The Last Empire (31 page)

In Kyiv and Almaty alike, the Russian officials did their best to dissociate themselves from Voshchanov's statement, treating it as the act of a rogue official. This turn of events came as a complete surprise to the politically inexperienced press secretary, who later wrote,

I shall never forget the strange feeling: I turn on the television set and hear Rutskoi and Stankevich speaking to the assembled Kyivans, calling down curses of every description on the “uppity press secretary who will get what's coming to him, you may be sure of that.” I waited anxiously until Rutskoi got back to Moscow. I go to his office: “Sasha, why are you making a scapegoat out of me?” The vice president puts a bottle on the table. “Ah, Pavel, son, what can I do? That's the dirty work you and I have to do!”

But it was not only Rutskoi and Stankevich but also Yeltsin himself, after having approved the statement, who tried to disown the failed political initiative. “I got a call from none other than Boris Nikolaevich [[Yeltsin]],” remembered Voshchanov later. “He had never spoken to me so severely in all the years of our acquaintance and cooperation. ‘You made an extremely serious error!' . . . Then it turned out that, having made the statement, I should have clammed up, as if I had lost my tongue, and not named the disputed territories under any circumstances.” Voshchanov was left to pay the price.
¹⁹

By August 28, a mere two days after Yeltsin and the new Russian deputies had reduced Gorbachev to submission and all but taken over the Union center, the victors found themselves in great difficulty. Kravchuk and Nazarbayev, who were supposed to have been reminded of their place in the Union hierarchy, were evidently refusing to fall into line. It was becoming clear that the non-Russian republics were not just pawns in a chess game between the Russian president and his Soviet counterpart. They had agendas of their own, and their combined forces were too strong to be kept in check by two main players at odds with each other. The formerly united Russian forces were now in disarray. Some of Yeltsin's advisers wanted to take the place of the Union center in negotiations with the republics; others suggested strengthening the unequal Yeltsin-Gorbachev alliance. There were also those who saw no sense in fighting for a Union that would leave out Ukraine and Belarus but include the “undemocratic” Central Asian republics. And, finally, there were those outside Yeltsin's immediate circle who welcomed the fall of the empire and called for the dissolution of the USSR, no matter what the consequences.
²⁰

The setback in the Russian offensive against the increasingly obstinate republican leaders and the confusion in Yeltsin's ranks came at a time when Yeltsin himself felt completely exhausted, as was often the case after periods of extreme stress and feverish activity. Even before the crisis over the recognition of Soviet-era borders between republics, he announced to his aides that he was leaving Moscow for a two-week vacation. “After the putsch and the personnel changes,” recalled Yeltsin's chief bodyguard, Aleksandr Korzhakov, “Boris Nikolaevich wanted a rest.” On August 29 he was spotted in the Latvian capital, Riga, at the opening of the Russian embassy there. Journalists wondered what had brought him to Latvia in the midst
of an ongoing crisis in Moscow. It turned out that the exhausted Yeltsin had decided to take his vacation at a Baltic seaside resort near Jurmala, now beyond the borders of Russia and the Union alike. It was the last time that a Moscow leader would vacation in the Baltics.

“Boris Nikolaevich and I walked the beach and delighted in the sea air,” remembered Korzhakov. “Seagulls cried, children dug out pieces of amber on the shore, and it seemed that the sleepless nights at the White House and the grueling battle with political opponents had all taken place long ago, in another time dimension.” Over the next few days, Yeltsin would call his associates, sign papers, and occasionally come to Moscow to take part in the Congress of People's Deputies, the Union superparliament, which was called into session on September 2, 1991. But his absence from Moscow created an opening for rivals to regain some lost ground.
²¹

THE GROWING CRISIS
in relations between the Russian leadership and the republics allowed Gorbachev and his advisers, who seemed to have been swept from the scene only a few days earlier, to attempt a political comeback. Gorbachev's return to center stage in Soviet politics began at a session of the Soviet parliament on August 28, the day Yeltsin left for Latvia and the Rutskoi delegation flew to Kyiv. That day, for the first time since the coup, he found himself under attack for being subservient to Yeltsin and the Russian leadership because he supported the appointment of Yeltsin's prime minister, Ivan Silaev, as head of the all-Union government. Gorbachev's economic adviser Vadim Medvedev noted in his diary entry for the Autust 28, “The greatest passions are swirling around the creation of Silaev's committee. People are saying that because of that committee, Union agencies are being supplanted by Russian ones. The president is being accused of acting at the dictate of the Russians.”

