A few months ago I was going through old newspapers from late 1991, looking at coverage of the Soviet collapse. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the whole system came down, and how confused everyone was during the process. For example, looking through the New York Times, you read the union first declared “dead” and “buried” on December 9, 1991, following the Belavezha Accords where Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus declared among themselves the dissolution of the Soviet Union and creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Times said:
Ever since the August coup d’etat, the Soviet Union has been dying a lingering death its final agony stretched over months of crisis and negotiations while it was kept alive largely by the frantic faith of one man, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet President. Today, the union died – if future historians will accept a death warrant signed by the patient itself as proof, which is how the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia intended their statement, signed in the Byelorussian border town of Brest, to be read.
On December 22, however, with the signing of the Alma-Ata Protocol, which extended membership in the CIS to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldovia, and the Central Asian republics, the Times discussed issues realted to the not-quite-dead-and-buried-yet USSR and its technically-still-in-charge leader, Gorbachev. There was also a quite accurate prediction by Secretary of State James Baker that the CIS would lead to nothing and the republics were destined to pursue independent paths, and an amusing-in-hindsight op-ed by Judy Shelton (who now spends her time writing for the WSJ and calling for a return to the gold standard) praising the strong, united country of the CIS (“a voluntary association of nations committed to the freedom of entrepreneurship and the morality of free markets”) and the long-term opportunities for investors. The best part of the entire coverage, however, was this gem: “To emphasize their resolve to move beyond the Kremlin, the commonwealth leaders pre-emptively accepted the resignation of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, even though it has not yet been submitted.” Ouch. Plus, just in case Gorbachev didn’t get the message, Yeltsin added: “We respect Gorbachev and want him to go gently into retirement in December…we do not want to carry on the tradition since 1917 of burying our heads of state and having to rebury them later or having to pronounce them a criminal.”
One reason I enjoy going over these “first drafts of history” is because it helps to understand what was important, or at least seen as important, at the time. Now, no one today would deny the importance Gorbachev in the final few months of the USSR if asked directly. However, speaking as someone who’s studying this period nearly two decades later, I believe it’s become common to give more attention to the roles of those who remained in power afterwards – Yeltsin in Russia, Nazarbyaev in Kazakhstan, Karimov in Uzbekistan, etc. This is likely due in part to the strong focus on nationalism nowadays when studying the Soviet collapse – in such a context, it’s only natural to center on the national leaders who were (supposedly) fostering these forces. Reading though the contemporary articles, however, it’s clear that Gorbachev was the man everyone was looking to for answers. Even as a lame duck, he still commanded the attention of both Western press and the leaders at Almaty. Perhaps because in the end he slipped away so quietly, and because current leaders in Central Asia are constantly striving to promote their role in the “founding of the country” in late 1991, we have a tendency to write off Gorbachev during these final months. And though today it’s easy to say that by mid-1991 Gorbachev was only along for the ride, devoid of any control over the situation, the people at the time still conferred upon him a great deal of respect and power. Even at the very end, it wasn’t over until Gorbachev said it was.
Front page of the New York Times, December 26, 1991
One final interesting note from the paper – unlike the messages of hope and reconciliation written about the fall of the Berlin Wall only a month earlier, the day after Gorbachev’s resignation the New York Times chose to publish a simple obituary:
The Soviet state, marked throughout its brief but tumultuous history by great achievement and terrible suffering, died today after a long and painful decline. It was 74 years old.
Conceived in utopian promise and born in the violent upheavals of the “Great October Revolution of 1917,” the union heaved its last in the dreary darkness of late December 1991, stripped of ideology, dismembered, bankrupt and hungry – but awe-inspiring even in its fall.
The end of the Soviet Union came with the resignation of Mikhail S. Gorbachev to make way for a new “Commonwealth of Independent States.” At 7:32 P.M., shortly after the conclusion of his televised address, the red flag with hammer-and-sickle was lowered over the Kremlin and the white-blue-red Russian flag rose in its stead.
There was no ceremony, only the tolling of chimes from the Spassky Gate, cheers from a handful of surprised foreigners and an angry tirade from a lone war veteran.
All images and texts © The New York Times Company, used here for non-commercial purposes
