How the Soviet Union Fell Apart
by Richard Pipes
August 27, 1998
What should we make of Boris Yeltsin's latest bizarre action? Dmitry
Trenin analyzes in Crossing the Swamp.
In his 7/16 article, Russia Rescued from Financial Crash, Richard Pipes
assesses the IMF bailout of Russia.
When in December 1991 the heads of Russia, Belorussia and the Ukraine,
meeting privately in a Belorussian forest, announced the dissolution of
the Soviet Union, the news seemed so incredible that they immediately
gave rise to a host of legends.
One myth, popular in Russia, held that the event was a conspiracy
hatched by the CIA. Another, spread both in Russian and abroad, claimed
that Yeltsin along with his Ukrainian and Belorussian colleagues were in
a drunken stupor when they signed the declaration: Yeltsin was said to
have fallen off his chair during the negotiations and lain prostrate on
the floor.
Setting the record straight-
Shushkevich: Putting
the rumors to rest
These stories have now been put to rest by then-chairman of the
Belorussian Supreme Soviet, S. Shushkevich, in a May 1998 interview with
the Polish Daily, Rzeczpospolita (The Republic). Shushkevich, who
represented his country on this occasion, says that the action of the
three heads of state was the result neither of a foreign plot nor of
alcohol. It was rather a deliberate move to confront the inevitable and
to make the transition to a new political regime as painless as
possible.
The Soviet Union was in the 1920s by the forceful annexation to Soviet
Russia of a number of independent republics located along Russia's
borders. Although a highly centralized state directed by the Communist
apparatus from Moscow, it was given the appearance of a voluntary
federation that any member state could leave at will. The union held as
long as the Communist Party remained united.
But the reforms of Gorbachev, carried out after 1985, quickly threw it
into confusion. The instant the politicians of the non-Russian republics
felt the center wobbling, they began to clamor for their national
rights. Thus, Georgia declared its independence in April 1991;
Azerbaijan and the three Baltic republics followed suit that August. In
the Ukraine, the largest and most important of the non-Russian
republics, with over 90% of the population -- including the 12 million
Russians residing there -- voted for separation and sovereignty.
These declarations and referenda could have been dismissed as
meaningless gestures. Apparently this was the opinion of American
diplomats who had advised President Bush, on his visit to Kiev in August
1991, to urge the Ukrainian to remain in the Union. But under communism,
where symbols meant more than reality, they signified that the Soviet
Union was falling apart, that it existed only on paper.
The conclusion, according to Shushkevich, was drawn by the heads of
state of the three Slavic republics. The question they faced was how to
clothe the new reality in a form that would make possible a peaceful
transition and avoid the kind of civil war that tore apart the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia after its dissolution in the summer of 1991. In
October, Gorbachev proposed a confederate plan. In theory, a confederate
is a looser arrangement than a federation, but on closer inspection his
proposed state turned out to differ from the old Soviet Union only in
name.
Taken to a logical conclusion
At this point, Yeltsin accepted the invitation of Shuskevich to meet in
the privacy of a national park in Belorussia to settle the issue. They
invited the president of the Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, but deliberately
kept out Gorbachev. The trio proceeded on the assumption that the Soviet
Union was dead. After intense discussions among themselves and with
their legal experts, they agreed to declare the Soviet Union formally
dissolved and to grant each of its constituent republics full
sovereignty. The alternative, in their view, was to maintain the fiction
of unity by resorting to force that would inevitably lead to massive
bloodshed.
These revelations are significant not only because they set straight the
historic record. They indicate that the dissolution of the Soviet Union
had become unavoidable and that when the Russian parliament, the Duma,
votes to annul the December 1991 decision, it is acting in a totally
irresponsible manner. The same holds true of the Russian military and
other imperialists who dream of re-imposing Moscow's rule on the
separated borderlands. Russia has lost its empire not from foreign
conspiracy or drunkenness of its leader, but from the force of political
reality. Hence, there is no way this process can be reversed.
Richard Pipes is a professor of history and has previously served as
director of Russian studies at Harvard University. He is a contributing
editor of IntellectualCapital.com. |
