The Last Empire

by Serhii Plokhy

  7. “Remarks at the Arrival Ceremony in Moscow, July 30, 1991” and “Remarks by President Gorbachev and President Bush at the Signing Ceremony for the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks Treaty in Moscow, July 31, 1991,” Bush Presidential Library, Public Papers, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=3256&year=1991&month=7.

  8. Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Boston, 1993), 411; George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York, 1998), 510–511.

  9. “Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev,” Trip of President Bush to Moscow and Kiev, July 30–August 1, 1991, Bush Presidential Library, Presidential Records, Office of the First Lady, Scheduling, Ann Brock Series: Moscow Summit, Monday 7/29/91 to Thursday 8/1/91—Moscow and Kiev, no. 4.

  10. Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford, 1997); Andrei Grachev, Gorbachev’s Gamble: Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Cambridge, 2008); Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington, D.C., 1994); Don Oberdorfer, From the End of the Cold War to a New Era: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983–1991 (Baltimore, 1998).

  11. Walter Goodman, “Summit Image: Hardly a Mikhail and George Show,” New York Times, August 1, 1991; Gene Gibbons, “Pre Advance Pool Report, Moscow Summit, July 29–August 1, 1991, July 25, 1991,” Bush Presidential Library, Presidential Records, White House Office of Media Affairs, Media Guide to the President’s Trip to the USSR—Summer 1991.

  12. Goodman, “Summit Image”; Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 511; Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 415.

  13. Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 411–412; “Memorandum of Conversation. Extended Bilateral Meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR, July 30, 1991,” Bush Presidential Library, Memcons and Telcons, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/pdfs/memcons_telcons/1991-07-30—Gorbachev%20[1].pdf.

  14. Strobe Talbott, “Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush: The Summit Goodfellas,” Time, August 5, 1991.

  15. Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 405–406.

  16. Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, issue 50, ed. Duncan Lennox (Surrey, 2009), 161–163; “Study Details Catastrophic Impact of Nuclear Attack on US Cities,” Space War, March 23, 2007, www.spacewar.com/reports/Study_Details_Catastrophic_Impact_Of_Nuclear_Attack_On_US_Cities_999.html.

  17. Pavel Palazhchenko, My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter (University Park, PA, 1997), 292–293; Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 508–509; “Beseda Gorbacheva s Dzh. Bushem v Londone, 17 iiulia 1991 goda,” in V Politbiuro TsK KPSS po zapisiam Anatoliia Cherniaeva, Vadima Medvedeva, Georgiia Shakhnazarova (1985–1991) (Moscow, 2000), 695–696.

  18. “Memorandum of Conversation. Extended Bilateral Meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR, July 30, 1991,” Bush Presidential Library, Memcons and Telcons, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/pdfs/memcons_telcons/1991-07-30—Gorbachev%20[1].pdf

  19. Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 511–512; David Remnick, “All Substance, No Style Makes a Dull Summit: Businesslike Bush Forsakes the Flourishes,” Washington Post, July 31, 1991.

  20. Goodman, “Summit Image,” New York Times, August 1, 1991.

  21. Remnick, “All Substance, No Style”; Ann Devroy, “First Lady: Bush Must Run Again: ‘For Country’s Sake,’ She Tells Interviewers,” Washington Post, August 1, 1991; White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Interview of Ms. Bush by Steve Fox, ABC, July 31, 1991, Bush Presidential Library, Presidential Records, National Security Council, Nicholas R. Burns and Ed A. Hewett Files: POTUS Meetings March 1991–July 1991: Moscow Summit, July 1991, no. 1.

  22. “Raisa Maksimovna Gorbachev,” Trip of President Bush to Moscow and Kiev, July 30–August 1, 1991; Raisa Gorbacheva, Ia nadeius’ (Moscow, 1991); Anatolii Cherniaev and Vitalii Gusenkov, Memo for Mikhail Gorbachev on the Program of His Visit to the United States from May 29 to June 4, 1990, Gorbachev Foundation Archive, fond 2, no. 8288.1; Anatolii Cherniaev, Sovmestnyi iskhod. Dnevnik dvukh ėpokh, 1972–1991 gody (Moscow, 2008), 939; “Raisa Gorbachev to Join Barbara Bush at Wellesley,” Harvard Crimson, May 18, 1990; “Wellesley Students Hail Raisa Gorbachev,” New York Times, May 20, 1990.

  23. Barbara Bush, Address to Soviet Children, July 1991, Trip of President Bush to Moscow and Kiev, July 30–August 1, 1991; Francis X. Clines, “Red Square Is Beautiful. That’s Agreed,” New York Times, July 31, 1991; J. Y. Smith, “Raisa Gorbachev, Activist First Lady Dies,” Washington Post, September 20, 1999; Barbara Bush, “Eulogy: Raisa Gorbachev,” Time, October 4, 1999.

  24. Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 415; Galina Markova, Bol’shoi kremlevskii dvorets (Moscow, 1981).

  25. Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 514; “Remarks by President Gorbachev and President Bush at the Signing Ceremony for the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks Treaty in Moscow, 31 July 1991,” Bush Presidential Library, Public Papers, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=3256&year=1991&month=7.

  26. Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 514; R. W. Apple Jr., “Summit in Moscow: Bush and Gorbachev Sign Pact to Curtail Nuclear Arsenals, Join in Call for Mid-East Talks,” New York Times, August 1, 1991.

  27. Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York, 1995), 624.

  28. Gorbachev, Memoirs, 624; Cherniaev, Sovmestnyi iskhod, 968–969.

  29. Internal Points for Bessmertnykh Meeting, July 28, 1991, James A. Baker Papers, box 110, folder 5; Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 514–515.

  30. Esther B. Fein, “Summit in Moscow: The God (of Technology) That Failed,” New York Times, August 1, 1991.

  CHAPTER 2

  1. Strobe Talbott, “Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush: The Summit Goodfellas,” Time, August 5, 1991; “At Big Moment, Little Earpiece Fails,” New York Times, August 1, 1991.

  2. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York, 1998), 514–515; “Toasts at a Dinner Hosted by President Bush in Moscow, 31 July 1991,” Bush Presidential Library, Public Papers, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=3256&year=1991&month=7.

  3. Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 510–514; Pavel Palazhchenko, My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter (University Park, PA, 1997), 305–306; “Dmitriy Timofeyevich Yazov,” The Trip of President Bush to Moscow and Kiev, July 30–August 1, 1991, Bush Presidential Library.

  4. Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York, 1995), 624–625; Palazhchenko, My Years, 300–301; Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Boston, 1993), 413; Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 512; Jack Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York, 1994), 564.

  5. Gorbachev, Memoirs, 624–625; Palazhchenko, My Years, 300–301; Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 413; Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 512; Jerry Seib, “Pool Report no. 11. Bush, Gorbachev—and Yeltsin—Go to Dinner. Moscow, USSR, Tuesday, July 30, 1991,” Bush Presidential Library, Presidential Records, National Security Council, Nicholas R. Burns Files, Subject Files: Moscow Summit—Press Releases, Fact Sheets, Remarks, no. 2; Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire, 564.

  6. For biographies of Yeltsin, see Timothy J. Colton, Yeltsin: A Life (New York, 2008), and Leon Aron, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (New York, 2000). Cf. Boris Yeltsin, The Struggle for Russia, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (New York, 1994).

  7. “Boris Nikolaevitch Yeltsin,” The Trip of President Bush to Moscow and Kiev, July 30–August 1, 1991, Bush Presidential Library.

  8. Colton, Yeltsin, 183–184; Petr Aven and Al’fred Kokh, “El’tsin sluzhil nam!,” interview with Gennadii Burbulis, Forbes (Russian edition), July 22, 2010, www.forbes.ru/node/53407/print.

  9. Anatolii Cherniaev, Sovmestnyi iskhod. Dnevnik dvukh ėpokh, 1972–1991 gody (Moscow, 2008), 862
–863, 968; Gorbachev, Memoirs, 601–602.

