some of the letters in the book had been transformative for him and the letters he has used to pass legislation or the times when he responded to the letter writer then they go back to the home town to give a speech. also, i was looking for stories i could still go watch them unfold. the book would be very static by reduced report this person wrote because of this. i wanted the letters to be the beginning point* where somebody is writing about something and i could go watch. other questions? thoughts? criticisms? >> i have read the book and

i thought it was excellent. i thought it should re-read in school because i think that was one of the message is that came out that the u.k. and connecting and to make your voice heard by to the story about the health care the plummet in ohio who was so ill and the story would clinch the health care deal it was absolutely amazing. >> the story she is referencing which probably is the letter over the last three years has had the most profound impact on the president, came from a cleaning woman in ohio who wrote a letter to say basically my health care premiums have skyrocketed come i cannot afford to pay

them. i have to choose between health insurance are my house i give up my health insurance. the president immediately recognize the vote potential as he tried to pass health care reforms that the white house they talk about maybe we should bring her here to talk to the major health insurance companies. they called her to see you should be willing to during those two weeks right after she had given up health care issue was diagnosed with leukemia and given 35 percent chance to live. it was the impact moment for the president in this will then who said a seven per coming here i will go there. he gave a major speech there and turned her into a major icahn for the bill. they wrote back and forth

more than once and for me, the hardest chapter in the book to report is i was there with her a new system was so fragile she was barricaded in her house and her sister and i sat there with her as she scrapped to see and nail for her life what fortified her was not only the letters from the president but she had become the icon of health care reform she was getting letters from all across the country. eat mashed potatoes. people were sending checks and four per it kept her alive i'm sure she thinks. she is still live. but that is the case where it impact of the president and a profound way.

thank you for reading. i appreciate it. >> i am surprised the access people gave you to their lives paragraph the breakfast table you were there. what does that look like? you just show up? >> yes. it is a tremendous privilege. in this case i am always to make -- always amazed how willing people are to open their lives which is not an easy thing to do to have me go to your bankruptcy hearing with you, it is a lot to ask. or your chemo. people right to the president because they want to know their lives matter. so in these cases when the president does read the

letter what you are going through does matter i want to write about it up close and honest across the board, people were open and willing so in terms of how the troops usually go, my experience is the first day of a trip like that could be awkward or hard people are nervous. those days are the hardest under way by the second or third day you stop being fair writer and that is when new go to sure up the level of intimacy that is why i knew i wanted to talk to people. just going back and reporting on why people wrote, you could get back to

what to be there while it unfolds it helps to get you to the next level. >> i was looking up on the internet to see how she was doing so thank you. >> anybody turned you down? >> nobody. honestly it made it hard to pick the letters. usually, i was also looking for a big issues over the course of the year i did want a letter about the oil spill so sometimes i would say here are 10 letters about emigration then i could call to have the initial half hour 40 minutes conversations sometimes nearing goes down was brittle. i feel i could have written

100 letters and nobody would have written it. but it was hard to narrow it down. >> with about those who did not make it into the book? >> i never went out of town for a long trip. i made more than 10 trips because of what they were going through. for the bankruptcy hearing and the first day of college there was more than 10 trips that way but i never felt this would not work. also my job the same type of thing. that does not have been very often and is now because i

get incredible material but people are really interesting if you get to that level with almost anybody, if you can write about them in a textured way there are very few people who is lives that you think this is really boring. [laughter] if you felt that way you're added different levels. >> did the white house approved the 10 letters to selected? >> not only submit for access to say want to do the book and we need to work out i read the letters that he reads that is part of the process. but once i have the access access, i picked would never once i wanted. honestly that worked for them because why the

president likes to talk about people is they want to show he listens to everybody so the fact i knew i wanted to write about whether the letters is a book from a republican in texas rewrites and angry email i knew i wanted that but also for them they want to show that yes he is that person the reads whatever comes in. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> i don't know. maybe i can go to montana to have one class of 15 kids but that is the extent. >> has the president read the book? >> i don't know. i doubt in terms of how much

is going on but thinking maybe he has read the book then i remembered everything he read his very public with the white house a here's what is on the president's reading list. he is reading this book wrote the letters he is reading. i sent him a copy and a hand written note kurt rafik of the male but he does have a copy. >> i have not read the book but i plan on its. real and contact with the president and you had an interview. >> i was in contact with

some of staff there were some who worked in the administration that i know well enough i could if i was writing come apart of the book was the education because it is all about different issues so it is to learn about education policy and that you could write in the interesting way. i would be talking to arne duncan to limit their redeeming about education that way. i was not talking to the president about any of it until the end. then had 30 or 40 minutes to talk in general about the letters and specifically about the letters in the book. >> [inaudible] >> i did. it is a crazy and cool place. in this of filter between

the public and the president for producing and in e-mail it plans on the computer, the letter, the comment line, there are 35 people who sit at the phone bank to try to keep the calls. there is a gift room hundreds in hundreds of people since the president gives and they send really weird things. sometimes like when he was interested to get a dog there was a handful of different puppies mailed. [laughter] used to be worse weedy about the history of the mail room presidents who were big game hunters sometimes would receive from gives across the world of big game animals, tigers, the gift room is the coolest place.

