Gorbachev’s Last Hurrah
David Remnick on the first—and last—President of the Soviet Union.
On Yeltsin at the meeting dissolving the USSR: "Russian President Boris Yeltsin, drank heavily throughout the session, and, in time, his head slumped to the desk; once in a while, he would raise his head, mutter the phrase, 'What you say is right,' and then fall off again into a stupor. At the end of the meeting, he had to be helped from the room." The Armenian president asked: "This is terrible! Who's ruling Russia?"