Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

by Vladislav M. Zubok

was Raisa. When the BBC began to report on the race of the two planes to Crimea, Raisa convinced herself that the plotters were coming to get rid of witnesses, including her whole family. She collapsed into the arms of her daughter Irina and son-in-law Anatoly. It was a massive hypertension attack. Unfortunately for Gorbachev, he would lose his beloved wife eight years later; her terminal illness was caused by the shock of 21 August. The Soviet President was determined to get rid of the plotters.112 After assisting his wife into

Gorbachev returned to his wife, who remained in bed, to tell her about his actions: “I will not receive Kryuchkov, Baklanov, and Yazov at all. There is nothing to talk with them about now.” He had made up his mind. He would embrace the Russian government and try to outperform Yeltsin on his own territory. Meanwhile, the “Russian” plane landed at Belbek after

circling for an hour over Crimea.

Vladimir Lukin in Yeltsin’s entourage strongly believed that the borders of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan “were the products of the Bolsheviks’ cynical manipulation of nationalism in order to construct their totalitarian empire.” Internationally monitored referendums, Lukin argued, should be called to allow these areas to decide whether they wanted

to become part of a new democratic Russia or stay as they were. The territories in question were Crimea and the Donbass region.56 At a round-table discussion in Moscow, Alexander Tsypko, a political scientist with Ukrainian roots, argued that this declaration could lead to a war with the two Slavic republics. It would be, he warned, worse than the conflict between Serbia and Croatia in the collapsing Yugoslavia. The only way to keep the peace would be to recognize the current borders of Ukraine. Lukin objected: “And what would remain [of Russia] after everybody took what they considered necessary?” He rejected the analogy with Yugoslavia. The Soviet Army was still under Moscow’s control. Yeltsin should quietly, but firmly, use economic pressure to force Ukraine to return Crimea, where the majority of the population were ethnic Russians. The Ukrainian leaders, he concluded, “would have enough brains to understand that they cannot operate without Russia.”

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.

Voshchanov did the same, when he held a press conference. A Ukrainian journalist accused Yeltsin and the Russian leadership of clinging to communist-imperialist legacy. Voshchanov replied that Ukrainian nationalists regarded this “legacy” highly selectively: “You don’t want to live with Russia in a union? This is a communist legacy for you? Then go, but return Crimea and Donbass to us! Because they became part of Ukraine due to the ‘communist legacy’! You received them from Nikita Khrushchev with the approval of the CC CPSU Presidium.”

The next day, Kravchuk called Yeltsin to protest. Hadn’t they both agreed in November 1990 on the territorial integrity of the two republics? Yeltsin prevaricated. He denied he had authorized the declaration, arguing only that there could be a problem with having borders between Russia and Ukraine in the future, should the Union fall apart. Kravchuk agreed, but urged Yeltsin to solve this problem when it arose, “in a civilized manner.”61 Yeltsin’s waffling was a reaction to the political storm that the declaration triggered in the West and among Russian democrats. Western ambassadors were telephoning him to express their concerns. Journalists besieged Yeltsin’s office with enquiries: Had Yeltsin changed his colors? Would Russia go to war with Ukraine over Crimea? In Moscow, the Independent Gazette published an op-ed piece whose author compared Yeltsin’s territorial revisionism to Hitler’s claims on the Sudetenland in 1938.62

Kravchuk and Rutskoy signed a Russian-Ukrainian agreement. They confirmed that the Ukrainian-Russian treaty of

November 1990 remained the basis for all present and future negotiations.

Crimea remained the bone of contention. Russia had already ceded Soviet ports and bases on the Baltic Sea to the Balts; Ukrainian secession would mean that the Russian state would lose nineteen out of twenty-two ports on the Black Sea. The feeling that the Russian-Ukrainian accord was unfair would become the main source of conflict for years to come.64

The historian Serhii Plokhy has observed: “Kravchuk decided that his best strategy was to campaign not for himself but for Ukrainian independence.”

The myth of Ukraine as “an economic superpower and breadbasket of Europe” that was feeding Russia and other republics, writes Serhii Plokhy, was “ingrained in the minds of the country’s inhabitants.”118 The recognition of the United States, the most powerful and wealthiest country in the world, meant that a separate Ukraine would flourish, not perish. This myth would soon be painfully dashed. Ukraine’s economy would tank, not soar. And US recognition would not be matched by financial generosity or investments.

Later, in 1992, the former leader Gorbachev would write that US recognition of an independent Ukraine tipped the delicate balance against the Union Treaty.

Leonid Kravchuk later claimed that Ukraine’s referendum became the last push that led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. “Ukraine should take credit for it.”1 The evidence contradicts this claim. The Ukrainian referendum was a reflection of the Soviet collapse, not its cause.

Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). The role of Ukraine in the demise of the USSR is overstated in Serhii Plokhy, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (New York: Basic Books, 2014).