Gorbachev’s backpedaling bore on more than economics. He bit off extra powers for his executive presidency, promoted hard-liners to positions such as prime minister (where he replaced Ryzhkov with the Soviet finance minister, Valentin Pavlov), and made spasmodic use of troops against nationalist unrest in the Baltic and Caucasus areas. In the consultations on a new “union treaty” for the Soviet federation, the necessity for which he announced on June 11, 1990, the day before the Russian sovereignty declaration, Gorbachev ceded nothing to the republics.
In November 1990 Yeltsin visited Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, the secondranking Soviet republic, where he addressed its parliament and dealt with Ukrainian officials as equals. He signed a ten-year cooperation treaty with his counterpart, Leonid Kravchuk, on November 19. It recognized existing borders, which gave weight to Ukraine’s claim to Crimea, the idyllic peninsula in the Black Sea, populated chiefly by Russian speakers and home to the Black Sea Fleet, arbitrarily shifted from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian republic by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. Yeltsin, said a leading nationalist, Vyacheslav Chornovil, had “injected a very constructive note” by holding out the prospect of greater Ukrainian autonomy from Moscow without severing ties with Russia.48 A month later, Yeltsin’s Russia and Kravchuk’s Ukraine, with Belarus (Belorussia) and Kazakhstan (the fifth- and fourth-ranking republics, Uzbekistan being the third), formed a “council of four” to work on a bottom-up treaty as a counter to Gorbachev’s. In January 1991 the Soviet military put on a show of force in Lithuania and Latvia, slaying twenty people in firefights at a television tower in Vilnius and an office building in Riga. In fear of a crackdown that would be lethal to democratization, Yeltsin called down hellfire on it and issued an appeal to Russian soldiers in the Baltic garrisons not to take “a wrong step.” Anatolii Chernyayev, in a draft letter he kept to himself, reproached Gorbachev: “You started the process of returning the country to civilization, but it has come up against your line on the ‘unified and indivisible [USSR].’ You have said many times to me and other comrades of yours that the Russians will never forgive anyone for ‘breaking up the empire.’ But here is Yeltsin insolently doing it in Russia’s name, and very few Russians are protesting.”49 On February 19 Yeltsin issued his first call for Gorbachev to resign. Gorbachev assured his assistants that “Yeltsin’s song has been sung” and time was working against him.50
A related topic was Russia’s right to act in world affairs. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker was in Moscow on March 14–16, 1991, and refused to meet with Yeltsin privately; Yeltsin then refused to come to the embassy dinner party. Ambassador Matlock thought his handling of Baker “petty and selfdefeating.”51 In mid-April he got a chilly reception at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, leaving after several days of snubs, and was unable to get President François Mitterrand to meet with him at the Élysée Palace.52 After France, he tried again in the United States. Through Ambassador Jack Matlock, he stated his wish to visit Washington a second time and be guaranteed that he would be properly received by the president. He went shortly before his swearing in as Russian president, but at the bipartisan invitation of Senators Robert Dole and George Mitchell, not of George Bush. Hosting Yeltsin in the Rose Garden on June 20, Bush stressed relations with the Soviet government and mentioned Gorbachev’s name more often than Yeltsin’s. Strasbourg and Washington were both reminders “that the West only had eyes for Gorbachev.”53
Or at least most of those in authority in the West did. Margaret Thatcher had been an admirer since their meeting, and John Major, her replacement, took a like view. They were joined by Richard Nixon, the thirty-seventh president of the United States. Nixon went to Moscow right after Baker and paid a call on Yeltsin. Yeltsin had been misinformed by staff members about the family history of his guest and held forth about Nixon’s grandfather having lived for a time in Yekaterinburg. Nixon’s grandfathers had never traveled outside the United States; he listened without comment, and they moved on to the current political situation.54 Nixon, who had traded observations about the future of communism and capitalism with Nikita Khrushchev in the celebrated Kitchen Debate of July 1959, liked what he saw and heard in 1991. The Russia trip had held but one surprise, he told an assistant back in New Jersey. “What was that?” she asked:
He pointed a finger in the air. “One word. Yeltsin.”
Several long moments went by before he continued. “Goddamn the press! If you listen to them, you’d think Yeltsin was an incompetent, disloyal boob. The only reason the press have treated him as badly as they have is because he has some rough edges. He doesn’t have the grace and ivory-tower polish of Gorbachev.” Nixon shuddered with self-recognition. “He moves and inspires the people despite what the Western press says about him.”
Yeltsin’s defiance fed into his own. “The guy has enormous political appeal. He has the potential to be a great revolutionary leader, charging up the people, his own Silent Majority,” he said, making the parallel explicit. “He is very direct. He looks you straight in the eye. He has core convictions that no longer involve communism. He is infinitely better for the United States than Gorbachev. But I don’t think he wants Gorbachev’s job.”
“Do you mean that he doesn’t want to lead the Soviet Union, but he may want to lead an independent Russia?” I asked.
“Right, because he knows that there’s no future for the Soviet Union. None…. If Russia has any future, Yeltsin is it.”55
Nixon made the point in a meeting with President Bush and in public articles and interviews.
American audiences got a peek at Yeltsin’s ability to cut to the chase in the June visit to Washington. At one dinner, he made it about two minutes into his prepared speech and told his interpreter to give it in English. “This cut the delivery time in half, and when it was over the crowd responded with a standing, cheering ovation.”56 Desk analysts for the Central Intelligence Agency began giving Yeltsin respect right at this time. A secret assessment by the Office of Soviet Analysis circulated on June 1 argued that too much attention had been lavished in the government and the press on Yeltsin’s quirks, lust for power, relationship with Gorbachev, and tactics—“his larger-than-life persona and remarkable political odyssey invite this.” But that was not the whole picture, and it was high time to say so. “Contrary to the stereotype, Yeltsin does have goals that he has been consistently pursuing, and strategies for realizing them. These are important not only because they drive his actions, but also because they reflect in broad outline a coherent Russian democratic alternative to the imperial authoritarianism of the traditionalists.” The CIA team was especially impressed by Yeltsin’s ability to keep up with changes in the Soviet environment and by his “appreciation of the interdependency of goals.”57