>> spend some time with the tiger. >> i have a question. i am sure there are that years of threats. >> the first thing that happens is it goes through the weeklong screening process it is scanned for a chemical threats idiological threats, so that happens first so the reason in the have a huge staff there is a rule that every single letter half's to re-read the canvas buried in a letter could be incredible threat so they have decided we need to make sure a person reads every letter. so to read others but also on the comment line all of

the phones have the red button with a suicide calls and threats which is astounding that enough people call the white house because they will commit suicide or because they called in a threat that they have a button on every phone that automatically transfers it. it is bad. people call for all kinds of things. i think sold building is a window into the relationship between the public and the president and the fact that things get to him is great which is eliminating in the other way also. >> has the volume increase with obama's? he has talked about the letters and complained about

not having his own blackberry. so sometimes feel they he is more accessible? >> especially at first the volume was more they have ever seen. going right into office of any president. partly from the election and especially emails much easier to send. letters are one thing you can go to the white house website to send an e-mail very quickly in people do. thousands per day. the volume in the beginning was skyrocketing it came down but it has stayed very steady i had coffee with the director who said they have noticed it is climbing again with the year before the

election it will be crazy. people probably right to more when politics this induce thank you so much. thank you for coming i appreciate you being here and thank you for your support. i hope you enjoy it and think you to those who have read it. we appreciate it. [applause] . .

>> host: conor o'clery, author of moscow, and you describe it as a miracle day, this great moment, and of an empire without firing a shot. the alternative versions of that they also including the current prime minister of russia called the geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. can you give us a sense of the historical important, your take on the big picture take. >> guest: when my publisher

asked me to write a book about the fall of the soviet union to mark the 20th anniversary, i came to realize that this day was a day full of human drama because of the conflict between boris yeltsin and mikhail gorbachev. but also it goes pretty well -- i came to realize that this day marked the end of the superpower, if you consider gorbachev as president of the soviet union, coetzee he was the leader of a superpower as long as he held onto what was called -- about three pounds which was the nuclear communications device pixels long as he had that in his possession, he was president of a superpower. on that day he had to give that up to boris yeltsin who is president of russia. and that meant russia, the nuclear power.

ghostly power from that point of view but also when you think about it was the end of the one to two of the totality systems which conducted the greece were in history. that was the last day of that totalitarian system and. >> host: was that system still totalitarian by that point? >> guest: it wasn't. in fact, i think you'd call it off or terry and and party democratic at the time. this was because of the reforms that gorbachev has introduced when he became general secretary of the comments part in 1985. >> host: let's go back to the moment, the brief for passionate nuclear briefcase mode. it's an almost a comedy of errors and conflict and vanity and come up and says at the end, where there's a plan for the handoff, graceful, almost in front of the tv camera, but it all goes to not because of the tension that is the core of your book. >> guest: the details were

worked out a couple days before and. one of the agreements was that after gorbachev made his resignation speech on television he would then -- for seals and who was watching television on a nearby building made his way over to gorbachev's presidential office and would receive the nuclear. it would be recorded by russian tv but also by abc, ted koppel was there and his producer. they were there to record this. the problem was boris yeltsin watched the kill gorbachev's resignation speech from his office in a nearby building. and he threw a fit because he got very angry that gorbachev hadn't mentioned it in the speech, hadn't credited him with any of the things that happen in the soviet union and the last two years. >> host: edited on --

>> guest: he saw as gorbachev justified in so. he developed an intense dislike for gorbachev. he was ready to be offended but he also was annoyed that gorbachev, as much as this was non-democratic thing, bring up the sub union and pointed i think that yeltsin of course was instrumental in holding falling apart. so what he did was he called marshall who sing in another room and he was supposed to accompany him for the handover of the nuclear suitcase and bring the two colonels over to yeltsin's office. but he ran as if i'm not going over there. you go and collect it. he said if there are legal problems here, the documents, he said you go over and collect them. and if he doesn't come to sort of come if he doesn't typically we will sort it out some other way. and he changed his mind and said let's make this thing katherine

hall and will do the exchange there. of course, say katherine hall at a residence for yeltsin. that's where gorbachev humiliated him earlier. gorbachev of course for once had the upper hand over yeltsin because -- >> host: still held the previous. >> guest: he said no, i'm not going over there. the whole thing was sort -- sort it out to make we didn't witness the documents, the suitcase be brought over to yeltsin. interestingly, this moment not only symbolized but in effect meant the end of the sub union and the superpower was to be recorded on television, but now it was only seven channels walking away with the chairman, and they handed over to the other, yeltsin that the only witnesses for the cnn crew who had been their film in gorbachev's resignation. they had packed up all the equipment, there in the car --

