Moscow, December 25, 1991

Yeltsin called Gorbachev to say that he would not come to the Kremlin as he feared for his personal safety. “Are you crazy?” retorted Gorbachev. Yeltsin replied, “No, I’m not, but somebody else might be.”

Unknown to Yeltsin, that somebody was his estranged vice president. Alexander Rutskoy had raced to the Kremlin that morning when he heard the news of the Belovezh Agreement and begged Gorbachev to arrest the “drunken threesome” for a state crime committed to please the United States. Gorbachev told him, “Don’t get so het up; it’s not that terrible.” The volatile Rutskoy was now bitterly opposed to the breakup of the country in whose name he had risked his life in Afghanistan. He prepared a press statement attacking his president, but friends talked him out of issuing it. Seeing he had little support, he backed down and a few days later renewed his vows of allegiance to Yeltsin in unctuous terms.¹³

According to Grachev, the idea of having Yeltsin apprehended never came to Gorbachev’s mind, though he had the power to arrest him for high treason. “That was the reason they were hiding in the woods.” Some in Gorbachev’s entourage, like economist Nikolay Shmelev, believed it was only his aversion to bloodshed that stopped him sending a division of paratroopers to the forest to arrest “those three provincial men of great ambition.” Gorbachev’s former speechwriter Alexander Tsipko would later berate the generals and colonels who “did not stir a finger to stop the outrage.” Gorbachev’s former adviser Arkady Volsky, who had become a Yeltsin supporter, believed that the military would have supported Gorbachev if he had declared martial law.¹⁴

Whether he was tempted or not, Gorbachev did not try. He was not prepared to spark a civil war. Ordering arrests would have meant taking a road that could have become bloody. “We can’t start a fight. We can’t. It would be just criminal, taking into account the conditions under which our people are living.”

There was no doubt, however, about how bitter the Kremlin loyalists felt. At an American embassy reception on Sunday evening, Palazchenko denounced the Belovezh Agreement to diplomats as a second coup, a blatantly illegal act, dividing the country up like some inherited estate to get rid of its president.

Yeltsin overcame his reservations and arrived at twelve o’clock on Monday at the Kremlin, with Korzhakov nursing a weapon in the front seat of the Niva. They were accompanied by armed bodyguards in several cars that deployed around the red-brick fortress. Yeltsin’s personal security men insisted on accompanying him to the door of Gorbachev’s third-floor office in the Senate Building, where they stood face to face with Gorbachev’s bodyguards as Yeltsin went inside.

Nazarbayev was there already. He thought Yeltsin looked terribly hungover. He complained immediately that the Belovezh Agreement was an offense to the dignity of the Asiatic republics.

Gorbachev squared up to his nemesis and accused him of “some kind of a political coup… meeting in the woods and shutting down the Soviet Union.” He wanted to know if the independent states would have their own forces. “Yes, except for strategic forces,” replied Yeltsin. “So that means Ukraine will have its own army of 470,000, which is 100,000 more than united Germany!” exclaimed Gorbachev. “You were the first to recognize the Baltic states and signed agreements on human rights and what is the result? Now there are laws on citizenship that discriminate against Russians. That’s what democrats do! They say ‘Russians get out.’”

Yeltsin became indignant and snapped, “Why are you interrogating me? A way had to be found out of the dead end, and we found it!”

The wrangling got nowhere. Yeltsin left after ninety minutes. Gorbachev dictated a statement claiming the end of Soviet law was “illegal and dangerous.”¹⁵ It was at variance with the will of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians in the March referendum on preserving the Union. It would strand millions of Russians living outside Russia’s borders. He called for an emergency session of the Congress of People’s Deputies to adjudicate on what he dismissed as the “initiative” of the three leaders.

In Andrey Grachev’s opinion, people were too concerned with their daily problems to take action on behalf of the Union. They had lost faith in Gorbachev and his project and just kept silent. That evening the presidential spokesman went to a piano recital in the Pushkin Museum given by Svyatoslav Richter—a Ukrainian—and had a late-night dinner with the Italian and Dutch ambassadors. The Belarus accord was not mentioned by the company, on the principle, he guessed, that “one doesn’t speak of rope in the house of a hanged man.”¹⁶