The Last Empire

by Serhii Plokhy

  Even though they were unhappy about the exclusively Slavic character of the Belavezha meeting, Nazarbayev, Karimov, and their colleagues saw no alternative but to support—in each case for a different combination of political, economic, social, ethnic, and security reasons—the course adopted at Belavezha by Russia and its Slavic neighbors. At Ashgabat, the Central Asian leaders not only agreed to join the Commonwealth but also came up with a face-saving way to do so. “Having discussed the matter, we adopted a declaration of the leaders of the five republics,” Nazarbayev told journalists after the end of the meeting, “which states the following: ‘We treat with understanding the effort of the leaders of the republics of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine to establish a Commonwealth of Independent States in place of the previously disenfranchised republics. Our main condition is the entry of all republics of the CIS as founders, that is, on the basis of absolutely equal rights.”18

  THE ALMATY SUMMIT, which, as many expected, would decide the fate of both the crumbling Union and the not yet fully established Commonwealth, was scheduled for Saturday, December 21. It was to be held at the Palace of Friendship in Kazakhstan’s capital, where in early November the leaders of twelve Soviet republics had met for their first summit without Gorbachev to sign an economic agreement.

  This new meeting would also take place without Gorbachev. But how many leaders would come to Almaty was not clear until the very end, and the journalists who descended on the capital of Kazakhstan—almost five hundred in all—to cover the last Soviet and first post-Soviet summit of the republican presidents were kept guessing. “The talk now is that not just eight but nine or ten states will take part,” wrote a reporter for the Moscow newspaper Izvestiia. “It is expected that the Minsk ‘trio’ and the Ashgabat ‘quintet’ will be joined by Armenia and perhaps Moldova.” On the eve of the meeting, news reached Almaty that Ayaz Mutalibov of Azerbaijan, a country locked in bloody battle with Armenia over Nagornyo-Karabakh, was also on his way.19

  What the presidents of republics with different interests—sometimes even at war with one another, such as Armenia and Azerbaijan—were bringing to the table and what to expect from the meeting were anyone’s guesses. The only political leader to go public with his agenda for the Almaty summit was the one who was not invited to attend—Mikhail Gorbachev. He was left with no vehicle but that of a public statement to present his views and concerns and try to influence the outcome. After the ratification of the Belavezha Agreement by the Russian parliament and the Ashgabat declaration of the leaders of the Central Asian republics, Gorbachev had no choice but to reconcile himself to the idea of the Commonwealth. On December 17, the day on which Baker left Moscow and Gorbachev held his all-important meeting with Yeltsin about the transfer of power, the Soviet president declared to the media that his position coincided 80 percent with that of Yeltsin.

  The content of the remaining 20 percent was revealed on the following day, when Gorbachev published an open letter to the participants in the Almaty summit. Gorbachev wanted the Commonwealth to become a subject of international law, take part in international relations, and have a common citizenship. He also argued for the creation of a unified military command and a common foreign policy agency that would take care of Soviet legal obligations abroad and USSR representation in the United Nations Security Council. He proposed the creation of Commonwealth institutions to coordinate economic and financial policy, as well as academic and cultural activities. Finally, he suggested dropping the reference to independent states from the title of the new organization and calling it the “Commonwealth of European and Asian States.”20

  The letter left little doubt that while Gorbachev accepted the word “commonwealth,” he actually wanted to re-create a looser version of the polity envisioned in his now defunct union treaty. At best, he was finally prepared to agree to the principles of confederation advocated by Yeltsin and Nazarbayev and briefly accepted by Kravchuk after the failure of the August coup. But it was too late: the train of confederation had long since left the station. The text of the open letter was drafted by Anatolii Cherniaev, whose version Gorbachev preferred to the one prepared by his other aide, Georgii Shakhnazarov. According to Cherniaev, Shakhnazarov’s draft was “composed in thoroughly ‘constructive’ tones—benevolent, conciliatory, offering wishes of success.” Was Gorbachev concerned with making a statement of principle, regardless of the political consequences? Or was he still hoping to be offered a major role in the Commonwealth, which would keep him afloat politically? In his memoirs, Gorbachev does not comment on his intentions, stating only—and not without bitterness—that his letter “had no effect whatsoever.”21

