Yelena Biberman:
I'm Yelena Biberman.
Zach Troyanovsky:
And I'm Zach Troyanovsky.
Yelena Biberman:
Welcome to episode three of How to Kill a Superpower: Lessons from USSR. In this episode, we deep dive into the moment the USSR dissolved. We explore the theme of spontaneity.
Zach Troyanovsky:
They met with the goal of working out a sticky trade issue, but they ended up creating an entirely new government and changing the world forever. I'm of course talking about the Mount Vernon Conference of 1785.
Yelena Biberman:
Of course.
Zach Troyanovsky:
At Mount Vernon, representatives from Maryland and Virginia met with the goal of discussing their rights to the Potomac River. The success of this meeting led James Madison to push for more interstate trade meetings. Within two years, the Philadelphia Convention. Its official purpose was to revise the Articles of Confederation, but out of it came the American Constitution. Leaders like Madison and Hamilton pushed to scrap the old system in favor of a new one.
Yelena Biberman:
This story is eerily similar to the story of Belavezha, though, of course, things happened much more quickly at Belavezha. To paraphrase Lenin, "There are decades where nothing happens, but there is also weekends when decades happen."
Zach Troyanovsky:
Well, the pace of Belavezha is nearly impossible to match. As political scientist Mark Basinger puts it, "History thickened during that time period." Things happened shockingly quickly, over one weekend. Even the organizers were left speechless. In one account, the historian Serhii Plokhy, the Belarusian delegation had to step out at some point to figure out what in the world was going on. I mean, they couldn't believe it. They organized the meeting with a specific and limited goal in mind: to get Russia's oil and gas to get through the winter. They invited the Ukrainians, merely out of courtesy, or as Shushkevich put it at Harvard's Davis Center event marking the 25th anniversary of Belavezha, "Because he was a romantic, and didn't want Ukraine to not get any of Russia's energy."
Yelena Biberman:
Oh, that's very romantic of him. What I find fascinating about how the U.S. started and how the USSR ended is the role of spontaneity. Although each of the characters had preferences and plans, it seems like something inside them, some inner impulse played a big role in their decision-making. Have you ever had a moment like that? A moment in which something seemingly happened out of nowhere, something that changes your life forever?
Zach Troyanovsky:
I guess this makes me sound like a bit of a boring person, but no, not really. I'm not a really spontaneous person, I guess. I can't think of anything. What about you?
Yelena Biberman:
Okay. So the thing that comes to mind is how we ended up sort of being selected for refugee status. So my family and I, we had to travel from Belarus to Moscow, to the U.S. embassy in Moscow. And there, we would be interviewed by American officials and they would determine whether or not we qualify for refugee status. So we arrive at the embassy, I remember it very clear...I remember standing in line at that embassy, which is remarkable because many years later I came back and I delivered the lecture there. And it was such a surreal experience to give a talk at an embassy where I once stood in long line nervously, but in any case, so there we were at this embassy. The children were told to stay back, and then the adults were let in the room. One thing that you should know is that all of my family members wanted to go to U.S. except one, my father, he did not want to leave.
He thought he had a good life. So there my family was in the room and the American officials said, "Okay, we're just going to ask one person. So we're going to just talk to one person about why you guys want to leave." He said, "Okay, I'm not going to ask my grandfather because he was a member of the communist party." My grandmother, wasn't a hundred percent Jewish genetically, so for some reason she didn't qualify. I forgot why my mother wasn't asked, but they went, "Okay, my father, why do you think you wouldn't leave?" My family remembers it as it was like, "Oh my God, scared. What is he going to say? He doesn't want to leave." But, oh my God, luckily, serendipitously, my father had just lost his job. So he said, "You know what? I lost my job." And that was enough. The embassy official is like, "Oh, wow, this is real serious stuff." And thank God we got a refugee status.
Zach Troyanovsky:
Wow. Yeah. It's probably one of the few times that the story is recalled with luckily my father just lost his job.
Yelena Biberman:
I know. There's one story of spontaneity that's always struck a chord with me. It's a story reporter Gal Beckerman tells in his book about Soviet refugees like my family. So it's a story of a military factory worker. The year was 1967 and Israel had just unexpectedly defeated four countries in less than a week. The Soviet worker in question was sitting at a factory wide meeting listening to lecture delivered by a local army officer. This was a typical propaganda meeting. The officer was vilifying Israel as usual, but suddenly something inside the worker snapped.
