Moscow, December 25, 1991

Valery Boldin would later characterize Raisa as tough, harsh, domineering, and fussy, an imperious first lady who delivered barbs and humiliating lectures to those working for her. According to him she had no qualms about issuing orders over the phone to the general secretary’s aides and to several members of the government. He seemed to enjoy her company at times, however, and related how they shared the pleasure of surreptitiously sipping red wine together on an international flight at the height of the anti-alcohol campaign. But he wrote that he recoiled when on the same flight she tried to order Gorbachev’s aides, whose allegiance was first and foremost to the party, to swear an oath of loyalty to her husband. They all declined.

In the opinion of the president’s interpreter, Pavel Palazchenko, who helped her with the English-language edition of I Hope, Raisa is not at all the aloof and didactic woman she often seems on television but is an authentic person. Georgy Shakhnazarov believes Gorbachev would have benefited if he had listened to her advice more often, and that Raisa fulfilled her mission honorably and set a precedent for future spouses of Russian leaders.

Gorbachev’s distress at Yeltsin’s treatment of his wife on their last day as the Soviet Union’s first couple is deepened by his knowledge of a truth they have obscured from the world, that Raisa is at the end of her tether. The drama of their life is something that “ultimately she is not able to bear.” He acknowledges in time that she is a vulnerable person. “She was strong, but she had to endure a great deal.”¹⁴ Only two decades later does he disclose how ill she is at the time. After the August coup “she had a massive fit, or rather a micro stroke,” he tells the newspaper Novaya Gazeta. “Then she had a hemorrhage in both eyes. Her eyesight deteriorated dramatically. And the incredible stress continued.”¹⁵

Gorbachev calls Raisa back and assures her that no one will intrude further into their state dacha that day. Still red in the face with anger after he replaces the receiver, he laments to his colleagues, “What a disgrace! Can you imagine, it was the living space for the family for seven years. We have several hundred if not thousands of books there. We would need time to pack them all.” He has little but contempt for the people around Yeltsin and for those who denounced the communists for their system of privileges and are now jostling each other “like hogs at a trough.”

The eviction orders, delivered even before he has stepped down, make it clear to Gorbachev that he can no longer trust Yeltsin to honor the commitments in the transition package negotiated between them two days ago. He has to be prepared for more humiliations before the day is out.

It takes some minutes for him to calm down over the action of “those jerks” and turn his mind again to the farewell address he is to give in three and a half hours. When he recovers his composure, Gorbachev turns to Grachev and says, “You know, Andrey, the fact that they’re acting this way makes me certain that I am right.”¹⁶

Chapter 15 HIJACKING BARBARA BUSH

After the debacle in the Baltics in January 1991, Gorbachev realized he had to compromise with the republics if he was to have any chance of saving the Soviet Union. Force would not work. It only fueled nationalist sentiment, went against his nature, and threatened to destroy his legacy as a democratic reformer—not to mention slamming the door on the billions of dollars in international credits he was seeking to restructure the economy.

Therefore he invited Yeltsin and the leaders of the other fourteen Soviet republics to meet him on April 23 at Novo-Ogarevo, an estate with several fine buildings set in a pine grove high on the banks of the Moscow River. The aim would be to discuss a future union with more power devolved to the republics. Nine of them accepted his invitation, including Yeltsin.

The “nine plus one” group—nine republic leaders plus Gorbachev—gathered in a second-floor room of a reception house constructed in the style of a nineteenth-century manor. Gorbachev sat at the top of a long table on which were placed four slim microphones to amplify his voice. Behind him the Soviet flag hung from a twelve-foot-high stand, and a heavily bearded Karl Marx observed the proceedings from a portrait on the wall over Gorbachev’s shoulder. The Soviet president was in a conciliatory mood. He said that he was ready to sign a draft union treaty giving real sovereignty to the republics, and that after a new Soviet constitution was adopted, he would dissolve the Congress of People’s Deputies and hold direct elections for the post of Soviet president.