  One day after Gorbachev issued his letter, Russian newspapers published a translation of Yeltsin’s interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, which left Gorbachev little hope of a political future. To the question “Will Gorbachev play any role in the Commonwealth?” the Russian president gave an unequivocal answer: “No. We shall treat him with the dignity and respect that he deserves, but because we have decided to complete the transition phase in our country by the end of December, he should also make his decision by that deadline.”22

  Yeltsin’s vision for the Commonwealth institutions was much more modest than Gorbachev’s. “Perhaps a Council of Heads of State, a Council of Heads of Government, and a Defense Council will be established, comprising the heads of the independent states,” wrote Yeltsin’s chief aide, Gennadii Burbulis, outlining Russian desiderata for the Almaty meeting after the Russian cabinet discussed the matter on December 18. On the same day, the government reviewed alternative designs for the new Russian coat of arms. It was decided to go back to the symbol of imperial Russia, the double-headed eagle. Burbulis told the press that of the two designs discussed at the meeting, the ministers decided to choose the eagle that looked less threatening. The last thing Russia wanted at that point was to frighten away its potential partners in the Commonwealth.23

  The character of the new Commonwealth institutions and the scope of their authority were of great concern to Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine. For some time it was not clear whether he would attend the meeting at all. At Belavezha, Kravchuk had insisted that Ukraine would not accept any Commonwealth institutions that limited its independence. He had won the day. Now that arrangement suddenly appeared to have been called into question: judging by the statements of Yeltsin’s aides, Russia was eager to “deepen” the deal and strengthen the integrationist aspect of the Commonwealth. Kravchuk was not pleased. He faced strong opposition in his government, parliament, and society at large to what many considered a sellout of Ukrainian national interests, perpetrated almost immediately after the country had won its long-sought independence. Many questioned the intentions of the former communist apparatchik who had led his nation to independence and then, without so much as consulting the cabinet or parliament, signed an agreement to establish what looked to many like a reincarnation of the Soviet Union.

  A poll conducted in Moscow, Kyiv, and Minsk after the signing of the Belavezha Agreement indicated that only 50 percent of respondents in Kyiv supported it, as compared to 84 percent in Moscow and 74 percent in Minsk. Kyivans who favored the creation of the Commonwealth did so largely for economic reasons, not because they were inspired by the notion of political unity of the three Slavic nations. Of those polled in Kyiv, 54 percent linked their hopes for a better economic future with the Commonwealth, as compared to 44 percent in Minsk and 38 percent in Moscow.24

  After the Central Asian presidents proposed to cancel the old treaty and sign a new one, Kravchuk indicated that he was in no hurry to go to Almaty. As always, he played his weak hand exceptionally well. By showing no interest in renegotiating accords, Kravchuk put everyone on edge. If the Central Asian republics did not want to lose Russia, Russia did not want to lose Ukraine. Yeltsin had been opposed to signing Gorbachev’s union treaty without Ukraine because it would have left Russia almost one-on-one with the Central Asian Muslim republics. The Commonwea
lth without Ukraine, as he saw it, was quite a similar proposition. Baker visited Kravchuk in Kyiv on December 18, and their conversation began with Kravchuk’s plea for American support of Ukrainian independence. When Kravchuk told Baker that he would go to Almaty, the US secretary of state was greatly relieved.25

  Unlike Kravchuk, the Belarusian leader, Stanislaŭ Shushkevich, was eager to take part in the Almaty meeting. Soon after signing the Belavezha Agreement, he issued a statement to the effect that the Commonwealth was not meant to be an exclusive Slavic club and was open for other republics, including the Central Asian ones, to join. But the Belarusians did not want to extend the Commonwealth at any price. They came up with the idea that only republics not involved in violent conflicts on their territory could be invited to join the Commonwealth. That approach would automatically exclude Moldova, which was trying to rein in its predominantly Slavic region of Transnistria; Azerbaijan, which was striving to retain its predominantly Armenian-settled region of Nagornyo-Karabakh; Armenia, which was involved in the Karabakh conflict; and probably Georgia, where the opposition was engaged in street fights with government forces, and such regions as Abkhazia and North Ossetia, predominantly non-Georgian in ethnic composition, were demanding the right to self-determination. In theory, even Russia, with its deepening crisis in Chechnia, could be barred from Commonwealth membership if the Belarusian proposal was adopted at the Almaty summit.26

