Transcript: How to Kill a Superpower: Lessons from the USSR, Episode 4

In a five-part podcast series, Yelena Biberman and Zachary Troyanovsky explore the fateful events that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Yelena Biberman:

And I'm Yelena Biberman.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

And I'm Zachary Troyanovsky.

Yelena Biberman:

Welcome to episode four of How to Kill a Superpower: Lessons from USSR. In this episode, we talk about the big elephant or donkey in the room, the United States. What role did it play in the dissolution of the Soviet Union?

Zachary Troyanovsky:

It's an ordinary fall Saturday in Clear Lake, Texas. The year is 1989. Paul Yirga, the manager of a Randalls grocery store picks up the phone. He is told that in 10 minutes, an important Russian politician will arrive. Paul is about to meet Boris, Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin had just visited NASA but wasn't impressed. The USSR had its own space program but there he was in front of frozen Pudding Pops at Randalls and it was epic. For a moment, he thought the store was staged like a Potemkin village. "Even the politburo doesn't have this choice, not even Mr. Gorbachev," Yeltsin exclaimed. With the help of a translator, Yeltsin began asking customers what they were buying and how much it cost. He asked Paul if a special education was needed to manage a grocery store. And before leaving, Yeltsin was given a small goodie bag of select items from around the store.

Yelena Biberman:

So this is an important moment for our story. Yeltsin's biographer, Timothy Colton, describes this moment as when quote, "The last drop of Yeltsin's Bolshevik consciousness decomposed and with it, the vestiges of his belief in the Soviet model." This visit showed Yeltsin that the command economy which the Soviet union had developed was failing. Under a different model, maybe Soviet people could have had a better life." We spoke about this moment with Evan Mack, who created a comedic chamber opera called Yeltsin in Texas.

Speaker 4:

(singing).

Evan Mack:

For us, the Americans think to show him everything that's Americana. Let me show you the absurdity of a cosmetic section. The manager's like, "This is what a working woman needs to succeed." And it's Clearasil, Epilady, Lee Press On Nails, all of these little things. And he's like, ah. Or let's show him Colby, Swiss and American spray cheese. I'd like to believe that it was as he stated, "The Jello Pudding Pops, it was the Jello Pudding Pops that said, get on this tank and get the free market's going." The real takeaway for me is what is American greatness? And it's it lies in the ordinary. That's the greatness. It's not Statue of Liberty. It's not the Tower. It's not all these political things. It's the fact that we have 15 Jello Pudding Pops, that ended communism. That's so wild.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

There was nothing extraordinary about what Yeltsin was doing. A surprise visit and a comparison of conditions was by 1989, a regular part of U.S.-Soviet relations. But Yeltsin admitting openly that his side wasn't winning on the flight back, that was new.

Yelena Biberman:

We often make Yeltsin out to be a politician, an alcoholic, but he was also a Soviet man. His politics were built around the belief that what he was doing was best for the working people. And this visit showed him that maybe that wasn't the case, maybe what he was doing was not the best for them. Maybe there was another way, another system. Yeltsin's experience in Texas followed in a tradition of Cold War culture contests on which the Soviet Union and the U.S. staked their reputation and their ideology.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

Absolutely. While many Americans may not know about Yeltsin's trip to Texas, many are familiar with the Miracle on Ice. President Jimmy Carter had just made the announcement that the US would boycott the 1980 Olympic Summer Games in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. America was also in the midst of a major recession. This is all to say that the U.S. needed a win. Then the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York came around. The Soviet ice hockey team were four time defending gold medal champs and the U.S. team was composed almost entirely of amateurs with only four players having had even minimal minor league experience. The U.S. team was the youngest in the Olympics and U.S. national team history, just a couple of schmucks. But, because of head coach Herb Brook's grueling practice regimen and what could only be described as fate, the U.S. amateurs beat the Russian pros four to three in what Sports Illustrated later described as the best sports moment of the 20th century and in the last few seconds before the clock, Al Michaels famously said,

Al Michaels.:

Do you believe in miracles? Yes. Unbelievable.

