The Last Empire (30 page)

Many in Yeltsin's camp treated Ukrainian independence not as an act aimed at the weakened center but as a stab in the back of democratic Russia, which had emerged victorious in the battle with the communist Goliath. Besides, the sudden shift of political power in Moscow created a situation unimaginable only a few days earlier. So far the Russian Federation had been in the forefront of rebellion
against the center, working hand in hand with the Baltics and adopting laws on its sovereignty ahead of Ukraine, Belarus, and most other Soviet republics. Russia had now all but taken over the center and was faced with the unexpected task of what to do with the Union.

As Sobchak, Stankevich, and Likhachev joined forces in an attempt to save the Union in the Soviet parliament, Boris Yeltsin ordered his press secretary, the forty-two-year-old economist-turned-journalist Pavel Voshchanov, to prepare a statement to the effect that “if any republic breaks off Union relations with Russia, then Russia has the right to raise the question of territorial claims.” This was a complete reversal of the policy adopted only two days earlier vis-à-vis Baltic independence. Voshchanov remembered later that when it came to relations with the non-Russian republics, Yeltsin was eager “to put Gorbachev to shame,” as the latter had failed to keep those republics in line. To his chagrin, the Russian president soon found himself in the same situation as Gorbachev. “The Russian president was wounded,” remembered Voshchanov. “And at that point the idea was born to give the negotiating partners a ‘hint' that ‘Yeltsin, as you will see, is no Gorbachev.'” The declaration of Ukrainian independence and the process that it unleashed made the task especially urgent.
⁸

Pavel Voshchanov did as he was told. After the draft of the presidential statement was ready, he read it to Yeltsin over the phone. The statement released to the press read as follows: “The Russian Federation casts no doubt on the constitutional right of every state and people to self-determination. There exists, however, the problem of borders, the nonsettlement of which is possible and admissible only on condition of allied relations secured by an appropriate treaty. In the event of their termination, the RSFSR reserves the right to raise the question of the revision of boundaries.” The statement did not name the republics with which Russia might have territorial disputes, but when Voshchanov was asked during the press conference which countries Yeltsin had in mind, he responded by naming Ukraine and Kazakhstan. He recalled later that the contested areas included territories that had earlier belonged to Russia: the Crimea and the Donetsk region of Ukraine, Abkhazia in Georgia, and northern territories of Kazakhstan.
⁹

In fact, the Crimea was the only region transferred from Russia in the 1950s. The transfer took place in 1954, when, in commemoration
of the tercentenary of the extension of Moscow's protectorate over Cossack Ukraine, the Crimea was reassigned by Moscow to Ukraine. By that time two hundred thousand of the peninsula's indigenous Crimean Tatars had been exiled to Central Asia. Most of the remaining inhabitants were ethnic Russians, but the peninsula was geographically and economically tied to Ukraine. The transfer made sense from the viewpoint of the central planners in Moscow, and the authorities in Russia and Ukraine went along. The Crimea was, however, the exception on Voshchanov's list of contested territories: the others had never belonged to the Russian Federation. That applied to the Donets Basin (Donbas) of eastern Ukraine, which had been part of the independent from Russia Ukrainian state and then of the Union republic, and to Abkhazia, which in Soviet times had been either formally independent or an autonomous part of Georgia. No territory was formally transferred from the Russian Federation to Kazakhstan, which became an autonomous republic in the 1920s and, in the next decade, a Union republic of the USSR.
¹⁰

The crisis in Russo-Ukrainian relations produced an opening for the embattled Gorbachev. Speaking at a session of the Soviet parliament that day, he told the deputies that he would do everything in his power to keep the Union together. “There can be no territorial problems within the Union,” declared Gorbachev. “But their emergence cannot be ruled out when republics leave the Union.” Voshchanov's statement was welcomed also by leaders of the Russian democratic camp. Many believed that Ukrainian and Belarusian independence amounted to little more than an effort by local party elites to cling to power, and in the struggle against those elites, democracy had to show its teeth. Gavriil Popov, the democratic mayor of Moscow and Yeltsin's close ally, appeared on central television to claim that he supported Yeltsin's position on secessionist republics and that border questions would have to be decided by referendum in the border regions. He referred specifically to the Crimea, Odesa, and Moldovan Transnistria. The irony of the situation was that the elites in the regions mentioned by Popov had welcomed the coup, and most of their inhabitants showed no sympathy for the democratic Russian leaders in Moscow.
¹¹

