Moscow, December 25, 1991

As the moment approaches for the live broadcast, a security man in grey suit and blue shirt and tie leans down and orders Liu to leave. He refuses, and the guard glares at him furiously. He hisses at him not to take a photograph during the televising of the address. Liu replies “OK!” But he doesn’t mean it.

A technician fits a microphone to the president’s tie, and Gorbachev takes a felt pen from inside his suit jacket. He tries it out on the green folder. It doesn’t work. “Andrey, it is too hard,” he says, glancing back at his spokesman, who is hovering over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t have a softer one? Give me a good pen to sign these.”

Johnson, standing a few feet away, sees what is happening. He reaches into his pocket and draws out his Mont Blanc ballpoint, a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary present from his wife, Edwina. The sudden movement alarms the three security officials in the room. “They did everything but draw AK-47s,” laughs Caudill. “Gorbachev says to them, ‘Nyet, nyet!’”³

“We were about to go live on Russian television and around the world with the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the conveyance of power to Boris Yeltsin,” recalled Johnson. “And I am standing one person away from Gorbachev within, say, forty-five seconds to a minute before air time. He takes this green Soviet-made pen out to just test it…. And it didn’t work…. And I just reached in my pocket and I said, ‘Mr. President, you may use mine.’”⁴

“Is it American?” asks Gorbachev with a smile as he takes the German-made pen with black resin sheen and gold point.

“No, sir, it is either French or German,” says Johnson.

“In that case I will use it.”

Once again a member of the media provides the instrument for the Soviet Union’s liquidation.

Gorbachev tests the pen on the green folder and, satisfied that it works, ends the discussion with his aides and—despite what he has just been advised—signs the five-page decree abdicating as president of the Soviet Union and the second decree giving up his post as commander in chief of the Soviet armed forces. Hardly anyone takes any notice. The historic event is not televised, as the cameras have not gone live. He puts the pen on the edge of the desk beyond the coffee cup and places the decrees on the left side of the folder.

In cities across the world, viewers tune in to watch the first and last resignation of a leader of the Soviet Union, live on CNN.

In the Washington suburbs, a generation of sovietologists, correspondents, academics, and economists who had been dealing with the mysterious and closed USSR over the years pause in their preparations for Christmas lunch to watch the news from Moscow. Many are in a state of incomprehension—even a few weeks ago it seemed the Soviet Union would prevail in one form or other.

As Gorbachev is preparing to make his broadcast, another convoy with sirens wailing makes its way to the Kremlin. It is the president of Russia, who has just finished his crisis meeting with Moscow’s deputy mayor, Yury Luzhkov, in the White House. His car pulls up outside Building 14 just before seven o’clock. Accompanied by Gennady Burbulis, Yeltsin takes the lift to the fourth floor, where he has his Kremlin office. An assistant has the television switched on.

Yeltsin’s office has a more personal feel than Gorbachev’s presidential suite in the adjoining building. The walls are decorated with a picture of Yeltsin on the tank during the coup, an ornate religious icon, and a framed painting of his eighty-three-year-old mother Klavdiya Vasilyevna Yeltsina, copied from a photograph by the painter Ilya Glazunov, a well-known purveyor of Russian nationalism. There is a map of the Soviet Union covered with colored pins signifying hot spots of ethnic and nationalist crises.

The group gathers round the television to observe Gorbachev doing what Yeltsin publicly first asked him to do in his famous televised interview ten months ago. At that time his call for Gorbachev’s resignation had provoked outrage and dismay around the world.

Everything is now in place for the final act of the transition. As soon as Gorbachev has finished speaking, the Russian president is to walk across the narrow courtyard to Gorbachev’s office. There, in the presence of Marshal Shaposhnikov and the television cameras, he will take formal possession of the nuclear suitcase and will become the legal successor in Russia of the last president of the USSR.

The world will see the two rivals shake hands and smile as the chemodanchik changes ownership and the curtain comes down on seventy-four years of Soviet rule. At least that is the plan.

Chapter 23 THE DEAL IN THE WALNUT ROOM

The details of the transition of power were worked out during a nine-hour encounter between Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin two days before the Soviet president gave his resignation address on the evening of December 25, 1991.¹