ON THE EVENING OF THE SAME DAY, August 23, George Bush and Brent Scowcroft were watching a televised relay of Gorbachev’s meeting with the Russian deputies and Yeltsin’s humiliation of his rival. “It’s all over,” was Scowcroft’s comment. Gorbachev, he told the president, was “not an independent actor anymore. Yeltsin is telling him what to do. I do not think Gorbachev understands what’s happened.” George Bush agreed:
