A member of the Soviet parliament, Yurii Shcherbak, who flew to Kyiv together with Rutskoi and his colleagues as one of the delegates representing the Union bodies, later remembered something that Anatolii Sobchak had said to him: “Don’t you Ukrainians think of separating from Russia: we are one, after all.” According to Shcherbak, not only Sobchak but also Stankevich regarded the proclamation of Ukrainian independence with utmost suspicion. Rutskoi, who spoke good Ukrainian, was especially condescending. “So, you topknots [[khokhly]], you’ve decided to separate, have you?” he asked the representatives of Ukraine, using a derogatory term for the Ukrainian nationality.14
Before boarding the plane, Shcherbak called Kyiv to warn his colleagues there about the arrival of the Moscow delegation. Immediately, Ukrainian radio broadcast two appeals from the Ukrainian parliament. The first called on all political forces in Ukraine to unite in defense of independence. The second appeal assured the sizable national minorities that Ukrainian independence was no threat to their rights. That day the presidium also issued a decree placing military recruitment centers all over Ukraine under the republic’s jurisdiction. The Ukrainian leadership was consolidating its political position and preparing citizens for an impending diplomatic confrontation with Russia.
As the Russian plane made its way to Kyiv, Ukrainian radio broadcast a third appeal. A Rukh leader went on the air to summon Kyivans to the parliament building in order to defend Ukrainian independence. More people responded to the call than had come to the Ukrainian parliament during its vote for independence, and soon the building was surrounded by Kyivans eager to defend what still remained a dream. Shcherbak was himself shocked to see how many people showed up, resolved to defend their newly declared independence.15
It is not clear what kind of reception Aleksandr Rutskoi and his colleagues expected in Kyiv, but it was not the one they received. A member of the delegation, Sergei Stankevich, later remembered, “In Kyiv they did not let us out of the plane for half the day, interrogating us about the purpose for which we had come to the independent state.” Rutskoi appealed to Slavic solidarity and declared that the purpose of the visit was to work out a program for the development of Russo-Ukrainian relations in light of the declaration of Ukrainian independence.
Only after these assurances had been given was the delegation taken to parliament. Instead of being met by members of the presidium, dominated by former communists, the delegates were welcomed by the leaders of the democratic bloc. Sobchak and Stankevich found themselves across the table from their old friends and allies in the Ukrainian democratic camp. The latter sought to convince their Russian counterparts that an independent Ukraine was anything but a safe haven for the Communist Party. Stankevich assured the members of the “reception committee” that the Moscow delegation was not going to raise territorial questions, and it did not question Ukraine’s right to independence. That reassurance broke the ice.16
After the meeting with the democratic deputies, the Russian representatives and Soviet parliamentarians sat down with the official Ukrainian delegation, led by Leonid Kravchuk. Their meeting would last long into the night. From time to time the participants would come out to tell the crowd of people around the parliament building how the negotiations were going and try to calm them down. Sobchak’s attempts to appeal to the people over the heads of their unyielding leaders produced disastrous results. When he told the crowds, “It is important for us to be together,” they responded by chanting, “No!” “Shame!” “Ukraine without Moscow!”
After midnight, when Kravchuk and Rutskoi finally called a press conference to report on their deliberations, the results favored the Ukrainian leadership. The two countries agreed to create joint structures to manage the transition and work on economic agreements. The Ukrainians were happy with the outcome; the Russians were not. “The talks were difficult,” recalled Stankevich. “We did not come up with a formula of association,” meaning that they had found no common ground for continuing existence in the same state. That was bad news indeed for the future of the Union. Its two largest members could not agree on a formula for coexistence that would satisfy both parties. Time would show that even Ukrainian accession to the agreement was provisional—the Kyiv politicians were already seeking a formula for what later became known as a “civilized divorce.”17
The outcome of the late-night deliberations in Kyiv that disappointed Stankevich encouraged Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was upset about the Russian takeover of the Union government and wanted to take control of Soviet armed forces in his republic. That day the Kazakh leader fired off a telegram to Yeltsin requesting that Rutskoi’s delegation visit Kazakhstan. It read, “Given that so far the press has carried no clearly expressed renunciation on Russia’s part of territorial claims on contiguous republics, social protest is growing in Kazakhstan, with unforeseeable consequences. This may force the republic to adopt measures analogous to those of Ukraine.” The threat to follow the Ukrainian example and declare outright independence, voiced by the leader of another nuclear republic, worked. Rutskoi, Stankevich, and Sobchak had their plane refueled and flew east instead of returning to Moscow. In Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, they signed a declaration analogous to the one negotiated in Kyiv. At his press conference with Nazarbayev, Rutskoi assured journalists that there were no territorial problems between Russia and Kazakhstan.18
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 afte
r 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
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