But not everyone in Moscow applauded Yeltsin and Voshchanov. On the day after the publication of Voshchanov's statement, seven prominent democratic figures led by Yurii Afanasiev and Elena Bonner,
whose anticoup credentials were beyond reproach, signed an appeal titled “We Welcome the Fall of the Empire.” They acknowledged that the leadership of some republics leaving the Union was dominated by communists who had supported the coup and were prone to oppress their own people, but this was to be resisted by coordinated action with other democratic powers, not by restoring the empire. “Most dangerous of all,” wrote Afanasiev, Bonner, and their colleagues, “are statements about possible territorial or property claims by Russia on neighboring republics in the event of the dissolution of the USSR.” The authors of the appeal stated that the way toward the creation of a new community of democratic republics on the ruins of the former empire was through peaceful dissolution of the USSR. The appeal presented a clear challenge to the position taken by the Russian leadership. It also offered a bold vision that would be crucial to Russia's search for a new policy toward the Union center and the former Union republics in the months to come. Few appreciated its importance at the time.
¹²

The new line of the Russian government, expressed in the Voshchanov statement, was met with deep concern also by the leaders and legislators of Ukraine, Moldova, and Kazakhstan. Ukraine was most threatened and therefore made its position known more quickly than any other republic directly or potentially affected by the new Russian attitude. On August 27, the day on which the Voshchanov statement was issued, the Rukh association of Ukrainian democratic parties fired off a statement of its own. It accused the “newly democratized leaders of Russia” of “imperial aspirations” akin to those manifested by the Bolsheviks in 1917. At that time, under the banner of proletarian revolution, the Bolsheviks had crushed the young Ukrainian independence movement and destroyed its democratic institutions. This historical parallel was echoed by a document issued the same day by the presidium of the Ukrainian parliament. It declared that Ukraine had no territorial claims on Russia but was prepared to discuss possible Russian claims on the basis of the Russo-Ukrainian treaty signed by Yeltsin in November 1990. That treaty guaranteed the existing border between Russia and Ukraine. Leonid Kravchuk called a press conference to release the presidium's statement, informing journalists that he had called Yeltsin to discuss the Voshchanov statement. The next day, the Russian president ordered Rutskoi and Stankevich to go to Kyiv to deal with the situation.
¹³

THE MEMBERS OF THE JOINT
Russian/all-Union delegation that flew to Kyiv on the afternoon of August 28 to explain the position of the Russian president and his democratic supporters to the leadership of the newly independent country had their task cut out for them. Their main goal was to derail or postpone Ukrainian independence, not to claim contested territories. “Do you think we need those territories?” a member of Yeltsin's inner circle had asked a surprised Voshchanov. “We need Nazarbayev and Kravchuk to know their place!” Their proper place was, of course, in the Union, together with Russia and under its control.

A member of the Soviet parliament, Yurii Shcherbak, who flew to Kyiv together with Rutskoi and his colleagues as one of the delegates representing the Union bodies, later remembered something that Anatolii Sobchak had said to him: “Don't you Ukrainians think of separating from Russia: we are one, after all.” According to Shcherbak, not only Sobchak but also Stankevich regarded the proclamation of Ukrainian independence with utmost suspicion. Rutskoi, who spoke good Ukrainian, was especially condescending. “So, you topknots [[
khokhly
]]
,
you've decided to separate, have you?” he asked the representatives of Ukraine, using a derogatory term for the Ukrainian nationality.
¹⁴

Before boarding the plane, Shcherbak called Kyiv to warn his colleagues there about the arrival of the Moscow delegation. Immediately, Ukrainian radio broadcast two appeals from the Ukrainian parliament. The first called on all political forces in Ukraine to unite in defense of independence. The second appeal assured the sizable national minorities that Ukrainian independence was no threat to their rights. That day the presidium also issued a decree placing military recruitment centers all over Ukraine under the republic's jurisdiction. The Ukrainian leadership was consolidating its political position and preparing citizens for an impending diplomatic confrontation with Russia.

