Moscow, December 25, 1991

Yeltsin’s entourage is delighted with the newfound enthusiasm for him in the U.S. media. His officials note with glee the comment of Michael Wines in the New York Times that Yeltsin had at last “escaped the long shadow of Mr. Gorbachev, a man who had mesmerized average Americans and their Presidents alike with his flirtations with democratic rule and his frantic dance atop the Soviet power pyramid.”⁸

Five months after the transition, relations between the unforgiving Gorbachev and the belligerent Yeltsin deteriorate sharply. The former Soviet president starts to publicly criticize the harsh impact of shock therapy, which had sent prices skyrocketing and made people’s hard-earned savings worthless. Yeltsin complains that this breaks a pledge not to interfere in politics. Gorbachev explodes to a reporter from Komsomolskaya Pravda. “Listen, Yeltsin is not Jesus Christ. He is not the kind of a person to whom I should answer. Both the right wing and the democratic press have been simply falling on Gorbachev, trying to discredit me, to cause hate and venom.” In any event, he adds, he only promised not to turn his foundation into a political party.

Yeltsin accused Gorbachev of making dangerous and intolerant statements “in a schoolmasterly tone.” In true Soviet style he gets interior minister Viktor Verin to carry out an unannounced financial audit of the Gorbachev Foundation. To no one’s surprise, the auditors find “abuses” in foreign operations. Yeltsin’s media allies give Gorbachev the same kind of damaging treatment Yeltsin received from Pravda when it was under Communist Party control. Izvestia, for example, reports that Gorbachev is buying a house in Florida for $108,350, though no real estate transaction is ever identified.

Around this time Alexander Yakovlev, installed as vice president of the foundation, warns Gorbachev that some individuals have formed a task force to discredit him. Gorbachev tells La Stampa’s correspondent Elzio Mauro, “Now I see these names coming out in the open to attack me, one after the other. They probably want me to leave the country, to go hide somewhere, because I’m a problem to them.” Particularly hurtful is an accusation by Anatoly Lukyanov, former speaker of the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies who is awaiting trial in Matrosskaya Tishina prison as a putschist, that Gorbachev was complicit in the 1991 August coup.

The Commonwealth of Independent States never amounts to much, as its founders always intended. All the republics create their own armies and currencies. Only Belarus shows any enthusiasm for reintegrating with Russia. In Kiev, President Kravchuk cruelly dismisses a proposal by Gorbachev for greater commonwealth unity, saying, “That is the misfortune of that man, his sickness. Everybody is laughing at him, and he does not understand that.”

The Russian Constitutional Court summons Gorbachev to give evidence to a tribunal on the activities of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Labeling this “bizarre trial” a device for settling political scores, Gorbachev blusters that he will not take part in the proceedings even if hauled into court in handcuffs. The court fines him the maximum 100 rubles, about 5 U.S. dollars, but takes away his foreign passport. It is returned shortly afterwards when former West German chancellor Willy Brandt dies and Gorbachev wishes to attend the funeral.

Yeltsin’s impatience with Gorbachev comes to the breaking point in the autumn, when Gorbachev again strongly attacks his “cavalry charge” approach to the economy. On October 8, 1992, three busloads of police arrive and block the doors of Gorbachev’s foundation on Leningradsky Prospekt, preventing the staff from entering. Gorbachev turns up minutes later and fumes to journalists on the steps, “They are out to get Gorbachev, Gorbachev the devil, Gorbachev the prince of darkness, as they call me.” Yeltsin has issued a decree transferring the ownership of the building to the Russian Academy of Finance. The Gorbachev Foundation is allowed to remain but only as tenants paying rent and service charges to the Russian Academy of Finance. Gorbachev complains that all this is done in a typical Yeltsin fashion—“noisily, rudely, and unskillfully”—in order to humiliate him once more and clip his wings.

The Russian president also withdraws from Gorbachev the two Zil limousines and the unit of bodyguards that was part of the resignation deal. The former president has to settle for a standard black Volga V8 sedan.