The Last Empire

by Serhii Plokhy

  If Bush did send a signal, Pankin was in no position to hear it. He was in a sour mood in Madrid. He was about to become a minister without a ministry. News had reached him in the Spanish capital that in his speech on economic reform, Yeltsin had put Pankin’s ministry on the chopping block, demanding that it be reduced to a tenth of its size and even threatening to cut off funding altogether.

  On the eve of the Madrid conference, the announcement of planned cuts made by the Russian foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, caused an uproar in Washington. Bush and James Baker instructed the US ambassador in Moscow, Bob Strauss, to meet as soon as possible with Kozyrev to discuss the unexpected cuts to Pankin’s ministry. With the Madrid conference about to start in a few days, Yeltsin’s apparent drastic reduction of the all-Union center, including its international arm, presented a major threat to American plans for a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Kozyrev assured Strauss that what he had said was merely an expression of his frustration with the ministry’s policy of ignoring Russia. The problem seemed to have been resolved. But now, in Madrid, Pankin learned that despite Kozyrev’s assurances to the contrary, Yeltsin had gone ahead and announced the cuts.13

  Pankin tried to maintain a brave face, telling the international press that “Boris Nikolaevich must have been speaking figuratively,” but the situation was spinning out of control. His subordinates in the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs began a mutiny. A petition demanding Pankin’s return to Moscow was signed by some of the ministry’s most prominent employees and reached the minister in Madrid. The petition “had the nerve to say that rather than establishing peace in the Middle East I should hurry back home and set about saving the Foreign Ministry,” recalled Pankin. He refused to do so. He would return only when he believed that his world mission was fully accomplished.14

  The Foreign Ministry petition highlighted the gap between the grand façade of Soviet diplomacy and the misery of the Union government’s everyday existence. The collapse of Union institutions, which was gathering speed in Moscow, seemed a nightmare that many in Madrid—not only members of the Soviet delegation—simply wanted to forget. After all, it was interfering with the realization of a dream that Western leaders had cherished for generations, that of establishing lasting peace in the Middle East. Now, when that dream seemed within reach, the partner they were counting on to make the process work was about to disappear.

  The Americans worked hard to keep the dream alive by helping the Soviet center send representatives abroad and play its role in the grand Middle Eastern gala. The Soviets rose to the occasion. Like old aristocrats who had lost all their possessions to nouveaux riches but would not give up their extravagant lifestyle, the Soviet leaders came to Madrid for their last ball. Everyone appreciated their presence, but the conference itself was considered an exclusively American success. In the dozens of congratulatory letters received afterward by its main organizer and promoter, James Baker, there was no mention whatever of the Soviet Union.15

  THE TRUE HIGHLIGHT of Gorbachev’s visit to Madrid was the dinner he attended with Bush and Felipe González at the invitation of the Spanish king, Juan Carlos. There the Soviet leader got all the emotional support he was longing for. In his memoirs, Gorbachev called the dinner and the four-hour conversation “truly unique” and “amazingly candid.” He and Raisa, who later departed with the queen, leaving the four men alone, recalled their ordeal in the Crimea. Juan Carlos, himself a survivor of a military coup and head of a country with its own nationality problems, represented most vividly by Basque separatism, could not have been more supportive. So was Felipe González. The dinner hosted by the Spanish king made the whole trip worthwhile for Gorbachev. Despite all the problems and humiliations, the Madrid conference ultimately accomplished what all his previous foreign visits had done for him: it boosted his morale and helped recharge his batteries for the continuing fight back home.16

  Another psychological boost came from a most unexpected quarter: President François Mitterrand, who invited the Gorbachevs to visit him at his modest estate in southern France on their way back to Moscow. They accepted. Unlike González, who had stood by Gorbachev during the first and most difficult hours of the coup, Mitterrand had made an initial statement that many interpreted as de facto recognition. He had corrected his position by the end of the day, and the people around Gorbachev blamed the faux pas on the Soviet ambassador in Paris. Now Mitterrand insisted on seeing Gorbachev. He wanted to support his struggle to preserve the Union and did so more than once during the Soviet leader’s impromptu visit to his estate.

