Moscow, December 25, 1991

Chernyaev watches his chief having to “talk his heart out for two hours… and us sinners were also tortured quite a bit!” He tells David Remnick of the Washington. Post that Yeltsin has insulted and provoked Gorbachev and made it personal, but that Gorbachev feels he has completed his mission, no matter what lies ahead. “His goals, his strategy and events all bear him out, despite the mistakes in tactics, the hesitations. His greatest mistake was that he always tried to balance things, to unite everyone, and that was absolutely impossible to do.”⁸

While the reception is in progress, the news reader on the television in the bar of the hotel is reminding viewers that as a consequence of the demise of the Soviet Union, they all woke up that morning no longer citizens of a great superpower but citizens of one of fifteen independent nations.

As he is driven home after the reception, Gorbachev passes several buildings where the Russian tricolor has been hung to mark the change in government. There are no red flags to be seen anywhere. The lowering of the communist emblem over the Kremlin on December 25 was the signal for Soviet flags to be pulled down from public buildings across the vast country and replaced with the white, blue, and red flag of independent Russia.

In St. Petersburg, as elsewhere, the Russian flag is hoisted over public buildings. But a red flag continues to fly from a metal pole on the House of Political Enlightenment, where the communists have been allowed to retain an office since it was turned into an international business center. It is visible from the Smolny Institute, where Vladimir Putin, future president of Russia, works as the head of the committee for external relations in the office of the mayor, Anatoly Sobchak.

The ex-KGB officer gives the order to workmen to remove the flag. The next day the communists put up another one. Putin gives the order once more, and once again his men remove the flag. Vladimir Churov, an aide to Mayor Sobchak, watches as back and forth it goes. “The communists began to run out of flags and started using all sorts of things. One of their last versions wasn’t even red but more of a dark brown. That put Putin over the edge. He found a crane and under his personal supervision had the flagpole cut down with a blowtorch.”⁹

Chapter 28 DECEMBER 27: TRIUMPH OF THE PLUNDERERS

Just before 8 a.m. on Friday, December 27, a little over a day and a half after Mikhail Gorbachev announced he was ceasing his activities as president of the USSR, Russian president Boris Yeltsin leaves his apartment at 54 Second Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street, as usual groomed and spruced up by the women of his family. He climbs into the back of the presidential Zil, taken from Gorbachev’s dacha two nights ago, and directs the driver to take him straight to the Kremlin.

The limousine cuts across the ring road, cruises along Tverskaya Street, and turns right past the Intourist Hotel, then left in through the Borovitsky Gate of the Kremlin, finally stopping at the Senate Building. He is joined there by his deputy prime minister, Gennady Burbulis, parliament chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, and his minister for press and information, Mikhail Poltoranin.

The four men crowd into the lift and take it to the third floor. Guards snap to attention as they stride purposefully along the red runner in the corridor and burst into the anteroom of the presidential office to confront the receptionist on duty.

Mikhail Gorbachev has not yet arrived. He has an appointment at 11 a.m. in the presidential office with a group of journalists from the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. Under the deal worked out with Yeltsin in the Walnut Room, he believes he has the use of the office until Sunday. An unpleasant surprise awaits Gorbachev, however. In the early hours of the morning, on Yeltsin’s personal instructions, a group of workmen came with a bag of tools and unscrewed the plaque on the door of the office with the inscription in brass letters: “M. S. Gorbachev, President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” They replaced it with one stating, “B. N. Yeltsin, President of the Russian Federation.” Gorbachev is no longer welcome.

“Well, show us around!” Yeltsin commands the receptionist.¹ Without waiting for a response, he barges into the room. “Here on the table there was a marble pen set,” he thunders. “Where is it?” He clearly is implying that the property of the Kremlin is being pilfered by the outgoing officials. The secretary protests, “There was no set…. Mikhail Sergeyevich did not use such pens. We bought for him felt pens.”

“OK and what’s here?” demands Yeltsin, peering into the resting room where Gorbachev takes his afternoon naps and seeing only the couch and toilet facilities. The Russian president goes behind the office desk and starts pulling out drawers. He comes upon one that will not open.