>> host: they couldn't get any pictures? pictures? >> guest: no, they had stopped. they saw these generals exchanged this object which was clearly the nuclear suitcase. >> host: extraordinary moment. in reading the book i have to say, i was so struck by the variety of sources, memoirs, diaries and others. it sounds in the book you credit one of the top aides for yeltsin, later prime minister, is getting almost a minute by minute blow-by-blow or journalism phrase they call it a tick tock. and in the same sound, gorbachev says the press secretary to the same kind of real, providing some insight. can you say a word about where you got this incredible detail? goes by that time you had already left the soviet union, right? >> guest: i worked for the bureau in "the irish times" in moscow in 1986. and i was there until july 1991.

and i was transferred to washington as white house correspondent. >> host: what impeccable editorial turning. >> guest: it was forward-looking of my editor. i felt i had been -- a new correspondent taken my place. >> host: this book, going back and reconstructing and doing the reporting, you really wish you had been there for? >> guest: i was like a historian as much as a journalist in going back to find out what really happened that day. i had a wonderful for our lunch with andre who was not only courthouse book, i spent all day with him and have spent, joined a small group with gorbachev that evening in the kremlin, drinking cognac and discussing what had happened, looking back on the years.

they were drinking and to midnight which wasn't unusual i should say. i think i got the last interview with him before he died, just about four weeks before he died he was extremely helpful. he at the time had been appointed by yeltsin to bring in price reform which was, up to then prices in the soviet union had been decided by the bureau and its ministries. they decided everything from the price of bread, love, to oil. that was dictated from above. and prices were freed that meant that you were rid of liberal capitalism. one of the effects of fat, he told me, he said a few days after freed prices up at the 1991 from his walking along the street and saw a line of people and he thought, he realized what was. people for the first time were a loud to engage in private sales

but these were people standing along the road selling things that they had to try to make some money. and this day, december 25, 1991, probably marks the last point in the lives of most russian people, nothing in the shops -- >> host: many economic turns. >> guest: it was a miserable time for that one of the commentators on radio advice people don't look for things in shops. count yourself lucky. that's how bad things were. another commentator described a scene in the shops as a war zone with a counter of the project. people are so desperate to get necessities. >> host: how much of that was driven by the revolt, the efforts you describe in the book, you're the meeting of the mob bosses who come together to plan how they're going to rip off the street property to give description of some of the plant owners and party secretaries busy enriching themselves in that last year, two years of the

soviet union. essentially pulling aside almost privatizing before there's a formal program, and how much is that driving the economic collapse? >> guest: part of it was the fact that these didn't exist. huge shortages in the country of flour, of meat. but also i think people who had these stocks are holding back for price reform because why so a pound of flour today at 10 callbacks if you get for 100 kovacs the next day. >> host: why wouldn't they, i mean you have a premonition in a book where you describe on that day, he's meeting with an international monetary fund official pashtun. >> guest: in former headquarters. >> host: you give one of the protections of the i am prices will only rise 70%. actually it was more like 7000%. why wouldn't they have been

better off doing more socialist, swedish scheme soft landing, or did they just believe that you had to do shock therapy because there was no other way out? you presage it in part because among other things you talk about your in-laws, which married into the russian summit, losing all her savings and not being paid from us at a time. you have personal knowledge. >> guest: first of all on the point that you raised about the big bang. guide are told he is very much, they had to destroy the system so it couldn't come back. that they had to print a situation in russia where they could not bring back communist, but everything would have been freed up in the western market type a comment which had taken root. >> host: it sounds almost like the american general in vietnam is as we have to destroy the village in order to save it. >> guest: regards to my own

personal experience, some of them were pretty weird. my wife, a follow, a former deputy in the parliament -- >> host: unit in 1989. >> guest: 1989. the fact i was the first foreigner, western allowed to visit since the second world war because it is a closed city. things were changing. cities were opening up. when the price reform came, my wife's sister who is a director, stopped giving her salary because there wasn't a synthesis of paying salaries to institutions look out for people. factories look out for people. they just didn't have any resources. so shoot a one month without some and get another month to get something into a celibate one month it was the sox. >> host: what did she do with that? bill and seldom? >> guest: you can go out and sell these. good luck to you.

if you drove near a tire factory and saw workers from the factory trying to sell tires. it was that sort of chaotic situation that people suffered from after the reform. >> host: but does and impartially undermine your thesis that the main driver of the collapse and break up is the personal attention in a way that conflict between yeltsin and gorbachev? in a way, you are also saying that one of the key causes is that the senate did not have the resources anymore to buy anybody off. there was always the old soviet phrase can we pretend to work and state pretends to pay us. but there was certainly some security, although it was less. so wasn't that part of the driver here? >> guest: the basic tensions between yeltsin and gorbachev was how quickly they should move