  “History teaches us through the centuries,” he told Gorbachev, according to Cherniaev’s diary, “that France needs an ally to maintain the European balance. . . . We are great friends of today’s Germans. But it would be very dangerous if there were a soft underbelly north or east of Germany. Because the Germans will always be tempted to penetrate in those directions.” Gorbachev could not have agreed more. Indeed, the two leaders agreed on almost everything, including the threat of German economic expansion, the unduly cozy relations between the United States and Israel, and the need to preserve Yugoslavia. They discussed the new architecture of Europe, almost always seeing eye to eye.17

  Gorbachev was obviously in his element. As the two presidents were joined by their wives and assistants, he kept talking over cognac and coffee served after dinner. “Mitterrand,” remembered Cherniaev, “sitting in a large chair, infrequently ‘stopped’ the meandering conversation with significant observations . . . with a benevolently condescending smile on his weary face.” Cherniaev, one of the architects of Gorbachev’s concept of a “common European home” and the European destiny of the Soviet Union, wrote in his diary about the meeting of “two great Europeans at the end of a terrible century, so different and so understandable to each other.” But even he could not avoid noting the difference between Mitterrand’s private and public behavior. At the press conference that followed their informal talks, Mitterand, like Bush before him, offered very little support for Gorbachev. Such, at least, was the impression of Gorbachev’s assistants. “His friends are writing him off,” said Palazhchenko to Cherniaev.

  On the flight home, Gorbachev gathered a small group of advisers over lunch to share his thoughts on the visit and chart a course for the future. He was pleased and inspired by what he saw as the Western leaders’ concern about the future of the USSR. His best strategy, argued Gorbachev, would be to support Yeltsin in his economic reform efforts while pushing ahead with the new union treaty. Everyone agreed. “One person on the plane who seemed pessimistic about the chances of success was Raisa Gorbacheva,” wrote Palazhchenko later. “She was not saying much, but it was clear she had grave concerns on her mind.”18

  LIKE GORBACHEV’S RETURN to Moscow after his ordeal in the Crimea, his return from Madrid was to some degree a landing in a different country. Once again, the country was being transformed by Boris Yeltsin. His decision to initiate radical economic reform, which Gorbachev had never had the stomach for and now had no time to implement, made a strong impression on everyone, including Gorbachev’s own advisers. “These days are probably decisive after all,” noted Anatolii Cherniaev in his diary after his return from Madrid. “Yeltsin’s report at the RSFSR congress is certainly a breakthrough to a new country, to a different society.”

  Yeltsin was eager to show that he meant what he had said in his speech to the Russian parliament. Russia cut funding to the majority of Union ministries. University professors went without paychecks and students without scholarships. Cherniaev expected that by mid-November there would be fifty thousand unemployed ministry officials in Moscow alone. It was the first time that he and his staff in the presidential administration had not received their paychecks: with Russia withdrawing its funding, there was no money left in the Union coffers. Food shortages became a daily reality. Reinvigorated after his return from Madrid, Gorbachev sensed an opportunity to regain some of his lost political ground. On Novem
ber 4, at the State Council meeting attended by the leaders of the Union republics, he attacked Yeltsin for his ill-conceived plan for implementing reform.19

  “Look at what has happened already,” said Gorbachev, referring to the consumer panic created by Yeltsin’s price liberalization. “Generally, 1,800 [[metric]] tonnes of bread per day are sold in Moscow. But yesterday, it was already 2,800 tonnes! Goods are being snapped up at a furious rate. Stores have started to hold back goods. The markets are deserted: sellers are waiting for prices to rise.” Gorbachev launched his attack before Yeltsin entered the room—he was running late—but continued after Yeltsin eventually arrived for the meeting. “That’s what always happens when you lag behind events,” declared Gorbachev in Yeltsin’s presence. “Those around the table looked at each other in amusement,” recalled Boris Pankin. “The roles had switched, and now it was Gorbachev reproaching Yeltsin for wasting time.”20

