Conor O'Clery - Moscow, December 25, 1991

Once through the Kremlin’s Borovitsky Gate, Gorbachev’s Zil continues past the Great Kremlin Palace and the grandiose glass-and-concrete Palace of Congresses, erected by Khrushchev for important Communist Party meetings, and on into the central Kremlin Square. As the driver spots Koppel and his camera crew, he brings the Zil to a halt, and by prior arrangement the Soviet president climbs out, adjusting his fur hat, to walk with the Americans the last bit of the way to his office.

As always with the Western media Gorbachev is engaging and courteous, and he greets the ABC television crew with a friendly smile. Koppel is struck by how calm he is, given the circumstances. “He showed very little emotion throughout, he was very businesslike, very self-contained and dignified.” The broadcaster likes Gorbachev. “He reminded me of my father, an old-world European. When my father needed to get something notarized he dressed in a suit. I would tell him a notary public was some pimply faced kid in a drug store, but he would say, ‘No, a notary is important, he expects to be treated with dignity.’ That’s what Gorbachev was like.”

The Soviet leader and the American reporter walk slowly towards Gorbachev’s office building, with the camera crew recording their conversation, translated by a bulky female Russian interpreter walking close behind, her hair tied tightly in a bun. “Today is a culmination of sorts. I’m feeling absolutely calm, absolutely free,” insists Gorbachev, when Koppel inquires how he is coping. “Only my role is being changed. I am not leaving either political or public life. This [a peaceful transition] is happening probably for the first time here. Even in this I have turned out to be a pioneer. That is, the process we are following is democratic. My resignation from the office of the presidency doesn’t mean political death.” [29] 2 ABC Television, unedited footage, December 25, 1991.

Was there perhaps a fable or parable that he might tell to a grandchild about what has happened in his country? Koppel asks. “Here is a fable that I learned some years ago,” replies Gorbachev. “A young ruler wanted to rule in a more humane way in his kingdom. And he asked the views of the wise men. And it took ten years to bring twenty volumes of advice. He said, ‘When am I going to read all that? I have to govern my country.’ Ten years later they brought him just ten volumes of advice. He said that is still too much. Five years later he was brought just one volume. But by then twenty-five years have passed and he was on his deathbed. And one of the wise men said, ‘All that is here can be summarized in a simple formula—people are born, people suffer, and people die.’” The message is clear: Gorbachev the reformer has suffered and done his best.

The Stavropol native likes to pepper his responses with such parables and anecdotes, especially for foreigners. At his last meeting with President Bush eight weeks ago, he tried to convince him of the nobility of his efforts to create a new Union by relating the story of a passerby who asked construction workers what they are doing. “We are breaking our backs,” replied one. But another said, “Can’t you see we are building a temple here?”

When Kaplan asks the Soviet president if it distresses him to be like Moses, led to the Jordan River but unable to cross, Gorbachev replies: “A man is walking by the Moscow River. He falls in. He can’t swim. He shouts ‘Help!’ He is ignored. He thinks perhaps the people passing by don’t understand Russian. He shouts for help in German. No good. He shouts for help in French and Spanish. He is about to go under when a man throws him a lifeline and says, ‘If you spent more time learning how to swim you wouldn’t be in this trouble.’”

Gorbachev also likes to compare his political trajectory and the fate of his reforms to that of the heroic airline pilot in the Soviet film The Crew , who risks taking off during an earthquake saying, “It’s not safe to fly, but we can’t stay here. So we’re going to fly.” [30] 3 Gorbachev and Mlynář, Conversations with Gorbachev, 92.

The small procession comes to the Senate Building, the four-story neoclassic citadel of Soviet power, built by Catherine the Great in the shape of a triangle, with its roof just visible from Red Square. The dome with the red flag once bore a statue of Justice, which was destroyed by Napoleon’s troops in 1812. Today it is topped by a circular railed platform and a twenty-foot pole for the flag. At the entrance is a set of steps and a spectacular view of St. Nicholas’s Tower. In Stalin’s day being “summoned to the steps” meant being ordered to his office, a frightening prospect. Pausing at the door, Gorbachev quotes Winston Churchill about the difference between a politician and a statesman: “The politician thinks about the next elections—the statesman thinks about the next generation.” The message again is evident. He is a statesman. He is not a mere politician, like a certain other.

The president takes the elevator to the third floor, where his office is situated along a dimly lit corridor with a high ceiling. There is a long red carpet down the middle and doors on either side. It smells of antiquity and fresh paint. [31] 4 Chernyaev, 1991, diary entry for December 15, 1991. Lenin lived in three large rooms with a kitchen along the same corridor. His former study is preserved as a museum and contains a wicker-backed chair and desk with papers and appointment books arranged as they were on his last working day. It was from here that the founder of the Soviet Union gave the order for the liquidation of the tsar and his family in Ipatiev House in Sverdlovsk. Stalin also lived and worked in the Kremlin, though having been discredited by Khrushchev for his reign of terror, no museum was ever established in his name. Stalin’s legacy is a series of five giant red stars made from stainless steel and ruby glass, which are located atop the Kremlin towers, replacing the copper two-headed eagles, symbols of imperial Russia, which were there in prerevolutionary times.

Before entering his office Mikhail Gorbachev leaves the television crew and slips into a small room off the corridor, where his hairdresser, a young woman, is waiting to give him his daily grooming. [32] 5 Boldin, Ten Years That Shook the World, 225. It is a morning ritual of his, especially when something important is to take place, to make sure he looks presidential. The stylist gives his nape and sideburns a slight shave and combs and dries his hair. Today his appearance is more important than usual, because in a few hours he will make a televised address that will be seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

According to the transition agreement he made with Yeltsin on Monday, Gorbachev can continue to occupy his Kremlin office for another four days, until Sunday. This will allow him time to keep previously arranged appointments, grant a few final interviews, and clear out his desk. Only yesterday Gorbachev had gathered the staff in the Walnut Room close to his office and for the first time informed the forty or fifty men and women gathered there—advisers, assistants, and heads of departments—that he was resigning within twenty-four hours and that they would all have to leave the Kremlin no later than December 29.

There is some evidence, however, that Yeltsin’s Russian government is growing impatient and that the transition period may not be respected. The president’s spokesman, Andrey Grachev, feels that the appropriate funeral rites for the deceased are being dispensed with and that the new tenants are anxious to move in and are already “pressing the relatives of the departed to vacate the premises.”