Those who Orchestrated Disintegration of USSR Now Deny It; Those who Opposed It Now Take Credit

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 8 – A generation after the USSR fell apart, those who caused that to happen and even orchestrated its final days – committed communists all – deny they played any role in those events and instead blame it on others (newizv.ru/article/general/08-12-2019/provaly-v-pamyati-kommunisty-sami-razvalili-sssr-a-teper-zhaluyutsya).

            This act of denial has had its effect, Russian historian Sergey Baymukhametov says. If you ask passersby in the streets of Russian cities “Who destroyed the USSR? 80 or even 90 percent will respond: ‘Gorbachev! The Democrats! Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich. In addition, 23 percent begin there was ‘a conspiracy of foreign forces hostile to the USSR.” 

            In March 1991, 76 percent of Soviet citizens voted “for the preservation of ‘a renewed USSR,’” but in August, the coup plotters effectively put any “reformed” USSR on the way to disintegration, the historian says. And “who were the members of [the body that carried out the coup]?” Committed communists all.

            And who voted for the resolutions in the republics that had the effect of destroying the central government and thus the Soviet Union? In the case of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet, 86 percent of the deputies were members of the CPSU. And elsewhere the situation was mostly much the same.

            But for 30 years, Baymukhametov says, “the communists everywhere and always assert that they were and are for the Soviet Union, that the democrats and ‘western agents of influence’ destroyed the USSR.”  They’ve managed to convince others and perhaps even themselves but only by suppressing memories of the truth.

            At the same time and as discussions on two popular Russian telegram channels, Nezygar and Shadow Policy, make clea,r Russia’s communists are not the only ones who have problems with how they remember the events of 1991. Some Western leaders who opposed the demise of the USSR until almost the very end have subsequently taken credit for that outcome.

            A survey of these discussions by Kazan’s Business-Gazeta makes that clear (business-gazeta.ru/article/449129).  They show, the online paper says, that “at the beginning of the 1990s, Washington faced a choice in its strategy regarding the future fate of the USSR” between those who favored a confederation and those who favored its disintegration into the republics.

            Despite what many in Russia and elsewhere now think, the US government was hardly united in wanting the Soviet Union to come apart. “The State Department, military analysts and the experts they used considered it important to keep as far from Yeltsin as possible.” And their views were supported by the Bush Administration at the top.

            But opposed to them and arguing for giving support to Yeltsin and the republics were CIA analysts and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.  Cheney and his allies “predicted that a radical geopolitical innovation in the form of the disintegration of the USSR would help not simply to weaken Moscow but create the basis for creating an alliance to restrain China.”

            Many others, however, were “absolutely against the disappearance of Russia, viewing it as a regional power which could be used in the Game. The State Department, the apparatus of the national security advisor and President Bush himself also did not share the view that there could be stable micro-states on the territory of the former USSR.”

            Major American oil companies were also against the disintegration of the USSR, the telegram channels say. They believed that they had already gotten what they needed from Gorbachev and that any change could unsettle their situation. According to these channels, “analysts at the State Department asserted that “the presence of a confederal USSR would be more promising and useful.”

            The State Department reportedly believed that helping the USSR move to a confederation rather than allowing it to disintegrate would promote stability and make Moscow a more reliable and even controllable partner. [That was not a universal view at the Department at that time. See Eric Rubin, “A Time of Hope and Optimism,” Foreign Service Journal 96:9 (November 2019): 24-29 available online at afsa.org/time-hope-and-optimism.]

            Bush’s plan, the telegram channels continue, was to promote “the legitimate transformation of the USSR” by relying on the Soviet elite and rejecting the radicals. Cheney and the CIA, they say, wanted exactly the opposite, the destruction of the Soviet Union and the rise of Yeltsin and the leaders of the national republics.

            Bush’s prohibition on anything that would promote that otrcome, the telegram channels say, “did not stop Secretary of Defense Cheney and the leadership of the CIA.” But the White House continued to support Gorbachev and the center, even warning him of the threat of a coup, a warning the Soviet president ignored.

            When the coup began, the channels say, “Bush did not know how to react. More than that, the US president was prepared to support Yanayev since he saw in him a supporter of reform and of the fulfillment of international obligations.” But because of the tectonic shift from the coup, Bush “was forced de facto to recognize Yeltsin whom he had opposed for a long time.”

            In short, Washington’s attitude toward the demise of the USSR was far more complicated that many infected by triumphalism and a desire to be on the right side of history have suggested. Along with the communist denial of any role, that more complex one in the US should be recalled as well.