  Gorbachev used the aura of world leader that he had partially recovered in Madrid to advance his main cause—the preservation of the Union. “The West fears the breakup of the Soviet Union,” he told the republican leaders. “I assure you that this was the main subject of all my talks in Madrid. They can’t understand what’s happening here. Just when we are finally on the road to democracy and clearing the debris of totalitarianism. . . . They say the Soviet Union has to be preserved as one of the pillars of the international system.” Yeltsin was not impressed. He derailed Gorbachev’s attempt to renew discussion of the union treaty by demanding that participants stick to the agenda, which did not include an item on the treaty. But the Russian president showed no hostility toward the idea of union in general. He even voiced support for the continuing existence of joint armed forces. Gorbachev’s spokesman, Andrei Grachev, came to the conclusion that Yeltsin had no immediate plans to destroy the Soviet Union.21

  In the following days Gorbachev extended his offensive against the Russian president by assuming his traditional role of protector of the autonomous republics within the Russian Federation against the “tyranny” of the Russian government. The case in question was Yeltsin’s treatment of Chechnia. On Saturday, November 9, in the middle of a four-day holiday break to mark the anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Anatolii Cherniaev found his boss in his office working the telephones. “What is he doing, what is he doing?” said Gorbachev to Cherniaev, referring to Yeltsin. “There would be hundreds of people killed if it were to start.”

  The previous evening, central television had announced the Russian president’s signing of a decree introducing a state of emergency in Chechnia, a former autonomous republic within the Russian Federation that had recently declared independence. Now Gorbachev was consulting with his security ministers, trying to prevent bloodshed. “I am told that the governor whom he [[Yeltsin]] appointed there has refused to carry out his role,” continued Gorbachev to Cherniaev. “Parliament as well. All the factions and groupings that were holding discussions and bickering among themselves have [[now]] united against the ‘Russians.’ The fighters are already assembling women and children to go in front of them when the troops approach. Idiots!” The last word was meant for Yeltsin and his team.22

  The roots of the Russo-Chechen conflict that flared up in November 1991 and subsequently engulfed the entire North Caucasus went back to the Russian conquest of the region in the nineteenth century. During World War II, Joseph Stalin ordered all Chechens resettled to Kazakhstan as punishment for their alleged disloyalty. Nikita Khrushchev allowed the Chechens and the Ingush, another North Caucasian people with whom the Chechens shared an autonomous republic and experience of exile, to return to the North Caucasus in the late 1950s. Three decades later, the implementation of perestroika and glasnost allowed the Chechens to assert their identity and make claims for sovereignty and independence. In that regard, they were not very different from other Soviet nationalities.23

  In June 1991, after Yeltsin’s victory in the Russian presidential elections, the Chechen National Congress, a pro-independence organization established in the fall of the previous year, proclaimed a Chechen national republic separate from Ingushetia. A forty-seven-year-old major general named Dzhokhar Dudaev emerged as its leader. A month earlier he had resigned as commander of the Soviet strategic bomber division based in Estonia, where he witnessed the movement of that Baltic republic toward sovereignty and independence. Dudaev wanted the same for his homeland. His people were only slightly less numerous than the Estonians: according to the Soviet census, there were close to 1 million ethnic Estonians and approximately 750,000 ethnic Chechens in their respective homelands. Russians and other Slavs constituted between a quarter and one third of the population in each republic. But there were also significant differences between Estonia and Chechnia. The former had the status of a Union republic, and its right to independence was recognized and promoted by Bush and Yeltsin alike. Chechnia, on the other hand, was a self-proclaimed republic whose right to existence, let alone independence, was recognized by no one.24

