Moscow, December 25, 1991

Somov does not share the teary emotions displayed by Gorbachev’s aides. He notes that half of the CNN crew are Russian and believes none of them give a damn. “There was no feeling among us that it was a momentous event. It was just a power struggle. It wasn’t affecting us.” Far from being awed by the downfall of an empire, he believes that everything collapsed a long time previously. “What was emerging was years of chaos and theft,” he explains years later. “I knew at the time that was what was going to happen.” Somov was not given to empathizing with politicians. He was of the opinion that “you can’t be a good interpreter without being jaded and cynical and you can’t be a good interpreter if you are emotional.”

He does, however, feel professional pride in the accomplishment of CNN. “We were patting ourselves on the back. It had never been done before on the network, getting an interview with the leader of a nation on the same night he resigned!”

CNN producer Charlie Caudill reckons Gorbachev’s “emotional and passionate address” to be the most painful speech he has ever heard. “The room was full of melancholy, and after the broadcast Gorbachev looked beaten, sad—the adrenalin had drained away, gone.” He finds himself thinking back to the day in 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for a second term, an event Caudill witnessed as a White House correspondent. “President Johnson was conducting a war in Vietnam that had lost popular support and had been, like Gorbachev, clearly repudiated by the people, and, like Gorbachev, he had fought as long as he could and then came to terms with reality.”

Tom Johnson was assistant press secretary in the LBJ White House that same day. He, too, is keenly aware of the similarities between Gorbachev’s resignation and the former U.S. president’s decision not to seek reelection. “I really felt a sense of sadness on both occasions, a sense that each man had tried in his own way to leave the world a better place, but that each had been swept aside by forces each had unleashed.”⁵

Gorbachev waits to make sure the television cameras are no longer rolling. He gives a sigh and sits back. There is a brief silence; then people start moving around again.

Claire Shipman and Steve Hurst pull up chairs in front of the desk for their scheduled CNN interview. Caudill insists that hangers-on leave the room. “I mean we’re doing the world here—we’re not just doing local.”

“Can we make this short?” pleads Gorbachev, suddenly drained. He has only a few minutes before the scheduled handover of the nuclear suitcase to Boris Yeltsin in his office. Grachev tells CNN there is time for four questions only.

In the interview, which is broadcast live around the world—except for Russia—Gorbachev says he hopes that, as life improves for the people, they will look back at this time as hard, but necessary. “We had to begin, and it is good that we began. Now I will have to recover a little bit, relax, take a rest.” Asked how Raisa and other members of his family are taking his resignation, he answers, “Bravely.”

Gorbachev seems to Shipman weak, defeated, exhausted, and melancholy, as if the energy was sapped out of him and he is still puzzling how it all came to pass. She feels as if they have intruded on a very private moment. “I almost felt bad being there. It was almost like going to a funeral.” Hurst is struck by how somber the atmosphere is. “There was sadness in his eyes and none of the ebullience .”⁶

Central Television in Moscow carries the interview two hours later, after producers at TV headquarters satisfy themselves there is nothing in it that will offend Boris Yeltsin.

As Gorbachev gets up from his desk, he picks up the Mont Blanc pen and with a reflex movement slips the shiny black object into his breast pocket. Tom Johnson thinks fast. He must not let Gorbachev disappear into the corridor with his precious writing instrument, which is now of some historical significance. During Gorbachev’s address the CNN president had whispered to Caudill, “What do you think I should do about the pen?” Caudill had muttered, “Get it back!” When Gorbachev pauses to shake his hand on the way out, the CNN president says, “Sir, my pen!” Palazchenko translates. “Oh yes!” says Gorbachev, his face breaking into a smile. He hands over the pen and leaves.

Shipman is taken aback that Gorbachev has no understanding at all of the importance of the instrument. “I was looking at Tom and Charlie and thinking, this is crazy. We are going to have the pen he signed away the Soviet Union with.”

One of Gorbachev’s aides does make a halfhearted attempt to persuade CNN to leave the pen behind. The response is “No way!” (In 2008 Johnson donated the pen to the Newseum in Washington.)