The Day Yeltsin Bested Gorbachev

Conor O’Clery’s Moscow 25 Decem­ber 1991 fol­lows a not­ably grow­ing trend for pick­ing a pivot point in his­tory and revolving round it to find a pop­u­lar audi­ence (wit­ness 1066, 1421, 1434, 1491, 1492 etc. All good books by and large but adopt­ing a very sim­ilar tact). The date provides a recog­niz­able focus and then the space is open for provide the back­ground and the after­math in a pop­u­lar fash­ion. O’Clery breaks the mold though in a most enga­ging fash­ion with the book. I am always in praise of those who can man­age to effect­ively uses flash­backs within chronologically-driven nar­rat­ives and the still hold the thread. In Moscow 25 Decem­ber O’Clery very effect­ively picks the day that Mikhail Gorbachev signed the legal doc­u­ment dis­solv­ing the USSR as his pivot. The day is divided into a series of peri­ods and as time cov­er­less on the act of sign­ing the paper, the author steps back to the gen­esis of the two prot­ag­on­ists careers. The careers of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin lead up to the day and as time slows as they con­verge on the act, the inter­ming­ling of the story lines con­verges. The struc­ture and exe­cu­tion of the writ­ing is superb.

This is not to down­play the actual events tak­ing place. The cyc­lical nature of revolu­tion in Rus­sia (both polit­ical and eco­nomic) is thought­fully doc­u­mented and exposed and the author takes advant­age of a priv­ileged pos­i­tion on the side­lines to high­light much inform­a­tion that simply didn’t make it above the fold in the West. In my opin­ion Gorbachev comes of far worse than Yeltsin in the author’s hand­ling. I am grate­ful for this as I feel that west­ern media treat­ment of him may well have been lately shaped by cul­tural bias and the polit­ics of the time. Neither of which should sur­prise. How­ever, it is very good to have some cor­rect­ive applied. Non­ethe­less, one is struck by how much the pet­ti­ness and per­sonal anim­os­it­ies can play a huge role in the des­tiny of a nation (or in this case of nations).

I hung on to the few events that I felt I had a degree of famili­ar­ity with such as the failed 1991 coup and the rise of Vladi­mir Putin, and O’Clery thank­fully fills in some gap­ing holes. The char­ac­ter treat­ment of Yeltsin gave much to con­sider and appre­ci­ate how his por­trayal by west­ern media as merely and oppor­tun­istic drinker misses a huge swath of his char­ac­ter and denies a truer appre­ci­ation of his motiv­a­tions and accom­plish­ments. The con­trast­ing (less than com­pli­ment­ary) por­trait of MIkhail Gorbachev sur­prises me, yet provides me with a cor­rect­ive that illus­trates how much a care­fully man­aged pub­lic per­sona might hide simple human frailties. Both warn the reader that we much be more crit­ical con­sumers of the media — for­give my rather naive moment here.

This is a grip­ping read. The pace of the nar­rat­ive holds you in thrall and the rich­ness of the story envel­ops. A true pleas­ure. I was fas­cin­ated by much of the detail that I simply would not have come to appre­ci­ate at the time of the events tak­ing place and dis­mayed that I feel that I was starkly out of touch with the moment­ous things going on. I am grate­ful for O’Clery’s work in craft­ing such a fine account and shar­ing his exper­i­ences. Highly recom­men­ded!