Kremlin, Moscow. The ceremony in which Mikhail Gorbachev signs the dissolution of the Soviet Union takes place in a Kremlin television office, set up as if it were Gorbachev’s office. It is crowded with 27 American journalists, in addition to Russian ones. The Russian marker Gorbachev tries to use to sign doesn’t work, so he asks CNN president Tim Johnson, who is standing nearby, for a pen. It is a Mont Blanc ballpoint pen. Thus ends the USSR: in a fake office, crowded with American journalists, and with a signature made with a pen born of the most blatant Western consumerism.
