Moscow, December 25th, 1991 (31 page)

Both sides took a break to report to their respective masters. Gorbachev and Yeltsin conferred separately on the telephone. Yeltsin retreated from Burbulis’s hard-line position and said he would agree to an all-union army and foreign ministry. Gorbachev was somewhat heartened. He could perhaps salvage a confederation and a common market similar to, or even stronger than, the European Union.

Yeltsin had to capitulate very quickly on Crimea. The Russian president had raised the issue in a conversation with President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan. He told him an independent Russia might have to redraw its borders with other republics, a reference to Crimea and Russian-speaking areas of northern Kazakhstan. “Well then, that’s war,” said Nazarbayev. “That’s civil war.” Yeltsin’s economic adviser, Yegor Gaidar, was also emphatic about the danger. “If you start to discuss the problem of the borders,” he said, “then you have civil war.” Yeltsin quickly closed this Pandora’s box. He could see every day on television the bloodshed that border disputes were causing in the former Yugoslavia.

The Russian and Soviet presidents could at least show a common face to the world again. “After the coup Russia has changed and so has the president,” Yeltsin declared grandly in a television interview. “He found within himself the courage to change his views. I personally believe in Gorbachev today much more than I did three weeks ago before the putsch.” The two rivals openly consulted each other during a session of the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies. Their only altercation occurred when Yeltsin criticized Gorbachev for creating the climate for the coup, to which the Soviet leader retorted, “Don’t spit on me!”

On September 5 Gorbachev cajoled the congress to approve in principle a new union to be called a Union of Sovereign States, the details of which would be negotiated by the new State Council comprising the leaders of the willing republics. But it would be the last time his famous powers of persuasion would work their magic on a parliamentary assembly.

An anecdote made the rounds. The “Union of Sovereign States” meant the “Union to Save Gorbachev.” (The initials were the same in Russian.)

Gorbachev and Yeltsin performed together on ABC News on the morning of September 6. The much heralded program was postponed twice because of the hectic schedules of the participants. Sitting side by side in the Kremlin’s St. George’s Hall, they told viewers they were getting along fine together.

“There were times when President Gorbachev thought I was a political corpse and I thought he ought not to be president,” said Yeltsin. “Now we are committed to common work—how to deal with a crisis.” Gorbachev agreed: “We do have to cooperate now.”

Then Yeltsin went to ground. Physical exhaustion and melancholy followed the intensity and excitement of battle. He spent almost two weeks on the beach at Yurmala on the Baltic coast; then on September 18, citing a minor heart attack, he retreated to Sochi on the Black Sea. He spent most of the time in a state of semiparalysis or dictating notes for the second volume of his memoirs.

Everyone, it seemed, was rushing to get books out. On October 4 Gorbachev sold a short text called
The August Coup
to HarperCollins for half a million dollars. It featured seven color pictures of himself with a smiling George Bush. It was written in such haste that a garbled reference to President Francois Mitterrand not calling Gorbachev at Foros nearly caused a diplomatic rupture with Paris.
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In Sochi Yeltsin had a visit from Burbulis to discuss strategy. As they sat on deck chairs by the warm sea, his grey cardinal presented him with a “Top Secret” memorandum called “Russia’s Strategy in the Transitional Period.” It was a blueprint for a fully independent Russia. This would be achieved by going along with the new union negotiations until they failed, thereby preserving the appearance of legality. Yeltsin should then make his own arrangements with the other republics and consign the USSR to history.

Yeltsin faced a decision of enormous consequence. He could win full control of Russia, but the price would be high. Russia would lose the steppes of southern Siberia and “Russian” cities like Kharkov and Odessa, as well as the Crimea peninsula and Sevastopol, where the Russian fleet had been based since the reign of Catherine the Great.

