On the following day, Gorbachev’s aide Anatolii Cherniaev noted in his diary, “Yesterday was the day of the Alma-Ata slaughter. A turning point, evidently, comparable to October 25, 1917, and with equally undetermined consequences.” Cherniaev was referring to the Bolshevik takeover in St. Petersburg seventy-four years earlier—an event that had changed the fate of his country and the history of the world. He and his boss, Mikhail Gorbachev, were about to enter the final, and probably the most dramatic, if not tragic, stage of their political careers.