He stood and asked to speak. In a move that was sure to end life as he knew it, the worker began asking how he was expected to continue working in a factory that made arms to those who threaten Jews when he, himself, whether he wanted to or not, was a Jew. Beckerman writes that this factory worker quote, "Knew little about what it meant to be a Jew and even less about Israel, which he imagined to be a vast desert filled with camels. But there he was becoming a marked man for doing something that even shocked himself. He was not the only Jew in the audience. Almost half of the factory's engineers were Jewish, but spontaneity got the better of him."
Zach Troyanovsky:
Why do you think the story strikes such a chord with you?
Yelena Biberman:
It's a reminder to me that there's always something inside us waiting for its moment. When the moment comes, we can surprise even ourselves in a good or in a bad way. I like the idea that we can always surprise ourselves. It's a scary idea, but it's also an exciting one.
Zach Troyanovsky:
Well, so for Yeltsin, Shushkevich, and Kravchuk, that moment came when Gennady Burbulis, Yeltsin's deputy, posed the question: would you agree to sign a sentence which would state at the Soviet Union, as the subject of international law, ceases to exist?
Yelena Biberman:
You know, imagine being asked, "Hey guys, you want to dissolve the Soviet Union?" Okay. So I wonder why he did it. Was it an act of spontaneity, right? He didn't stand to gain all that much from this dissolution, certainly not as much as Yeltsin. And it wasn't Yeltsin who asked this question, neither was Kravchuk or Shushkevich. The conversation had been steered towards serious topics, but Burbulis took a big leap when he asked this more fundamental question. In my conversation with Nargis Kassenova, a senior fellow at the Davis Center, she told me in her experiences with Burbulis, he often came across as more of a "philosopher" than a politician. But what does that mean?
Zach Troyanovsky:
Well, so in my brief stint, as a member of Steve Morris philosophy club, I noticed that philosophical discussions often structured themselves around expand in sets of questions and they take things to their logical conclusions. So the question of whether the USSR should just be dissolved was perhaps the logical conclusion of the conversation they'd been having that whole night.
Yelena Biberman:
That that makes a lot of sense. It seems that Shushkevich was the first to say yes. Later, he publicly even lamented over and over that he wished he was the one to ask this question. It was an obvious one, he said, in hindsight. In his memoir, Shushkevich wrote that he "understood the gist Burbulis' proposal instantly and liked it immediately. He says that he "felt uncomfortable that he did not think much of Burbulis before." At the Davis Center event we mentioned, Shushkevich admitted that he is a physicist, and as a mathematician was never fond of philosophy, especially Marxism, Leninism. So he wasn't particularly fond of philosophers, but in that moment, he gained profound respect for the Marxist-Leninist philosopher Burbulis. He explains in his memoir that he "did not want to wait until someone else stated their opinion and would just say dryly, 'I would sign.'" In my interview with Shushkevich, he told me that he was actually quite envious of Burbulis to be the first one to ask this question and that he wishes that he was the one to ask this first, to go down in history for this moment,
Zach Troyanovsky:
Just as something inside Burbulis called on him to pose the questions, something inside Shushkevich, Yeltsin, and Kravchuk was holding them back. But once the question was posed, there was no more holding back. It seems that Shushkevich was the first to say yes, but he also assumed that everyone else was going to answer yes immediately, and didn't want them to beat him to it. At that same Davis Center event, Shushkevich noted that the next important thing after they had read the sign was said by Yeltsin, "We will take over the international responsibilities of the Soviet Union. We are civilized people. We will look after the nuclear weapons."
Yelena Biberman:
So this is an important moment where spontaneity played a big role. Maybe without it, the USSR would not have dissolved, at least not that weekend. It would have been hard to get the three leaders together again in a way that would have given them that much privacy. And so the USSR would have potentially held on for awhile. But it's not the only moment when things could have turned out very differently. Let's talk about Yeltsin and his late arrival to dinner.
Zach Troyanovsky:
The seating at the dinner table played a big role in shaping the interactions between these three leaders and their negotiations. Yeltsin arrived late and took the only seat available. That seat was across from Kravchuk.
Yelena Biberman:
I wonder why nobody wanted to sit there.
