The Last Empire (54 page)

When Yeltsin left his guards in the reception area and entered Gorbachev's office, the Soviet president was already waiting for him in the company of Nazarbayev, who despite his earlier promises had never gone to Viskuli or even to Minsk and was now, to all appearances, in Gorbachev's camp. Yeltsin began by telling Gorbachev that he had tried to sell Kravchuk on any conceivable union treaty, starting with a four- or five-year agreement and ending with Ukraine's associate membership in a Slavic union. Since Kravchuk had remained obdurate, the Commonwealth of Independent States was the only possible solution under the circumstances, argued Yeltsin. The main issue on Gorbachev's mind, however, was not the creation of the Commonwealth but the dissolution of the Soviet Union. “The three of you got together, but who gave you any such authorization?” said Gorbachev, according to the account that he gave a group of advisers later that day. “The State Council gave no instructions; the Supreme Soviet gave no instructions.”

Yeltsin protested and threatened to leave. Gorbachev stopped him, but the tone of the discussion did not change much. To Gorbachev's question, “Tell me what I am to say to people tomorrow,” Yeltsin responded, “I will say that I am taking your place.” He accused Gorbachev of conspiring with Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi of Russia behind his back. “You conspired with Bush,” shot back Gorbachev. “And so it went—forty minutes of squabbling; I even felt ashamed to be present there,” recalled Nazarbayev later. The Soviet president demanded that a referendum be held on the future of the Union, but the stormy meeting ended with a compromise solution: the text of the Belavezha Agreement was to be sent to the republican parliaments for study and evaluation. Yeltsin told Kravchuk afterward, “I would never again want to have such a conversation with anyone else.”
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Gorbachev did not attempt to arrest Yeltsin, but neither was he giving up. He believed that the newly created Commonwealth was
illegitimate and would not last, while the Union could and should be saved. The next two weeks in Moscow would witness the highest human and political drama since the failure of the August coup, with Gorbachev and Yeltsin contending for the support of the republican leaders, their parliaments, top military commanders, and the international community in a struggle whose stakes were the future of the Soviet Union and the world political order. There was only one person in Moscow to whom the worrying leaders were prepared to listen: the visiting US secretary of state, James Baker. The problem was that for some time neither Baker nor his boss in the White House, George Bush, knew what to make of the new situation and whether to endorse or torpedo the newly created Commonwealth.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV STILL
believed that it was in his power to save the crumbling Soviet Union. He started by restoring relations with the minister of defense, Marshal Yevgenii Shaposhnikov, whom he had warned the previous evening not to get involved in politics. Now he changed his tune. “Perhaps,” he said to the marshal after meeting with Yeltsin and Nazarbayev, “we shall have one more meeting at Novo-Ogarevo and propose that the union treaty be signed by those wishing to do so.” That day Gorbachev also met with the leaders of Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. But the leaders of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan ignored Gorbachev's summons to come to Moscow and asked Nazarbayev to return to Almaty. Rumors were spreading there about the possibility of establishing a Muslim or Central Asian confederation to counter the Commonwealth founded at Belavezha.
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That evening, television announcers read Gorbachev's statement on the Belavezha Agreement. It was a product of his uneasy discussion with advisers after the meeting with Yeltsin and Nazarbayev. Everyone agreed that Gorbachev could not remain silent and had to make his position known to the public. But what should he say? Gorbachev's aides, who attended a reception that evening at Spaso House, the residence of the US ambassador, denounced the agreement as a second coup, but the statement eventually signed by Gorbachev and read on television was pointedly nonconfrontational. Gorbachev welcomed the return of the Ukrainian leadership to the negotiating table and praised articles of the agreement that ensured the continuing existence of a common economic, security, and cultural space. He stressed, however,
that while every republic had the right to leave the Soviet Union, three republican leaders could not decide the fate of the entire USSR on their own. Gorbachev wanted the Belavezha Agreement to be discussed in the Union and republican parliaments and suggested that a new referendum be held on keeping the USSR in existence.
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Anatolii Cherniaev, who had not been summoned for consultations, heard the statement on television. He was more than skeptical that anything would come of Gorbachev's proposals. In his diary, he recorded, “Even if the people's deputies collect half the signatures [[required to authorize a referendum]], that will be of no avail. Nicholas II was man enough to renounce the throne. Three hundred years of dynastic rule. M[[ikhail]] S[[ergeevich]] cannot understand that his day is done. He should have left the scene long ago . . . to maintain his dignity and respect for what he has accomplished in history.”
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On the other side of the globe, in Washington, George Bush and members of his staff were following the drama unfolding in Moscow with concern. “We were somewhat surprised by December 8, by the meeting of Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich,” recalled National Security Council staffer Nicholas Burns. “We did not expect a definitive statement that they would secede from the Soviet Union. . . . We were surprised, but we knew that this was probably going to be the end, that if these three republics were determined to leave there was very little way that the Soviet Union would hold together. I think it was the first time it became very, very clear that the Soviet Union was going to be disintegrating rather shortly.” What worried the American president most was the possible involvement of the military in a clash between Gorbachev, on one hand, and Yeltsin and his allies in the republics, on the other.