Yelena Biberman:

President Carter called the players to congratulate them and Americans from all over spent the night celebrating the triumph of quote, "Our boys over the Russian pros." Some even said that this event, wiped clean the underdog mentality that cemented in the minds of Americans over the 1970s.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

What is sometimes forgotten is that the Cold War ended two years before the USSR dissolved. It is the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that traditionally marks the end of the Cold War. By the time Yeltsin, Suskievic, and Kravchuk arrived in Belavezha, the Cold War had already ended.

Yelena Biberman:

In August 1991, George Bush flew to Kiev. He had been in Russia to sign the START agreement, which was a piece of the mutual nuclear disarmament the two countries were working towards. Bush's decision to go to Kiev was the first step and the new era of U.S.-Soviet relations where most direct contact would be established with the Soviet republics rather than the central powers. The rise of independence movements and the Baltics and Ukraine pushed the U.S. government to encourage and engage in cooperation with them, while also promoting nonviolent means of achieving their goals. Bush assured Gorbachev, his friend, that his visit would not disrupt the rocky relations between the USSR and Ukraine. Bush was received by Kravchuk who was then the speaker of the parliament. And in one account, Kravchuk told him that he saw this as an opportunity to create a full blooded Ukrainian state.

After a series of diplomatic formalities, Bush made his way to the front of the Ukrainian parliament to deliver his speech. The main topic of the speech was the responsibilities that come with independence. "Freedom," he said quote, "is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far off tyranny with local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based on ethnic hatred."

Zachary Troyanovsky:

Jesus. I mean this was not received well. Ukrainian nationalism had been playing an increasingly large role in Ukrainian politics and many members of the parliament felt that Bush had merely been sent to do Gorbachev's bidding. Ukrainian Americans demonstrated outside the White House and the New York Times piece from Richard Nixon's, former speech writer, dismissed Bush's speech as quote, "Lecturing the Ukrainians against self determination, foolishly placing Washington on the side of Moscow centralism and against the tide of history." This same article also labeled the speech, the Chicken Kiev speech.

Yelena Biberman:

Mmm, delicious.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

As someone who started cooking more intensely about a year ago, I guess two years ago now, I've made Chicken Kiev a few times, it's not worth it. It takes way too much time and there's better things to put inside smashed chicken than garlic butter. I don't know how this fits in. It's just that I'm very passionate about it.

Yelena Biberman:

Fun fact, this speech was actually written by Condoleezza Rice, who would later go on to become George W. Bush's Secretary of State. Her career certainly survived that disaster.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

Another fun fact that I actually learned pretty recently was that in the 2020 election, George W. Bush didn't vote for Trump or Biden, he wrote in Condoleezza Rice because he couldn't decide between the two.

Yelena Biberman:

What's important to remember here was that the U.S. government did not want the Soviet Union to collapse. I have in front of me, the classified CIA documents from June 1991. They lay out the implications of alternative Soviet futures. These reports describe four possible scenarios for the Soviet Union over the coming years.

Scenario one, chronic crisis. There are no major changes enacted.

Number two, system change where Baltic states become independent and the new smaller system is established with relatively little violence.

Option three is regression, where nationalist hardliners violently establish independence and enact martial law.

And finally number four is fragmentation, where you see a violent and chaotic collapse of the entire system.

The CIA reasoned that chronic crisis was the best of all possible worlds for the Soviet Union. It would force the Soviet establishment to request economic assistance and accept the U.S.'s conditions tied to that. And it would lead to gradual reduction in military capabilities. On the other hand, fragmentation would lead to loss of control over nuclear weapons and would lead to a more dangerous and unpredictable situation. The best option for the U.S. was to keep the Soviet Union intact and let it slowly wither.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

I went through to George Washington National Security Archives and I found declassified documents of conversations between American and Soviet leaders. These documents showed that despite the conventional narrative, keeping the Union together and back in Gorbachev personally remained at the core of U.S. policy all the way through 1991, for fear of a bloody disintegration.

Yelena Biberman:

These documents describe the worst possible outcomes as well. One official describes this as quote, "Yugoslavia with nuclear weapons."

