Yelena Biberman:
I'm Yelena Biberman.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
And I'm Zachary Troyanovsky.
Yelena Biberman:
Welcome to our last episode of How to Kill a Superpower: Lessons from USSR. Here, we will be wrapping up our exploration of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the process, we will be figuring out what to call what happened at Belavezha. We look at what happened to our heroes since their fateful weekend. And we talk about Tetris.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
I've been playing Tetris my whole life, but I never knew that it was a Soviet game. Though, during our time working on this podcast, I definitely think I've succumbed to the Tetris effect.
Yelena Biberman:
What's the Tetris effect?
Zachary Troyanovsky:
It's when someone devotes so much time to an activity or game that the pattern of that activity affects their thoughts and their dreams. So, it's named after Tetris because it was observed that people who played the game for too long began to think about how real world items would fit together as if they were shapes in Tetris.
Yelena Biberman:
Oh, I see. So you Tetris effect?
Zachary Troyanovsky:
It was that I began to see people in my life and media through the lens of the characters of our story. I would see everyone as either a Shushkevich, a Yeltsin, or a Kravchuk.
Yelena Biberman:
Okay. I wonder who I am. Maybe Yeltsin?
Zachary Troyanovsky:
I'd probably go with Shushkevich.
Yelena Biberman:
For me or yourself? Maybe not all people could be categorized this way, but I think you may be onto something. You're not the only one seeing through the lens of Belavezha. In 2016, at the anniversary event hosted by the Atlantic Council, Gennady Burbulis said that the Belavezha consensus model could be useful for the world today.
Burbulis:
Потребность острейшая и глубокая в диалоге, в взаимопонимании, и в конечном счете—в консенсусе.
Yelena Biberman:
Burbulis is saying here that the world needs to understand that the only way to solve conflict is through dialogue, consensus, and mutual understanding.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
What is the Belavezha consensus model?
Yelena Biberman:
Okay, so let's figure that out. And while we're at it, let's figure out what we should be calling what happened at Belavezha. Was it a revolution, a coup, an act of courage, or treason? Or maybe it was something completely unique and unreproducible. The same year the USSR dissolved, the United States initiated military action against Iraq. This was in response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. But French philosophers, Jean Baudrillard, in a collection of essays published in European newspapers during this time, made what seemed like a mind bending claim that, quote, the Gulf War did not take place. What Baudrillard was doing was reminding us to distinguish between what things are called and what they actually are.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
It's kind of like that old saying about the Holy Roman Empire in that it's not holy, it's not Roman, and it's not an empire.
Yelena Biberman:
Yeah. Baudrillard was at the time challenging the passive consumption of the label "war." Why was Iraq's action in Kuwait called an invasion, rather than Kuwait War, while U.S. action in Iraq was called the Gulf War? He argued that when the media packages something as a war, we uncritically take it as such. When it doesn't, like debilitating economic sanctions which cause deaths of thousands, we don't see it as a war. War was neither the goal nor outcome of America's action in Iraq, according to Baudrillard. The American military political establishment chose an adversary much weaker in military capacity and then declared a war with it. America's, quote, victory over Iraq than acted to perpetuate America's image of strength.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Well, so what is remarkable about the Belavezha events is that they are widely unknown. There's no term or media label, no debate, no narrative. It's almost as if none of it ever happened.
Yelena Biberman:
I think this raises an interesting question. Why is there silence in the popular culture about such a momentous event?
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Well, so before starting this with you, I had never heard about Shushkevich or Kravchuk. I have heard of Yeltsin, but mostly for his drunken shenanigans.
Yelena Biberman:
Well, the silence about Belavezha is particularly striking when we consider how much attention the fall of the Berlin Wall received
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Drawing on Baudrillard, we did say that because the popular media did not immortalize the events at Belavezha, there is no politically prepackaged term for us to describe them.
Yelena Biberman:
So we need to figure this out. When we give something a name, it makes it visible and analyzable. So what should we call what happened?
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Okay, well, let's start with the term "revolution." It's a popular term we hear a lot in American politics nowadays, but what does it mean?
Yelena Biberman:
You're right, the term revolution is being used for policies as basic, well, at least among wealthy countries, as universal healthcare or as extreme as violent overthrow of U.S. government.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Well, what would that actually look like?
