Word: gorbachev
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During the Gorbachev era, political life in Moscow crackled with all the raw power of a performance of Boris Godunov. The Soviet leader's personality clashes with Russian populist Boris Yeltsin, their pendulum swings from angry betrayal to wary reconciliation, were as important for the process of perestroika as finding the right mechanisms for a free-market economy. Then came the high drama of the August putsch and the final unraveling of the union. Given his turbulent career, the Soviet leader probably never suspected that everything would come tumbling down just because three republic leaders decided to hold a weekend...
...themselves to deliver the final political coup de grace. Instead the Soviet President was left to go through the motions of office while Yeltsin methodically chipped away at his powers, placing the entire territory of the Kremlin under Russian control, and pro-Yeltsin television commentators made daily calls for Gorbachev to step down...
...that the ex-President would be well taken care of: he would receive a pension of 4,000 rubles a month (roughly $40 at the present exchange rate), the use of two official cars and the services of a staff of 20. In private, overzealous Russian bureaucrats reportedly told Gorbachev's wife Raisa to pack up and vacate the presidential dacha for more modest housing no later than midnight on the day of his resignation...
...will democracy continue without Gorbachev? As a supporter of his changes, I never praised him while he was in office -- a poet must not praise a czar, even a good one. But now I will say that this great man, one of the men of the century, turned around global consciousness, broke the back of totalitarianism and gave us glasnost...
...wrote only two letters to him in my life: once to get permission for an exhibition of paintings by the banned Marc Chagall, and the second time for the rehabilitation of the novelist Boris Pasternak and the creation of a museum in his honor. Gorbachev helped both times. I never mentioned this before, so as not to damage his standing with the conservative wing. And when demonstrators call for "Gorbachev on trial!," this is also a victory for him. He was the first Russian ruler to allow himself to be mocked. Why was there never a demonstration calling for trials...