492 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
seat.^56 One by one, the rescue party came to talk to Gorbachëv and his
family; and it was then that they discovered that all was not well with
Raisa. The experience at Yuzhny had caused a heart attack. Although
she survived without medical attention, she found hand movement
difficult. Gorbachëv himself suffered a relapse into the sciatica that
had affected him since his younger days.^57
His mood picked up as they neared the capital: ‘We’re flying into a
new country.’^58 He never spoke a truer word. Yeltsin, the victor over
the State Committee, was the master in Moscow and compelled Gor-
bachëv to purge all those who had supported or condoned the coup.
Despite his experience at Foros, Gorbachëv was initially reluctant to
acknowledge the sheer scale of betrayal. Yeltsin brusquely told him, in
full public view, to read out the list of known traitors. Gorbachëv pro-
ceeded to proscribe the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and to
replace the leaderships of most of the governmental agencies. He held
the members of the State Committee in custody.
On 24 August there was a barrage of declarations of independence
by Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia; and Yeltsin announced his
approval of them. The Ukrainian leadership made a similar declara-
tion.^59 Liberated from Crimean house arrest, Gorbachëv felt himself
under political siege in Moscow and appealed to his former associates
to return to his side. On 30 August Gorbachëv asked Shevardnadze:
‘Come to the Kremlin immediately!’ Shevardnadze no longer submit-
ted to orders: ‘Immediately is impossible. Things won’t move so simply.
We need to talk.’ Gorbachëv exclaimed: ‘But aren’t we having a conver-
sation at the moment?’ Yakovlev was present at their ensuing meeting
when Shevardnadze gave vent to his anger. Gorbachëv had destroyed
his own life’s cause, betrayed his allies and surrounded himself with
mediocrities and flatterers: ‘You became a person who – whether it
was deliberately or involuntarily doesn’t matter – provoked the coup,
and I have every ground for supposing that you took part in the plot.’^60
When he refused to return as Foreign Affairs Minister, Gorbachëv
asked why. Shevardnadze answered simply: ‘I don’t trust you.’^61
Yakovlev was equally harsh in his comments.^62 In past years Gor-
bachëv would have interrupted. Now he held his tongue. At the end of
the conversation he told Shevardnadze and Yakovlev that he would
forget everything and recognize his mistakes. What he was intending
to forget, he did not say; and he never did fully explain the nature of
his mistakes.^63
Bush’s loyalty to him was not what it had been, and on 2 Septem-