Moscow, December 25, 1991

“Why is it locked?” he booms. “Call the commanding officer.” An aide arrives with a key and opens the drawer. It is empty.

After nosing around some more, Yeltsin summons Kremlin staff and orders them to dump Gorbachev’s remaining private belongings in the corridor. The group then gathers around the oval table in the office. “OK! Give us glasses,” calls out Yeltsin. A bottle is produced and whiskey splashed into the tumblers, which are raised in a triumphal toast.

The secretary in the reception room nervously telephones Gorbachev and tells him what is happening: Yeltsin, Poltoranin, and Burbulis have occupied the office and are holding a party there, emptying a bottle of whiskey, the assistant says. And his name is no longer on the door.

After an hour and a half of revelry, Yeltsin announces benevolently to the trembling receptionist that he has no need to inspect the Walnut Room or the State Council office. He has seen them before. He and his companions leave, laughing among themselves. “Behave yourself!” he calls over his shoulder. “I’m going to come back today!”

Georgy Shakhnazarov arrives minutes later to check that the office is ready for Gorbachev’s interview with the Japanese correspondents. “I found that all the president’s things were taken out of the office and there was an order that by ten o’clock in the morning the office was to be ready for the arrival of the new master.”

Anatoly Chernyaev is horrified. “What a nightmare! And Yeltsin gets more and more uncouth. He is trampling on everything…. He must be paying us back for yesterday’s reception with the press!” He once again feels utterly dismayed that his boss would still want to come to the presidential office at all. “Why should he humiliate himself? Why does he have to go to the Kremlin? The flag has already been brought down over the cupola… and he is already not a president.”²

Gorbachev is in a fury when he arrives shortly after Yeltsin has left. On December 18 Yeltsin had publicly announced that Gorbachev could wait until the end of December or, at a maximum, until the middle of January to make a decision on his resignation. When he did decide to resign on December 25, Yeltsin had clearly and categorically agreed that he could remain in his office until December 29 to wind up his affairs.

“Yeltsin put off his presidential duties to supervise personally my ‘expulsion’ from the Kremlin,” complained Gorbachev in his memoirs. “I was informed that Yeltsin, Khasbulatov and Burbulis had occupied my office at 8:30 a.m. and held a party there, emptying a bottle of whiskey… for their ‘victory.’ This was the triumph of plunderers, I can find no other word for it.”³

The Russian president has had for some time the use of an office in the adjacent Kremlin building. But Gorbachev’s continued presence in the historic seat of power, two days after he stepped down, is a manifestation that a single all-union state still exists. It is an affront to the new ruler. Yeltsin is the sole president of Russia, but it is Gorbachev who is being fêted by the foreign media and who still claims the right to occupy the presidential office in the Kremlin, with the red flag of the Soviet Union behind his desk.

Grachev reckons that the door plaque and the red flag are not merely symbols for Yeltsin but the very goals of the struggle, the chief trophies of his crusade against Gorbachev.

Yeltsin does not like the “rumors” that appear later in the press that they literally threw Gorbachev’s things out of the Kremlin office. He makes some backhand charges of his own. “The old tenants did not unscrew the handles from the doors, of course. But they did remove some furniture and even took some official state gold fountain pens from their inkwells. Well, that kind of thing’s a habit in our country.” He denies acting imperiously and blames “friction among the clerks.” He claims that they warned Gorbachev and his staff a week before the move of their intentions. “It was a period of time quite sufficient to pack up one’s papers. From the outset I did not want Gorbachev and his team, or rather its remnants, either to be thrown out of the Kremlin or allowed to linger an extra month packing. Long farewells make for too many tears.”⁴

The idea of moving into Gorbachev’s office crystallized in Yeltsin’s mind only in the previous few weeks, when it became evident that the Soviet Union had no future. Before that, when there was a chance that some form of union would be salvaged, there was no discussion of Gorbachev leaving the Kremlin, as he would have continued to command the center from there, however weakened.