1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

MILLER: They sided with the people. People were stuffing flowers down the gun barrels.
These were 18-year-old kids and their parents who were in front of the gun barrels and
tanks.
Q: It was during this short time of ...
MILLER: This is very interesting, because the heads of battalions that were guarding
Moscow at the time, this I recall, these guards who headed the major tank divisions, were
well known to the legislators. The legislators and Yeltsin's group got to them. The
overwhelming view that Yeltsin had a right to govern was maintained and the experiment
of an independent Russia was preferred, in the absence of a coherent Soviet Union on the
part of Gorbachev. He hadn't presented a coherent alternative vision.
Q: It never resolved his dilemma of being a Soviet man in this new ...
MILLER: Yes, right. And, again, I return to Sakharov. Sakharov could have given
Gorbachev the formulation. It's was tragic for Gorbachev.
Q: What did you do personally during the three or four days when Yeltsin was besieged,
when the coup was going on?
MILLER: Well, I was receiving reports from the parliament. You remember they were
besieged, and the “White House” was communicating by telephone, almost minute to
minute to strategic places all over the world not to mention Moscow. I have messages
tucked away, files of those, mostly from Sergei Kovalev, who was Chairman of the
Supreme Soviet Human Rights Committee. He and his office kept us informed minute by
minute of what was happening inside the besieged White House.
Q: By the way, I'm not sure where she fits in, or if she does, but Susan Eisenhower, was
she involved with your group or not?
MILLER: Yes, she was.
Q: Could you talk a little about her, because it's interesting that we have Susan
Eisenhower over there, and eventually we ended up with Khrushchev's son in the United
States. It got kind of mixed up.
MILLER: Well, yes. Susan, was also a board member, with the name of a very
distinguished American family, was a great help. She was very interested in what was
happening, learned much and was a positive force. She fell in love with a fellow
International Foundation board member, Roald Sagdeev, the head of the Soviet space
program. They carried on a romance in the middle of all of this and got married. He came
with her back to the United States. He's here at the University of Maryland at this point.
She was a good reporter to her circles of friends about what was going on. She's a good
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