Ivan Silaev came to Gorbachev's rescue, explaining that the republics would be invited to join his committee. That explanation did not sit well with many deputies, whom Gorbachev was now asking to rubber-stamp the liquidation of the cabinet, a body they had created less than a year earlier by amending the existing constitution. Gorbachev maneuvered this way and that but eventually allowed himself his first critical remarks about the Russian president and his actions since the coup. He said that once the coup was over, neither
the Russian president nor the Russian parliament or government had the right to violate the constitution by claiming the prerogatives of the central government. Specifically at issue was the Russian attempt to take over the Soviet central bank in the chaos that followed the defeat of the coup. Gorbachev's advisers protested. Later that day, Yeltsin signed a decree suspending the takeover. Gorbachev and his circle were glad to claim their first victory over their Russian nemesis.
²²

The next major victory for Gorbachev came on September 2, the opening day of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, the Soviet superparliament that had the authority to change the constitution. The meeting began with Nursultan Nazarbayev reading a “Statement of the President of the USSR and the Supreme Leaders of the Republics.” It became known as 10 + 1, with 10 standing for the number of republics that subscribed to the statement and 1 for the center, represented by Gorbachev. A few days earlier Moscow newspapers had been full of articles claiming that Russia, and not the Union center, should be the 1 in the formula 9 + 1 or 10 + 1, but few Congress deputies were open to that idea. Nazarbayev's statement brought the center back into the equation and put Gorbachev back in the game. That was the Soviet president's main achievement.

The statement itself was the product of a compromise that reduced the actual importance of the center in all-Union affairs to a degree unimaginable before the coup. Produced at a meeting between Gorbachev and the leaders of the republics the previous evening, it reflected the new political reality—the growing power of Yeltsin in Moscow and of the republican leaders in all-Union affairs. Leonid Kravchuk came to Moscow to say that Ukraine was implementing its declaration of independence, but before it was confirmed by referendum, he was prepared to take part in negotiations on the union treaty—just in case the declaration was not approved. Earlier he had informed the Russian president, who was insisting on a federal structure for the Union, that the only structure acceptable to Ukraine was confederal. Nazarbayev, asserting that Ukraine's declaration of independence had rendered the old federal Union obsolete, also threw his support behind the idea of confederation. It envisioned the Soviet Union not as a state in its own right but as a coalition of states that would create joint bodies for the conduct of foreign and military policy.

With the leaders of the two largest non-Russian republics presenting a united front, Gorbachev and Yeltsin had little choice but to give in to their demand. The Nazarbayev statement, prepared and signed by Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and other leaders of the Soviet republics, called for a new union constitution and proposed a set of measures for the so-called transitional period. They included the replacement of the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People's Deputies with a Constitutional Assembly composed of representatives of the republican parliaments; the creation of a State Council, the new executive body, consisting of the Union president and the leaders of the republics; and the formation of an Economic Committee made up of representatives of the republics, to replace not only the now defunct cabinet but also the controversial Silaev committee.

