Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia · CHAPTER 9 ·
Collapse of the Soviet Union
Chapter 9 of Remaking the State: Meiji Japan 1600–1912 and Post-Soviet Russia 1964–2000: “The Union Unravels”
In 1989–91 the Soviet republics turned their paper rights into real power. The Baltic Way chain of August 1989 and the opening of the Berlin Wall came before Lithuania declared independence in March 1990, and after the failed coup of August 1991 the Union broke into fifteen states.
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The map above is the world of Russia and the former Soviet Union, December 1991 — The Soviet Union dissolved.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1990 · Europe in 1990.
Part of IB History: Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia →
SHORT EXPLANATION
The Soviet Union’s fifteen republics had constitutions, parliaments and flags, and a formal right to leave. For a long time the central government held the power that mattered. Glasnost opened discussion and competitive elections gave national movements a way into office. In August 1989 about two million people joined hands from Tallinn to Vilnius in the Baltic Way, demanding independence. That autumn communist governments across Eastern Europe fell without Soviet military intervention; in November the Berlin Wall, which had divided the city since 1961, opened. Lithuania declared independence in March 1990, while violence around Nagorno-Karabakh and in Tbilisi revealed the danger of conflicting national demands.
The largest republic then turned its institutions against the Union. Russia’s parliament asserted the priority of Russian law in June 1990, and a year later voters elected Boris Yeltsin president. Gorbachev had never received a comparable popular mandate. In August 1991 hard-liners tried to seize power illegally; Yeltsin opposed them from a tank outside the Russian parliament, the White House, and their coup failed within three days. Independence declarations followed. More than 90% of Ukrainian voters approved independence on 1 December; a week later Russia, Ukraine and Belarus declared the Union dissolved at Belavezha. In the December map fourteen republics turn tan and Russia remains red. The challenge from the edges had met a decisive break at the center.
The full story
The communist governments of Eastern Europe had reason to fear opposition at home, but their opponents had reason to fear Soviet tanks. In 1989 Gorbachev removed that last assurance of rescue. His spokesman joked that the new policy was the “Sinatra doctrine”: each country could do it “my way”. Poland’s Solidarity, an independent trade union turned national movement, defeated the communists in semi-free elections in June. Hungary opened its Austrian border, allowing thousands of East Germans to travel west along the route shown by the arrow. Protests grew in East Germany itself, and on 9 November the Berlin Wall opened. Within weeks communist rule also ended in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. The former bloc states turn tan on the December 1989 map; Germany reunited in October 1990. Once Moscow would no longer defend these governments, they fell within months.
The Union faced a different problem within its own borders: national movements could make claims against neighboring peoples as well as against Moscow. In February 1988 the Armenian-majority region of Nagorno-Karabakh voted to leave Azerbaijan for Armenia. Pogroms against Armenians in Sumgait and later Baku, and the expulsion of Azerbaijanis from Armenia, sent refugees in both directions, along the arrows on the map. Soviet troops killed 21 peaceful demonstrators in Tbilisi in April 1989 and more than a hundred civilians when they entered Baku in January 1990.
In the Baltic republics the history of annexation gave independence movements a different claim. The Soviet Union had annexed them in 1940 under the Nazi–Soviet Pact, whose secret protocol divided Eastern Europe between Stalin and Hitler. Popular fronts, bringing reformers and nationalists together, won elections; Lithuania declared independence on 11 March 1990. Troops seized the television tower in Vilnius in January 1991, killing fourteen people, but crowds defended parliament and the crackdown stopped. Moscow’s use of force could push moderates toward separation; its failure to sustain that force left the independence movements in place.
Russia’s defection mattered because its government could contest the Union from within its largest republic. Yeltsin became chairman of the Russian parliament in 1990 and won 57% of the vote for president in June 1991. The republic claimed supremacy for its laws, withheld taxes from the center and dealt directly with other republics. A treaty due to be signed in August would have loosened the Union further. On 19 August, the day before the signing, the heads of the KGB—the Soviet secret police—the army and the interior ministry placed Gorbachev under house arrest in Crimea and declared an emergency.
The plotters had powerful institutions, but they could not make them act together. Yeltsin mounted a tank outside the White House, the Russian parliament building; crowds built barricades, and army units refused to attack. By 21 August the coup had collapsed, with three civilians dead. Ukraine declared independence on 24 August and confirmed it by referendum on 1 December. On 8 December Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus met at Belavezha, dissolved the Union and established the loose Commonwealth of Independent States, without a common government. Gorbachev resigned on 25 December, having lost the country whose government he headed.
FULL EXPLANATION
Did nationalism break the Union?
How did separate demonstrations become a crisis for the whole Union? Mark Beissinger’s study of thousands of Soviet protests finds waves of mobilization: a successful protest made another appear possible. Events that had seemed unthinkable in 1987 could look inevitable by 1991. Ronald Suny and Yuri Slezkine help explain why republic borders mattered to these movements. From the 1920s Soviet policy assigned major nationalities territories, language schools, party leaders and cultural institutions. The state suppressed nationalism, yet also built national institutions. As central control weakened, republics possessed capitals, parliaments and elites that could serve independent states. This did not mean that every republic wanted to leave. Balts, Georgians and Armenians mobilized early and strongly; in March 1991 most Central Asian voters, and a large majority across the Union, voted to preserve it in a referendum six republics boycotted. Most historians conclude that nationalism in a few regions began the crisis, while the collapse of central power left reluctant republics independent almost by default.
