Moscow, December 25, 1991

After a couple of days, observed Grachev, Kaplan and Koppel “blended into the walls of the Kremlin so completely that even the guards stopped paying attention to them.” The two Americans are surprised to find that Russian journalists are showing scant interest in Gorbachev’s departure. “They were really nervous being around Gorbachev,” recalled Kaplan. “They knew the Soviet Union was ended. The Soviets were leaving the Kremlin, and the Russians were getting ready to march in, and they wanted to show allegiance to the next government.”

They are also surprised at how little the Soviet president had to do of an official nature in his last days. Once when in the Kremlin with associate ABC producer Holly Petersen, Gorbachev said to Kaplan, “Come in, meet my cabinet.” They were brought into a big room to find his ministers sitting there, and Gorbachev gave him a two-hour interview in their presence. None of it ever got shown on television.

The Americans at first reckoned on being back in the United States for the holidays, but having accepted the Kremlin’s offer of unlimited access, they are at the mercy of history’s timetable. The Nightline presenter swore to his family he would be home by Christmas Day, and when he broke the news that they were stuck in Moscow, “my wife didn’t speak to me for a day!”¹⁴ Kaplan too finds himself in his family’s bad books. At one point he calls home using the satellite phone with unfolding dish he carries in a little briefcase. “My wife is yelling at me—it’s Christmas time, holidays, children on vacation!” Gorbachev overhears and offers to take the phone, saying in English, “I talk.” “You don’t want to do this!” replies Kaplan. Gorbachev asks, “Why is she angry?” Kaplan explains, “I am a week here, and I am still not going home.” Gorbachev laughs and says, “If it was me, Raisa would kill me!”¹⁵

Gorbachev later borrows the satellite phone to call his own wife. Kaplan thinks that he takes it because he is wary about using his own telephone in the Kremlin. The Soviet president can trust no one now.

Chapter 11 KNEE DEEP IN KEROSENE

With his name dominating global headlines after his election to the Soviet congress, Boris Yeltsin decided in late summer 1989 that it was time for him to see the world and look at how other systems worked. He accepted an invitation to go on a lecture tour sponsored by the secretive Esalen Institute, a Californian nonprofit “dedicated to the exploration of human potential” whose leaders were close to the U.S. administration.

Visiting America for the first time turned out to be a life-changing experience for Yeltsin, revealing to him the human potential and dynamism of a different ideology.

He was astonished by New York. As a construction expert he was awed at the majestic skyscrapers, and he marveled at the cheapness, quality, and speed of service in the restaurants. He found Americans “wonderfully open, sincere and friendly, industrious and intelligent.” He was mesmerized by the cornucopia of food in Randall’s Grocery Store, a supermarket in Houston, Texas, which he dropped into unannounced with his assistant Lev Sukhanov on his way to the airport after visiting the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. They had never seen such a store. It had 30,000 items, countless varieties of sausage, no queues, and a woman at the checkout reading the prices with a device like a hair dryer. There he had an epiphany. He concluded that the sole purpose of the Iron Curtain was to prevent Soviet citizens knowing what was on the other side, as it would be too much for them to endure.

“Look to what limits we have brought our people,” he complained to Sukhanov as they flew on to Miami, deeply depressed at what he had seen. “We were told fables!” Sukhanov observed that “after Houston, in a plane provided by a millionaire, Yeltsin’s belief in the Bolshevik idea was finally destroyed. During those minutes he decided to leave the party and start fighting for supreme power in Russia.”¹