In addition, Nazarbayev proposed that a new union treaty be signed and comprehensive economic and security agreements be concluded among the republics to guarantee the rights and freedoms of their citizens. The republics declared their intention to join the United Nations. Appearances to the contrary, Nazarbayev's statement turned out to be a blueprint for the takeover of the center not by one republic, as Yeltsin had attempted, but by all of them. Like Yeltsin's takeover bid, it was directed against the existing constitution, which was declared irrelevant. To the surprise of the delegates, the declaration demanded that the Congress of People's Deputies endorse this assault on the constitution and then dissolve itself. In their memoirs, both Gorbachev and Yeltsin refer very favorably to the Nazarbayev statement and defend its constitutionality. At the time, they also did their best to have the Congress of People's Deputies approve the document and dissolve itself.
²³

After Nazarbayev read the text of the statement, a recess was abruptly announced, without giving the deputies an opportunity to ask questions or express their opinions. Shock prevailed in the chamber, but the break gave some deputies time to cool off and prevented an explosive reaction. Gorbachev's close ally Vadim Medvedev, who took part in the session, wrote in his memoirs, “In essence, such decisions are inevitable as a last chance to save the country. On the outside, of course, they do not look very democratic, but then, that is the nature of the situation.” This was a breathtaking understatement, and many
in the Soviet superparliament had no intention of yielding. The debate would last four days.
²⁴

“The president of Kazakhstan, Comrade Nazarbayev, whom I respect, is being offered the role of the legendary sailor Zhelezniak,” declared Deputy A. M. Obolensky from the podium of the congress. He was referring to the forcible dissolution of the Russian Constitutional Assembly in early 1918 by a Bolshevik military unit headed by a sailor of the Baltic Fleet, Anatolii Zhelezniakov. “The leadership of the republics,” continued Obolensky, “has made its destructive contribution to the final dismantling of Soviet power. Perhaps it is time we stopped treating the Constitution like a common strumpet, accommodating it to the pleasure of the new courtier!” Whether Obolensky had Yeltsin or Gorbachev in mind, he ended with a demand for the latter's resignation. Yeltsin, who was back from the Baltics and chairing that particular session, later recalled that “words like
treachery
,
conspiracy
,
plundering of the country
, and so on were hurled from the speaker's platform.”

But after days of debate, Gorbachev and the leaders of the republics finally bullied the Congress of People's Deputies into submission. According to Yeltsin, “Gorbachev always had trouble restraining himself when people said such nasty things around him, and when they finally drove him to the wall, he went to the podium and threatened that if the Congress didn't dissolve itself, it would be disbanded. That cooled the ire of some of the speakers, and the proposal for the council of heads of states went through without a hitch.” The Congress thus approved the Nazarbayev memorandum and dissolved itself, but not before getting a concession of sorts: while the superparliament would be gone, the Supreme Soviet, or regular USSR parliament, which had no right to amend the constitution, would stay in place. Gorbachev later expressed satisfaction with that decision. After all, it left him with one more Union institution to rely on in his battles with the republican leaders.
²⁵

The Congress completed its work on September 5. The next day Gorbachev convened the first meeting of the State Council, consisting of him and the republican leaders. “In the new reality,” remembered Yeltsin, “Gorbachev was left with only one role: the unifier of the republics that were scattering.” One way or another, Gorbachev was back, performing a clearly diminished but still significant role that
satisfied both Yeltsin and the leaders of the non-Russian republics for the time being. In late August one of those leaders, the Speaker of the Armenian parliament, Levon Ter-Petrosian, had explained the nature of the new arrangement in an interview with the Moscow weekly
Argumenty i fakty:
“If Yeltsin allows the reanimation of the center, then Gorbachev has a chance to stay. But for now Gorbachev is necessary as a stabilizing factor.”
²⁶

The active phase of the struggle between the Union center and the republics was over. Those republics that were not yet ready to leave the Union gained time to make their final decision. The Russian president's recognition of Baltic independence had closed one chapter by encouraging the sovereignty of the republics and their rebellion against the center. The declaration of Ukrainian independence opened a new chapter in which Russia began to feel responsible for the fate of the center and the republics alike. Soon after the Soviet superparliament adopted the Nazarbayev statement, Yeltsin signed a decree canceling passages of his earlier decrees that had infringed on Union rights. Gorbachev and Yeltsin had reached an interim agreement: they now shared responsibility for maintaining the empire.