind,
with its graphic description of the terrible losses and sacrifices of war.
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The prospect of keeping the USSR together diminished during three more meetings of the republics’ leaders that the Soviet president convened in November.

The first, on November 4, left Gorbachev hopeful. He had organized the event in such a way that for forty minutes of live television, viewers saw him warning the representatives of ten republics that they could “slide into the devil’s abyss” if they split up. They listened respectfully while the cameras were on. But afterward there was silence. Everyone eyed Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Grachev thought it was like the scene in
The Jungle Book
in which the pack waits for the confrontation between the two strongest wolves to find out which will be the leader. As it turned out, Yeltsin was in a conciliatory mood. He agreed on keeping an all-union foreign policy and armed forces. Gorbachev was jubilant. That in itself was a victory.

The second meeting, on November 14, however, would confirm his suspicions that the Yeltsin team, steered by Burbulis, had begun the methodical, step-by-step subversion and destruction of the process. And this time only seven republics attended. Ukraine was not among them.

Yeltsin arrived late. This was a tactic the Russian president often used to unsettle Gorbachev. Ordinarily Yeltsin was fastidious about time keeping, and he had always had the extraordinary ability to tell what the time was, to the minute, without looking at his watch.

He marched into the second-floor conference room and feigned anger about a report that Gorbachev had criticized Russia at a press conference over events in Chechnya, the rebellious Russian province that had declared independence. “Since you are criticizing Russia let me respond,” Yeltsin thundered. “Our new relations have lasted all of three months. Now they’re over.”

Gorbachev was stunned. The other leaders made excuses to go to the bathroom. Yeltsin gradually cooled down, and the meeting got started. They debated all day, discussing confederation models such as Switzerland and Canada. Gorbachev still wanted a union state; Yeltsin, a union of states. The difference was not semantic: The former preserved the country, while the latter meant dividing the USSR into a number of independent entities. Watching on the sidelines, Gorbachev’s aides were convinced the Russian leader was only playing for time and manipulating the process.

Before the coup the presidents of the republics had been reasonably respectful to Gorbachev. No longer. Korzhakov watched as “Gorbachev became very obedient, knowing that his power was ebbing away.” The draft treaty was watered down until it provided for a confederation in which each republic had the right to conduct foreign relations and create military units.

When walking round the table and gesticulating to make a point, Gorbachev accidentally knocked over the black Samsonite case containing the nuclear codes. It had been placed at arm’s length from him as if to remind the company of his status as commander in chief of the Soviet armed forces.

They eventually decided to initial a draft treaty for a “confederative union state” on November 25. When they emerged to meet the media in the lower hallway, Yeltsin and Gorbachev bantered with each other. Looking at his rival, Yeltsin said, “We don’t always understand you.” Gorbachev replied, “That’s all right, as long as you eventually catch on.”
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The third meeting took place on Novo-Ogarevo on November 25, an exceptionally mild, late autumn day with no sign yet of the first winter snows. A round table had been trucked to the dacha and the flags of the republics put in place for a solemn initialing ceremony. Again only seven republics turned up, and Ukraine was not among them. But Yeltsin still seemed agreeable to a union, albeit with a weakened center. He told Soviet television beforehand it could have defense, atomic energy, and railroads. Two familiar figures were there flanking Gorbachev. The Soviet president had brought back Alexander Yakovlev as his presidential adviser and Eduard Shevardnadze as foreign minister. Their presence was intended to signal that the old firm was back in business.

Before the media was brought in, Yeltsin dropped a bombshell. He announced he could not initial the treaty as the Russian parliament might not accept the wording. He again demanded that the formula “Union State” be replaced by “Union of States.” Stanislau Shushkevich, head of state of Belarus—known as Byelorussia before it voted for independence in September—said he too needed more time, another two weeks, for consideration.

Exasperated at this “perfidious move,” Gorbachev reacted angrily. “This little game of yours is not just a postponement; you are rejecting what we agreed on,” he fumed. Yeltsin retorted that in any event they should wait until after the Ukrainian referendum, which was only six days away. If Ukraine voted for independence, it would change everything.