As the Russian plane made its way to Kyiv, Ukrainian radio broadcast a third appeal. A Rukh leader went on the air to summon Kyivans to the parliament building in order to defend Ukrainian independence. More people responded to the call than had come to the Ukrainian parliament during its vote for independence, and soon the building was surrounded by Kyivans eager to defend what
still remained a dream. Shcherbak was himself shocked to see how many people showed up, resolved to defend their newly declared independence.
¹⁵

It is not clear what kind of reception Aleksandr Rutskoi and his colleagues expected in Kyiv, but it was not the one they received. A member of the delegation, Sergei Stankevich, later remembered, “In Kyiv they did not let us out of the plane for half the day, interrogating us about the purpose for which we had come to the independent state.” Rutskoi appealed to Slavic solidarity and declared that the purpose of the visit was to work out a program for the development of Russo-Ukrainian relations in light of the declaration of Ukrainian independence.

Only after these assurances had been given was the delegation taken to parliament. Instead of being met by members of the presidium, dominated by former communists, the delegates were welcomed by the leaders of the democratic bloc. Sobchak and Stankevich found themselves across the table from their old friends and allies in the Ukrainian democratic camp. The latter sought to convince their Russian counterparts that an independent Ukraine was anything but a safe haven for the Communist Party. Stankevich assured the members of the “reception committee” that the Moscow delegation was not going to raise territorial questions, and it did not question Ukraine's right to independence. That reassurance broke the ice.
¹⁶

After the meeting with the democratic deputies, the Russian representatives and Soviet parliamentarians sat down with the official Ukrainian delegation, led by Leonid Kravchuk. Their meeting would last long into the night. From time to time the participants would come out to tell the crowd of people around the parliament building how the negotiations were going and try to calm them down. Sobchak's attempts to appeal to the people over the heads of their unyielding leaders produced disastrous results. When he told the crowds, “It is important for us to be together,” they responded by chanting, “No!” “Shame!” “Ukraine without Moscow!”

After midnight, when Kravchuk and Rutskoi finally called a press conference to report on their deliberations, the results favored the Ukrainian leadership. The two countries agreed to create joint structures to manage the transition and work on economic agreements. The Ukrainians were happy with the outcome; the Russians were not.
“The talks were difficult,” recalled Stankevich. “We did not come up with a formula of association,” meaning that they had found no common ground for continuing existence in the same state. That was bad news indeed for the future of the Union. Its two largest members could not agree on a formula for coexistence that would satisfy both parties. Time would show that even Ukrainian accession to the agreement was provisional—the Kyiv politicians were already seeking a formula for what later became known as a “civilized divorce.”
¹⁷

The outcome of the late-night deliberations in Kyiv that disappointed Stankevich encouraged Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was upset about the Russian takeover of the Union government and wanted to take control of Soviet armed forces in his republic. That day the Kazakh leader fired off a telegram to Yeltsin requesting that Rutskoi's delegation visit Kazakhstan. It read, “Given that so far the press has carried no clearly expressed renunciation on Russia's part of territorial claims on contiguous republics, social protest is growing in Kazakhstan, with unforeseeable consequences. This may force the republic to adopt measures analogous to those of Ukraine.” The threat to follow the Ukrainian example and declare outright independence, voiced by the leader of another nuclear republic, worked. Rutskoi, Stankevich, and Sobchak had their plane refueled and flew east instead of returning to Moscow. In Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, they signed a declaration analogous to the one negotiated in Kyiv. At his press conference with Nazarbayev, Rutskoi assured journalists that there were no territorial problems between Russia and Kazakhstan.
¹⁸