In Moscow Gorbachev was also trying to relax after the strain of Foros. He took his wife to see a performance of Thornton Wilder’s play Ides of March, whose theme of betrayal he and Raisa found timely, and “really enjoyed it.” A stream of foreign dignitaries came to seek his assessment of the situation. He assured them that the centrifugal tendencies had been reversed. He warned one visitor, “If we fail to preserve the unitary state, we’re going to have another Yugoslavia on our hands. I bet my life on it.” Unlike the Serbs, however, who fought to preserve their hegemony in Yugoslavia’s provinces, Russians living in the republics were generally passive as the Soviet Union fell apart. Many of them foresaw only further misery and a return to a new era of totalitarianism if the center prevailed, and they were encouraged to support the process of disintegration by the most credible Russian figure of the time, Boris Yeltsin.

When at last he returned to Moscow, on Wednesday, October 10, Yeltsin found Russia in political chaos and his parliament a nest of political intrigue. Geared up for a long period of opposition, neither he nor the deputies had a firm idea of how to use the levers of power that were now within reach. Russian ministers were squabbling, and Rutskoy was warning of anarchy. The city was full of rumors of a second coup to prevent the USSR’s disintegration.
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Gorbachev, meanwhile, was busy trying to seize back the initiative by rallying the leaders of the republics to the cause of a new union treaty. He convened a meeting of the State Council the day after Yeltsin’s reappearance. The Russian president arrived late and remained sullen throughout. Nevertheless, the leaders of the republics agreed to form a new economic union, with discussions to take place later on a political union. A ceremonial signing of a cobbled-together economic treaty took place the following Thursday, October 18, in St. George’s Hall. Gorbachev fussed over the seating and whether champagne toasts should be televised (they were), and he made sure that the red flag was bigger than the flags of the republics. He personally decided on the types of chairs most suitable for an official dinner that followed in the St. Catherine Hall. He convinced himself that there was a momentum again for a single union state with a common defense and foreign policy. He conveyed this to the visiting German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who assured him of German support for the survival of the Soviet Union but had offended Gorbachev by visiting the independent-minded republics without liaising with Moscow. After Genscher left, Gorbachev called him an “elephant” and complained that he had behaved shabbily.
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While seemingly in favor of the economic union, Yeltsin had been calculating his next big move. On Sunday, October 28, he delivered a shock. In a rousing speech to the Russian legislature, sitting in the Great Kremlin Palace, he declared that the only way out of the country’s crisis was by drastic action. Therefore he planned to free prices, end subsidies, and speed up privatization in the territory of Russia.

“The time has come to act decisively, harshly, without hesitation,” he announced. There would be difficult times ahead, but the alternative was ruin. “The period of moving in small steps is over. We need a major economic breakthrough.... If we don’t seize the real chance to break the unfavorable course of events, we shall condemn ourselves to beggary and our centuries-old state to disaster.” Swayed by his powerful oratory, the parliament gave Yeltsin the power to enforce his “big bang” economic reforms by decree. Even Gorbachev’s loyal aide Anatoly Chernyaev was impressed, seeing Yeltsin’s drive as a breakthrough to a new country and a new society.

The first Gorbachev knew about this bold initiative was when he glanced at the television in his office and saw that Yeltsin was speaking. The Russian president had not bothered to alert him, although they had spoken on the phone just the night before. He asked for the text of the speech. Next day he read it several times on the presidential plane en route to Madrid, where he was cohosting a Middle East conference with U.S. president George Bush. The economic mechanisms were fine, he thought. But it boiled down to one thing. This was a Russian initiative. The center had no role. Yegor Yakovlev, also on the plane, warned Gorbachev that Yeltsin clearly meant to destroy the Union.

In Madrid Gorbachev found his international colleagues more apprehensive than ever about his survival capacity. He blustered that Yeltsin was “rather easily influenced” by his entourage and not to take him too seriously. But his own demeanor gave the game away. James Baker found Gorbachev unfocused, acting like a drowning man who is looking for a life preserver. Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez urged Gorbachev to persist in his efforts, as Europe needed its two secure pillars, the European Community in the west and the Soviet Union in the east.