Russia against the Union
Serhii Plokhy’s The Last Empire places the choices of Russia and Ukraine, the two largest republics, at the center of the Union’s end. That outcome was not what Washington sought. In August 1991 President George Bush warned Ukrainians in Kiev against “suicidal nationalism”; he preferred a reformed Union to fifteen states, several possessing nuclear weapons. Yeltsin saw a different opportunity: Russia could shed the burden of subsidizing other republics, while dismantling Gorbachev’s power would give him power himself. Vladislav Zubok’s Collapse shows how little financial authority remained at the center. Republics withheld revenue, the Union printed money to finance its budget, and by 1991 Gorbachev could no longer pay the army or central ministries. Ukraine’s vote of over 90% for independence on 1 December convinced Yeltsin that a Union without Ukraine was impossible. Its elected core leaders then dissolved it—an unusual end for an empire.
The August coup: why it failed
The eight members of the State Committee for the State of Emergency had the KGB, army and police at their disposal. Control on paper did not settle whether these institutions would obey. Historians point to will, legitimacy and communication: the plotters expected Gorbachev to yield and the public to remain home, failed to arrest Yeltsin at the outset, and could not agree to storm the White House. At a televised press conference acting president Gennady Yanayev’s visibly shaking hands persuaded many viewers that the committee was weak. Tens of thousands of Muscovites surrounded parliament. Some tank crews turned their guns to protect it, and senior commanders, including the air force chief, refused orders to attack. Three young men died in a tunnel near the White House on the night of 20–21 August; the interior minister later shot himself. Without enforcers willing to shoot fellow citizens, the challenge could not be suppressed. The failed coup destroyed institutions it had sought to save.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
Glasnost and elections gave nations a voice. Glasnost made public discussion of deportations, annexations and suppressed languages possible for Balts, Georgians, Armenians and others. The 1989–90 elections gave those grievances a political route: movements could win parliaments and govern through them. Gorbachev hoped openness would renew loyalty; in several republics elected leaders used it to demand departure.
Moscow renounced force in Eastern Europe. Gorbachev announced cuts to Soviet forces in Europe at the United Nations in December 1988. The following year, communist governments fell from Warsaw to Bucharest without Soviet intervention. People inside the Union saw that Moscow could let allied governments go; restraint abroad made a threat of repression at home less convincing.
The economic crisis destroyed the centre’s case. Shortages, rationing and broken supply chains by 1990–91 made prosperity a difficult argument for keeping the Union. Republics hoarded food and fuel and withheld taxes, issuing coupons and later currencies of their own. Departure could appear a way out of the crisis, while the center had too little money to purchase loyalty.
Russia’s leaders wanted Moscow’s power for themselves. After his expulsion from the Politburo in 1987, Yeltsin rebuilt his career in the Russian republic. Its parliament, presidency and treasury gave him a base from which to contest the Union government. Russian nationalists and democrats both argued that their republic subsidized the others. As the center weakened, its elected rivals had a reason and the means to take its place.
THE TURNING POINT
The White House, 19–21 August 1991. The plotters hoped to preserve the Union, but their defeat discredited three of its central pillars: the KGB, army leadership and Communist Party. Yeltsin’s stand on a tank gave him the initiative. Leaders who had hesitated now had reason to fear that hard-liners could again seize a government in Moscow. Within days Yeltsin suspended party activity in Russia, the Baltic states gained recognition and most remaining republics declared independence. The attempt to hold the Union together hastened its end.
What it changed
Fifteen states with inherited borders. The lines between Soviet republics became borders between states. About 25 million ethnic Russians now lived outside Russia, and other minorities found themselves in new states that did not want them. Crimea, transferred to Ukraine in 1954, was part of independent Ukraine. Citizenship, language and military bases would trouble relations among successor states for decades.
Frozen conflicts on the edges. As Soviet authority weakened, wars began over Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, hatched on the map. They continued after dissolution, with Russian troops and arms involved in most. Ceasefires in 1992–94 stopped fighting while leaving breakaway regions beyond the control of the states to which they legally belonged. The unresolved disputes became known as “frozen” conflicts.
Russia inherited the Union’s seat, weapons and debts. Russia assumed the Soviet Union’s United Nations Security Council seat, its embassies and most of its foreign debt. By 1996 all Soviet nuclear warheads had been moved to Russian territory. The new government also inherited the economic crisis while promising its people a rapid transition to a market economy.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Was the Soviet Union destroyed more by the nations on its edges or by Russia at its centre?
The borderlands made secession a public question. Baltic popular fronts, the Karabakh crisis and Georgian protests opened the crisis; Lithuania declared independence first, and Ukraine’s vote of more than 90% made a Union without it impossible. Mark Beissinger shows how mobilizations encouraged later ones. But the Union also needed its core. Russia asserted sovereignty and withheld taxes; Yeltsin defeated the coup and took the initiative at Belavezha. Serhii Plokhy emphasizes Russia and Ukraine’s choices together, while many Central Asian leaders received independence they had scarcely sought. The borderlands began the crisis, but the core decided its outcome. Russia’s leaders saw more to gain by leaving than by sustaining the Union, illustrating how an empire can end when its core judges the periphery too costly to hold.
An interesting fact
At a hunting lodge in the Białowieża forest on 8 December 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the agreement dissolving the Union. Boris Yeltsin then called US President George Bush while Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich tried to reach Gorbachev. Yeltsin got through first, and Gorbachev was angry that Washington already knew. Shushkevich later insisted the calls were almost simultaneous. In either account, a foreign president learned of the decision as quickly as the man who still nominally governed the Union.
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