Zachary Troyanovsky:

The conventional story is of the USSR crumbling after being called out for what it is by Reagan. But if Belavezha is added to the equation, the credit goes to Bush who had a more collaborative approach.

Yelena Biberman:

There was someone there who thought something very different. Cheney argued for the rapid disintegration of the USSR.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

Yeah, it sounds a little bit political shock therapy. I guess, with someone like that, it's no wonder we invaded Iraq in 2003.

Yelena Biberman:

It was Bush's sense that time was running out though for Gorbachev and for USSR and this led him to employ such significant and unilateral disarmament policies.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

Well, so this reminds me of an exchange we found in the memo of Yeltsin and Bush's calls on December 8th, 1991. We mentioned in the last episode that the reason the Slavic leaders were so adamant about bringing Nazarbayev to Belavezha was the fact that Kazakhstan was the only non-present republic with access to nuclear weapons. This was obviously on Bush's mind, which is why Yeltsin assured Bush that Nazarbayev was quote, "Fully in accord with all of our actions and he wants to sign the accord. He is about to fly to Minsk to sign it," though that never actually happened.

Yelena Biberman:

Did you say that was from the Bush memo?

Zachary Troyanovsky:

Yeah, it was the one from the call on December 8th.

Yelena Biberman:

I remember an historian, Serhii Plokhii's account, it was noted that the leaders were aware of Nazarbayev's decision not to join them, prior to the calls that they made to Shaposhnikov, Bush, and Gorbachev.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

Wait, but wouldn't that mean that Gorbachev knew about the decision to dissolve the Soviet Union before the call? That doesn't really make much sense from what we know about his reaction.

Yelena Biberman:

Yes, but also more importantly, if Plokhii is right about the sequence of events, it means Yeltsin may have lied to Bush.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

I know this is just speculation, but I don't think that that's necessarily out of the realm of possibility. Yeltsin brought Nazarbayev up himself, meaning he was aware that the nuclear security involved with Nazarbayev's cooperation would be a key selling point for Bush.

Yelena Biberman:

It feels like we're describing a chess match. But if Yeltsin was inebriated during this time, how could he be such a master strategist?

Zachary Troyanovsky:

Well, there's a reason why they call him an Irish poet. He could clearly do well even while drinking. But I want to flesh this out a little bit more because some puzzle pieces are starting to fit together for me. We've made the case before that Yeltsin didn't call Bush first on purpose. But if we examine this again through what I'm now calling the Nazarbayev lens, I think a very different picture starts to form. Plokhii's account noted that Nazarbayev's decision depressed everyone in Belavezha. But maybe that's not putting it strongly enough. Yeltsin placed the call to Bush, but as he was aware that they needed the US to back them in this decision. But why called Bush first? Let's imagine for a second that the answer to that wasn't coincidence but rather because of Nazarbayev. By December of 1991, Yeltsin and Gorbachev had gained enough experience in U.S.- Soviet diplomacy to know that the bottom line always came back to nuclear weapons. With Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia present in Belavezha, the only variable outside of Yeltsin's control was Nazarbayev.

Once Nazarbayev arrived in Moscow and spoke with Gorbachev, this must've been evident to Mikhail as well. The game Tetris was invented by a Soviet software engineer in 1984. And in it, it's quite common to see frustrated players build an increasingly elaborate structures, which can only be dissolved with a straight line block. In this scenario we're painting, both Gorbachev and Yeltsin had been building for a while and Nazarbayev was that straight line. I always wondered why Gorbachev would offer Nazarbayev such a high political position just for remaining in Moscow. What if it was because he knew that without Nazarbayev's cooperation, the Slavic leaders couldn't win over Bush and the Americans? In this situation, Gorbachev would have outmaneuvered the men of Belavezha and practically assured that they wouldn't receive the support of the international community without full control of the USSR's nuclear weapons. This is why everyone was so depressed in Belavezha.

From here, the rest of the story fits together quite nicely. If Yeltsin knew that Nazarbayev's absence was the only thing between them and the commonwealth of independent states, there was only one option, call Bush before Gorbachev and lie about Nazarbayev's cooperation. By the time they'd reached Gorbachev, they would already have the international community backing them and the truth about Nazarbayev would be irrelevant.

