Suddenly a voice was heard, with a swear word: “Where are the pens?” There were no writing instruments available to sign the Soviet Union’s death warrant. Everyone standing around began producing ball points, felt tips, and fountain pens from their pockets. Valery Drozdov, deputy editor of the Belarus newspaper
Narodnaya Volya
(People’s Will), was among those who handed his pen to the trio at the table.
3
In a profound silence the three leaders signed the documents in the red folders. Only Drozdov took note of the exact time on his watch, which ironically bore the symbol of the USSR, the hammer and sickle, on its face. It was 2:17 p.m., on Sunday, December 8, 1991.
4
Waiters began bustling around with trays bearing glasses of champagne, and the high-ceilinged foyer echoed to the clinking of glasses. Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich posed for the cameras, the Ukrainian president smiling like a cat with cream.
“I well remember how a sensation of freedom and lightness suddenly came over me,” wrote Yeltsin in his account of the moment. “In signing this agreement Russia . . . was throwing off the traditional image of ‘potentate of half the world,’ of armed conflict with Western civilization, and the role of policeman in the resolution of ethnic conflicts.”
Others reacted differently. Shakhrai felt as if they were burying a relative. Gaidar recalled, “We all had a heavy burden in our hearts.”
Drozdov did not get his pen back. “One of the three put it in his pocket out of force of habit,” he recalled. “I believe it was Yeltsin.”
Evgeniya Pateychuk, the typist, stepped out into the fresh air with her boss, forestry official Sergey Balyuk. It was already twilight and a light snow was falling. “So, Sergey Sergeyevich, what have we done!” she said. Years later she would protest: “I typed what I was given; understanding came later, in a day or two.” In her village of Kamenyuki twelve miles away, she became known as the woman who destroyed the Union.
Yeltsin had not invited Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, to the meeting of the Slav leaders in the forest. The head of the powerful central Asian republic was a Gorbachev ally and had yet to declare independence. If they could get him to join them in Belovezhkaya Pushcha, they could present him with a fait accompli and ensure the support of the other Asian republics that deferred to him. But it was not so simple. Nazarbayev was at the time en route by air from Alma-Ata to Moscow. Korzhakov called the commander of Vnukovo-2 airport in Moscow and asked to be connected with the plane, identifying himself as “chief of security of the president of Russia.” The airport commander refused rudely, saying, “I have a different chief.” This was typical of dual power, thought Korzhakov. Gorbachev wasn’t being taken seriously, but Yeltsin didn’t have the mechanisms of power.
5
Nazarbayev took the call when he landed in Moscow. All three leaders spoke to him. Yeltsin read him the documents. But the Kazakh leader was deeply offended at being left out. He telephoned Gorbachev at his dacha to tell him what was happening. Furious at the turn of events, Gorbachev persuaded Nazarbayev to join him and confront the conspirators together in Moscow the following morning.
The three men at the hunting lodge were worried that there might be a military response to what they had done. Gaidar admitted to being a little apprehensive that Gorbachev would take this option, “though I was more or less sure that it would be impossible for him to do because he would not find one regiment to obey his orders.” Shakhrai was unafraid, as “everybody knew there was no army anymore,” though he believed that the Belarusian KGB was keeping Gorbachev informed of everything going on in the forest.
6
Years later the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, bragged that if Gorbachev had given an order to the Belarusian KGB to arrest the threesome, the order would have been fulfilled “within minutes.” Gorbachev’s aide Andrey Grachev claimed that the conspirators had a helicopter standing by so they could flee to Poland if necessary, though Gaidar did not recall seeing any helicopter.
7
The attitude of Marshal Shaposhnikov, head of the Soviet Union’s armed forces, would be critical. Throughout Sunday morning Gorbachev kept phoning him in an agitated state, always with the same question, “What have you heard from Minsk?” Each time Shaposhnikov replied, “Nothing yet.”
