the person is male or female. He is responsible for CNN having so many female camera operators and other women covering wars, unheard of at other networks.
My first big chance to report as an on-air correspondent came in autumn of 1992. The Moscow bureau chief was on vacation and I had been left in charge. Russian reforms were in a shambles and frustration was growing over the delays in reaching the prosperity that everyone expected after the collapse of communism. Russian politicians were looking for someone to blame. Boris Yeltsin, eager to protect his image as a popular hero, chose Gorbachev, his longtime rival. Yeltsin commandeered Gorbachev’s newly founded think tank without telling the former president, who turned up to work one morning and found the doors of his office padlocked. The next day Yeltsin stripped him of his special government limousine and his dacha, or country home. That week I interviewed Gorbachev, who appeared genuinely hurt that after all he had done to avert violence in Russia, he was so unappreciated by his countrymen. Gorbachev had been pushed out by Yeltsin for his slow pace at reforming the Soviet Union and argued that a more gradual dismantling of the system would have resulted in less chaos. He warned that Yeltsin’s decision to unshackle the Soviet republics would result in widespread bloodshed. With Gorbachev still popular in the West, I was on the air several times a day covering the spat between the two statesmen.
It was a great break for me. But I was also getting a lesson about how petty and childish politicians can be, letting personal animosities and political expedience override all other concerns. I was astounded by the intensity of the bitter personal rivalry between these two men. Initially they had been allies in the fight against old Soviet hardliners, but in 1987 Gorbachev had insulted Yeltsin by sacking him as Moscow Communist Party boss. After Yeltsin took over the presidencyin late 1991, he took every opportunity to pick on his former superior. He especially loved to take swipes at Gorbachev’s relationship with his late wife, Raisa, expressing an old-fashioned Russian distaste for a wife’s involvement in state affairs. Yeltsin often spoke with pride about how he kept his own wife out of politics. But he didn’t always apply the same principle to his daughter, Tanya, who later played a significant role in his government.
I threw myself into work. And there was no shortage of news in Moscow to report, with one crisis emerging after another. One such story came when tanks in Moscow’s streets began firing at the Russian White House, or Parliament, in October 1993. Yeltsin was locked in a power struggle with his old Soviet-style parliament, one of the last vestiges of Soviet power and full of disgruntled communists. They were trying to thwart his reforms, so at one point he dismissed them and called for new elections. It was democracy,
à la Russe
. When Yeltsin’s vice president, Rutskoi, complained publicly that reforms weren’t delivering all that they were supposed to, Yeltsin confiscated his government car and dacha, the favorite form of official torture. When Rutskoi joined forces with the parliament in an all-out mutiny, refusing to budge until their demands were met, Yeltsin shut off the White House’s heat, then the electricity, and finally the water.
We had to cover the story in shifts, sleeping in the White House, waiting for the inevitable conclusion, knowing that an attack could come. We would prepare for our daylong turn inside as if on a camping trip. Given the amount of TV equipment we had to haul around, personal luxuries like sleeping bags and food supplies had to be minimized. As my camerawoman and I curled up on our coats, shivering one night on a bed made of two wooden chairs, we laughed at the notion that a few utilities being turned off would have any effect whatsoever on a Russian.
Yeltsin disappeared during the standoff, and I assumed he
My first big chance to report as an on-air correspondent came in autumn of 1992. The Moscow bureau chief was on vacation and I had been left in charge. Russian reforms were in a shambles and frustration was growing over the delays in reaching the prosperity that everyone expected after the collapse of communism. Russian politicians were looking for someone to blame. Boris Yeltsin, eager to protect his image as a popular hero, chose Gorbachev, his longtime rival. Yeltsin commandeered Gorbachev’s newly founded think tank without telling the former president, who turned up to work one morning and found the doors of his office padlocked. The next day Yeltsin stripped him of his special government limousine and his dacha, or country home. That week I interviewed Gorbachev, who appeared genuinely hurt that after all he had done to avert violence in Russia, he was so unappreciated by his countrymen. Gorbachev had been pushed out by Yeltsin for his slow pace at reforming the Soviet Union and argued that a more gradual dismantling of the system would have resulted in less chaos. He warned that Yeltsin’s decision to unshackle the Soviet republics would result in widespread bloodshed. With Gorbachev still popular in the West, I was on the air several times a day covering the spat between the two statesmen.
It was a great break for me. But I was also getting a lesson about how petty and childish politicians can be, letting personal animosities and political expedience override all other concerns. I was astounded by the intensity of the bitter personal rivalry between these two men. Initially they had been allies in the fight against old Soviet hardliners, but in 1987 Gorbachev had insulted Yeltsin by sacking him as Moscow Communist Party boss. After Yeltsin took over the presidencyin late 1991, he took every opportunity to pick on his former superior. He especially loved to take swipes at Gorbachev’s relationship with his late wife, Raisa, expressing an old-fashioned Russian distaste for a wife’s involvement in state affairs. Yeltsin often spoke with pride about how he kept his own wife out of politics. But he didn’t always apply the same principle to his daughter, Tanya, who later played a significant role in his government.
I threw myself into work. And there was no shortage of news in Moscow to report, with one crisis emerging after another. One such story came when tanks in Moscow’s streets began firing at the Russian White House, or Parliament, in October 1993. Yeltsin was locked in a power struggle with his old Soviet-style parliament, one of the last vestiges of Soviet power and full of disgruntled communists. They were trying to thwart his reforms, so at one point he dismissed them and called for new elections. It was democracy,
à la Russe
. When Yeltsin’s vice president, Rutskoi, complained publicly that reforms weren’t delivering all that they were supposed to, Yeltsin confiscated his government car and dacha, the favorite form of official torture. When Rutskoi joined forces with the parliament in an all-out mutiny, refusing to budge until their demands were met, Yeltsin shut off the White House’s heat, then the electricity, and finally the water.
We had to cover the story in shifts, sleeping in the White House, waiting for the inevitable conclusion, knowing that an attack could come. We would prepare for our daylong turn inside as if on a camping trip. Given the amount of TV equipment we had to haul around, personal luxuries like sleeping bags and food supplies had to be minimized. As my camerawoman and I curled up on our coats, shivering one night on a bed made of two wooden chairs, we laughed at the notion that a few utilities being turned off would have any effect whatsoever on a Russian.
Yeltsin disappeared during the standoff, and I assumed he
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