  10. Oleg Shenin, “Ot partii zhdut ėnergichnykh deistvii,” draft of a speech delivered at a meeting of secretaries of republican, regional, and oblast committees, January 24, 1991, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (Russian State Archives of Recent History, hereafter RGANI), fond 89, op. 23, no. 2, 25–26.

  11. “TsK KPSS. Ob obstanovke v partiinoi organizatsii sovetskikh uchrezhdenii v g. Zheneva (Shveitsariia),” RGANI, fond 89, op. 20, no. 23, 1–6; Economic Survey of Europe, no. 3 (2003): 125.

  12. Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge, 2002), 147–199.

  13. Quoted in Edward W. Walker, Dissolution: Sovereignty and the Breakup of the Soviet Union (Lanham, MD, 2003), 88.

  14. Soiuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’. Belaia kniga. Dokumenty i fakty o politike M. S. Gorbacheva po reformirovaniiu i sokhraneniiu mnogonatsional’nogo gosudarsta, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 2007), 150–155; Yegor Likhachev, Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin (New York, 1996); Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford, 1996); Archie Brown, Seven Years That Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective (Oxford, 2007).

  15. V Politbiuro TsK KPSS po zapisiam Anatoliia Cherniaeva, Vadima Medvedeva, Georgiia Shakhnazarova (1985–1991) (Moscow, 2000), 499, 529; Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization, 405.

  16. Roman Szporluk, “Dilemmas of Russian Nationalism,” in Russia, Ukraine and the Breakup of the Soviet Union (Stanford, 2000), 183–228; Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization, 390–396, 401–416; Walker, Dissolution, 78–81.

  17. Eduard Shevardnadze to James Baker, Moscow, January 20, 1991, James A. Baker Papers, box 102, folder 35.

  18. Cherniaev, Sovmestnyi iskhod, 862–863.

  19. Gorbachev, Memoirs, 326–347, 569–607; Walker, Dissolution, 55–136.

  20. Szporluk, “Dilemmas of Russian Nationalism,” 188–198; Cherniaev, Sovmestnyi iskhod, 947, 961; Valerii Boldin, Krushenie p’edestala. Shtrikhi k portretu M. S. Gorbacheva (Moscow, 1995).

  21. Soiuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’, 268–283.

  22. “President. USSR. Designated Gifts,” Bush Presidential Library, Presidential Records, Office of the First Lady, Scheduling, Ann Brock Series: Moscow Summit, Monday 7/29/91 to Thursday 8/1/91—Moscow and Kiev, USSR [[3]].

  23. Colton, Yeltsin, 171–173; Boris Yeltsin, “Quotation of the Day,” New York Times, September 11, 1989.

  24. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York, 1996), 478–479; Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 141–143; Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 103–104.

  25. Gates, From the Shadows, 503; Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 142–143; Colton, Yeltsin, 172.

  26. “Luncheon with President Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR,” July 30, 1991, Bush Presidential Library, Memcons and Telcons, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/pdfs/memcons_telcons/1991-07-30—Gorbachev%20[2].pdf.

  27. “Memorandum of Conversation. Meeting with Boris Yeltsin, President of the Republic of Russia,” July 30, 1991, Bush Presidential Library, Memcons and Telcons, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/pdfs/memcons_telcons/1991-07-30--Yeltsin.pdf; “The White House Office of the Press Secretary. Remarks of President Bush and President Yeltsin in Press Availability,” July 30, 1991, Bush Presidential Library, Presidential Records, National Security Council, Nicholas R. Burns and Ed A. Hewett Series: POTUS Meetings, March 1991–July 1991: Moscow Summit, July 1991, no. 1.

  28. Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 412–413; “Points to Be Made for Meeting with President Yeltsin,” Bush Presidential Library, Presidential Records, National Security Council, Nicholas R. Burns Series, Subject Files: POTUS Trip to Moscow and Kiev, July 27–August 1, 1991, no. 1; G. Alimov, “Ukaz o departizatsii nachnet deistvovat’ s 4 avgusta. Bush-Yeltsin-Gorbachev,” Argumenty i fakty, no. 30 (August 30, 1991): 7; Jessica Lee, “Pool Report no. 10. President Bush Visits Boris Yeltsin and Stops at Tsereteli Studio,” Moscow, USSR, Tuesday, July 30, 1991, Bush Presidential Library, Presidential Records, National Security Council, Nicholas R. Burns Series, Subject Files: Moscow Summit—Press Releases, Fact Sheets, Remarks, no. 2.

