Collapse Quotes

“History has never been a morality play about the inevitable victory of freedom and democracy. Instead, the world remains what it always was: an arena of struggle between idealism and power, good governance and corruption, the surge of freedom and the need to curb it in times of crisis and emergency.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“A state that could not ensure its main function, a stable currency, was bound to fall apart.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“Gorbachev said he would refuse to take the vote for Ukraine’s independence as the right to secede. Otherwise, he warned, a conflict between Ukraine and Russia could arise that would be worse than Yugoslavia. Yeltsin had “forces” in his camp who wanted to claim Crimea and Donbass for Russia.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“The British ambassador Rodric Braithwaite wrote: “Perfectly sensible Russians froth at the mouth if it is suggested that the Ukraine (from which they all trace their history) might go off on its own.” Russian-Ukrainian relations “are as combustible as those in Northern Ireland: but the consequences of an explosion would be far more serious.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“We . . . acknowledge that the USSR as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality ceases to exist. The agreement on a Commonwealth of Independent States, Minsk, 8 December 1991”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“Another article claimed that the emergence of a powerful, flourishing Ukraine next door would force Russia to bury its imperial dreams, in order to stay in Europe. Otherwise, it would have to look for its place in Asia.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“By mid-November, all US diplomatic and intelligence agencies concurred that the referendum of 1 December would confirm Ukraine’s independence. For Bush and Scowcroft, however, the vote posed a problem. Ukraine’s voters “almost certainly would vote for sovereignty,” recalled Scowcroft, “but not necessarily independent [sic] from the Soviet Union . . . What became clear to me was that Yeltsin was maneuvering so that the Ukraine would be the proximate cause of the break-up of the Soviet Union.” Should the United States therefore announce its recognition of Ukraine straightaway and thus set the final break-up of the USSR in motion? Dick Cheney and his deputies in the Pentagon proposed just that.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“For the Russians, Ukraine was like Scotland to the English, only closer. From the Russian perspective, Ukraine was filing for divorce without a settlement. This Russian mindset was bound to clash with Ukrainian nationalism and become a source of great tension and trouble for decades to come.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“A nuclear dispute between post-Soviet republics was an outlandish idea for anyone living in the Soviet Union. A few days earlier, however, a troubling incident had occurred. Vice-President Rutskoy had used the nuclear argument in his negotiations with Ukrainian government officials. He was acting as an envoy of Gazprom, to bargain on the commercial price of natural gas in pipelines that ran from Siberia to Western Europe across Ukraine. The talks quickly touched on other issues, including the future of Crimea, and grew heated. Rutskoy, no diplomat, said that Ukraine should not behave so stubbornly “with a nuclear power.” The Ukrainian negotiators responded that their republic also had nuclear weapons and would defend its borders by all means available. Newspapers wrote about the threat of “a Russian nuclear strike against Ukraine.” Yeltsin was forced to provide explanations.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“The licenses and quotas on the export of oil, gas, and other raw materials—a hugely profitable business for Soviet government officials and select enterprises—would now be sold at auction.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“The logic of economic reform, the struggle for Soviet assets, the realities of power and state-building pushed the Yeltsin government to get rid of Gorbachev. Other factors, above all economic interdependence and the fear of an uncontrollable break-up, and the need for recognition and legitimacy from the United States and Western Europe, forced Yeltsin to keep the Union afloat.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“The naval base of Sevastopol was widely considered by Russians to be the city of Russian glory since the Crimean War of 1854–55. It happened to be inside the Ukrainian SSR, after Crimea was transferred to the republic under Nikita Khrushchev. The city’s population, however, passionately believed in their Russian identity.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“The countries of Eastern Europe, Shakhnazarov said, had already begun to make approaches to NATO. Ukraine might do the same. “If this happens,” he continued, then we “would get [NATO] on our borders.” And what about Crimea? Would this peninsula, so integral to Russian national identity, become foreign territory?4 Burbulis replied that all this could be resolved by skillful diplomacy.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“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.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“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.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“Popov, the head of Moscow’s City Council, took the floor. He did not believe that Russian Solidarity was a good option: 1991 would be the year of “catastrophe equal to a war or the Great Depression.” Soviet national income would fall by 10 or 20 percent, he said. Angry and unemployed masses would yearn for an authoritarian leader, he claimed: in America they had found Roosevelt, in Germany—Hitler.