Yelena Biberman:

Okay. The difference between what we're finding here and the conventional Cold War confrontational narrative is reflected in the different positions Bush and Reagan took. Reagan called the USSR quote, "The focus of evil in the modern world," but Bush thought of Gorbachev as a friend. This idea wasn't just transforming U.S. policy but also being internalized by the Soviet elite. In his memoir, Gorbachev recalls in the late 1980s he was quote, "Firmly convinced that there was no turning back the realization that we live in a single interdependent world and this belief made its way into common political thinking already. And this enemy image used to fuel the Cold War confrontation for decades had lost much of its appeal." This makes sense to me because while I was growing up in the 1980s in the Soviet Union, I did not experience the demonization of the U.S. I did not see that happening.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

From the moment Gorbachev took power, he knew he had to change things. Quote, "The very system was dying away. Its sluggish, senile blood no longer contained any vital juices. I realized the weight of the responsibility I had to shoulder," end quote.

Yelena Biberman:

Wow, what a quote. And Bush was part of that change. Where previous leaders saw the U.S. as a rival, Gorbachev saw it as a potential partner. He respected Bush greatly and the two formed a close friendship. On the day Gorbachev resigned, he called Bush to update him on the political situation and to assure him that though their political roles may have changed quote, "What we developed, our friendship will not change," end quote. In fact, when writing about the December 8th phone call with Yeltsin in his diary, Bush notes that he was quote, "A little uncomfortable," and quote, "anxious about the fate of his partner Gorbachev." He also noted that he was worrying about the military action.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

It's kind of funny to picture. Dear diary, today the Soviet Union dissolved. I'm worried about my best friend Misha and also about nuclear annihilation. XOXO, George.

Yelena Biberman:

One thing I kept running into over and over in the accounts of the phone call between Yeltsin and Bush, was Bush asking, "What's going to happen to Mikhail?" Well, when you look at the actual declassified transcript from the White House, there's no such question. He didn't actually ask it.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

Yeah, I've known about that call for quite a while before we found the transcript of it and it was honestly really surprising to see how that conversation went down.

Yelena Biberman:

If you can even call it a conversation. The call began with Yeltsin describing the events of the weekend and laying out the terms of the new commonwealth treaty. Every once in a while, Bush would chime in with, "Okay," or, "I see," but would remain otherwise silent. Yeltsin then informs Bush that Kravchuk and Suskievic were in the room with him. It's only when Yeltsin tells Bush that Gorbachev does not know about these decisions yet does Bush perk up and ask a question, "What do you think the center's reaction will be?" So I'm pretty sure that the claim that Bush was uncomfortable throughout this call is true. Yeltsin assures Bush that with the defense minister backing the Slavic leaders, the transition would not be violent. Bush tells Yeltsin that he appreciates his courtesy and he will get back to him shortly, but notes that he intends to let the matter be sorted out by the parties involved rather than by any outside actors like the U.S.

Zachary Troyanovsky:

It's interesting for me to think about how Russia's approach to the U.S. in the past few years has mirrored the CIA documents we discussed earlier. Where the Cold War and the era we're examining side or confrontation or to operation as the options, Putin's approach seems more like the chronic crisis option we described. I'm a big fan of the TV show BoJack Horseman. And in this one episode, there's a character introduced who's a Soviet sleeper agent who has been in a coma for 30 years and wakes up still intending on destroying the US. But at the end of the episode, he comes to a realization while at an amusement park. And he says, "You know, I came here today to blow up Disneyland but I realize now that capitalism sows the seeds for its own destruction." And though this is a 2014-ish episode of a cartoon, I think it captures this political mentality that we once held towards the Soviet Union and that Russia may hold towards us now as well.

Yelena Biberman:

Yeah. Here Putin is the sleeper agent who wakes up. I guess in Putin's view, the chickens were coming home to roost and then he was going to cook them and make Chicken Kiev.

Zachary 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.

How to Kill a Superpower: Lessons from the USSR