Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

by Vladislav M. Zubok

Gennady Burbulis continued to claim even many years later that the declaration to the Ukrainians was the work of Yeltsin’s press secretary, Voshchanov. Burbulis’s mother came from Luhansk, Donbass, and his son was born in Kiev. He could not imagine Ukraine and Russia as being separate, but he rejected Solzhenitsyn’s ethno-nationalism.58 Voshchanov later recalled the motivation of his boss: “Yeltsin of course did not have any political desire to hold onto the Union at any cost.” At the same time, Yeltsin was offended by the Ukrainian Act. He had been supporting Ukrainian independence all along, yet he convinced himself that this would assist a rapprochement between Russians and Ukrainians. Instead, Kravchuk and the Ukrainian communists had tricked him, and decided to separate themselves from a democratic Russia, while taking Russian-speaking Crimea as well. Yeltsin decided to send a strong signal to Kiev. When Voshchanov finished his draft, he called Yeltsin, who was on his way to the Latvian resort of Jurmala, and read the text over the phone. “Fine,” Yeltsin said. “Send it to the press.”59 Vice-President Rutskoy as well as the mayor of Leningrad, Anatoly Sobchak, and Gavriil Popov, mayor of Moscow, welcomed the declaration. In a televised interview, Popov mentioned not only Crimea but also some areas on the left side of the Dnieper and Odessa as disputed territories.