Moscow, December 25, 1991

Gorbachev’s popularity suffered more after April 9, when Soviet troops used sapper’s spades and gas to attack a peaceful nationalist demonstration in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, resulting in twenty deaths. Gorbachev claimed that the decision to use force was made by the Georgian leadership without consulting him, and years later he would blame Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov for giving the order to a local general. Many did not believe him, especially when later that month in Sverdlovsk he hardened his stance against nationalism, vowing that he would never let the Baltics leave the Soviet Union. He also blustered in the same speech that Yeltsin was finished as a politician.

But it was Gorbachev who was in decline. The new Soviet president was humiliated on May 1, 1990, when the pro-reform Moscow Club of Electors joined the end of the official May Day parade in Red Square. After the usual disciplined march of grateful workers chanting official slogans, thousands of raucous, angry, disrespectful Muscovites appeared carrying banners reading, “Gorbachev, resign” and “Down with the cult of Lenin.” Marchers with Lithuanian and Ukrainian flags stopped in front of Gorbachev to whistle and jeer. The benign expressions on the faces of the Politburo members on the Lenin Mausoleum turned to granite.

State television always continued live coverage of Red Square parades as long as the leaders remained on the Mausoleum. Now, these mortifying scenes were being broadcast to 150 million viewers across the USSR. The transmission was only stopped when a television director ran screaming into the studio to shut it down. After a few minutes of confusion, Gorbachev led his comrades off the platform, his shoulders hunched and his fedora hat pulled down, and ordered an investigation of the “political hooligans.” His flirtation with the democrats was over.

Raisa Gorbacheva felt the anger not just of the democrats but of the party conservatives who believed her husband was destroying their careers. When she went to the district party committee to pay her dues, she was appalled at the local party secretary’s spiteful attitude towards her. “I really feel he hated us,” she confided to Pavel Palazchenko. “They will never forgive Mikhail Sergeyevich.”¹⁰

Yeltsin meanwhile was being carried forward on a wave of pro-Russian nationalism. On May 17, 1990, a damp, overcast late spring day, the first freely elected Russian congress since before the Revolution met in the Great Kremlin Palace. The interior was dominated by the immense, theatrical picture by Boris Ioganson, Lenin’s Speech at the Third Congress of the Komsomol. The white, blue, and red flag of the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky, which briefly ruled Russia in 1917, was carried into the debating chamber, and deputies responded with a standing ovation of several minutes. The tricolor, which originated as a naval and military ensign at the end of the seventeenth century in imitation of the Dutch colors and was first recognized as the flag of Russia in 1896, was banished after the October Revolution. More than anything else, its reappearance symbolized the beginning of the end of the seven-decades-long experiment in social engineering based on Karl Marx’s idea of a workers’ state. A couple of years earlier, people would have been arrested for displaying it.

Most of the deputies were party members, with views ranging from neo-Stalinist to radical democrat, but almost all were united in a desire to carve out greater sovereignty for Russia within the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin put himself forward for election as chairman of the presidium, in effect Russia’s head of state. Gorbachev let it be known he favored Alexander Vlasov, an uninspiring government functionary who was less threatening as a political rival. Though not an elected member, Gorbachev came to the Russian chamber to intimidate the deputies by his presence. He insisted that the president’s flag of the Union be placed beside him on a ten-foot pole to symbolize his new status. The only seat where the flag could be accommodated was in the balcony perched high above the chamber like a royal box. From there Gorbachev descended at intervals to lecture deputies on the risks of voting for his former comrade. From the podium he accused Yeltsin of abandoning socialist principles and working for the destruction of the Soviet Union.

In the congress 40 percent of deputies were solidly for Yeltsin and 40 percent against. The remaining 20 percent—known as the “swamp”—resented Gorbachev’s interference and leaned to Yeltsin. On May 29 the Siberian won a secret ballot with 535 votes, 4 more than the absolute majority required. For the first time Gorbachev had failed to get his preferred candidate elected for a leadership post in the Soviet Union.