Yelena Biberman:
Well, let me give you an example from one of my favorite stories. It's a story of beans as described by Leon Trotsky in his memoir. While embarking on his revolutionary path as a young man, Trotsky decided that he should go out into the real world and meet some real workers. He soon met an electrician named Ivan Mukhin. An excited young man, Trotsky asked Mukhin what he believed needs to be done to help the working people of then-tsarist Russia. Mukhin explained, okay, quote, I put a bean on the table and say, this is the tsar. Around it, I place more beans. These are the ministers bishops, generals, and over there is gentry and merchants, and in this other heap, the plain people. Now I ask, "Where's the tsar?" You point to the center. Where are the ministers? You point to those around. Just as I told you, you answer.
Yelena Biberman:
Now, wait. Then I scramble all the beans. I say, "Now tell me where's the czar, the ministers?" And you answer me, "Who can tell. You can't spot them now." And so I say, "All beans should be scrambled." This blew Trotsky's mind. He recalls in his memoir, quote, I was so thrilled at this story that I was all in a sweat.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
So, did the Belavezha events scramble all the beans?
Yelena Biberman:
Well, not really I think. Gorbachev's bean got tossed, but many remained
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Like the Yeltsin, Kravchuk, and Shushkevich beans.
Yelena Biberman:
Yes. New beans also emerged, the so called oligarchs. Though, ordinary Russians soon grew to hate them, these overwhelmingly corrupt business tycoons. Yeltsin's successor Vladimir Putin gained tremendous popularity for reigning them in, at least some of them.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Well, so we may not be able to call what culminated in Belavezha a social revolution, but can we call it some sort of top down revolution?
Yelena Biberman:
Well, this is the argument made by researcher, Gordon Han. He describes it as a revolution from above. This he defines as an illegal takeover of state institution by high ranking officials and bureaucrats in order to overthrow the entire system with little or no mass participation.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Wait, isn't that just a coup?
Yelena Biberman:
Okay, so to figure that out, I talked to my friend and coup expert, Erica De Bruin.
Erica De Bruin:
That's a great question. I think that there would be possibly some disagreement among scholars of coups about whether or not that would fit. I think from my own perspective, what those regional leaders are doing is not seizing power in an existing state, but creating their own states. And so it's...I think for me, part of the important aspect of kind of how scholars think about coups is that it's a contestation over political power in a sort of existing state. And so if you're talking about eliminating that state and creating new states then would be, I think, more akin to what we just think of as a secessionist movement, or there's a lot of civil wars that kind of take that flavor of what the goal is. It's not to seize power in a sort of central government, but to create your own new political entity. And so we sort of think about those as different things.
Erica De Bruin:
And for me, I mean, I will say, I don't know how much it matters how to exactly classify each of...an event like this, other than that we have a sort of set...a body of research about how to prevent coups, what the causes of coups are, what the consequences of coups are. And I think that those studies have to use a kind of narrower definition of a coup so that we know what cases are right to compare to. And I think that this, the case that you're talking about, I think wouldn't fit those kind of narrower definitions of coups. And so what that means is that most of the research we have about how to prevent coups couldn't have told us about how to prevent this event from happening, from these accords from being signed and this sort of dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Yelena Biberman:
When Burbulis describes the events at Belavezha, he refers to their decisions as courageous. Do you think he's right about that?
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Yeah. I mean, they were committing treason, altering the course of history. That's undeniable.
Yelena Biberman:
You know, in Shushkevich's memoir, he describes himself as not very courageous. So the main residential area where everyone stayed had three suites, all of them sort of equally comfortable, according to Shushkevich. Two of the suites went to Yeltsin and Kravchuk, but Shushkevich did not take the third one because, as he writes in his memoir, he knew that "anything could happen." Instead, he and two of his bodyguards stayed at a nearby two-story cottage.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
I interviewed a Russian filmmaker named Alexandra Sviridova, who in 1992 produced a Russian TV show called Top Secret, which investigated cases of corruption and coverups that have been revealed by Gorbachev's glasnost policies. Sviridova told me that in her journalistic circles, it was known that Gorbachev was actually aware of the meeting at Belavezha and that KGB operatives had surrounded the estate waiting for an order from Gorbachev, which never came.