Yeltsin, with Kravchuk and Shushkevich beside him, eventually telephoned the marshal. “Today we in Belarus signed an agreement about a three-state union, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus,” he boomed down the line. “What’s your opinion about that?” Shaposhnikov asked if other republics would join in. “Yes,” said Yeltsin. “And one more question Boris Nikolayevich. Is there a reference to the armed forces in the treaty?” Yeltsin: “Yes. Of course.” The Russian president recited the article confirming that the commonwealth would preserve a common military-strategic space, including single control over nuclear weapons. He told Shaposhnikov that the three presidents had agreed that he should be the commander.
“Does Nazarbayev approve?” asked Shaposhnikov. “Yes, he has reacted positively,” replied Yeltsin. The marshal sensed that Nazarbayev was in fact cool towards the plan, but he didn’t argue. He realized something like this was inevitable sooner or later, though he believed the leaders were less intent on destroying the Union than getting rid of Gorbachev. He accepted the post offered.
8
As soon as he replaced the receiver, the telephone rang again. “So, what’s happening?” barked Gorbachev. “What’s going on in Belarus?” Shaposhnikov summarized the conversation with Yeltsin, giving the impression that the Russian president had just called for advice. Gorbachev cut him short. “Don’t put your nose into somebody’s business. I’m warning you!” He slammed down the phone. Gorbachev realized Shaposhnikov had signed on to Yeltsin’s coup d’état and would always remember how he “wriggled and squirmed like a grass snake on a frying pan” as he lied.
9
Yeltsin was meanwhile trying to get through to President George H. W. Bush. He gave the hunting lodge operator the number of the White House in Washington. She called back flustered to say that the White House switchboard couldn’t grasp who was calling. Kozyrev took the receiver and in fluent English explained who Boris Yeltsin was and why it was important to be put through to the president.
Bush came on the line. Yeltsin read the agreement and told the U.S. president that this was the only way out of the crisis convulsing the Soviet Union. Addressing Bush as “dear George,” he told him that the union treaty had reached an impasse and that they had decided to create a commonwealth of independent states. “I must tell you confidentially,” he said, “President Gorbachev does not know these results. Because of the friendship between us, I couldn’t wait even ten minutes to call you.”
“I see,” said the U.S. president hesitantly. He got the impression Yeltsin was reading from a script. It dawned on him that the Russian leader had decided to dissolve the Soviet Union.
Yeltsin assured him that the agreement recognized the five principles that the United States had stated it required for recognition of future independent states: peaceful self-determination, respect for existing borders, respect for democracy and the rule of law, respect for human rights, and respect for international law.
The next day Bush dictated into his personal mini-recorder: “I find myself on this Monday night wondering, where was the army? They’ve been silent. What will happen? Can this get out of hand?”
10
Yeltsin had used the leader of the free world to his advantage. Telling Bush first had further diminished Gorbachev, and his consultation with the president of the United States implied that they had cleared everything with the White House.
It fell to Shushkevich, the third ranking member of the group, to break the news to Gorbachev. It took him some time to get through. Yeltsin and Kravchuk listened as Shushkevich told the Soviet president what they had done.
“What happens to me?” Gorbachev demanded to know. “Do you understand how this will be received by the world community?” The Belarusian leader replied, “I do understand; we have told Bush and he took it well.’”
Gorbachev erupted at this gross discourtesy. “You talk to the president of the United States of America and the president of the country knows nothing. This is a disgrace!” He demanded to speak to Yeltsin.
When the Russian president came on the line, Gorbachev snapped at him in cold fury. “What you have done behind my back, with the consent of the U.S. president, is a crying shame, a disgrace.” He demanded that all three Slav leaders come and explain themselves to him in the Kremlin the next day. He was convinced now of his rival’s duplicity.
11
The Ukrainian president laughed at the idea of giving an account of himself to Gorbachev. Kravchuk had taken such a dislike to him—the feeling was mutual—that he was offering to sell Gorbachev’s dacha at Foros in Crimea, now part of Ukraine, to anyone who would guarantee that Gorbachev would never be permitted to return there. He also wanted to get back to Kiev immediately. These were dangerous times, and he was “afraid that violent methods would be used against Ukraine.”