To no avail Gorbachev argued the opposite: They must initial it now and give Ukraine no choice but to come in. He harangued them in peasant language. “We’re already drowning in shit,” he exclaimed. “If you reject the concept of a confederal state, you’ll be going on without me.” With that he gathered up his papers and, followed by his entourage, stalked out of the room, saying as he left, “A break!” In the Fireplace Room downstairs, Gorbachev collected himself. Ever resourceful and increasingly desperate, he came up with the idea that the presidents should make a collective appeal to the parliaments to approve the draft. He wrote a new version and sent it up to the conference room. Shortly afterwards Yeltsin and Shushkevich came downstairs. “Well, here we are,” snorted Yeltsin as they entered the room. “We have been delegated to kowtow before the tsar, the great khan.” Gorbachev replied in a conciliatory tone, “Fine, fine, Tsar Boris.”
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Nevertheless, it was clear, noted Grachev, that the signing of the treaty had moved off again like the ever-receding line of the horizon. The final document on which they agreed that day was more like an epitaph for the Union than the proclamation of a brave new world. Yeltsin’s prediction that Gorbachev’s role would be “like that of the queen of England’s” would be made true.

The presidents left Novo-Ogarevo late that night with vague talk about a signing on December 20. They would never return.

What Gorbachev did not know was that during the break, Yeltsin and Shushkevich had quietly discussed the stalemate and agreed they would meet in the Belarus capital, Minsk, after the Ukrainian referendum to talk about common economic problems. They would invite Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk to join them and spend the weekend in a secluded retreat, where they could perhaps talk about a different type of association.

Both would claim later that they had been negotiating with Gorbachev in good faith but that the Soviet president was insisting on conditions that they knew Ukraine would not accept and they had to think of something else.

Gorbachev knew differently. Someone had leaked to him a copy of Burbulis’s secret memorandum on Russia’s strategy. He was convinced that Yeltsin was laying a trap, stringing out talks until Ukraine voted for independence, and using that as the catalyst for the Union’s demise.

On Moscow television on November 30 Yeltsin said he could not imagine a union without Ukraine, but that Russia could not sign a union treaty if Ukraine didn’t. The die was cast.

The Soviet president could not bring himself to believe that Ukraine would vote for independence. Most Russians felt they and Ukrainians were politically and culturally of the same stock—Slavs descended from the once united Rus people. Classic Russian writers like Anton Chekhov and Mikhail Bulgakov placed their tales in Ukraine. Gogol and Shevchenko were born there. So too was Brezhnev. Gorbachev and his wife both had Ukrainian blood. They believed Ukraine was to Russia what Bavaria was to Germany. It had been part of greater Russia since the “Eternal Peace” between Russia and Poland three centuries earlier, when Kiev and the Cossack lands east of the Dnieper went over to Russian rule.

Gorbachev made a televised appeal to the “normal, sane people” of Ukraine to hear him, not just with their heads but with their hearts, and not to listen to “all those crafty politicians.” Why only the other day, he said, his Ukrainian driver had come back from a funeral and told him that people in his hometown of Lugansk had no intention of separating from the Union. It was an unconvincing example—situated in eastern Ukraine, Lugansk had a large Russian population.

The Soviet president was genuinely shocked when 90 percent of Ukrainians voted for independence on December 1. Fearing another coup in Moscow and weary of the never-ending shortages, even the majority of Russians who made up one-fifth of the population voted to split with “the motherland.” In his driver’s native town of Lugansk, 84 percent supported independence.

The Russian government immediately recognized Ukraine as an independent country. Not to be upstaged, the American administration also formally acknowledged Ukrainian independence, causing Gorbachev to moan, “How could Bush do this!”

On December 2 Gorbachev called Yeltsin to discuss the outcome. The Russian president took the call while in his car, slumped in the back right-hand seat as usual, with his security chief, Alexander Korzhakov, in front next to the driver. Yeltsin had been drinking heavily.

“Nothing will come out of the Union now—Ukraine is independent,” gloated Yeltsin on the radio telephone.

“And you, what about Russia?” asked Gorbachev.

“So what! I am Russia! We can live without Ukraine. Perhaps we will go back to the idea of a four-member union: Russia plus Ukraine, plus Belarus plus Kazakhstan.”

Gorbachev retorted, “And where is the place for me? If so I am resigning. I’m not going to float like a piece of shit in an ice hole. I am not for myself. But you have to understand without the Union all of you are going nowhere.... You are going to condemn all the reforms. You have to decide. Everything depends on the two of us to a great degree.”