On the evening of December 9, Bush dictated into his tape recorder, “Now we hear from Gorbachev, saying that the whole deal by Yeltsin is illegal. ‘We need a referendum, we need the people to speak.' And, I find myself on this Monday night, worrying about military action. Where was the Army—they've been silent. What will happen? Can this get out of hand? Will Gorbachev resign? Will he try to fight back? Will Yeltsin have thought this out properly? It's tough—a very tough situation.” The last time Bush had had such worries was during the August coup. Back then he could not reach Gorbachev and believed for some time that Yeltsin was out of reach
as well. He could now call both of them, but what good would that do under the circumstances?
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Bush's concern about the possible involvement of the military was anything but a figment of his imagination. One thing that Gorbachev still had going for him was his formal title of commander in chief of Soviet military forces, and he was not above using that trump card in his confrontation with Yeltsin. On the morning of December 9, he had called Marshal Shaposhnikov in an effort to rebuild relations, which had been damaged during their telephone confrontation the previous night over the news from Viskuli. On Tuesday, December 10, Gorbachev summoned district military commanders to the Ministry of Defense. Speaking in Shaposhnikov's presence but over his head, Gorbachev called on the military brass to support him as commander in chief in preserving the Soviet Union. He could not help but lecture them on the importance of Soviet patriotism. It did not work. Shaposhnikov and his supporters were clearly consolidating their position in the ministry. On that day, Shaposhnikov removed two deputy ministers of defense from their posts. Gorbachev returned from the meeting with little hope that the army would support him. His aides later admitted that the generals' attitude had been hostile.
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According to a Russian proverb, “Bad news does not travel alone.” That same day, December 10, Gorbachev learned that the parliaments of not only rebellious Ukraine but also the much more cautious Belarus had ratified the Belavezha Accords. In Ukraine the ratification came with a number of amendments—twelve altogether—that put in question even the few “integrationist” articles smuggled into the agreements by Yeltsin's Young Turks at Viskuli. Kravchuk managed to sell the agreement to parliament but faced strong opposition to any proposal that would put Ukraine back into Russia's orbit. Even some members of his cabinet, including Defense Minister Kostiantyn Morozov, opposed the agreement.
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In Belarus, the agreement was met with mild criticism from both pro-Union and pro-independence politicians. But most deputies supported the agreement. This was true even of Aliaksandr Lukashenka, the future president of Belarus, who would later denounce the Belavezha Accords. “He congratulated me and shook my hand with the words ‘Way to go, guys! You've
done really well,'” recalled the Belarusian foreign minister, Petr Kravchenka, writing about his exchange with Lukashenka on the day of the ratification.
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After returning from the Ministry of Defense, where he was rebuffed by the generals, Gorbachev gathered his advisers from the Political Consultative Committee—a body he had created in the fall to improve his political standing—for a discussion of the rapidly deteriorating situation. With the military option off the table and the republics beginning to ratify the Belavezha Accords, Gorbachev's hopes of saving the Union and staying in power were dwindling with unprecedented speed. He opened the meeting with another piece of depressing news: without so much as consulting him, Yeltsin had subordinated the service responsible for government communications to himself. “They took over, and that's all there is to it,” Gorbachev told his allies.

