Gorbachev, having zigged toward the counterreformist pole in 1990, zagged back toward reformism in the spring of 1991. In dread of losing his support in the USSR congress and the Central Committee, of the republics coming to agreement at their own initiative, and of consumer ire at price increases, he restarted the effort to herd the republics together into a union treaty. The “Nine Plus One” talks (nine willing republics and the Soviet government) at the Novo-Ogarëvo state residence west of Moscow, built for Georgii Malenkov as Soviet prime minister in the 1950s, was one more sparring match with Yeltsin and dragged on from April 23 to late July. Gorbachev wanted a federation in which the center retained as many powers as possible.66 With some sadness, Yeltsin thought the Soviet Union as constituted by Lenin and Stalin was doomed. “I am a Russian,” he confided to a French academic of Russian origin in Strasbourg, “and I am not happy with the idea of the collapse of the empire. For me, it is Russia, it is Russian history. But I know it is the end. . . . The only way [forward] is to get rid of this empire as quickly as possible, or to accept the process.”67 He wanted in effect a confederation (although he stuck to the word “federation”), with Russia and the other sovereign republics controlling all taxation and natural resources and delegating a few functions (national security, railroads, the power grid, and atomic energy) to a central authority, which would haggle over its budget with them line by line. Verbal fisticuffs between Yeltsin and Gorbachev on May 24 spotlighted the disagreement over the monetary lifeblood of government:
YELTSIN: On taxes . . . we are thinking of transferring into the federal budget a fixed sum for programs that we are going to implement jointly, or that the union [government] will tackle, including ones for the republics. It will be done by amount and not by percent. That will be it. . . .
GORBACHEV: Hold on. You say it will be by program. But what about permanent functions of the state such as the army or basic scientific research?
YELTSIN: I am thinking of the army, too. We will have a look, so to speak. “Please show us everything” [we will say].
GORBACHEV: Boris Nikolayevich! In this case we will not have a federation. . . .
YELTSIN: We will deposit [the funds] in one bank and hand them over to you.
GORBACHEV: No, no. . . . There needs to be a federal tax.
YELTSIN: Not on every enterprise, no way. We are ruling that out.
GORBACHEV: In this case we will not have a federation.
YELTSIN: Why not? Why not?
GORBACHEV: In this case we will not have a federation.
YELTSIN: That is a federation.
GORBACHEV: We need a federal tax. . . . You want on every question to force us to our knees.
YELTSIN: It is you who wants to force us to our knees.68
Gorbachev yielded on taxation after Yeltsin called his bluff on a threat to pull out of Nine Plus One. “Do not,” Yeltsin upbraided Gorbachev privately, “take things to the point where we have to decide this question without you.”69 To increase Russian autonomy and defang the CPSU, Yeltsin on July 20 issued Decree No. 14, proscribing any party from having cells or operations within organs of government in the RSFSR. Gorbachev seemed powerless to do anything about it.
A draft treaty for a Union of Sovereign States was initialed by the Novo-Ogarëvo working group on July 23, published on August 15, and its signing fixed for August 20. It largely embodied Russian preferences on taxation, natural resources, and the lesser republics within the RSFSR (they were to sign only as subunits of Russia). The center would still have the power to declare war and manage the military, but even foreign policy and public safety were to be subject to joint jurisdiction. In recognition of Russia’s new global stature, President Bush, in Moscow for a summit with Gorbachev, was received by Yeltsin in his new Kremlin office on July 30. To Soviet and foreign correspondents after the meeting, Yeltsin talked up the treaty and the July 20 decree. At the state dinner in the Kremlin, he tried unsuccessfully to upstage Gorbachev by making a beeline for Barbara Bush and escorting her from receiving line to table. Gorbachev also reports Yeltsin pouting over not being seated at the head table at a dinner at Spaso House, the U.S. ambassadorial residence, and pressing a conversation on George Bush.70 The previous evening, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Nursultan Nazarbayev, the party prefect and now president of Kazakhstan, had met at Novo-Ogarëvo and agreed that Nazarbayev would replace Pavlov as prime minister after the treaty signing, the vice presidency would be dissolved, and other heads would roll. The KGB, whose chief, Vladimir Kryuchkov, was one of those to be demoted, bugged their nocturnal conversation. Yeltsin warned Gorbachev that the walls had ears; Gorbachev did not believe him but acknowledged in his memoirs that Yeltsin had it right.71