Alexandra Sviridova:
Очень легко найти, что они, как бы собирались секретно. На самом деле, весь лес был в автоматчиках, их должны были расстрелять. Это решение было принято, люди были вооружены, а команда не поступила. Команды стрелять не было.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Here she's saying that the forest surrounding Viskuli was full of KGB operatives, who are awaiting an order to shoot, but that order never came. Plokhii's account also noted that the head of the Belarusian KGB, Edward Shirkovsky, had reported the events of Belavezha to Moscow and was awaiting Gorbachev's command on the day of the signing ceremony.
Yelena Biberman:
It seems that what's consistent here is the notion that Gorbachev never made a move. In a 2016 interview with BBC, he explained that the reason for this is that he wanted to avoid a civil war.
Gorbachev:
Представьте себе, раскол и борьба за власть в такой стране, как наша, перенасыщаная оружием?
Yelena Biberman:
He said, can you imagine a split and a power struggle in a country like ours. History doesn't give Gorbachev enough credit, I think. Had he been a more violent, aggressive leader, this whole story might have had a much bloodier ending. I think that his aversion to violence and respect for human life was ultimately what allowed the USSR to be dissolved so peacefully.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
In that same interview, he notes that, quote, "stepping down was my victory."
Gorbachev:
Моя победа состоит в том, что я покинул власть.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
In the years, following the USSR's collapse, Gorbachev spent more time with his family and focused on building his foundation for political studies. He began lecturing internationally to raise money for his foundation. To supplement this, he appeared in commercials for Louis Vuitton and, quite infamously, Pizza Hut.
Speaker:
Sometimes nothing brings people together like a nice hot pizza from Pizza Hut.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
He worked on his memoirs, and began writing a monthly column for the New York Times, addressing topics like the future of communism, the Persian Gulf War, relations between the Kremlin and the Pope. And his relationship with Yeltsin. Since Putin's rise to power, Gorbachev has spent his time promoting social democracy in Russia and publicly criticizing both Putin and the U.S.-Russia relationship. But what happened to our other heroes and their countries after Belavezha?
Yelena Biberman:
Okay. So in 2020, the Atlantic Council published an article, entitled, quote, Belarus is a Reminder that the USSR is still Collapsing. This was in the wake of nationwide protest against Belarusian authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, who is often referred to as, quote, Europe's last dictator. After Belarus declared independence, Shushkevich removed the remainder of Belarus's nuclear arsenal without any preconditions. He had trouble pushing other reforms though.
Yelena Biberman:
In 1993, the chairman of the anti-corruption committee, Alexander Lukashenko, accused a number of government officials of stealing state funds. Shushkevich was accused of stealing two boxes of nails, and was ousted from the government after losing a vote of confidence. In 1994, the first direct presidential elections were held and Lukashenko won. Since then, he has consolidated power and used authoritarian tactics to govern. In 2020, when Lukashenko ran for his sixth term and the government exit poll reported him receiving almost 80% of the vote, mass protests erupted. A heavy police crackdown ensued. Shushkevich has served as the chairman of the opposition party throughout this time. He came to view Belarus's position within Russia's orbit as the central obstacle to his country becoming a free democracy.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
In the years leading up to 1991, Ukraine's politics was dominated by nationalistic dogma, and the idea that, by achieving independence, Ukraine would separate itself from the economic downturn of the Soviet Union. But when independence finally came, Kravchuk found himself woefully unequipped to tackle the economic crisis. Kravchuk was also voted out of office in 1994.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Ukraine being within Russia's orbit has also come at a price. Following a series of political dramas, economic crises, and revolutions in 2014, Putin seized Crimea from Ukraine in an illegal move that violated the country's territorial integrity and sparked a war. Over the course of the so-called Donbas War, the insurgent controlled eastern regions of Ukraine have witnessed what the United Nations described as an alarming deterioration in human rights.
