Moscow, December 25, 1991

Founded by Ted Turner in Atlanta in 1980 as the world’s first round-theclock television news service, CNN invested heavily in the Soviet Union during its first decade. It located one of its pioneer foreign bureaus in the Russian capital. Turner brought the Goodwill Games to Moscow in 1986 to encourage competition between U.S. and Soviet athletes, after the United States boycotted the 1980 Olympic Games over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. On a trip to Russia during the early days of Gorbachev’s reforms, the CNN founder was so impressed by the new Communist Party general secretary that he suggested to a bewildered Soviet official that he should be made an honorary member of the party. The official politely demurred and offered him instead membership in the Soviet Union of Journalists, which Turner in turn declined, citing his distaste for trade unions of any kind.

In 1989 CNN became the first non-Soviet broadcaster to be allowed to beam its news programs into Moscow. Initially it was only available in the exclusive Savoy Hotel for viewing by foreign guests, but amateur Russian engineers found they could rig up an aerial to get the network’s signal on their home television screens. In the days before the internet and the mobile phone, this had a considerable impact on how Russians saw events in their own country, and made censorship of news almost impossible.

They almost missed out on the drama of the last day of the Soviet Union. Only when CNN executives got wind that ABC’s Ted Koppel had secured unique access to the Kremlin to film Gorbachev’s last days were they jolted into action. In Atlanta CNN president Tom Johnson decided to throw all the station’s resources into battle with its rival. A former publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Johnson took over the CNN presidency the previous year and established a reputation for being ferociously competitive. He set out for Moscow on December 18, taking with him Stuart (Stu) Loory, a former CNN Moscow bureau chief who could speak Russian, to lobby for the first interview with Boris Yeltsin as the new leader of Russia and the final interview with Gorbachev as leader of the USSR, though they were not even absolutely sure a transition would happen.

Johnson called on the Russian information minister to make his case for the Yeltsin interview. He cited to Poltoranin their exclusive coverage from Baghdad and showed the information minister the latest color global satellite distribution map, emphasizing that no other news organization on the planet could reach as many nations. Poltoranin snapped, “I know that!” Taken aback, Johnson proposed that they would link the interview with Yeltsin to Russian television to ensure it got shown across the country. “The entire spirit of the talks became very friendly after that,” he recalled. Johnson was brought to meet Yeltsin, who agreed to an exclusive interview on the day, though precisely when that would be Yeltsin could not tell him. He gave the Russian president a copy of Seven Days That Shook the World, a CNN book on the failed August coup.

It helped that CNN was a known quantity in Moscow, explained bureau chief Steve Hurst. “We were in the offices of serious players day and night.”

The company started bringing people to Moscow from all over the world. Charlie Caudill, senior CNN producer in charge of live coverage, flew in from Atlanta to head the biggest crew ever assembled for a single foreign television event up to that time. The group of seventy-five included executives, producers, directors, interviewers, camera operators, sound operators, managers, and interpreters. Unit manager Frida Ghitis arrived in Moscow to find that the bureau staff had already spent weeks “begging for interviews from Yeltsin and Gorbachev” and strategically placing boxes of chocolate and bottles of whiskey in the hands of their aides. “There was great pressure to beat the competition,” she remembered, “and Koppel’s name came up with some frequency.”