Nor were there any trials or truth and reconciliation commissions, internationally or domestically, about the former USSR. After decades of genocides, mass relocation and imprisonment, and totalitarian repression, it was decided to let bygones be bygones and move into the bright new future without recrimination. Of course many of the new leaders and officials had a personal interest in not digging too deeply into the cruel past. I’m not proud of having once been a member of the Communist Party myself, even if joining had been a calculated move so that a lack of party affiliation did not hurt my developing chess career. (I left the party in January 1990.)
The dominant position soon became one of “avoiding witch hunts,” even if that meant leaving people with blood on their hands in positions of power. More critically, it left the roots of the powerful Russian security apparatus intact, if renamed and with a considerably lower profile for the time being. Yeltsin didn’t want trials and the Russian KGB archives remained off limits. Former officials were given tacit promises of financial security and immunity from prosecution in exchange for facilitating the transfer of power. This same formula was employed by Yeltsin when he hand-picked Vladimir Putin to become his successor in 1999.
Western nations unanimously collaborated with this dubious cover-up. It is remarkable how quickly even many of the most hawkish Cold Warriors were willing to forgive and forget as soon as the USSR ceased to exist. “Witch hunt” implies persecution with false pretenses and/or a lack of evidence. But what if there are plenty of actual witches around, and plenty of evidence of witchcraft? Don’t forget that Lenin’s mausoleum in the middle of Red Square was never removed.
I think the sense of jubilation overwhelmed people on both sides of the Iron Curtain. We could learn about the rest of the world, travel, read newspapers that were actually interesting. We could talk about politics that actually mattered, and even vote! Few Russians had the appetite for gloomy trials detailing the horrors we knew all too well had occurred in the Soviet Union. This turned out to be a terrible mistake that Russia, and the rest of the world, is still paying for today.
There is no single moment where Russia lost its way and Vladimir Putin, or someone like him, became inevitable. There was no specific turning point in the West’s dealings with Russia marking the shift from confrontation over human rights to engagement. It was a slow and steady process. Time and again, the United States and Europe turned a blind eye to the crimes and misdemeanors of Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin in the hope that everything would work out on its own. US presidents in particular always placed far too much faith in individuals in Russia, instead of supporting the structural and institutional reforms that could have guaranteed the survival of democracy.
The West’s acceptance of authoritarianism in the former USSR actually began before the “former” had been firmly appended. In 1988, Ronald Reagan’s devout belief in the moral superiority of individual freedom and the free market was replaced by the cautious pragmatism of George H. W. Bush. By early 1991, Gorbachev was losing control of his timid reform program as the winds of change blew in hard from Eastern Europe. Bush did his best to support Gorbachev’s efforts to hold the USSR together, delivering his infamous “Chicken Kyiv” speech on August 1, 1991, where he enraged many Ukrainians by warning them against pushing too hard for independence from the USSR.
Gorbachev’s desperate attempts to preserve socialism and the Soviet Union eventually failed utterly, turning him into an accidental hero in the West. I won’t even give him the minimal credit some offer for not sending in the proverbial tanks to crush the anti-Communist uprisings that were taking place all across the Soviet Bloc, especially since Gorbachev did send in military to Latvia and Lithuania, where he believed he could get away with it. He was hardly a risk taker where his own neck was concerned and didn’t want to end up like Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, whose rapid overthrow and execution in December 1989 was still fresh in everyone’s mind.
When I spoke in the European Parliament in September 1991, I compared Gorbachev to Louis XVI, who also recalled parliament and declined to use force against the revolutionaries in the hopes they would spare his life. In that regard Gorbachev had better luck than Louis, despite having a roughly similar approval rating with his own people. There are also similarities with the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, who likewise attempted to stave off revolution and maintain his autocracy via shallow reforms. He convoked a parliament, issued a constitution, and still ended in misery. (I cannot resist pointing out that Gorbachev, Nicholas II, and Louis XVI also all had intelligent, influential, and unpopular wives: Raisa, Alexandra, and Marie Antoinette. Raisa was certainly aware of the violent fate met by the others, and I imagine she encouraged her husband to avoid the use of force in order to increase their chances of escaping with their skins, and her furs, intact.)
Boris Yeltsin, in contrast, was a true populist at heart despite being a career party official. He backed up his faith in the people with action and with ambitious political reforms. Internationally speaking he had a weak hand and he knew it, compensating by alternating between bluster and charm with foreign leaders. Yeltsin managed to preserve a regional sphere of interest despite the terrible weakness of Russia on the world stage during the 1990s. That he succeeded in doing this is to his credit—and to the immense discredit of Bill Clinton and the other G7 leaders who allowed it to happen.
The 1990s were a series of huge missed opportunities for the global forces of democracy. The economic, military, and moral might were all on one side more so than at any time in history. Instead of pressing this advantage by, for example, reforming the United Nations with a robust new human rights framework, the advantage was squandered. The United States and its European allies had the capability and the leverage to exert tremendous pressure for positive reforms—capability they exercised effectively to win the Cold War. Instead, as soon as the Berlin Wall fell they switched to relying almost exclusively on incentives and engagement, which were quite effective in Eastern Europe but failed against determined autocrats like Vladimir Putin.
Every time Putin cracked down in Russia, or even when he interfered with neighboring nations, the West had the opportunity to push back. Instead, at every turn Putin was rewarded with even closer ties to the world’s leading democracies and, more importantly, with greater access to their lucrative markets. It is impossible, of course, to say with certainty that Putin’s course toward dictatorship would have been altered or prevented by a strong stand by the free world. But I believe it to be so.
Putin is not an ideologue. He and his cronies accumulated tremendous wealth, and the threat of not being able to enjoy it freely in the West would have been a very serious threat. Unlike their Soviet predecessors, Putin and his allies are not content with a late-model ZIL limousine and a nice dacha on the Black Sea. They want to rule like Josef Stalin but live like Roman Abramovich, the close Putin buddy who spent his riches buying a famous English soccer team and yachts the size of soccer fields. Putin’s oligarchs travel the world and keep their wealth abroad, and this gives Western governments real clout if they have the courage to use it.