Moscow, December 25, 1991

Yeltsin’s opportunity to be heard again in Russia came at a special Communist Party conference in June 1988—the nineteenth but the first since 1941—convened by Gorbachev to push through more new reform policies. As distinct from regular party congresses, such conferences were called only rarely to resolve urgent policy matters. In the spirit of glasnost the television cameras were allowed in. Yeltsin, a semi-outcast, was not invited but was slipped a ticket as a member of the delegation from Karelia, a region on the Finnish border, where he was admired. Arriving at the Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses, he found himself an object of curiosity among the 5,000 delegates, making him feel like an elephant in the zoo. He sent a written request to the platform to address the conference, but he was confined to a seat at the back of the balcony, from where no one was ever called.

On the fifth and last day, sure that he was being overlooked, Yeltsin walked down the hall staircase to the lower floor, persuaded the KGB guards to admit him, and marched to the platform holding aloft his red conference-mandate card. A delegate from Tajikistan who was speaking broke off in mid-sentence, and the hall fell silent as Yeltsin lumbered towards the rostrum, all the time staring Gorbachev in the eye. Reaching the presidium, he demanded the right to speak. Politburo members on the stage held a whispered consultation, following which Gorbachev sent Valery Boldin down to ask him quietly to go to the anteroom—he would have the floor later.

As Yeltsin began to walk back up the isle, some sympathetic delegates and journalists whispered loudly to him not to leave the hall. Realizing he might not be readmitted, he stopped and marched back to the front row and took an empty seat there. Gorbachev had little option but to call him to the microphone.

With delegates on the edge of their seats, Yeltsin began by asserting that he was proud of what socialism had achieved but there must be an analysis of the cause of the stagnation that still pervaded society. There should be no forbidden topics. The salaries and perks of the leadership should be made public. If there were shortages, everyone should feel them. This last remark drew a scattered round of applause; there were some in the hall who felt as he did. He concluded by asking for his political rehabilitation. This provoked boos and shouts. Gorbachev intervened. “Speak on, Boris Nikolayevich,” he said. “They want you to have your say. I think we should stop treating the Yeltsin case as secret.” Yeltsin responded that his only political mistake was to deliver his controversial speech at the wrong time, just before the seventieth anniversary of the October Revolution, but that the party should tolerate opponents as Lenin did. He left the podium—to applause from some and hisses from others—and went outside, where he was surrounded by a crush of journalists and camera crews.

In the hall some delegates rose to pillory their impulsive comrade all over again. Yegor Ligachev indignantly uttered a line that would haunt him: “Boris, you are wrong!” Within days people in Moscow were wearing lapel buttons saying, “Yegor, you are wrong!”

As the conference was about to end, Gorbachev introduced his most farreaching domestic reform yet.⁴ During his closing speech he produced a piece of paper from his pocket. On it was written a resolution to amend the constitution. This would permit the creation of a new Congress of People’s Deputies of 2,250 members, of whom two-thirds would be directly elected from all across the Soviet Union and a third chosen by party-approved public bodies. It would replace the rubber-stamp Soviet parliament, which met only eight days a year without ever hearing a dissenting voice. It was a giant leap towards democracy.

Already looking at their watches and preparing to leave for the railway stations and airports, many loyal delegates raised their cards to vote for this sensational resolution without realizing what they were doing.

This was the high point of Gorbachev’s reforms, achieved by sleight of hand. He had got support from the ruling Communist Party for the first multiplecandidate elections in seven decades of Soviet rule. His scheme was a masterly combination of democracy and management. The party would automatically have a hundred seats. This meant that Gorbachev and his Politburo comrades could safely include themselves in the “red hundred” to avoid any risk of being rejected by the people. Gorbachev dared not seek popular support in an electoral district. Yeltsin’s celebrity was growing, and he might oppose Gorbachev and win.