Moscow, December 25, 1991

As the flag with its three horizontal stripes of white, blue, and red flaps and cracks in the artificial breeze, the bells of the Kremlin’s Savior Tower start ringing and continue for several minutes. People walking near the Kremlin look up with curiosity and some concern. Though the Savior Tower clock chimes merrily every fifteen minutes, the heavy bells ring out only rarely to mark profound events. The sound prompts more late-evening strollers and tourists to notice the tricolor. Schmemann’s family recall cheers from a handful of surprised foreigners and an angry tirade from a lone war veteran. There are a few calls of “Oh!” “Oh!” “Oh!” as Russian strollers see what is happening, and whistles and laughter from young men craning their necks upwards. One person claps.

The news quickly spreads, and foreign correspondents hurry to Red Square. Militiaman Alexander Ivanovich, one of the greatcoated guards at the Lenin Mausoleum, who had marched off to dinner while the red flag was flying and returned to find the flag of the Russian Federation in its place, tells James Clarity of the New York Times, “It was a good surprise.” An inebriated and confused Muscovite asks an onlooker near the Mausoleum, “Why are you laughing at Lenin?” He is shushed by a passerby who cautions him that a foreigner is watching. Francis X. Clines, also of the New York Times, is noting down the exchange. “Who cares?” says another Muscovite. “They’re the ones who are feeding us these days.” Uli Klese, a photographer on vacation from Germany, finds the subdued public reaction strange. “When the Berlin Wall came down, everybody was out in the streets,” he tells Michael Dobbs of the Washington. Post. “This was an event of the same kind of magnitude, but no one seemed to care.”⁵

Steve Hurst spots the switching of the flags through a window in the Kremlin from where the dome at the apex of the triangular Senate Building is visible. “I looked out the window and saw the hammer and sickle coming down. I remember what a strong visual that was.” According to Stu Loory, while the CNN crew is dismantling their equipment, someone gets word about what is happening, and a window is opened to videotape the event. Gorbachev’s security people demand the window be closed. “Tell them I will take full responsibility,” shouts Tom Johnson to his interpreter, but the guards shove him away from the window. “Bodyguards are bodyguards everywhere in the world,” said Loory. “They couldn’t care less about the responsibility of the president of CNN!”

Andrey Grachev sees with dismay the red flag “hastily torn from the cupola of the Kremlin as if it were the Reichstag,” as he is leaving the Russian fortress to give an interview to French television in their office in Gruzinsky Lane. The flagstaff is directly above the presidential office, and “happily for Gorbachev he cannot observe this heartbreaking moment.”

A foreign television crew that has missed filming the event acquires a video cassette for 200 French francs from an enterprising Muscovite in Red Square who recorded the change of flags.

When Gorbachev learns what has occurred, he perceives it as another affront to his dignity. He believes that Yeltsin “gave instructions for the lowering of the Soviet flag and the hoisting of the flag of the Russian Federation and personally saw to it that the procedure be completed according to schedule and filmed by television cameras.” Gorbachev wants to secure the red flag as a memento but it is too late to stop it disappearing into the basement of the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, the CNN crew become the sole witnesses of the exchange of the nuclear suitcase some ten minutes later, after they have dismantled their equipment and are assembling in the Kremlin corridor.

“At 7:56 we were waiting in the hallway outside the green room for all of our party to assemble before we could leave,” said Loory. “At the other end of the corridor, near the entrance to Gorbachev’s working office, a man appeared carrying a cloth-covered suitcase with a protruding antenna. He disappeared into a doorway. We were watching the nuclear codes passing from Gorbachev’s control to Yeltsin’s.” Charlie Caudill recalled, “We are being led out by handlers down a very long corridor. All of a sudden a side door opens twenty-five feet in front of us. Armed soldiers come out. They block the way and make us halt. A door on the left opens up. A high-ranking military guy comes up, box under his arm. The opposite door opens, same looking kind of dude. He snaps to attention. They salute each other. The officers exchange the object.” The television cameras have been packed away, and an opportunity is lost to make a video record of the historic moment.