On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned. All the Union republics declared their independence, although most of them indicated their willingness to form an undefined loose association which came to be known as the Commonwealth of Independent States. Boris Yeltsin stood out as the central figure in a new and highly unsettled situation.
Concluding Remarks
The disappearance of the Soviet Union proved to be at least as unexpected and sudden as its appearance, and as controversial. Bitterly hated as well as enthusiastically admired during three-quarters of a century of its existence, the U.S.S.R. seemed to receive a universal recognition of its might and its durability after the victory over Germany in the Second World War and its attaining the position of one of only two superpowers in the world. Worshipful communists and related
elements aside, numerous more judicious observers interpreted Soviet history in terms of continuity and stabilization bringing it closer to Western nations whether after the inauguration of the N.E.P., the cultural "great retreat" of the 1930's, the gigantic war itself and the victory over Germany and Japan, the death of Stalin, or the ascendancy of Khrushchev. Although none of these varied developments proved to be a decisive turning point, it was within that framework that many in the West welcomed perestroika and glasnost: The Soviet Union would join democratic states as a major partner, perhaps even with much to offer. Very few expected total unraveling and collapse.
Yet some did. In addition to the unreconciled Whites and other dedicated enemies, who, however, rarely engaged in academic analysis, the most far-reaching critical school or schools arose among the economists. As early as the first years of the Soviet regime, certain economists pointed to the basic flaws of the Soviet economic system, and that initial critique was continued by such specialists as Janos Kornai who worked within the system in Hungary and Gregory Grossman and Vladimir Treml, who studied the second, unofficial, Soviet economy from the vantage point of American Universities. Parts of Grossman's critique can be read in his testimony above. Indeed it became a commonplace to claim that whereas the Soviet Union did well in terms of a traditional industrialization based on coal and iron, it could not keep up with the West in cybernetics, computers, and in general the new communication technology. As Manuel Castells and Emma Kiselyova formulated it:
Thus, at the core of the technological crisis of the Soviet Union lies the fundamental logic of the statist system: the overwhelming priority given to military power; the political-ideological control of information by the state; the bureaucratic principles of the centrally planned economy; the isolation from the rest of the world; and the inability to modernize technologically some segments of the economy and society without modifying the whole in which such elements interact with each other.
And modern technology made isolation always more difficult, and Soviet citizens better acquainted with the rest of the world. The armed race continued to cost the Soviet Union twice the percentage of its much smaller productive capacity than in the case of the United States. Grossman pointed out repeatedly that only a massive export of oil and natural gas kept the Soviet economy for fifteen years, 1970-1985, from sliding downhill rather than being merely in a kind of cul-de-sac. Behind the strange course of the Soviet economy, as of the Soviet policies in general, was the Utopian Marxist vision perhaps analyzed best in Andrzej Walicki's brilliant Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Utopia.
The mistakes were many. Possibly the worst was the inability through the prism of ideology to see reality. Nationalism was misjudged until it destroyed the Soviet Union. Indeed Gorbachev apparently believed that he could go to Vilnius
and persuade the Lithuanians not to secede. But the understanding of Russia itself was not much better, and Russian interests and Russian nationalism played their major role in the abolition of the U.S.S.R. As to Gorbachev's contribution, it was extremely important from any point of view, although it was not what Gorbachev had planned. It was most impressive for those who believe in the great power of totalitarianism and the inability of a fragmented society to challenge it successfully. If so, a totalitarian system can unravel only from the top down. In the Soviet Union it did. In any case, there glasnost and other measures meant to strengthen the system led to a complete collapse. To cite, as a counterpoint to Derzhavin's, Heraclites' even more famous statement: "?? ????? ???" ("Everything flows").
Part VII: RUSSIAN FEDERATION
XLIII
Much has been written about my visit to the United States both in the United States themselves and in our country; therefore, there seems to be no need to dwell extensively on its main results. There were many interesting meetings, beginning with President Bush and ending with simple Americans in city streets. I shall appeal banal, for sure, but still I was most impressed precisely by the simple people, by Americans who exude a remarkable optimism, a faith in themselves and their country. Although, of course, there were also other shocks, for instance, from a supermarket… When I saw all those shelves with hundreds, with thousands of little cans, little boxes, and so on, and so forth, I was for the first time struck with an all-embracing pain for us, for our country. To bring the richest nation to such destitution… It is terrifying.
Yeltsin (breaks in the original)*
As already indicated, after Gorbachev's resignation on the twenty-fifth of December 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin remained as the undisputed master of the Kremlin. Engineer by profession and Party administrator by occupation, Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin rose by dint of hard and driving work to the top of Party ranks during the last years of the Soviet regime. Party secretary and thus "boss" of the very important Sverdlovsk region for a number of years, he was transferred to head the Moscow Party organization. Yet because of his criticism of Gorbachev and of the slowness of the ongoing reform, he was dismissed from that position at a meeting of November 11, 1987, which - judging by his writings - remained with him as a nightmare ever since. Blocked in the party, from which he resigned in July 1990, Yeltsin turned to the newly possible independent career in the Russian republic, which culminated in his becoming the first President of Russia after a sweeping electoral victory on June 12, 1991, and thus its most important figure to this day.
Yeltsin's career, as well as his pronouncements and his writings (especially the two autobiographical books he produced with his friend the young journalist Valentin Yumashev), depict an extremely high-strung individual, a courageous fighter, and a very poor loser, on occasion volatile and unpredictable. This frequent and at times very serious illnesses and heavy drinking further complicate evaluations of his actions and aims. Still, it is worth remembering that Yeltsin surged past Gorbachev on the Left, not on the Right, i.e., favoring the breakup
*Boris Yeltsin, Ispoved na zadannuiu temu, Sverdlovsk, 1990, pp. 226-27. The passage refers to Yeltsin's first visit to the United States, 1989.
of the Soviet Union and a major reform of Russia. Even more a Soviet and a Party product than Gorbachev, for he came from a still poorer, indeed semi-starving, background, and had no cultural baggage except that provided by the Soviet system, Yeltsin broke with that system more sharply and decisively. No adjusted Leninism or nostalgia for him. Whether the two men represent progressive stages of the transition from Communism to a new Russia, or whether their differences were merely idiosyncratic and personal, is for future historians to decide. Needless to say, Yeltsin's ideological reorientation did not change his career-long political manner of an authoritarian Communist boss. Notably, as one studies his battle with his legislatures, one has to recognize that time and again both sides acted illegally.