Moscow, December 25, 1991

As Gorbachev deals with his morning correspondence, the Italian journalist Giulietto Chiesa arrives in the Kremlin with colleague Enrico Singer for the first scheduled interview with Gorbachev as a “simple citizen.” The reporters for La Stampa and La Repubblica find the atmosphere strange. “Everything was in disarray, everyone was abandoning their position, and Yeltsin’s men were already there, waiting with impatience,” recalled Chiesa.¹ They note that a red flag is still proudly displayed on a pole behind Gorbachev’s desk, as if the Soviet Union still exists and he is still president. Gorbachev greets the Italians with his usual elegance, but Chiesa perceives his sense of loss.

The former Soviet leader amuses his guests with a story of how, when he vacationed in Sicily with Raisa Maximovna early in his career, he had to show his fist to a French tourist who was coming on too strong to his young wife. “Perhaps he wasn’t French but Italian, and Gorbachev simply wants to be courteous to us,” thinks Chiesa. Gorbachev allows some of his bitterness to show when he talks to them about the way the Union was dismantled. He calls the end of the USSR a putsch and the press conference of the regional presidents after their Alma-Ata summit a cock fight.

“I myself changed as the country did, but I also changed the country,” he boasts. “After all, it’s a rare opportunity to help restore one’s homeland to the world community, to universal values. That’s why I feel that whatever happens, my destiny has been fulfilled.”

When the Italians ask how his family feels about his resignation, he replies tellingly, “I am grateful to my family for having endured all this.” The change in his living conditions doesn’t scare him, he says, referring to his move from a grand state dacha to a slightly less grand one, for use during his lifetime, with state-supplied cars, drivers, security, and servants. “My family and I are not spoiled people.”

And how did he feel seeing the red flag being lowered prematurely from the Kremlin? “The same as all citizens of this country,” he replies. “The red flag is our life. But I don’t want to dramatize this moment out of respect to my compatriots.”

After the Italians leave, Grachev asks his boss to sign a copy of The August Coup, the slender volume Gorbachev wrote about his experience at Foros. The former president writes a message of gratitude to his spokesman, ending with the words “The most important events are still before us. It is noon on the clock of history.” As he reads the inscription in the anteroom, Grachev glances up and sees to his amazement that the hands of the clock stand at noon. Later he learns that the clock has stopped ²

Shortly afterwards Jose Cuenca, the Spanish ambassador to the Soviet Union who overnight has become ambassador to Russia, arrives with a letter of condolence from his head of state. Chernyaev seizes the opportunity to take the envoy aside and ask for his help in getting a new job for Andrey Grachev. Knowing that Cuenca is friendly with the director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Chernyaev asks him if he would lobby for a position there for his colleague. The ambassador’s expression changes. “This is not possible, not acceptable,” he splutters. “OK it’s not acceptable, I know that myself,” replies Chernyaev, “but what are you afraid of? Are you afraid of Kozyrev? Are you afraid he will throw you out?”³

Elsewhere on the Kremlin grounds, the Soviet Union is going through its death throes. The Supreme Soviet, the working parliament of the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies, is holding its last session in Building 14 just inside the Spassky Gate. Most of the elected deputies represent communist institutions that are now defunct or republics now independent and have departed for good. There is a single item on the agenda: a declaration disbanding the USSR and recognizing its successor as the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The deputies are intent mainly on making a gesture of protest at the extinction of the Soviet Union and availing for one last day of the well-stocked parliamentary buffet. Waiting for proceedings to start, they lounge around and read newspapers on the wide rows of orange armchair seats, like the early arrivals for a movie in a big-screen cinema. The chamber was actually once the official Kremlin theater, but only nonfictional dramas have been played out here for the last thirty years.

The forlorn lawmakers are almost outnumbered by journalists expecting to see history made, though the reporters themselves are not infused with excitement, as the end of the assembly is such an anticlimax.