to a market economy. a year before the end, gorbachev and yeltsin actually got together and agreed to give the task to a couple of very prominent economists to bring these reforms in the period of 500 days. it was called the 500 day plan hosting the fall of 1990 roughly. >> guest: about that. been gorbachev got cold feet. he came under a lot of pressure because this would mean that there subsidies would end. and yeltsin was furious. yeltsin was absolutely furious when gorbachev decided, gorbachev is a bit of a social engineer. he liked to see it, and his wisdom was superior to others. he decided to adopt a plan wrestled out by another bureaucrat. this wasn't going to work, it wasn't going to please anybody. that was one of the basic

tensions between gorbachev and yeltsin took one of the reasons why they diverge so radically in the last year post that because yeltsin became a real -- you describe yeltsin's visit to america is seen at shopping malls and grocery stores for thousands, and suddenly he comes back, we've got to do that here. >> guest: the visit to america was an eye-opener for yeltsin. what he describes in his own memoirs, he was being driven through texas and he said stop here, i want to look at this grocery store, the supermarket. he was still of the old soviet the tally that foreigners were only showing what the host country wanted to see. he thought he was being gone by seeing other aspects of life he entered the supermarket and he just -- he describes how he saw something, the checkout using

some like hairdryer to record prices. he found out there all sorts of different varieties of cheese and meat. the plane on their to miami he turned to his aid and he said, you know, that's why the iron curtain was there is to keep us from learning how good things were in the west, how much consumer goods were available. >> host: and so he was ready when some of the younger ideological economists would come in and say all at once. >> guest: yeltsin make big bets that he was a very impulsive politician. but he was very courageous. he thought he should do something, he did it. he reckoned that the soviet union should end. and he reckoned that there should be a very quick transfer to market economy. and trusted that task to two of his aides.

everything was owned up to that point. >> host: it probably goes back on talking about yeltsin impulsiveness, even his own rise to power was marked by the impulsive gestures in the commonest party, center committee, into -- which at the time looked devastating perhaps to his career. >> guest: is a very conflicted person. he would sit in a meeting, a candidate member which meant he was one of 15 top people in the soviet union, or 20. so they would have meetings and he would work up the courage to challenge gorbachev and say you're bring herself on itself and people, you're not moving fast enough. then he began taking off from core child who rallied his aides to take them off as well, and

then yeltsin would feel terrible and say i'm sorry. you're right, because please forgive me. this went on until it reached the point where yeltsin faces the challenge gorbachev. he resigned from the bureau, and then he faced very fraught meeting where gorbachev and others attacked him for this populism, the way he was going about things. he was so upset by this that he claims he tried to commit suicide. yeltsin. of gorbachev thinks he was faking but he did cut himself in the chest with a pair of scissors and rushed to the hospital. been gorbachev called another meeting of the moscow communist party to relieve boris yeltsin of his post. at this meeting -- sorry, before

this meeting, he rang boris yeltsin in the hospital and said i want you at this me this evening. >> host: come from the sickbed. >> guest: and boris yeltsin by his account said i'm not allowed by the doctors to leave my bed. gorbachev said that's okay, we will look after that. the doctor came along and injected him with a sedative and some anti-spasm agent and is taken by his bodyguard by car to the inquisition, which it really was an inquisition. and he was made to suffer for hours of abuse from gorbachev and other members of his center committee. this was a full committee meeting. he never forgave gorbachev. >> host: and given his health conditions he did not push back at that moment. that was not a time when he was physically able to get up on the tank, for example. >> guest: one of the interesting things i discovered,

i don't think and what has made this connection. years later when yeltsin was president and his prime minister was -- he discovered that doctor and injected him, yeltsin found him. tenuous the private doctor. he said don't you realize who this man is? and he was quite annoyed that he got rid of him. but i discovered that shortly after that, the doctor was shot in the streets. he had surgery, the same surgery or the same medical corps that injected him. >> host: who killed him? >> guest: the only port was from the test news agency at you said he was shot dead. nothing was ever reported since then. i looked up the statistics, something like 250 people were shot dead in the streets in

moscow that year. it could have been for any reason. i'm not trying to conclusion which one might suspect happened. people around yeltsin might have had a hand, but, you know, there were so many killings for so many different reasons that the doctor may not have paid protection money on something. so won't draw any conclusions. >> host: after this humiliation moment where gorbachev has hauled yeltsin from the hospital bed and spent hours marshaling the criticism of him, does yeltsin get sent to the reeducation camps? what happens to him? or i guess, i'm setting you up anyway because in your book you remark on the ironing that is exactly gorbachev's democratizing procedures that allow a comeback for yeltsin. it's not like the old days were a bullet in the head or a countryside.

