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END OF THE SOVIET UNION

END OF THE SOVIET UNION; On Moscow's Streets, Worry and Regret

END OF THE SOVIET UNION; On Moscow's Streets, Worry and Regret
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December 26, 1991, Section A, Page 13Buy Reprints
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When Aleksandr Ivanovich left his post guarding Red Square to go to dinner tonight, the bright red flag of the Soviet Union was fluttering above the Kremlin wall. When the militiaman returned to duty outside the Lenin Mausoleum he looked up and saw the white-blue-and-red striped flag of of the new Russia, whipping in the wind as if there had never been a Bolshevik Revolution.

"It was a good surprise," said the young officer wearing a fur cap and long gray greatcoat in the cold center of what had been the symbolic heart of the Soviet Union until a few minutes before. The militiaman, who identified himself with his first name and that of his father in the Russian style, declining to give his family name, said he had not seen Mikhail S. Gorbachev resign as Soviet President on television.

He was asked what might happen next in these days of momentous change. "History will show," he said, walking briskly toward the Mausoleum. There small knots of people were looking up at the Russian flag, some asking if the five huge ruby-red stars on the towers would come down next.

Mr. Gorbachev finished speaking at 7:12 P.M.; the Soviet flag was lowered at 7:32. Then at 7:45 the Russian flag was hoisted to fly above the illuminated dome of the Council of Ministers building, and the chimes on the Kremlin's Spassky Tower clock rang for several minutes. Unlike the clock bell, which sounds every 15 minutes, the chimes are heard only rarely to mark profound events.

Several dozen people were in the huge square, but most said they had just happened through on the way home from shopping or other errands, that they had no idea they would be witnessing the ringing in of a new era. There was no cheering of the flag and no hooting either, said people gathered in different parts of the square. No one had heard anyone say long live anything or down with anything.

Most of the people on the square appeared to know Mr. Gorbachev had resigned and had turned over power to President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia. A few held and waved simple red flags without the old hammer-and-sickle insignia. And here and there lively though not rancorous discussions broke out on the cold cobblestones.

If there were overriding themes among the conversationalists, they dealt with uncertainty over the fate of Russia and Mr. Yeltsin and grim regret that the Soviet Union, which they had been taught was the greatest state in history, had failed.

"Its values were our values," said a woman who would only identify herself as Larisa Nikolaevna, a 30-year-old teacher of handicapped children. "I am sorry for the Soviet Union. I am sad. I am sorry a great country is falling apart before my eyes." As microphones were thrust in her face, she laughed nervously. Someone asked why she was laughing if she was so sad. "It is laughter through tears," she said.

Some collective farmers from Bryansk looked glum. "His time was up," Dmitri Stepanovich said of Mr. Gorbachev. "He did many good things. The flag? It's a pity."

"It is now our flag, so let it stand," said a middle-aged woman named Lyudmila from Siberia, referring to the new tricolor. "It was better before. The greater numbers we had, we were stronger together. He destroyed the country," she said of the former President, "so now it's up to Yeltsin to stand up for himself."

A 23-year-old off-duty policeman, Andrei Karezn, said he had just been reading about the consolidation of the Russian empire. Now the country was disintegrating, he said. "I don't trust anybody," he said, adding that this included Mr. Yeltsin.

Visitors from Ukraine, Vasily and Aleksandra Taramenko, both over 50, said they were happy their country had left the Soviet Union and joined the Commonwealth of Independent States. "Gorbachev began well, finished badly," she said, but added that the transfer of power was "very normal and according to the law."

Away from the square, some hours earlier Nadia Avenarius, a language teacher, stared for a moment at the television screen in a central Moscow apartment on which she had just watched Mr. Gorbachev make his farewell comments before she summed up her feelings. "I am very sad. I liked Gorbachev from the very beginning. But from the beginning he didn't know the life of the people. He didn't understand the Soviet people are not well educated. They are like slaves, growing up in a corrupt society. First, he should have thought about the improvement of daily life. Second, about glasnost and democracy. But he did it vice versa. Now I am a little nervous. I am thinking about civil war all the time. I am not satisfied with Yeltsin. I was really in love with Gorbachev."

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 13 of the National edition with the headline: END OF THE SOVIET UNION; On Moscow's Streets, Worry and Regret. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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