At a joint appearance of the Soviet and U.S. presidents, interpreter Palazchenko observed the skeptical, cold, and indifferent faces of the Americans, who once regarded Gorbachev as a top-caliber world leader but whom they now thought of as “already a goner.” As the conference ended, Bush bade Gorbachev good-bye with a patronizing pat on the back, saying, “You’re still the master!”
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In an extraordinary tacit acknowledgment of the influence of the United States, the new Soviet foreign minister, Boris Pankin, traveling with Gorbachev, quietly asked James Baker to encourage the American president to persuade Yeltsin to preserve the Soviet foreign ministry.
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On the plane back to Moscow Gorbachev told Chernyaev, Palazchenko, and Grachev of his determination to succeed in forging a new union. The most pessimistic person on the plane, noted Palazchenko, was Raisa, who had “grave concerns” for the future.

She had every reason to be worried on her husband’s behalf. Nothing was certain. After his speech Yeltsin formed a new Russian government with himself as prime minister and two ultra-radical reformers, Gennady Burbulis and Yegor Gaidar, as deputy prime ministers. It began, with breathtaking audacity, to take over central institutions and to convert Soviet industry ministries into stock corporations subject to Russia, a process the demoralized Soviet government was too feeble to resist.

Ukraine forced the constitutional crisis to a head. Its leaders organized a plebiscite on independence to be held on December 1, 1991. Gorbachev assured everyone who would listen that Russia and Ukraine would not and could not separate, as the two nations were branches of the same tree. But if Ukraine opted for independence, as seemed likely, it would have to be either allowed by Moscow to break free or cajoled into a redesigned union. The alternative was war.

The possibility of war was taken seriously, especially in Kiev, and alarmist rumors appeared in the media. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Konstantin Masik, told
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
that “Yeltsin discussed with military leaders the possibility of a nuclear strike on Ukraine” to prevent the republic becoming a nuclear threat to Russia. The Russian information ministry protested vehemently to the newspaper that this was propaganda fomenting war, but editor Vitaly Tretyakov pointed out that the charge was not disavowed by Masik or his boss, Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk. The Russian government sent its legal counsel, Sergey Stankevich, to tell Tretyakov that the charge was wild and absurd. Yeltsin’s military adviser General Konstantin Kobets also dismissed the story as nonsense.
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Yegor Gaidar recalled that the leadership did not discuss plans for using nuclear means in the event of territorial disputes but acknowledged that perceptions were as important as facts.

Though the coup had failed, there was still talk of the military taking a role to enforce a new union. The prospect, and even the desirability, of such a drastic step was raised in mid-November by Gorbachev himself in conversation with Shaposhnikov.
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By the marshal’s account he was invited late at night to the Kremlin. Gorbachev revealed that he was worried that the Soviet Union was about to fall apart despite all his efforts, and “something needs to be done.” The Soviet president outlined options, one of which was, “You, the military, take power in your hands, put in place the government that is convenient to you, stabilize the situation and then step aside.”

“And then go directly to Matrosskaya Tishina with a song!” retorted the marshal, referring to the Moscow penitentiary whose name meant Seaman’s Silence, where some of the coup plotters were incarcerated. “We have had something similar in August already.”

“What are you talking about, Zhenya,” spluttered Gorbachev. “I’m not suggesting anything, I am just going through options, thinking aloud.”

The conversation came to an abrupt end. The idea of military intervention could have tragic consequences, wrote Shaposhnikov in his diary. “Yeltsin’s authority was unchallenged and he would have organized ferocious resistance to such a decision. Civil war could not be ruled out. Having imagined mountains of bodies and a sea of blood of my compatriots and my role as an executioner, I naturally did not support thoughts that were suggested by Gorbachev.”

“One can’t exclude the possibility that Gorbachev was testing Shaposhnikov,” suggested Andrey Grachev years later, when asked about this encounter. “He was playing with several ideas. It was his responsibility to see what levers he could use. It was his duty constitutionally to save the Union.” But society was divided, and the Soviet president knew well that in the event any leader in his position tried to resort to these methods, people would think he was trying to save himself. “The principle ambition of Gorbachev was to introduce the idea of division of powers; otherwise he would be acting as a typical Soviet leader, Brezhnev or Stalin, and that would be a denial of what he was doing for six years,” said Grachev. He added that Gorbachev had dismissed any notion of force once, saying, “What should I do—open fire on the parliaments that I constructed?”
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