  During the August coup, Dudaev supported the Russian president. “We took control of the situation, organized armed units, localized the MVD [[Ministry of Internal Affairs]] and the KGB, and took over the troops, communications, and railway junctions,” recalled Dudaev, summarizing the report he had sent to Yeltsin at the time. The failure of the coup in Moscow strengthened Dudaev’s hand in Chechnia but did not make him its leader: officially, power remained in the hands of the established politicians who had supported the plotters. On September 6 Dudaev staged a coup in Groznyi, the capital of the republic. His supporters stormed and took over government buildings. The head of the republican parliament was forced to resign, and the mayor of Groznyi jumped to his death from his office window when the rebels took it over. He became the first high-profile victim of a conflict that would eventually claim hundreds of thousands of lives.25

  Yeltsin and his advisers, who included Ruslan Khasbulatov, an ethnic Chechen and acting Speaker of the Russian parliament, found themselves in a difficult situation. Their opponents in Chechnia, the old Communist Party cadres, were opposed to Chechen independence, while their supporters, led by Dudaev, were for it. In September and early October Groznyi was visited by scores of Yeltsin’s advisers, including Ruslan Khasbulatov and Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi. The compromise they helped negotiate led to the dissolution of the old republican parliament. Elections were soon organized, but to the disappointment of the Russian authorities, these were not elections to the new republican parliament.26

  On October 27, in elections boycotted by ethnic Russians and justly criticized for numerous violations of electoral law, General Dudaev was elected president of Chechnia. His first decree declared the political sovereignty of Chechnia. It looked like the beginning of the disintegration not just of the Soviet Union but also of the Russian Federation. On November 7, Yeltsin countered with a decree proclaiming a state of emergency in Chechnia. On the following day, interior troops were dispatched to Khankala airport, near Groznyi. Fifteen hundred soldiers in police uniforms were supposed to enter Groznyi, depose the new government, and arrest Dudaev and his entourage. On November 8 the entire country learned of Yeltsin’s decree on the evening news. It was out in the open.27

  The Chechens refused to be intimidated and pushed for complete independence from Russia. On the following day, General Dudaev was officially inaugurated as the first president of Chechnia. One day later he issued a decree annulling Yeltsin’s proclamation of a state of emergency. The local police began to go over to the rebels, who took over police and KGB installations and began arming the militia—one of Dudaev’s earlier decrees had ordered the mobilization of all men age fifteen to fifty-five. Soviet military units in Chechnia were surrounded in their barracks, and Russia’s railway connections with the Transcaucasian republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia were blocked.

  On November 10, to attract international attention to the Russian actions in Chechnia, three armed Chechens hijacked a Soviet
plane with 171 passengers on board and rerouted it to Turkey. Leaving the frightened hostages at the Ankara airport, the hijackers flew on to Groznyi, where they were welcomed as national heroes. It was the first act of terrorism perpetrated in the name of Chechen independence by the twenty-six-year-old Shamil Basaev, who had been among the defenders of the Russian White House a few months earlier. Several years later, he would lead the takeover of the Budennovsk hospital in Gorbachev’s native Stavropol region of Russia, holding all its patients hostage.28

  Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi, who was charged by Yeltsin with overseeing the entire military operation in Chechnia, found himself in difficulty. Dudaev’s successful mobilization of pro-independence forces was only one of the problems facing Rutskoi and his men. No less serious was the sabotage of their orders by Soviet authorities. The Soviet interior minister, Viktor Barannikov, who had previously been the interior minister of Russia, voiced his opposition to the use of his forces in Chechnia. This was a major blow to Rutskoi’s plans. The police and interior forces were the only asset available to the Russian leadership to enforce the state of emergency in Chechnia. The army was under Union jurisdiction, and the Russian officials decided early on not to use it in Groznyi. The KGB also was under Union jurisdiction. Without the cooperation and support of the all-Union ministries, Rutskoi had no chance of implementing Yeltsin’s decree.