Moscow, December 25, 1991

In his second term, Yeltsin’s Kremlin court becomes a hive of intrigue. It is a period of political and economic chaos during which Russia’s natural resources are being sold off to favored insiders at fire-sale prices. Yeltsin grows ever more irascible, yields power arbitrarily, and treats his staff abominably. Aides assume that as head of his security, Alexander Korzhakov is monitoring their phone calls, and they communicate with each other only in scribbled notes. Always suspicious of overfamiliarity, Yeltsin drops his preindependence collaborators one by one. He lets Gennady Burbulis go because his grey cardinal is annoyingly appearing every day “in my office, at meetings and receptions, at the dacha, in the steam bath.” Korzhakov survives for five years but is fired after a scandal over election funding. He writes an unflattering book, Boris Yeltsins: From Dawn to Dusk, which angers Yeltsin so much they never speak again.

Yeltsin’s first, and only, formal contact with Gorbachev after December 1991 comes seven years later. In 1999 he sends a telegram of sympathy to the sixty-eight-year-old ex-president as Raisa Gorbacheva lies dying of leukemia in University Hospital in Münster, Germany. “I want to express my deep concern for the ordeal that your family is going through,” he writes. “I know well how hard it is to experience the illness of a loved one. More than ever, in moments like these, mutual support, warmth and caring are needed. I wish for you, my esteemed Mikhail Sergeyevich, strength and perseverance, and, for Raisa Maximovna, courage in her struggle against the disease as well as a speedy recovery.”

Gorbachev shows the telegram to his old friend the Italian journalist Giulietto Chiesa as they stroll in a park near the hospital in Münster. “These are kind words, a very nice gesture,” he remarks.¹⁶

The illness of Raisa touches a chord in Russia, especially as she is struck down by a disease with which her charitable work is associated. When Gorbachev asks his staff to approach the new prime minister, Vladimir Putin, for help in getting a passport for Raisa’s sister, Lyudmila, so that she can be available in Germany to become a bone marrow donor for Raisa, Putin’s response is instantaneous.

Gorbachev tears up talking with Chiesa about these acts of kindness. He thought it would take a whole generation before they understood, he says, taking a crumpled cutting from Izvestia out of his pocket and handing it to the Italian. Under the heading “Lady of Dignity” it reads: “Maybe we Russians are becoming people again…. It may only be on this sad occasion, but we are showing great respect for two people who love each other, Raisa and Mikhail. Diminutive and elegant, with sophisticated tastes, Raisa is not like the others. She has been the symbol of a country that wanted to free itself from its dreary grayness. People didn’t understand her, or perhaps they didn’t want to understand her. Maybe too much was asked of them when the couple was in power. But it’s also true that no one was able to bend their will and subdue them.” Raisa cried when she read the article, says Gorbachev.

The transplant cannot be made, and Raisa dies four weeks later, on September 20, 1999, at age sixty-seven. She is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. Yeltsin does not go to the funeral but issues a statement commemorating “a wonderful person, a beautiful woman, a loving wife and mother who is no longer with us.”

Vladimir Polyakov, the ex-president’s press secretary, believes the sympathy for the Gorbachevs has a political as well as a humanitarian side. “People need a certain amount of time to evaluate the past. He [Gorbachev] entered our lives so unexpectedly, and when he left, almost as suddenly, people needed a scapegoat. But if it had not been for Gorbachev, Yeltsin would still be sitting in Sverdlovsk as the regional Communist Party secretary. And if Yeltsin had been elected general secretary of the party in 1985 instead of Gorbachev, no changes would have happened in Russia. Now people are asking for forgiveness for not understanding that before.” ¹⁷

In November 1996 Yeltsin collapses and has a quintuple heart bypass operation. He is never the same afterwards. On December 31, 1999, he announces that he is leaving the remainder of his presidency in the hands of Vladimir Putin, who has risen from mayor’s aide in St. Petersburg to a senior position on Yeltsin’s staff, then head of the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB, and finally prime minister, in which role he has promoted a second war against Chechnya. For the first time in history, a Russian leader steps down voluntarily. Yeltsin tells Russians, “I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true. And also I would like to beg forgiveness not to have justified your hopes.”