Moscow, December 25, 1991

Gorbachev made a televised appeal to the “normal, sane people” of Ukraine to hear him, not just with their heads but with their hearts, and not to listen to “all those crafty politicians.” Why only the other day, he said, his Ukrainian driver had come back from a funeral and told him that people in his hometown of Lugansk had no intention of separating from the Union. It was an unconvincing example—situated in eastern Ukraine, Lugansk had a large Russian population.

The Soviet president was genuinely shocked when 90 percent of Ukrainians voted for independence on December 1. Fearing another coup in Moscow and weary of the never-ending shortages, even the majority of Russians who made up one-fifth of the population voted to split with “the motherland.” In his driver’s native town of Lugansk, 84 percent supported independence.

The Russian government immediately recognized Ukraine as an independent country. Not to be upstaged, the American administration also formally acknowledged Ukrainian independence, causing Gorbachev to moan, “How could Bush do this!”

On December 2 Gorbachev called Yeltsin to discuss the outcome. The Russian president took the call while in his car, slumped in the back right-hand seat as usual, with his security chief, Alexander Korzhakov, in front next to the driver. Yeltsin had been drinking heavily.

“Nothing will come out of the Union now—Ukraine is independent,” gloated Yeltsin on the radio telephone.

“And you, what about Russia?” asked Gorbachev.

“So what! I am Russia! We can live without Ukraine. Perhaps we will go back to the idea of a four-member union: Russia plus Ukraine, plus Belarus plus Kazakhstan.”

Gorbachev retorted, “And where is the place for me? If so I am resigning. I’m not going to float like a piece of shit in an ice hole. I am not for myself. But you have to understand without the Union all of you are going nowhere…. You are going to condemn all the reforms. You have to decide. Everything depends on the two of us to a great degree.”

“How can we do without you, Mikhail Sergeyevich?” said Yeltsin in a mocking tone.

“Well, where is my place if there is no Union?” asked Gorbachev.

“Don’t worry, you stay,” said Yeltsin.¹³

Standing behind their outraged president, Chernyaev and Alexander Yakovlev exchanged glances. It was clear to both of them that Yeltsin did not intend that Gorbachev would stay where he was for much longer.

Chapter 20 DECEMBER 25: EARLY EVENING

As the evening of the last day draws in, Boris Yeltsin has one important thing to do before assuming full power as the undisputed ruler of Russia. He must go to the Kremlin to take formal possession of the nuclear suitcase from Mikhail Gorbachev as soon as the Soviet president resigns. But he can’t leave the White House just yet. Already he is facing the first crisis of the new era. After saying good-bye to the CNN crew, Yeltsin finds a grim-faced delegation from the Moscow soviet waiting in his fifth-floor office. Their leader is the city’s fifty-five-year-old deputy mayor, Yury Luzhkov, a thickset, bullet-headed man wearing a short black coat with fur collar.

Luzhkov has come to ask Yeltsin to dissuade the city’s democratic mayor, Gavriil Popov, from resigning. Popov is a former ally of the Russian president. The tousle-haired mayor of Greek origin was a familiar figure at pro-Yeltsin rallies before the coup, and he helped defend the White House in August. Afterwards he hoped to be given a role in Yeltsin’s government—he wanted the foreign ministry—but was passed over. He has joined Gorbachev’s consultative council instead, and he and Yeltsin are barely on speaking terms.

Popov is also at war with the Moscow soviet, which is stacked with reactionaries and is blocking his emergency plans for managing the economic transition. He worries that he will be blamed if everything falls apart when Yeltsin introduces shock therapy and privatization in the Russian economy next week.

Moscow is on a knife edge. A decree signed by Yeltsin, reported in all the day’s papers, orders the freeing of prices nationwide from January 2. This will end seven decades of subsidies for food and basic materials, during which the Politburo itself determined what people should pay for a loaf of bread. It will inevitably raise prices. Under a splash headline, “How Will We Live?” Pravda warns that from January 2 “the price of bread, milk and meat will treble, the price of salt and matches will quadruple, and that of gas and water will increase by five times.” The sense of despair is expressed by a cartoon in Izvestia. It shows a baby hijacking its pram by pointing a gun at the mother and saying, “Take me to Sweden, fast.”

Popov had appealed for help to James Baker. He told the U.S. secretary of state on a recent visit that the city faced hunger and chaos. It could not support itself through the winter and needed right away 15,000 tons of eggs, 200,000 tons of milk, and 10,000 tons of mashed potato mix.