>> guest: the oldies would've been a bullet in head or ambassador to mongolia or somewhere. i need to get a bit of background here. yeltsin was pretty much excluded from coverage i in the newspapes that have become a bit of folk hero in moscow. i remember -- >> host: by being very active. >> guest: the word was he challenge gorbachev. the word spread he made a secret speech attacking gorbachev and there were all sorts of copies of the secret speech circulati circulating. newspapers were still pretty much under the thumb of the communist party. they were forbidden to record anything about yeltsin and what he was doing. but at the same time, they had advanced so far that gorbachev, and i think you should flex gorbachev's own democratic impulse as well, was not undermined to punish him for the victory gave him a desk job as debbie head of construction

ministry. which affect meant very little. he was in office in a car. still a member of the commonest party which made it possible still to attend meetings. yeltsin claimed to gorbachev, to show the more reactionary conference, you know, there were people that think like yeltsin -- >> host: and they represent some force so they represent somebody. >> guest: but for whatever reason they prefer to think it was gorbachev for the right thing to do. he gave him a job that allowed him to stay in moscow, didn't expel him. but it also gave him a basis to build on his political career as elections came about, yeltsin was well-positioned to flourish as he did. >> host: there is that moment

on gorbachev's reticence to use the old methods. is is among a new book where you quote i think one of the deputies in the congress supreme soviet, people's deputy after the election in march of 89 and say it something about go chop that he didn't have blood on his hands. and it was interesting, he never wanted blood on his hands competing in dealing with this, with yeltsin, this almost, this antagonist from the poultry from 87, the first outburst and the center committee all the way through december 25, 1991. >> guest: i think yeltsin's final problem was when he flew to a stone at a time when the people around gorbachev were cracking down in the baltics. january 1991, 12 or 13 people were shot dead by a kgb unit outside the television station in the capital of lithuania.

the crackdown -- yeltsin through and that the three presidents that have been elected of the baltic republic. they were still under soviet rule but they had local parliaments. and he encouraged them to resist yeltsin, encourage the soviet army do not obey orders to crack down on them. gorbachev had a blind spot about the separatists as he called them, the independent minded people in the baltics. >> host: and elsewhere in the soviet in. >> guest: of course, but we all see the baltics as sort of semi-attach republics in the soviet union. they were annexed after the second world war, during the second world war. but gorbachev never quite came to terms with the nationalist impulse of the baltic. he thought, in fact i went to lithuania some 24 that when he was trying to persuade them, your role is with us, in the

soviet union. and he was taken aback from people trying to challenge him. >> host: that's in the diary, the topic to gorbachev says gorbachev was basically blind to it. that gorbachev would say things like don't they understand if they leave the soviet union, they will be lost? there would be no anchor? there will be no economy. they are's comments come he doesn't get it. >> guest: you know, the democrats in russia at the time from yeltsin to others, they were outraged by what happened in the balkans. gorbachev surround himself with people who are real hardliners. he didn't majorly condemn what was happening in the falcons. that he pulled back. pulled back partly because

because he's going to use all credibility throughout the world. president george h. of the bush put off a meeting with them. he pulled back also because i think his repulsion to bloodshed. the diary -- he discloses that he wrote a letter of resignation to gorbachev saying you have surround yourself with these people, they are going to destroy you. he didn't deliver his letter of resignation mainly because his secretary said you can't do this, this is a time when gorbachev meet you. so he put it away for a weekend and decided not to use it. he believed in gorbachev to keep it that gorbachev was not -- that he really did want to affect democratic change. >> host: the line in your book that gorbachev, when pressed to get rid of those hardliners and the old communist party, said

something like i've got to keep that lousy rabid dog on a leash or otherwise it will turn on us and turn on the reforms. what do you make of that? >> guest: a very, very interesting moment when gorbachev was confronted with rebellion in the communist party. and he said i'm quitting, and it was a ploy. he wasn't quitting. he was just saying to them though, i'm -- i got presidential powers. if i quit, you can't do anything about it. >> host: please, don't quit, please come back? >> guest: and you know, he was pretty aware of the caliber of these people who are trying to hold back. that's when he made his remark, the rapid though, got to keep on leash.

if one wants to take a very positive view of gorbachev's action, that explains a lot. he allowed the hardliners to stay close to him so he could bring them for to the point when they couldn't succeed in staging a coup, which actually happened in august 1991 but in retrospect that's his defense but i'm not so sure i belong to a generation of correspondents who were there in early 1991 who were very critical of gorbachev and could see that yeltsin was doing the right thing, doing the courageous thing which was to stop the crackdown in the baltics pics of course yeltsin yes, was looking towards an independent russia. >> guest: in your book you have these wonderful details on both of those personalities. some of them jumped out at me. i didn't realize that you say, for example, gorbachev was the irving sophisticate man of the world, yet it blue streak ever

been at the drop of the house. yeltsin really dislike the use of swear words and just like the people who did it and hated it when gorbachev which were afghan. >> guest: i had a lot of fun finding out about the process of these two men who dominated my life for so many years. yeltsin as you say, haiti profound. he wouldn't let anybody near him to swear words. he also hated smoking. he hated people to smoke in his presence and he would take the cigarette from their lives and stop it up if you do that to the wife of helmut kohl. piece that out person or in front of her. gorbachev when he was relaxing like to quote poetry. lenin lives, lenin lives forever. yeltsin when he was relaxing, you like to drink and we all know that he also liked to play the spoons. if he was in the mood he would