Zach Troyanovsky:
Well, so this accidental arrangement, like the Shushkevich and Yeltsin conversation that took place while looking for Gorbachev, gave Yeltsin the opportunity, immediately, to present the Ukrainian leader with Gorbachev's revised treaty. Kravchuk, of course, immediately said no, but this got it out of the way quickly. It opened up the space to talk about other things. If they had been seated more distantly, Yeltsin would have had to wait, and then their negotiations could have gone differently, or at least at a different pace. The seating position also made it so Yeltsin and Kravchuk became the focal points of the negotiations, rather than Shushkevich or any of the other Belarusians. This made it easier for the conversation to drift away from the topic of gas and oil and towards the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Yelena Biberman:
What if Yeltsin had sat across from Shushkevich?
Zach Troyanovsky:
So the conversation that first night would have likely centered on Belarusian interests, as was Shushkevich's plan. Burbulis' question may not have been posed, or at least it may have been posed late enough in the evening that the participants would be too tired or drunk to engage with it.
Yelena Biberman:
Here's another one. What if Shushkevich sat across from Kravchuk?
Zach Troyanovsky:
Well, so we've spoken about Kravchuk's big personality before. In fact, at the 25th anniversary Atlanta council discussion, Kravchuk noted that he was expecting to take big steps at this meeting. Who's to say he wouldn't have steered the conversation towards the solution regardless? Kravchuk spent this entire weekend making shows of independent behavior, going hunting alone before Yeltsin arrived, drafting the treaty himself, et cetera. But this independence he was boasting about was the independence from the Soviet Union that Ukraine had voted on earlier that week. It was independence from the USSR and from central planning from Russia. If Kravchuk was seated across from a calm, well-managed Shushkevich, instead of a larger than life and perpetually inebriated Yeltsin, this behavior may have been more muted. Let's talk about the third moment in which spontaneity may have played a role.
This is during the phone calls placed immediately after the signing ceremony on December 8th that announced the news. One call was placed to Soviet minister of defense, Shaposhnikov.
Yelena Biberman:
Smart.
Zach Troyanovsky:
Another to the first Kazak president, Nazarbayev, who was en route to Moscow.
Yelena Biberman:
Wait, why?
Zach Troyanovsky:
In the years leading up to Belavezha, Gorbachev had often countered initiatives from the Slavic leaders by drawing support from the Central Asian republics. Nursultan Nazarbayev was the strongest Central Asian leader, and he was also the head of the only republic, other than Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia, that had nuclear arms. So from Yeltsin's perspective, Nazarbayev's cooperation was vital. When Yeltsin reached Nazarbayev after the signing ceremony and explained the situation, he promised to come join the Slavic leaders in Belavezha, but when they sent a car to pick them up at the Minsk airport, there was no sign of him. You see when Nazarbayev arrived in Moscow and informed Gorbachev of his plans to head to Belavezha, rumor has it that Gorbachev convinced him to stay by offering him the post of PM of the USSR.
Yelena Biberman:
Wow, that's a big offer.
Zach Troyanovsky:
Yeah. And a member of the Belarusian delegation later recalled that the news that Nazarbayev would not come depressed everyone. So the other two phone calls made that day were to Bush and Gorbachev.
Yelena Biberman:
Gorbachev always held a grudge against Yeltsin for informing Bush before telling him. As the conclusion to long and winding political rivalry, he sees this as one final act of disrespect.
Zach Troyanovsky:
But Yeltsin did present the leaders in Belavezha with Gorbachev's revised treaty. This means that the relationship between the two men had not deteriorated to the point of complete disrespect. I'm looking right now at the memo the White House released of Bush and Yeltsin's conversation. And in it, Yeltsin tells Bush that he is calling him because of some preexistent agreement between the two of them to inform each other of extraordinary events.
Yelena Biberman:
So maybe Bush being called first wasn't intentional. When Shushkevich was on the phone with Gorbachev, he remembers telling him of the decision and hearing the following response, "Do you have any idea what you've done? What will the international community think of this?" To which Shushkevich responded, "President Bush seems to be taking it well." After hearing this, Gorbachev hung up and the Soviet Union was done. But why does this matter?
Zach Troyanovsky:
Well, so doesn't that line from Shushkevich bug you at all? "President Bush seems to be taking it well." I guess it didn't bother me much either until I read Shushkevich's autobiography. You see, while Gorbachev spent the past 30 years upset about this decision to call Bush first, it might not have been a decision at all. When I asked Yeltsin's biographer, Timothy Colton about why Yeltsin would do like this, he told me that the story I was telling was too complicated, and that once Yeltsin decided to do something, he'd set about doing it immediately. In Shushkevich's account, the calls to Bush and Gorbachev were placed simultaneously.