Kravchuk and Shushkevich returned to their capitals rather than answer Gorbachev’s summons to Moscow. They had nothing to say to him and did not want to risk arrest. Both would later explain that they had always found him impossible to work with because he was not straightforward and forthright, qualities they found in Yeltsin. They never met Gorbachev again during his presidency.
When Anatoly Chernyaev, who had spent that Sunday with his mistress, Lyuda, got word of the Belovezh Agreement, he started to prepare, without any conviction, to make the case against it as Gorbachev’s loyal servant. “I didn’t believe in the survival of the Union, even before the putsch,” he wrote that evening. “I continued to work on the arguments for the Union.... But why? You can only laugh.” When “low-life Kozyrev,” as Chernyaev referred to the Russian foreign minister, announced to the media that there were two solutions for Gorbachev, self-liquidation of the presidency or an August-type coup, “we, Gorbachev’s team, shit ourselves.” Nevertheless he didn’t see any alternative but to give themselves to Russia, as the Union was dead.
12
Yeltsin still worried about a “countercoup.” When he got back to the Russian capital late that night—Gorbachev would later claim he was so drunk he had to be carried off the plane—there were rumors circulating that members of the former KGB Alpha Group, then under both presidents, were preparing to arrest the three signatories to the agreement and that concrete blocks had been trucked to the Kremlin to reinforce defenses. Russian radio also broadcast reports of illegal gatherings of intelligence and military generals to discuss a possible overthrow of the republic leaders.
The next morning security at the Russian White House was reinforced, with extra guards on duty cradling automatic weapons, stamping their feet in the frigid air. It was the coldest day of the winter, with the temperature falling below zero.
Yeltsin called Gorbachev to say that he would not come to the Kremlin as he feared for his personal safety. “Are you crazy?” retorted Gorbachev. Yeltsin replied, “No, I’m not, but somebody else might be.”
Unknown to Yeltsin, that somebody was his estranged vice president. Alexander Rutskoy had raced to the Kremlin that morning when he heard the news of the Belovezh Agreement and begged Gorbachev to arrest the “drunken threesome” for a state crime committed to please the United States. Gorbachev told him, “Don’t get so het up; it’s not that terrible.” The volatile Rutskoy was now bitterly opposed to the breakup of the country in whose name he had risked his life in Afghanistan. He prepared a press statement attacking his president, but friends talked him out of issuing it. Seeing he had little support, he backed down and a few days later renewed his vows of allegiance to Yeltsin in unctuous terms.
13
According to Grachev, the idea of having Yeltsin apprehended never came to Gorbachev’s mind, though he had the power to arrest him for high treason. “That was the reason they were hiding in the woods.” Some in Gorbachev’s entourage, like economist Nikolay Shmelev, believed it was only his aversion to bloodshed that stopped him sending a division of paratroopers to the forest to arrest “those three provincial men of great ambition.” Gorbachev’s former speechwriter Alexander Tsipko would later berate the generals and colonels who “did not stir a finger to stop the outrage.” Gorbachev’s former adviser Arkady Volsky, who had become a Yeltsin supporter, believed that the military would have supported Gorbachev if he had declared martial law.
14
Whether he was tempted or not, Gorbachev did not try. He was not prepared to spark a civil war. Ordering arrests would have meant taking a road that could have become bloody. “We can’t start a fight. We can’t. It would be just criminal, taking into account the conditions under which our people are living.”
There was no doubt, however, about how bitter the Kremlin loyalists felt. At an American embassy reception on Sunday evening, Palazchenko denounced the Belovezh Agreement to diplomats as a second coup, a blatantly illegal act, dividing the country up like some inherited estate to get rid of its president.
Yeltsin overcame his reservations and arrived at twelve o’clock on Monday at the Kremlin, with Korzhakov nursing a weapon in the front seat of the Niva. They were accompanied by armed bodyguards in several cars that deployed around the red-brick fortress. Yeltsin’s personal security men insisted on accompanying him to the door of Gorbachev’s third-floor office in the Senate Building, where they stood face to face with Gorbachev’s bodyguards as Yeltsin went inside.