Moscow, December 25, 1991

The hard-liners around Gorbachev decided on a display of military might to intimidate the restless populace. When the Russian congress convened on March 28 to debate Yeltsin’s future, demonstrations were banned, and armored vehicles, tanks, and several hundred troop carriers filled with conscripts were deployed nose-to-tail in streets around the Kremlin. Kryuchkov and Pugo had fed Gorbachev ridiculous warnings that radical democrats were preparing to storm the ancient fortress using ropes and grappling irons. These deployments only ensured that a pro-Yeltsin rally in the streets outside became an anti-Gorbachev demonstration. Inside, the deputies refused to debate in a state of siege and voted to adjourn. Tens of thousands of demonstrators milled around military barricades in the streets near the Kremlin as a heavy, fluffy snow coated everyone in white. The confrontation brought the country to the brink of civil conflict. Gorbachev was stunned when Alexander Yakovlev asked him to think of how Moscow would turn out for a funeral if a demonstrator should be killed. The tension was defused when Yeltsin’s collaborator, Ruslan Khasbulatov, persuaded Gorbachev at a tense meeting in the Kremlin that the idea of people scaling the Kremlin walls was outlandish. (Aides were joking among themselves that it would not be possible as there was a shortage of rope in the shops.) The president ordered Yazov to take the troops out of the city.

Khasbulatov later would identify the day the state powers blinked as the day the defeat of the reactionary forces began. Alexander Yakovlev told a visiting American senator, David Boren, that mobilizing the armed forces against the people was Gorbachev’s single biggest mistake.

For three days the Russian congress was deadlocked over whether to censure Yeltsin. In the end the “swamp” of undeclared deputies rejected impeachment rather than side with the unpopular Gorbachev. They were also alarmed by a spreading coal miners’ strike in support of Yeltsin, which began when miners coming off a shift at one mine shaft found there was no soap. Even Ivan Polozkov, leader of the communist faction, stated from the rostrum that the time was not right to destroy Yeltsin because of the ferocious backlash this could provoke.

Fearful of the gathering momentum towards the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev organized a referendum throughout the USSR to restore popular support for stability and a new union treaty. It asked for a yes or no to the question “Do you consider necessary the preservation of the USSR as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?” (emphasis in the original). The referendum was held on March 16. Six of the fifteen Soviet republics had become so independent-minded they boycotted the poll, but in the remaining nine, 76 percent of voters responded yes. Gorbachev took this majority as a mandate to negotiate a new union treaty that would give republics a measure of sovereignty but preserve the Union of which he was president.

Yeltsin cleverly turned the plebiscite to his advantage. On the referendum paper distributed in Russia he added an extra question: Do you support the idea of a directly elected president for Russia? The voters gave their approval. The Russian congress agreed to hold the first free presidential election in Russia, on June 12, 1991.

Though his popularity swelled at home, Yeltsin found to his dismay that his high profile in Moscow did not impress world leaders. Dignitaries who arrived in Russia on fact-finding missions came with perceptions of an unstable and vodkaloving bully. On the other hand, they liked Gorbachev personally and felt protective towards him. When Yeltsin asked U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to call on him during such a visit to the Soviet president in mid-March, Baker saw it as an effort to “drive Gorbachev up the wall.” The American declined after consulting Gorbachev, who “naturally went through the roof” and raved about how unstable Yeltsin was and how he would use populist rhetoric to become a dictator. Gorbachev displayed similar childishness, forbidding his associates to attend a dinner Baker hosted at the embassy in protest at the presence of some of Yeltsin’s team.