There's some evidence to support this in that the memo of Yeltsin and Bush's call includes a line from Yeltsin saying, "In the room with me are the president of Ukraine and the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Belarusia. Shushkevich claims that while the calls were placed simultaneously, his call to Gorbachev was intercepted by an administrative assistant who spent a few minutes verifying his identity. By the time Shushkevich was passed to Gorbachev, Yeltsin had already informed Bush of the decision made in Belavezha. So once Shushkevich says, "President Bush seems to be taking it well," it's possible he meant that quite literally, in that he turned to Yeltsin and could see that Bush was responding positively.
Yelena Biberman:
But what's important about the timing of the call, which may have been accidental, was that at this sound Gorbachev from the argument that the international community, i.e. United States, would never go along with it. Ironically, Bush was his last protector. And the fact that he took it well meant that there was no longer anyone to watch out for him.
[foreign language music 00:16:33].
Zach Troyanovsky:
Well, let's turn to the topic of liquid courage. So lots of alcohol was no doubt consumed that weekend, or at least that's what people assume. For example, according to Russian journalist Alexandra Sviridova, the men were incredibly drunk.
Speaker 4:
Я знаю, как инсайдeр, они все были пьяные, просто в жопу пьяные.
Yelena Biberman:
Yeah, sort of this stereotype really annoyed Shushkevich. At the Davis Center event, he reiterated that he doesn't want people to think that this decision to dissolve the USSR was made in drunken stupor. I remember a joke political scientist Mark Schrad tells in his book, Vodka Politics, about the role of alcohol in Soviet politics: What's the middle step between socialism and communism? Alcoholism.
Zach Troyanovsky:
Well, that's funny, but it's not necessarily a huge stretch. In 1985, the average Russian man was consuming 130 bottles of vodka per year. One Soviet study at the time concluded that, "if there was no drunkenness and alcoholism, there would be no more of the crimes that make up most of the elements of our criminal statistics." Gorbachev's reforms were focused around transparency, but they also involved anti-alcohol campaigns. In fact, in his memoirs, Gorbachev recalls being nicknamed the mineral water secretary by those frustrated with his anti-alcohol efforts. Yet even in this extreme environment, Yeltsin's name was still synonymous with alcoholism. In a country where an average man drinks 130 bottles of vodka per year, that same average man would turn on the TV, point at it and go, "Ah, look at that drunk."
Yelena Biberman:
Maybe that average was heavily skewed by Yeltsin himself. Maybe take Yeltsin out and the average would be like 95 or 20. Over the course of the two days spent in Belavezha, there are many accounts of Yeltsin being overly inebriated. So do you think that any of the decisions would have been different had it not been for the alcohol?
Zach Troyanovsky:
It's hard to say no to this question, because it feels obvious that they were, but I think focusing on specific moments might be more helpful. In Schrad's Vodka Politics, he notes that a witness from the signing ceremony on December 8 "found the spectacular scene of Shushkevich and Kravchuk dragging this enormous body to the couch. They took him to the next room to let him sleep. And when Kravchuk finished his short speech to everyone about what had been decided, he said, "There is one problem that we have to decide right away, because the very existence of the commonwealth depends on it. Don't pour him too much."
Yelena Biberman:
By him, Yeltsin, right?
Zach Troyanovsky:
Yeah.
Yelena Biberman:
And so in this problem, he means the phone calls?
Zach Troyanovsky:
I can't imagine what else he'd be referring to. Plokhii's account told a different story, one of a present Yeltsin who didn't answer any questions and then was subdued by Belarusian PM, Vyacheslav Kebich later on. But regardless, two different accounts place Yeltsin at the signing ceremony uncontrollably drunk, and a few hours later, these four calls are placed. When I spoke with Timothy Colton and asked if Yeltsin had intentionally placed the calls to Bush first, he told me that my story was too complicated and that Yeltsin would have just set about doing whatever he had to as soon as he knew he had to do it. So maybe crediting Yeltsin with the strategic mindset after he'd just woken from a drunken coma is a little far-fetched.
Yelena Biberman:
Or is it?
Zach Troyanovsky:
This podcast was made possible by the generous support of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative at Skidmore College. A special thanks to Adam Tinkle, Jesse O'Connell, Alexandra Vacroux, and Cris Martin.