Moscow, December 25, 1991

At least he does not face the prospect of exile or death, the fate of two other recently deposed communist leaders in Europe, Erich Honecker of East Germany and Nicolae Ceauşescu of Romania. But he knows there are people only too eager to discredit him to justify what they are doing.

Under the transition agreement the couple understand they have three days to leave the presidential dacha, their home for six years, after which they must give the keys to the new ruler of Russia. They will leave behind many memories of entertaining world leaders around the dining table and talking long into the night about reshaping the world. There is much to do now of a more mundane nature. They have to sort through books, pictures, and documents, and pack away clothes and private things to move to a new home. They have a similar task to perform at their city apartment on Moscow’s Lenin Hills, which also belongs to the state.

When Gorbachev moved his family here, they expected it would be for life. The dacha, called officially Barvikha-4, was the ultimate symbol of success for the top Soviet bureaucrat. They have occupied smaller government dachas during Gorbachev’s ascent to the pinnacle of Soviet power. As state-owned residences they were quite impersonal, and Raisa disliked that they were “always on the move, always lodgers.” But this was to be their final stop. This dacha was different. It was their creation. The yellow three-story complex was modeled in Second Empire style under Gorbachev’s personal supervision after he became general secretary of the Communist Party in 1985. In those days the party leader had emperor-like powers of command, and it was built in six months by a special corps of the Soviet army, earning the generals a few Medals of Labor. This had been Raisa’s first real home. “My home is not simply my castle,” she once said. “It is my world, my galaxy.”

Known by the security people as the wolfichantze (wolfs lair), the presidential dacha is serviced by a staff of several cooks, maids, drivers, and bodyguards, all of whom have their quarters on the lower floor or in outbuildings. It has several living rooms with enormous fireplaces, a vast dining room, a conference room, a clinic staffed with medical personnel, spacious bathrooms on each floor, a cinema, and a swimming pool. Everywhere there is marble paneling, parquet floors, woven Uzbek carpets, and crystal chandeliers. Outside large gardens and a helicopter landing area have been carved out of the 164 acres of woodland. The surrounding area is noted for its pristine air, wooded hills, and views over the wide, curving Moscow River.

For more than half a century Soviet leaders have occupied elegant homes along the western reaches of the river. This area has been the favored retreat of the Moscow elite since the seventeenth century, when Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich expressly forbade the construction of any production facilities. Stalin lived in a two-story mansion on a high bank in Kuntsevo, closer to the city. Known as Blizhnyaya Dacha (“nearby dacha”), it was hidden in a twelve-acre wood with a double-perimeter fence and at one time was protected by eight camouflaged 30-millimeter antiaircraft guns and a special unit of three hundred interior ministry troops. At Gorbachev’s dacha there is a military command post, facilities for the nuclear button and its operators, and a special garage containing an escape vehicle with a base as strong as a military tank.

Every previous Soviet leader but one left their dachas surrounded by wreaths of flowers. Stalin passed away in his country house while continuing to exercise his powers, and those who followed him—Leonid Brezhnev, Yury Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko—all expired while still in charge of the communist superpower. Only Stalin’s immediate successor, Nikita Khrushchev, a reformer like Gorbachev, had his political career brought to a sudden end when he was ousted from power in 1964 for, as Pravda put it, “decisions and actions divorced from reality.”

Today Gorbachev will suffer the same fate as Khrushchev. He will depart from the dacha as president of the Soviet Union. When he returns in the evening, he will be Gospodin (“Mister”) Gorbachev, a pensioner, age sixty—ten years younger than Khrushchev was when he was kicked out.