Moscow, December 25, 1991

Like many world leaders, Gorbachev has gotten out of the habit of reading the newspapers himself, preferring that his subordinates provide him with what he needs to know, thus protecting him from negative coverage. Under glasnost, censorship was relaxed, and newspapers became more daring. Now they provide freewheeling news and commentary, and much of it is insulting to the outgoing president.

Gorbachev has not yet been shown that day’s editions, and Chernyaev decides not to upset him by disclosing that they reveal in humiliating detail several aspects of his personal affairs. A report in Rossiyskaya Gazeta discloses that at Alma-Ata four days ago Yeltsin and the presidents of the other republics discussed Gorbachev’s material and financial benefits after he steps down as Soviet president.

“Regarding Gorbachev’s conditions of retirement,” the writer states, “Yeltsin announced the following: He will be given a pension equivalent to today’s salary, indexed for inflation; he will be given a state dacha but not the one he is in; he will have two state cars and a twenty-strong staff, including security, drivers, and service. After a vacation he will start his activities in the Gorbachev fund.”

A commentary in the newspaper rubs it in: “Gorbachev induced chaos, which destroyed the doomed empire… and has to pay for it by being withdrawn from the post without pity or sorrow from his fellow politicians and the Soviet people.”

Chernyaev is furious that Yeltsin has leaked—and distorted—the details of his private dealings with Gorbachev. The Russian president had blabbed to editors to let the world know how generous and considerate his behavior is towards his defeated adversary and how “civilized” his last meeting with Gorbachev had been—a nine-hour session on Monday at which they hammered out the terms of Gorbachev’s departure from political life. The reports say that Gorbachev was too demanding and Yeltsin had to reduce “by ten times,” from two hundred to twenty, the number of staff he wanted to retain. The claim “is a lie because Gorbachev didn’t ask for two hundred people,” Chernyaev writes in his diary. There are other things “in the same nasty style.”⁴ It adds insult to injury, he feels, that the amount of Gorbachev’s pension has been bandied about, apparently with unconcealed relish, among the leaders of the republics, former allies who used to show Gorbachev deference but who now regard him with contempt. Some wanted to give him nothing.

He is also privately dumbfounded by the way Gorbachev, too, is portraying his last conversation with Yeltsin on Monday as civilized. It is an illusion, Chernyaev believes, to talk about that meeting, as Gorbachev does, as if it had been conducted in a normal fashion, as if between comrades, and “as if nothing happened ,” when it was in fact an exercise in condescension and triumphalism on Yeltsin’s part. Chernyaev admires “the unrivaled courage and self-control that Gorbachev has demonstrated in situations of premeditated humiliation and disrespect towards his achievements and his name, all under an avalanche of disgusting mendacity and mockery.” At the same time he is somewhat resentful of the president’s obsession with his own fate. He helped Gorbachev draw up the terms for his retirement. “But what about me? He didn’t even take care of my pension. Tomorrow Mikhail Sergeyevich will deliver his farewell and we will be out of our posts. Where should I go to apply for my pension, which district office? Mikhail Sergeyevich is talking about his ‘RAND-type corporation’ and says, don’t worry there will be a place for everyone. He was very cheerful and optimistic. Money will flow he says. I don’t believe this and I don’t want it. I would like to feel free but what money will I live on? I don’t have any savings.”⁵

The “RAND-type corporation” is the foundation that Gorbachev plans to set up after retirement and that will in fact provide jobs for Chernyaev and other senior members of his staff after they leave the Kremlin.

The Kremlin staff know that Gorbachev is already a wealthy man. One day last week he stunned Chernyaev and Alexander Yakovlev by confiding to them that he had received an $800,000 advance from a German publisher for his autobiography, Memoirs. “You know, Anatoly,” Gorbachev had said. “I want to keep $200,000 for myself and give you $30,000—40,000.” “There’s no need to do that, I don’t need that,” Chernyaev had replied. Yakovlev counseled Gorbachev to put aside about $600,000 for establishing the Gorbachev fund and to attract matching contributions from other donors. He and Chernyaev “with one voice” advised him not to give anything to various hospitals, as it would be wasted, and to hold on to a substantial sum, as “you have to live in dignity further on without going to Yeltsin asking for money.”⁶