Moscow, December 25, 1991

Up to then Yeltsin also gave the impression to his family that he would rule Russia from the White House. Since being elected Russian president in June, he has made minimal use of his Kremlin office, going there mainly for formal purposes. His daughter, Tanya, said a few weeks ago, “The White House is his real office; the Kremlin office is just for show—to receive foreign guests and hold other official ceremonies.”⁵

Yeltsin is aware that to rule from the Kremlin will give the world reason to suspect his “great power” ambitions and that many of his colleagues will question whether a democratically elected leader should occupy the centuries-old citadel of imperial and totalitarian rule. Some regard the White House, the scene of Yeltsin’s heroic stand in August, to be the state symbol of Russia, rather than the fortress of the tsars on Red Square.

The Russian president has no patience, however, for suggestions that the Kremlin should be turned into a museum of history and culture after the departure of the last Soviet ruler. The Kremlin is an artistic gem, he acknowledges, but it is also the most important government compound in Russia. “The country’s entire defense system is hooked up to the Kremlin, the surveillance system, all the coded messages from all over the world are sent here, and there is a security apparatus for the buildings, developed down to the tiniest detail.” The Kremlin is, moreover, the symbol of “stability, duration and determination in the political line to be followed.”

It also was Gorbachev’s bailiwick, and it is now his for the taking.

One drawback for Yeltsin is that by moving to the Kremlin and bequeathing the White House as a kind of independent territory to the elected deputies, he is exacerbating the division between parliament and presidential rule and has left the White House with its squabbling parliamentarians to become a staging post for a future revolt against him.

Unable to use the ransacked presidential office on the third floor, Gorbachev descends to the second floor and proceeds to the office of the head of his apparatus, Grigory Revenko, to keep his appointment with the Japanese journalists.

He tells them, “You know what, I consider I have fulfilled my task.” He points out that the totalitarian system is no more and society has been transformed. “The main thing is that the people have changed. Now that they have tasted freedom I hope nothing will force them back to the status of before.”⁶

Another Japanese media company makes contact with his staff to offer $1 million for a televised interview in the Kremlin the next day.⁷ Gorbachev at first says he will accept but is talked out of it by Chernyaev, who points out that it is shameful to come back to the Kremlin where Yeltsin is having fun, and it would be more shameful to be looking for somewhere else to do the interview. Revenko scolds Chernyaev for turning down such an offer, but Gorbachev tells Chernyaev he has the flu and is not really feeling up to it. There will be many more lucrative media opportunities in the future.

Gorbachev leaves the Senate Building at midday, ducks into his borrowed Zil, and departs from the Kremlin through the Borovitsky Gate, never to return so long as Boris Yeltsin is president of Russia.

Early in the afternoon Yeltsin comes back to the Senate Building to occupy what is now his office, this time accompanied by a Russian camera crew. He instructs them to film his first act as master of the Kremlin. This is the signing of a decree providing for Russian jurisdiction over the Soviet Union State Television and Radio Company, Gosteleradio. Sitting at the desk vacated by Gorbachev, the Russian president puts his signature to an order transforming Soviet television into the Ostankino Russian State Television and Radio Company. He also decrees that Yegor Yakovlev should supervise the changeover and remain at its head, prompting a tongue-in-cheek headline in Izvestia: “Yegor Yakovlev Is Ordered to Turn Over All-Union Television and Radio Company to Yegor Yakovlev.”⁸

The state broadcasting station that smeared him when he led the opposition to Gorbachev, and that tried to gag him nine months ago, is at last fully under Yeltsin’s control. Yakovlev announces an increased output of news, with a new current affairs program called Itogi (Wrap-up) to be hosted by popular broadcaster Yevgeny Kiselyov. As his administration still controls the second national channel, the Russian president commands both TV channels beamed out to the Russian public—though he mandates Ostankino to shed its dependency on the state within a year and become independent through the issue of shares.