The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

by Serhii Plokhy

But not everyone in Moscow applauded Yeltsin and Voshchanov. On the day after the publication of Voshchanov’s statement, seven prominent democratic figures led by Yurii Afanasiev and Elena Bonner, whose anticoup credentials were beyond reproach, signed an appeal titled “We Welcome the Fall of the Empire.” They acknowledged that the leadership of some republics leaving the Union was dominated by communists who had supported the coup and were prone to oppress their own people, but this was to be resisted by coordinated action with other democratic powers, not by restoring the empire. “Most dangerous of all,” wrote Afanasiev, Bonner, and their colleagues, “are statements about possible territorial or property claims by Russia on neighboring republics in the event of the dissolution of the USSR.”