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“On 19–20 June, the Chancellor’s office invited the deputy head of the Soviet government, Stepan Sitaryan, to come to Berlin to negotiate the financial aspects of a future German settlement. On 25 June, the West German government signed a formal agreement on financial assistance to Soviet troops. Soviet officers would exchange their savings for Deutschmarks, one to one; Soviet forces in the GDR after 1 July would be largely funded from the West German budget.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“In August, Baltic nationalists decided to mobilize a massive protest on the fiftieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact. Acting on the initiative of Estonia’s Edgar Savisaar, on 23 August they staged a gigantic human chain that stretched all the way from Tallinn to Vilnius, some 600 kilometers. The media called it the “Baltic Way.” The popular mood among the Balts was to break away from the Soviet Union as soon as possible.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“After returning from his American trip, while speaking to journalists and his MDG colleagues, Yeltsin regaled them with details of his supermarket visit. He waxed lyrical about the “madness of colors, boxes, packs, sausages, cheeses,” and rhapsodized that the average American family spent one-tenth or less of their salaries on food, while a Soviet family spent over half of their salaries on food, and more. Yeltsin decided that his mission now was to bring the “American dream” to the Russian people.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“The United States was the first country that Yeltsin had ever visited outside the Soviet Union on his own rather than as part of an official Soviet delegation. He was feted and dined by wealthy Americans, flown by private jets, and stayed in the houses of American millionaires. Although he expected the lifestyle of the super-rich to be a never-ending feast, the real shock for him was his impromptu visit to Randalls discount supermarket, on the way to Houston Airport.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“For first-time Soviet travelers to the West a visit to a supermarket produced the biggest effect. The contrast between half-empty, gloomy Soviet food stores and glittering Western palaces with an abundant selection of food was mind-boggling. Not a single Soviet visitor was prepared for the sight of pyramids of oranges, pineapples, tomatoes, bananas; endless varieties of fresh fish and meat, in lieu of a butcher cutting chunks from bluish hulks from a freezer; efficient cashiers with a smiling attitude, instead of rude saleswomen doling out greasy cans and jars to a long line of desperately hungry customers. And then actually to be allowed to touch, to smell, to savor! A severe aftershock awaited Soviet visitors upon their subsequent return to the Soviet Union, and to scenes of misery. This experience changed Soviet travelers forever. Western standards, unimaginable before, immediately became the new norm. Soviet realities, part of everyday habit, suddenly became “abnormal” and therefore revolting, unbearable.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“The success of authoritarian reforms in China, they argue, was a unique case and could not be repeated under Soviet conditions.55 China, although in many ways a communist clone of the USSR, had fundamentally different starting conditions for reforms. Gorbachev could not release the energy of the peasantry in the way Deng did: Soviet agriculture, no more than 20 percent of the total workforce, had long been a state-subsidized business. China could leave its old industries, 15 percent of the total economy, alone, while creating a new market industrial sector. The Soviet economy was industrialized to an absurd extent, and its mono-industrial cities had no chance of surviving under market conditions. China’s economy tapped into peasants’ savings and foreign investments. The Soviet budget was overloaded by a safety net of 100 billion rubles paid as pensions and social benefits to Soviet citizens, as well as subsidies to external clients and internal republics. Moscow was losing billions of rubles because of oil prices and ill-fated economic decentralization.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“There was no political will or imagination among Western leaders to seize the unprecedented and historic opportunity to consolidate democracy in Russia. The widespread view was that the post-Soviet space was too huge and unpredictable for integration within the Western orbit. It was more realistic and pragmatic to pick the low-hanging fruits of the Cold War victory, above all in Eastern Europe and the Baltics.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“Yeltsin had spent years battling with lack of food supplies in his Sverdlovsk region. His greatest achievement had been to establish a system of poultry farms near Sverdlovsk that supplemented the meagre diet of workers in the industrial plants and factories. Randalls supermarket amazed him. This was an average place where the poorest American could buy what even the top Soviet nomenklatura could not back home.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“Gorbachev proposed a new world order based not on ideology, but on the “all-human interests” of cooperation and integration. This was a rejection of the Cold War order based on antagonism between the USSR and the USA and their respective allies.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“Many threads in the analysis of the Soviet collapse overlapped and created a widespread feeling of doom—with the result that ultimately the event became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet for a historian, this collapse presents a puzzle that does not quite click together. This puzzle became the main subject of this book. Gorbachev lies at the center of this puzzle.”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

“instead of billions of investments into the post-Soviet space and more jobs for Americans, as President Bush had proposed in his Russia package of 1992, hundreds of billions went into China, and many American workers lost their jobs”
― Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union