‘There was No Objective Reason for Complete Disintegration of USSR in 1991,’ Shubin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 19 – By early 1991, it was obvious that the USSR could not survive in its current borders because some of the republics were committed to becoming independent countries, Aleksandr Shubin says. But at the same time, there was “no objective reason” for all 15 to leave a common country and become independent.

            Many residents and leaders in many republics wanted to do so, the senior historian at the Russian Academy of Sciences says. They wanted change but they could not imagine being independent. All that changed when the Ukrainians voted for independence on December 1, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin could see no way forward except to recognize that.

            Had the Russian leader been able to work something out with his Ukrainian counterpart, Shubin continues, it is entirely possible that the USSR under one name or another would have lasted to this day. But it would have been smaller, approximately the size of the territory the Red Army controlled throughout the Civil War (rosbalt.ru/russia/2021/12/20/1936505.html).

            Recognition of Yeltsin’s failure in this regard, the historian says, opens the way for recognition of another important fact. It was not the Leninist creation of union republics that led to the outcome of 1991. Lenin’s system froze ethnic conflicts and made the system remarkably stable and long-lasting. After all, it withstood the second world war.

            Instead, Shubin says, a major role in the demise of the USSR was played by a mechanism put in place by Stalin that had quite unexpected consequences at the end. The Soviet dictator arranged to have elections for the central organs take place before those at the level of republics “and not the other way around.”

            What that meant, he continues, is that instead of having the republics speak up for themselves, they became prisoners of what was happening in the center. And the republic that was most affected by that was the RSFSR. Had Stalin orchestrated elections in the opposite way, that would have been far less likely to happen.