Moscow, December 25, 1991

On the second day the nuclear suitcase and its colonel-guardians had been escorted to the airport, where a plane was waiting to take them to Moscow. By nightfall the three suitcases were in the hands of Defense Minister Yazov and chief of the general staff General Mikhail Moiseyev. Ruslan Khasbulatov later testified that the colonel-guardians of Gorbachev’s chemodanchik destroyed the cipher to communicate with strategic command, but the vast nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union had temporarily come under the sole control of the hardliners. ⁷

As the coup was collapsing, Raisa suffered a minor stroke. “I felt a numbness and a limpness in my arm and the words would not come,” recalled Gorbachev’s wife. She was put to bed by the family doctor, Igor Borisov, who was with them in the house when it all started. Her power of speech came back shortly afterwards, but she would never fully recover.

At three o’clock on Wednesday afternoon they heard on BBC news that Kryuchkov was leading a delegation to Foros in the presidential jumbo. This caused panic at the dacha. Gorbachev feared that with the coup in danger they were coming to do him harm. He ordered the five members of his personal security detachment, which had remained loyal, to block the driveway and deploy with machine guns along the staircase. “This is it, they are going to make us fit Yanayev’s announcement [that Gorbachev is unwell],” thought Raisa.

Shortly after five o’clock two Zils arrived from the airport bearing Yazov, Kryuchkov, Baklanov, Lukyanov, and two others who wanted to plead with Gorbachev for their safety and negotiate a way out of the crisis. They were, by Kryuchkov’s account, hoping to persuade Gorbachev to face down the Russian government and halt its drive towards full sovereignty for the sake of the integrity of the Soviet Union. But the beleaguered president refused to meet either the KGB chief or Yazov.

Gorbachev’s telephone lines were restored shortly after 6:30, though only for outgoing calls. He immediately got through to Yeltsin, who responded in the most affectionate terms. “Mikhail Sergeyevich, my dear man, are you alive?” Thirty minutes later he got a call through to George Bush. “My God, I’m glad to hear you,” said Bush. “My dear George. I am so happy to hear your voice again,” cried Gorbachev. “They asked me to resign but I refused.” Bush responded, “Sounds like the same old Mikhail Gorbachev, full of life and confidence!” The U.S. president then called Yeltsin, whom he had recently described as a “wild man,” and told him, “My friend, your stock is sky-high over here.”⁸

Soon afterwards a second plane landed at Foros bearing armed members of the Russian government led by Alexander Rutskoy and Ivan Silayev, to escort the Gorbachevs safely back to Moscow. When the ministers arrived at the dacha, Raisa saw they were carrying Kalashnikovs. She cried out, “What, have you come here to arrest us?” When she learned the truth, she broke down in tears.

Past quarrels were forgotten as everyone cried and hugged each other. Gorbachev was almost incoherent with excitement, insisting over and over, “I made no deals.” Rutskoy thought that Raisa, walking unsteadily to kiss each visitor, looked as if she was “almost dying” from heart failure.

Fearing that a rogue unit might try to blast the presidential plane out of the air, the Russian vice president used a decoy aircraft to bring the Gorbachevs back to Moscow, with a miserable Kryuchkov sitting alone in the back, not fully aware that he was facing arrest.

At 2:30 on the morning of Thursday, August 22, Mikhail Gorbachev descended from the steps of the plane in a windbreaker and stained pullover. Raisa came behind him on the arm of her ten-year-old granddaughter, Kseniya, who was wrapped in a blanket. “I have come back from Foros to another country, and I myself am a different man now,” said Gorbachev. In the car on the way to the presidential dacha, their daughter, Irina, broke down in sobs. Raisa was in a bad way: She had spent the journey lying on the floor of the aircraft.⁹ The distressed condition of his family, Gorbachev explained years later, was why he did not go immediately to the Russian White House to thank the defenders still gathered there in large numbers. It was a serious political blunder nevertheless. The affection that had surged through the crowds for the previously unpopular Gorbachev quickly began to ebb.

Gorbachev was diminished by the experience, and Yeltsin’s stature was enormously enhanced. During the coup Yeltsin had rallied progressive forces within the Soviet Union not only to defeat the putschists but to enable his rival, President Gorbachev, to return to office to continue the peaceful process of reform. The failed coup demonstrated that the big, awkward, hard-drinking muzhik from the Urals was the leader best able and most inclined to offer the Russian people an alternative to the doomed communist experiment.