“How can we do without you, Mikhail Sergeyevich?” said Yeltsin in a mocking tone.

“Well, where is my place if there is no Union?” asked Gorbachev.

“Don’t worry, you stay,” said Yeltsin.
¹³

Standing behind their outraged president, Chernyaev and Alexander Yakovlev exchanged glances. It was clear to both of them that Yeltsin did not intend that Gorbachev would stay where he was for much longer.

CHAPTER 20

DECEMBER 25: EARLY EVENING

As the evening of the last day draws in, Boris Yeltsin has one important thing to do before assuming full power as the undisputed ruler of Russia. He must go to the Kremlin to take formal possession of the nuclear suitcase from Mikhail Gorbachev as soon as the Soviet president resigns. But he can’t leave the White House just yet. Already he is facing the first crisis of the new era. After saying good-bye to the CNN crew, Yeltsin finds a grim-faced delegation from the Moscow soviet waiting in his fifth-floor office. Their leader is the city’s fifty-five-year-old deputy mayor, Yury Luzhkov, a thickset, bullet-headed man wearing a short black coat with fur collar.

Luzhkov has come to ask Yeltsin to dissuade the city’s democratic mayor, Gavriil Popov, from resigning. Popov is a former ally of the Russian president. The tousle-haired mayor of Greek origin was a familiar figure at pro-Yeltsin rallies before the coup, and he helped defend the White House in August. Afterwards he hoped to be given a role in Yeltsin’s government—he wanted the foreign ministry—but was passed over. He has joined Gorbachev’s consultative council instead, and he and Yeltsin are barely on speaking terms.

Popov is also at war with the Moscow soviet, which is stacked with reactionaries and is blocking his emergency plans for managing the economic transition. He worries that he will be blamed if everything falls apart when Yeltsin introduces shock therapy and privatization in the Russian economy next week.

Moscow is on a knife edge. A decree signed by Yeltsin, reported in all the day’s papers, orders the freeing of prices nationwide from January 2. This will end seven decades of subsidies for food and basic materials, during which the Politburo itself determined what people should pay for a loaf of bread. It will inevitably raise prices. Under a splash headline, “How Will We Live?”
Pravda
warns that from January 2 “the price of bread, milk and meat will treble, the price of salt and matches will quadruple, and that of gas and water will increase by five times.” The sense of despair is expressed by a cartoon in
Izvestia.
It shows a baby hijacking its pram by pointing a gun at the mother and saying, “Take me to Sweden, fast.”

Popov had appealed for help to James Baker. He told the U.S. secretary of state on a recent visit that the city faced hunger and chaos. It could not support itself through the winter and needed right away 15,000 tons of eggs, 200,000 tons of milk, and 10,000 tons of mashed potato mix.

“Some of this material is stored by your army which throws it out after three years,” Popov admonished the American visitor. “But a three-year shelf life is all right for us.”
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Some American supplies are now arriving in Moscow. Three days ago, two U.S. military aircraft landed at Sheremetyevo Airport with $200,000 worth of year-old surplus army rations left over from the Gulf War, and limited quantities of sugar, flour, and rice are being delivered to the city’s orphanages and homes for the elderly.

Muscovites will never forget the discontent and shortages of December 1991. University student Olga Perova recalls being sent to queue at 6 a.m. to buy milk for her newborn sister. “There were empty counters everywhere, and everything that had to do with everyday life was horrible.” Anna Pruzhiner, a fifty-two-year-old specialist at the Metro construction company, Metrostroi, is first in line for milk when the doors of the dairy shop are opened each morning, and “there is such a jam that I barely avoid being trampled into the ground.” Tina Kataeva, thirty-two, who works at an art exhibition center, is unable to get “soothers, children’s food, Pampers or anything of that sort,” and when her actor husband returns from a tour abroad, he is quizzed by suspicious German customs officers about carrying so many cans of baby food. Yevgeniya Kataeva, a fifty-five-year-old translator living in Zoologicheskaya Street, is driving on the outskirts of Moscow when she sees a middle-aged man walking down the street with a sheaf of toilet paper strung around his neck like beads. She stops the car and runs over to him to ask where he got the toilet paper. “Naturally I drive there and buy as much as I can. Every time you get something like that, it is a big deal. You feel great, and discuss it over the phone with friends and among your family.”
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