Moscow, December 25, 1991

At nine o’clock Yeltsin leaves the hallway, where a golf club rests among the umbrellas, given him by the Swedish ice hockey player Sven Tumba when he opened Moscow’s first golf course two years ago. Yeltsin does not play golf but is passionate about tennis and volleyball, and he likes to tell foreign visitors he was a member of the Russian Federation volleyball team. This isn’t true, but he has apparently come to believe it himself.

After descending in the small elevator of the apartment block, he steps outside and enters a black Niva with the engine running. Yeltsin used a modest Moskvich sedan when campaigning for votes seven months back—it was useful for his image as a man of the people—but since he was elected president, Korzhakov has insisted on the chunky four-wheel drive for better security. Yeltsin sits on the right-hand side in the back, with Korzhakov in the passenger seat in front of him, cradling an automatic weapon. The two other bodyguards in the car also nurse sidearms. The Niva is preceded and followed by cars carrying militia guards. The city has been awash with rumors of a second coup attempt by diehard pro-Soviet elements in the military in a last ditch effort to preserve the Soviet Union. As head of Yeltsin’s personal security, Korzhakov is taking no chances.

The Niva crosses Tverskaya Street, where the police have stopped the traffic, and proceeds along Great Gruzinskaya Street, through the grounds of the decrepit city zoo and onto Kopushkovskaya Street. In five minutes it reaches its destination, the marble and concrete skyscraper on the Moscow River embankment known as the Russian White House. The car descends into the basement garage. For now, this building is Yeltsin’s power base. Very soon it will be the Kremlin.

Chapter 3 HIRING THE BULLDOZER

The resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev on December 25, 1991, will mark the end of a long-drawn-out and bitter struggle for power. It began not long after he was chosen as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on March 11, 1985, on the death of his predecessor Konstantin Chernenko. As the ruling party in a one-party state, the Communist Party’s leader was the person who ran the country. Right away Gorbachev began putting together his own team to take charge. One of the first things he did was to recruit Boris Yeltsin.

The Soviet Union that Gorbachev inherited was a moribund, totalitarian society. Outwardly it appeared stable. The non-Russian republics seemingly acquiesced in rule from the Kremlin. Soviet engineers had sent the first man into space. Its military matched the West in weaponry. Soviet athletes were among the best in the world. The vast majority of its inhabitants were literate, and higher education was within everyone’s reach.

But thousands of political prisoners languished in detention camps, a legacy of the Stalin era. There was no independent media, no right of assembly, no free emigration, no democracy, limited freedom of religion, and near zero tolerance for public criticism of those at the top. Corruption and alcoholism were a way of life. The courts did the bidding of the party, and the police and the KGB could arrest anyone without legal redress. The secret police stamped out unauthorized activities, from art shows to student discussion groups. Foreign books, journals, and movies with unapproved content were banned.

By the mid-1980s the command economy imposed by Stalin was in crisis. City dwellers had a tolerable standard of living, but most of the rural population endured wretched conditions. Lack of competition and dependence on world oil sales had stifled domestic manufacturing. The country was involved in a costly and dangerous arms race with the West and an unpopular war in Afghanistan, which Soviet troops had invaded in 1979.

It was a society pervaded by cynicism. Many people joked that they pretended to work and the government pretended to pay them, and that the four most serious problems facing agriculture were spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

Things had to change. People were becoming aware of how the country was being left behind by the capitalist world in terms of freedoms and standard of living. A new generation of Russians was growing restless at censorship and travel restrictions. The aging communist leaders sensed the dangers and the need for improvement. That was why they had turned to the youngest and most energetic comrade in the top ranks, Mikhail Gorbachev.