The main question on the agenda was what to do next. Yevgenii Primakov, the new head of the Soviet foreign intelligence service, now separated from the KGB, summarized the situation: “We have no means of settling this by force. We can't rely on the army. International powers will cooperate with the republics.”

But Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze told Gorbachev what he wanted to hear: “Resignation will be interpreted as an abdication of responsibility.”

Gorbachev was prompt to agree: “They would say that I ran away.” The Soviet president decided to stay and fight, against all odds.
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The next day, December 11, witnessed a further weakening of Gorbachev's position. Alarmed by his rival's meeting with the commanders, Yeltsin arranged his own meeting with the military brass. It went exceptionally well for the Russian president. “At first we did not know how we would react,” recalled one of the participants in both meetings, “but Mr. Yeltsin knew what to say—after all, he has fought an election, and Mr. Gorbachev hasn't.” Yeltsin also could promise the military what Gorbachev could not—a significant raise in officers' salaries, which had been reduced to virtually nothing by the high inflation of the previous months. Furthermore, he vowed to lead society out of the political and economic chaos prevailing under Gorbachev. That same day, Yeltsin delivered another blow
to Gorbachev's plans. The Russian parliament adopted a resolution recalling their deputies from the Union parliament, forestalling Gorbachev's use of it as an instrument against the Belavezha Accords. Gorbachev protested, but to no avail.
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On the next day, December 12, following the example of their Ukrainian and Belarusian colleagues, the Russian deputies voted to denounce the union treaty of 1922 and ratify the Agreement on the Establishment of a Commonwealth of Independent States. Yeltsin called on the deputies to support both proposals. He presented the Belavezha Agreement not as an empire killer but as an empire savior. “In today's conditions,” he said, “only a Commonwealth of Independent States can ensure the preservation of the political, legal, and economic space built up over the centuries but now almost lost.” Yeltsin also assured the deputies that the Commonwealth was open for other Soviet republics to join: “We have sought to take account of the interests not only of the three republics but of all possible future members of the Commonwealth. I cannot agree that it is based on any ethnic principle. We treat peoples of various nationalities with equal respect.” The Russian deputies supported Yeltsin: 188 voted in favor, 7 abstained, and only 6 voted against, including the head of the now banned Russian Communist Party, S. A. Polozkov.
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As Yeltsin was addressing the Russian parliament, Gorbachev met with journalists to deny rumors of his imminent resignation. “What right do we have to slice up the Fatherland like a pie?” he said to them. “We come into this world for sixty or seventy years, but our state was built over ten centuries; generations will live after us, yet we have begun slicing up the Fatherland like a pie. So what: will we slice the pie, drink, and have a snack? No, do not expect that of me.” His last hope was the session of the Union parliament scheduled to meet later that day. It was a faint hope. Gorbachev was unable to address the session for lack of a quorum. “In the afternoon,” wrote Gorbachev's aide Vadim Medvedev in his diary, “an attempt was made to convene a session of the Supreme Soviet. But it no longer has legal status, as a number of republics have recalled their deputies.” Then came the results of the vote in the Russian parliament—a devastating blow. “I believe it was after the Russian parliament's decision to approve the Minsk agreement that Gorbachev decided not to resist the process
that had taken on its own momentum,” wrote Gorbachev's interpreter, Pavel Palazhchenko, in his memoirs.
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