call on one of his aides and played the spoons on his head. when yeltsin was partying -- aspect watch out for the spoons. extraordinary dynamic because you mentioned we no yeltsin like to drink. like so many of these episodes, including that long nine-hour meeting you described two days before the day at the 10th of your book where they worked out a plan for the transition is accompanied by large quantities of vodka for yeltsin and cognac for gorbachev to the point of -- >> guest: that meeting i found one of the most fascinating aspects of the dying days of the soviet union. yeltsin bars and set its time we start things out. ian got the chop retire to the walnut room which was very important in the kremlin with the decisions were made. they were joined by others, a

witness to what went on there. they started drinking. >> host: was he also sort of the umpire? >> guest: a bit of an umpire as well because they both respected him. yeltsin respected him because he spoke out on issues that yeltsin was passionate about, opening up the history, exposing stalin and that sort of things. >> host: by their account got a number of the ideas. >> guest: this is a dashing he feels he was present too much. but there's no doubt he was very, very powerful figure beside gorbachev. but at this meeting, the waiter would bring in trays of cognac

and vodka. at one point the major went on -- the meeting went on, and at 6:00 gorbachev left the meeting to take a call from john major was prime minister of united kingdom at the time and had arranged to call to get what was happening. they both noted that he was sort of test. >> host: by that time they've been tracking all afternoon. >> guest: it was a very fraught day from mikhail gorbachev. he was, his nemesis in terms of this handover. and also to deciding whether he should have a house and two cars instead. it was pretty emotional day for gorbachev and. >> host: you give three different versions of that meeting. you say according to one, that it was actually friendly and

cordial. you have gorbachev saying well, it was businesslike. then you have, these guys are illusionist. he was actually condescending by yeltsin dictating. >> guest: a very cold meeting host of other than the cognac. >> guest: they couldn't start squabbling and shouting. yeltsin handled cars and yeltsin was dictating the terms. >> host: explain why he held all the cards. >> guest: he held all the cards because three weeks earlier he had met as leader of russia, he had met the leader of ukraine, which had just voted to go independent, whatever happened, and the leader of belarus. at a hunting lodge near the polish border. >> host: get gorbachev know about this? >> guest: he knew a and b. was going to take place that yeltsin

told him it was to try to persuade them to keep the soviet union in fact through the treaty. but at this meeting, they agreed to collapse the soviet union on the basis that these were three republics that had set up the soviet union. so now they could collapse it. from that moment on the soviet union was finished. they went to the other republics and got them to sign on, three days before december 25, 1991, although there's of the republic, all gone, met and agreed that they would set up instead of the soviet union could set up a commonwealth of independent states but he would have no common center, no center, nobody in charge of the foreign policy. no common military policy. it would be the commonwealth of independent states. no rule for gorbachev anymore.

but in this way right up to a few days before that, gorbachev still felt that he could maintain the soviet union in some form, that they would all see centric he wrote them along letter, that there at all see cents on the degree he should -- at least in charge of foreign policy for the republics, in charge of international -- >> host: delusional. >> guest: james baker who was secretary at the time came to see them. others foreign visitors, and this was two days, two weeks before the end. they so gorbachev expanding on the possibility of the soviet union maintaining some role in the world. and maybe not literally but they raising his eyes, this guy doesn't get it.

>> host: extorted for kerry you are describing a process where in addition to the yeltsin-gorbachev real tension, you have a group of what were really communist party functionaries in those republics leaking for power. of the whole bunch probably yeltsin is perhaps the only one who had democratic legitimacy. can we say that about the republic? >> guest: if you look at the guy who was, the leader, the first leader of ukraine's i first saw him, meeting in a conference of independence, which was set up three years before the end of the soviet union. i was at that meeting and he was observing from a balcony. he was a dark figure, he was in charge of all the repression. and when the coup happened he was to get a his party. when it happened in august 1991,

he went along with it when he saw wasn't going to succeed. and overnight he switched being a democrat. he said he realized the opposition in ukraine wanted nothing more to do. one of the things that really upset making gorbachev was that when he resigned, not one, not one of the leaders of the other 14 republics called him, send him a letter, sent word, good luck in the future. and thes these were people who d with him, sat with him and negotiate with them. and not one of them said you resigning, good luck in the future. i don't think he ever met any of them again. he made in that one of two of them once, but they did with anything more to do with them. perhaps went so far as to say, gorbachev, the tragic of gorbachev, he can't see anyone is laughing at him. and he also said after

independence i have failed -- used to go on holidays on the black sea. i feel anybody who comes mikhail gorbachev would've been allowed allowed to set foot again. that was an indication of how a deeply feelings went, how much despair these people have returned to gorbachev doesn't like yeltsin. yeltsin doesn't like some of these czars as he called them, they didn't like him. because they had seen threatening their whole communism. of course, when the soviet union was disbanded, they were ready to make the jump and reinvent themselves as capitalists. >> host: when you set out, or i guess at the time you were doing the reporting in 87, 88,

