Moscow, December 25, 1991

With the Americans heading home, Gorbachev prepared to depart for a vacation at his presidential dacha at Cape Foros on the Black Sea. He told Chernyaev, using the diminutive of his aide’s first name, “I’m tired as hell, Tolya. Everywhere you look things are in a bad way…. Everything has become so petty, vulgar, provincial. You look at it and you think, to hell with it all! But who would I leave it to? I’m so tired.”¹⁶

He had everything riding on the new union treaty now. Before leaving on vacation, the Soviet president personally supervised preparations for a grand signing ceremony in the Kremlin’s St. George’s Hall on August 20, the day after he was due back from Foros. He spent hours with staff discussing the placing of flags, the arrangement of chairs for the republic presidents and diplomats, the state banners to be displayed behind them, the delicacies and champagne to be served, and even the typeface for the treaty document.

Before he set off for the three-hour flight to Crimea on August 4, Gorbachev had a visit from his disillusioned old friend Alexander Yakovlev, who informed him he was quitting as his adviser. He warned Gorbachev that if he didn’t get rid of the “dirty circle” around him, they would seize power. “You exaggerate,” replied Gorbachev dismissively.

A few days later a KGB source tipped off Yakovlev that hard-liners were conspiring to take control and that he and Shevardnadze were on a death list.¹⁷ Yakovlev sought out a radical ex-KGB officer, Oleg Kalugin, for advice. They met in a busy street to avoid listening devices. Would the security organs really try to kill them? he asked. “Kryuchkov is a madman—he might resort to anything,” replied Kalugin. KGB archives would later reveal that their conversation in the roadway was monitored by more than a dozen agents.

On August 16 Yakovlev resigned from the Communist Party and wrote an explanation for his action in the newspaper Izvestia. He had evidently got wind of the same information that Popov had. An “influential Stalinist group,” he warned in the article, “is planning an imminent coup.”

Chapter 16 DECEMBER 25: LATE AFTERNOON

“Dorogoi (Dear) George, Happy Christmas to you and Barbara!” Gorbachev cries.¹ It is late afternoon in the Kremlin, early morning in Camp David. His interpreter, Pavel Palazchenko, has succeeded at last in making the connection between the two presidents. Gorbachev takes the call at his office desk, as Palazchanko listens on a separate handset. Ted Koppel and his ABC crew are seated in front of Gorbachev, their sensitive microphone picking up both ends of the conversation. The president’s press secretary, Andrey Grachev, has brought them into the office to witness the historic exchange.

Speaking in Russian and addressing the U.S. president as ty, the form used for family and close friends, Gorbachev says, “George, let me say something to you that I regard as very important. I have here on my desk a decree as the president of the USSR on my resignation. I will also resign my duties as commander in chief and will transfer authority to use nuclear weapons to the president of the Russian Federation. So I am conducting affairs until the completion of the constitutional process. I can assure you that everything is under strict control. As soon as I announce my resignation, I will put these decrees into effect. There will be no disconnection. You can have a very quiet Christmas evening.”

Palazchenko is painfully aware that he is translating the last formal consultation between the two presidents, for whom he has interpreted many times. He cannot help wondering what is going through their minds. “Was Gorbachev perhaps thinking that Bush could have done more for him? Was Bush trying to rationalize some of his decisions?” Was the American president concluding that he has “done his best” but that things in Russia are “beyond his control”?²

Speaking as if he still has influence over events, Gorbachev tells the U.S. president, “The debate on our [new] union [treaty], on what kind of state to create, took a different tack from what I thought right. But let me say that I will use my political authority and role to make sure that this new commonwealth will be effective.”

It is important to promote cooperation rather than disintegration and destruction, Gorbachev adds. “That is our common responsibility. I emphasize this point.”

Knowing of Bush’s concern about the security of the USSR’s nuclear arsenal, Gorbachev promises him that he will ensure the safe transfer of the nuclear suitcase to the president of the Russian Republic this evening, immediately after he has left office.