  Quite apart from the Belarusian proposal, the Almaty meeting had to take a stand on the breakaway regions. As the date of the Almaty meeting drew closer, two breakaway regions, Transnistria in Moldova and Nagornyo-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, applied for membership in the Commonwealth before their “home” republics did so. Meanwhile, Russia recognized the independence of Moldova and Armenia in their Soviet-era borders. This did little to defuse tensions in the breakaway regions. The revolt of autonomies against their “parent” republics, so greatly encouraged by Gorbachev’s center in 1990–1991, was in full swing now that the Soviet Union was nearing its final hour.

  As one would expect, given the Union republics’ earlier troubles with autonomist movements, at the Belavezha meeting the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus had declared their support for “legitimate” authorities in the republics. On Russia’s initiative, they had issued a statement supporting the Moldovan leadership in its effort to crush Slavic separatism in Transnistria. The Slavic presidents were insisting on the inviolability of existing borders and placing legal principle above ethnic solidarity with fellow Slavs. Their unanimity on those points would help prevent a “Yugoslavia with nukes,” as the Soviet Union was being described in Gorbachev’s doomsday scenarios.27

  While the Slavic republics were at peace with one another, the others were not. Ethnic warfare in the non-Slavic regions of the once united country was becoming more intense and dragging units of the Soviet army into the conflict. On December 9, the day after the signing of the Belavezha Agreement, Moldovan forces clashed with the Transnistrian militia in the border city of Bender. The Transnistrian forces enjoyed the support of the Soviet Fourteenth Army, formally still under Gorbachev’s authority. In the next few days, clashes took place in the Transnistrian town of Dubasari. In Azerbaijan, on December 18, President Ayaz Mutalibov took command of all military formations on the territory of his republic. He wanted Soviet army units to either acknowledge his authority or leave Azerbaijan. On the following day, the Armenians of Nagornyo-Karabakh formed their own self-defense committee, which took charge of local militias cooperating with Soviet troops under Gorbachev’s tutelage. President Levon Ter-Petrosian of Armenia issued his own decree strengthening ties between local Armenian authorities and Soviet army units on the territory of the republic. Whereas Azeris saw the Soviet army as a potential enemy, Armenians considered it an ally.28

  The civil war against which Gorbachev had warned Ukrainians on the eve of their referendum was breaking out in other republics. For the time being, it was limited to the Caucasus and the Slavic-Roman frontier in Moldova. In the following year, it would spread into Tajikistan.

  THE ALMATY SUMMIT began as planned at 11:30 a.m. on December 21 at the Palace of Friendship in the capital of Kazakhstan. The participants were supposed to give new meaning to the old Soviet cliché of the friendship of peoples. They managed to do so. They faced enormous problems at home and abroad, but there was also hope that their meeting—the largest such gathering since the failed coup—would show the former Soviet republics a way out of the impasse of the previous several months.

  The Commonwealth meeting offered the republican leaders a sorely needed negotiating platform that Gorbachev and his meetings on a new union treaty had failed to provide. Marshal Yevgenii Shaposhnikov was the first to admit this. “It was the first meeting in many months of all heads of Union republics in such a complement,” he wrote in his memoirs. “The very fact that everyone came, with the exception of the leaders of the Baltic republics and Georgia, which sent an observer, spoke volumes. I compared this meeting with many others—meetings of the State Council of the USSR and consultations at Novo-Ogarevo, at which some leaders failed to show up for a variety of reasons.”29

  Formally a minister in Gorbachev’s government, Shaposhnikov held the only official Commonwealth post so far established—commander in chief of its military forces. Having accepted the office from Yeltsin immediately after the signing of the Belavezha Agreement, Shaposhnikov was now presiding over a quickly disintegrating army. His problems in that regard were not limited to the attempts of the presidents of the North Caucasus republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia to establish some form of control over Soviet troops on their territory or the efforts of leaders of the breakaway regions of Transnistria and Nagornyo-Karabakh to do the same in their jurisdictions.