89, 90 in moscow, you said earlier you had quite a lot of sympathy for yeltsin, like so many journalists seem him as a courageous person trying to do the right thing, representing the kind of democratic surge. and perhaps, but your book, when a reader comes to the end of your book, one action has an impression of the enormous erratic and imposes and make it up as you go along quality that so much of yeltsin's governance, and one ends the book with a fair amount of sympathy for gorbachev, this tragic figure. was that a transition you went through as you did this? >> guest: it was sort of a transition. i was very much a yeltsin that like a lot of my colleagues at the time of the crackdown and the baltic when we could see that gorbachev was not doing anything to stop for a few days. we saw yeltsin at his best. in fact, a friend here in washington who was very noted

commentary on soviet union, and are never added import having an argument with him about a slogan that people used to attack yeltsin's great enemy where he said boris come you're not correct. people start wearing badges saying you've got to take a bath. i remember going to one of the parties wearing a badge saying -- but to get back to what you asked. i went into, with all these, the package, when i finished the book i think i have more sympathy. the scope of gorbachev's reforms were events, and what he managed to do, for example, in bringing about the election to the congress, he almost had to use

sleight of hand to get that motion railroaded through a meeting of the communist party. but he managed. he presided over the first immigrant elections in russia, and russia, the soviet union was formed. >> host: and they were active for the polish elections, right? all remover solidarity sweeping across eastern europe. >> guest: he reserved 100 seats of congress for top communist party officials. but he created conditions, this is gorbachev, he created the conditions were poor sales and could stand for election to represent for moscow. and he got something like 9 million votes. so corba jobs created to democratic conditions for the democrats to events. and i think that we must seek

gorbachev and yeltsin as an opportunist with the right impulses. i think that would be the best way to sum up. >> host: with some incredible moments of courage? >> guest: his instincts, it requires a lot of courage to do that. history proves that he was right. the time had come to wind down the soviet mean and he was the one who realized that, and he went about doing it. >> host: what about the what is? gorbachev today looking back 20 years says well, my couple big mistakes were not breaking become his party early on, perhaps, and perhaps not signing the union treaty in such way earlier so it would head off the to. if i done that, we could have had a union and a demilitarized,

more democratic union, soviet union. is that -- >> guest: the exercise in history, and one of gorbachev's what-ifs is what if i had gone on holiday august 1991 that would allow the two to take place. he regrets he went on holiday because he had arranged with yeltsin and others to sign a new union treaty. when he came back from his holidays. that's why the coup took place wednesday. and -- took place when it did. i think history was such that the soviet union was finished. these two men and their different ways brought it about yeltsin -- gorbachev by creating certain chances for socialism couldn't survive when he tried to maintain the socialist.

and yeltsin who took a big bet on wrecking a system that he saw wasn't working. >> host: and on the what-ifs, what if, what if yeltsin had not had that shock therapy, the immediate privatization peace? was very possibly for a soft landing, or was the economic reality -- let me phrase the question a different way. was it, if gorbachev had had the same lock with oil prices that vladimir putin had over the last decade, would the republics have been so eager to depart from the center if the center was a gusher oil will? >> guest: no, i don't think so because even if oil prices increase, the whole system was wrong. the edifice. one could look at a lot of

what-ifs. and what if hadn't succeeded in some of the very close votes in the russian parliament in which enabled him to become president, what if you're after december 25, 1991, the russian parliament which had been elected in the days of the soviet union contains a lot of hardline communists, what if they hadn't succeeded in defeating yeltsin because of the hardship before something? if you only fail but a few votes, prompting others to comment that they decided want to go back to the economist future. >> host: the old joe. >> guest: yes, there's a lot of what-ifs but i'm convinced the soviet union could not have survived. say the new union treaty had been agreed. i think the drift was still for all the republics having had a

taste of freedom would still have gone. >> host: and what if yeltsin had chosen a different form of change? that is to say, as soon as the two independent of the coup and its own courage in standing on the tank and some popular acceptance, he chose at that moment to go into the creed mode. he decided to change the whole system by decree. some of your episodes with the mayor of moscow, the deputy mayor comes in, oh, yeltsin dashes off 10 degrees, nationalize to take over this, takeover that. what if, was there any possibility for something that was more democratic, less autocratic? because one can see the seeds of today, the solitary and russia and the lack of any world transition. >> guest: one of the big bets yeltsin made was, he made a

wonderful speech, very forceful speech about a month after the coup. it got off to write his memoirs. there's a pattern come he would do something very courageous in him he would need to calm down and rest for a while. but he came back and made this speech in which he convinced the russian parliament that he had to be given the right to rule by decree because very big decisions have to be made and very quickly. his speech was powerful enough to get back. and i think that, you know, it was the eighth still democrats society that existed on the very last day of the soviet union due to gorbachev's reforms. igor made it very interesting point to be. he said remember, that on this day you had the freest press that russia ever had that wasn't