Yelena Biberman:
Finally, we come to Yeltsin. In the years after Belavezha, Yeltsin implemented new economic policies and transformed Russia into a market economy. This led to a lot of economic volatility. This is when the oligarchs emerged and came to dominate not only Russia's economy, but also politics. In 1993, Yeltsin ordered the dissolution of the Russian parliament in the power grab, which led to his impeachment. He remained in power for a few more years, but on the eve of the new year 2000, seconds before the clock struck midnight, Yeltsin resigned. He told his people, "A new generation is taking my place, the generation of those who could do more and do it better. In accordance with the constitution, as I go into retirement, I have signed a decree entrusting the duties of the president of Russia to Prime Minister Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin."
Zachary Troyanovsky:
I recently learned that a Photoshopped version of the original Tetris manual went viral a few years back with new names for the blocks. The L-shape pieces are called Orange and Blue Ricky, the cube is Smash Boy, the T-shaped one is Teewee, the Z-shaped ones are Cleveland and Rhode Island Z, and the straight line is called Hero. In Tetris, the most valuable block is the Hero, which is probably why it's called that. But the Hero is only valuable because the player builds the rest of their stack in a way which will let the Hero be valuable. It is only because of the way that the player constructs the stack, that the Hero can dissolve it. I think one of the takeaways from this podcast is that there's a reason why the conventional narrative doesn't include Belavezha. Like a poorly timed Rhode Island Z, it just doesn't fit. I'd like to think of the work we've done here as the Hero.
Yelena Biberman:
But I guess we're just not that good at dissolution.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
By the way, did I ever mention to you that my family last name used to be Trotsky?
Yelena Biberman:
What? No.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
We changed it when Stalin was...after Stalin had killed him and everything.
Yelena Biberman:
Wow. Well, do you realize it's not actually his real last name? His real last name is Bronstein.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
Yeah, right. I knew that one.
Yelena Biberman:
He took on the name Trotsky, because that was his prison guard's name when he was in Odessa, held captive.
Zachary Troyanovsky:
What?
Yelena Biberman:
So that's who you're related to.
Music:
The Soviet Union, the largest communist land,
had 15 republics that were centrally planned.
In the Soviet structure, Moscow organized all,
the big Republic of Russia, plus the ones that were small.
This communist form of public big industries
had central planning providing all the necessities.
But up to date little goods come faster if there's competitors.
They could not stay modern with just big central leaders.
And since World War II East Europe had been divided
in ways that were not what each place would've decided.
There was not enough freedom, just one old gang in the middle.
The war budget, too large and people's voices too little.
Then 1985 brought a younger guy to the top.
And this guy, Gorbachev wanted these problems to stop.
Gorbachev started Glasnost, more free speech and free news.
It was fine for the first time to express many views.
Gorbachev's Perestroika brought democratizations.
For the first time, elections let people steer their own nations.
When the Berlin Wall fell, Gorbachev was surprised,
but he slowed the arms race and won a Nobel Peace Prize.
Then all through East Europe, former Soviet states voted to break
from the union and control their own fates.
So Gorbachev sighed, but chose democracy's course.
He said he'd keep things together, just with discussions, not force.
Old Communist leaders feared big changes too fast.
The whole strength of the union might be lost in the past.
But new leaders and voters all wanted to change to come faster.
Gorby's middle reform plan soon were facing disaster.
See as Soviet president, Gorbachev wasn't defeated,
but each Republic's president now had strengths just like he did.
And Russia's president, Yeltsin, wanted more strength by far.
So they drafted new plans for a looser USSR.
But before this new compromise could be implemented,
eight conservative communists launched a coup to prevent it.
They kept Gorbachev trapped, but people rushed out to help
defend the Soviet congress that they had elected themselves.
And Yeltsin joined with the people and the coup met defeat.
But the old communist party now really looked obsolete.
So when Gorby returned, he was the leader of zero.
The union structure was dead. Each nation had its own hero.
The USSR is now no more he announced
and Gorbachy sadly resigned, and Russia's president pounced.
Yeltsin said it was time for the big free market test.
Public resources should open for the rich to invest.
But when the parliament leaders and the public protested,
Yeltsin ordered the army to have them killed or arrested.
So all profits went private or were bought up offshore.
Millions and millions of normal people turned poor.
And that's how the Soviet Union died before it enjoyed
the system Gorbachev wanted fixed instead of destroyed.
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
"The Fall of the Soviet Union" © Jeffrey Lewis 2012