  No less dangerous to the unity of the armed forces was the decision of the president of the so far peaceful republic of Ukraine to declare himself commander in chief of Soviet troops on Ukrainian soil. On December 6, Shaposhnikov’s former protégé Kostiantyn Morozov, who was Kravchuk’s minister of defense, had sworn an oath of allegiance to Ukraine. In response to Shaposhnikov’s subsequent attempt to order Soviet troops to swear allegiance to Russia, Kravchuk had pushed ahead with plans to administer the oath of allegiance to Ukraine to troops stationed on Ukrainian territory. Those plans had been suspended for the moment, but Shaposhnikov expected that the Ukrainians would raise the question in Almaty. Miraculously, they did not.30

  The participants in the Almaty summit focused on two big subjects: the dissolution of the USSR and the creation of a new Commonwealth that would now include not three but eleven republics. It took the heads of the post-Soviet states only three and a half hours to agree on the principles of the new international structure, which would include most of what remained of the Soviet Union after the departure of the Balts. By 3:00 p.m. the final drafts of the agreements had been sent to the typists, and two hours later they were signed at an official ceremony. At the insistence of the Central Asian republics, the leaders of the post-Soviet states, including Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, signed the declaration on the formation of the Commonwealth anew. Now all present in Almaty were founding members of the Commonwealth.

  Most of the decisions were adopted on the initiative of the Russian delegation. First, the presidents agreed to form two coordinating institutions: the Council of Presidents and the Council of Prime Ministers. They also agreed to abolish all remaining Soviet ministries and institutions—an issue of paramount importance to Yeltsin in his ongoing struggle with Gorbachev. Russia also received the participants’ approval to declare itself the successor to the USSR, which meant, among other things, permanent membership in the Security Council of the United Nations. The agreement on joint control of nuclear arsenals was in full accord with the scheme that Yeltsin had described to Baker a few days earlier in Moscow: only the president of Russia could authorize a launch of nuclear weapons, while the other presidents with a nuclear arsenal would be consulted b
ut would have no technical ability to order a launch. By July 1992, tactical nuclear arms would be moved from Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to Russia for disassembly. The leaders of all four nuclear republics, including Kravchuk, Nazarbayev, and Shushkevich, endorsed that solution.31

  The meeting proved so successful because its agenda was limited to issues on which all could agree. The others were postponed until the next summit, scheduled for December 30 in Minsk, the capital of Belarus and still the capital of the Commonwealth. Kravchuk, the most skeptical and reserved of all the participants, went along. He agreed to leave Shaposhnikov in charge of all armed forces, nuclear and conventional, until the next summit, not insisting on the creation of an independent Ukrainian army. Nor did he object to the resolution making Russia the legal international successor to the Soviet Union, which meant that Ukraine would forfeit its share of Soviet property abroad.

  The Almaty agreement offered Ukraine compensation in the form of the almost immediate liquidation of the USSR as a subject of international law, which cleared the way for recognition of Ukrainian independence by the United States and other Western countries that were still sitting on the fence. The most important point for the Ukrainian delegation was that, despite Gorbachev’s insistence, the Almaty meeting did not create any superstate structures or infringe on Ukrainian sovereignty by establishing joint Commonwealth citizenship. Moreover, the Commonwealth Defense Council, created ad hoc in Belavezha for the sole purpose of appointing Shaposhnikov commander in chief and luring him away from Gorbachev, was now tacitly dropped from the books. Leonid Kravchuk later recalled with satisfaction that at the press conference following the summit, its host, Nursultan Nazarbayev, “rose and, with no emotional ado, announced in businesslike fashion that we had all reached a decision: the Union no longer existed, the CIS was a fact, and we should now proceed to build new relations.”32