subservient to owners, wasn't subservient to the party, wasn't subservient to shareholders. people could provide would be one to they could criticize the like. of course, he said it couldn't last. and we've seen that it hasn't lasted, certainly in television, the control of television. but at that point history, on the 25th of december, 1991, you have a situation where people could do this if they wanted can't read anything you like in the papers. formed political parties as they did in the early 1990s. they are the election of yeltsin's president of 1996 was a free election could mind you, he has a lot of support from the only cards, a lot of support from the united states, from advertising agency here, our pr agency. >> host: david hoffman in his book, how does a guy go from meeting yeltsin, go from 6%

bothered in the spring take getting -- >> guest: the votes were cast and counted democratically. now, if you want, the communist party got 35 or something% of the vote. gorbachev run for election he got 2%. now if you want to form a political party in russia, the authorities will find some way, find, identifying a problem in your application papers. you don't have free of political association in russia today, but you did have during the early yeltsin years. >> host: you also have that collapse in the early, not only in the summer of 91 budget that collapse in 92. you had the sort of boom years. hewitt the attack on the apartment in 93. been at the international economic collapse in 98.

sort of in time in the series of disasters for the russian people. i'm just wondering how much that color is in russia the debate looking back to december 25, 1991, you describe some of the nostalgia that people do feel. >> guest: it's interesting. the day that the russian parliament declared they wanted to be solvent was celebrated after yeltsin, independence day, the third national holiday. vladimir putin change that to russia day because he didn't want -- they want independent. they were part of an empire. people today in russia, and i know this from my own family and from fairly frequent visits back there, they look back at the soviet era in an era where people were bombing the reverend stations, airports, when the nationalities all got along reasonably well together. when he was a degree of

education for everybody, when they were in shops but everybody suffered. except for the privileged members of the party, of course. >> host: and bribery. connections matter but there wasn't the pervasive corruption. >> guest: of course but and, of course, share the national pride being superpower come of one of the two great powers in the world. on this day december 25, 1991, marks the day that they ceased to be of best thing in the world. one of the reasons why putin as president brought back some of the cells of the soviet union, for example, the red flag came down on that day. what he allowed the soviet army, or the russian army to adopt a red flag again as their emblem, without the hammer and sickle in accord. he also, the russian national anthem which is a wonderful

during the term, and russians remember from second world war, you know, part of their pride in defeating not to use them. the words were changed by yeltsin. but the tune was changed. sorry, the anthem was changed. but putin brought back the anthem with you towards because you realize people felt proud -- felt pride whenever this. felt all sort of emotions about the defeat of hitler and the sacrifices that were made. he did this i think for the best of reasons, which was to calm people down and to have them get over the embarrassment of what happened on this day. this day is not celebrated at all in any way, or commemorated in russia. i went through all the russian bookstores. i went to the secondhand bookstores. i could find nothing, nothing

about the handover from yeltsin, or from gorbachev yeltsin. people don't want to no. >> host: extraordinary, and yet there is a very light debate today. for example, in the last month you had gorbachev giving interviews i've been in -- germany where he criticized putin and the described it, the exhaustion of the project, the petersburg project is what he called the prudence spoke person step back, gorbachev and he's the guy that lost the soviet colossus are standing, almost lost russia. what are you talking about? the light debate in today's newspaper front pages over your day, december 25, 1991. what do you make about? >> guest: gorbachev has been saying for some time now that russia has taken a wrong turn. the turn towards

authoritarianism. he has been critical for some time, and he's now become the one person in russia who can say this and putin can do nothing to stop them. he's got rid of a lot of these ngos and people who are interesting and. but coming from within russia, this obviously got to putin to putin knows that he has created this situation now where people enter politics not for public service, but for what they can get out of it, where the judge is okay, the kremlin in the old soviet times, where the police over a the kremlin rather than -- is partway there, but it stalled. that said, that gives gorbachev a lot of credibility when he

criticizes vladimir putin over that. >> host: let me bring the discussion back your to the united states, because in your book he remarked on the dramatic change in u.s. political rhetoric about december 25, 1991, and really i think you're making a larger point president george h. to the bush famously said he wasn't going to ban from the berlin wall because is more concerned about a cautious and prudent and stable process. he wasn't going to do any of this triumphalism because he saw that it would backfire. the same thing is to all the way up to this day what he cautions the white house folks, don't be declaring victory after. don't go being trampling. and yet as you point out a new book, within what, a month, there's bush up in front of the halls of congress saying we won, we won. was the effect of that i think on the american discourse, but even on some russian perception? >> guest: you're actually

right. he wanted the soviet union to survive, the soviet union that was to the west, to survive. i don't think survive is the right word. he wanted to survive having 15 independent republic, some with nuclear weapons. that was the prospect. so right up to august 1991 he was taking it upon himself to lecture other republicans, particularly in the ukraine, against nationalism because he wanted gorbachev to succeed and reformed soviet union. when the inevitable endgame, he did caution some people not to be triumphalists take, but as one with american politics, and election was looming. people thought he would get reelte