  29. Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 509; Alimov, “Ukaz o departizatsii,” 7.

  CHAPTER 3

  1. “Nuclear Weapon Effects from Hiroshima to Nagasaki to the Present and Beyond: A Broad-Gauged Analysis with New Information Regarding Simultaneous Detonations and Firestorms,” Nukefix, www.nukefix.org/weapon.html.

  2. Jack Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York, 1994), 464–465; Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Boston, 1993), 408–410.

  3. Sergei Solodkin, “Glavredu udalos’ razdobyt’ v Londone sensatsionnye zapisi besed Mikhaila Sergeevicha s inostrannymi politikami,” Glavred, October 5, 2009, http://www.glavred.info/archive/2009/10/05/163604-3.html.

  4. “Russians Divided over Baltics’ Independence,” April 12, 1991, USIA Research Memorandum, National Archives and Records Administration, RG 306, box 49, M 52–91.

  5. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York, 1998), 512; “Implications of Alternative Soviet Futures,” National Intelligence Estimate, NIE 11-18-91 (June 1991), http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000265647/DOC_0000265647.pdf; Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire, 565–566.

  6. Author’s interview with Nicholas Burns, Harvard University, June 15, 2012; Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 414–415; Handwritten Notes on the Killing of Lithuanian Border Guards Passed by Brent Scowcroft to James Baker on July 31, 1991, James A. Baker Papers, box 110, folder 5; Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 513–514; Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York, 1995), 623.

  7. “Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon Interviews,” May 13, 1983, Day 5, Tape 1, 00:01:59, www.libs.uga.edu/media/collections/nixon/nixonday5.html; Conrad Black, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full (New York, 2008), 814.

  8. Von Hardesty and Bob Schieffer, Air Force One: The Aircraft That Shaped the Modern Presidency (New York, 2005), 127–154; Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 515; Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 415–416.

  9. Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire, 567; Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 416; “Remarks to the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of the Ukraine in Kiev, Soviet Union,” August 1, 1991, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=3267&year=1991&month=8.

  10. Gibbons, “Pre Advance Pool Report, Moscow Summit, July 29–August 1, 1991, July 25, 1991”; Susan Page, “Pool Report, Pool H,” Bush Presidential Library, Presidential Records, National Security Council, Nicholas R. Burns Series, Subject Files: Moscow Summit—Press Releases, Fact Sheets, Remarks, no. 1; Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire, 567.

  11. Volodymyr Lytvyn, Politychna arena Ukraïny: diiovi osoby ta vykonavtsi (Kyiv, 1994); Ukraïna: politychna istoriia XX–pochatok XXI stolittia, ed. Volodymyr Lytvyn et al. (Kyiv, 2007), 875–947; Lina Kushnir, “Valentyna Shevchenko: Provesty demonstratsiiu 1 travnia 1986-ho nakazaly z Moskvy,” Ukraïns’ka pravda, April 25, 2011, http://www.istpravda.com.ua/articles/4db5d3966b581/view_comments/.

  12. Page, “Pool Report, Pool H.”

  13. “Leonid Makarovich Kravchuk,” The Trip of President Bush to Moscow and Kiev, July 30–August 1, 1991; author’s interview with Leonid Kravchuk, Kyiv, September 1, 2011, http://www.istpravda.com.ua/articles/2011/09/10/53558/view_print; Vahtang Kipiani and Volodymyr Fedoryn, “Kravchuk: ‘Shcherbyts’kyi skazav: Kakoi durak pridumal slovo perestroika?’” Ukraïns’ka pravda, September 13, 2011; Valentyn Chemerys, Prezydent. Roman-ese (Kyiv, 1994); David Remnick, “Ukraine Split on Independence as Republic Awaits Bush Visit,” Washington Post, August 1, 1991.

  14. “Remarks at the Arrival Ceremony in Kiev, Soviet Union,” August 1, 1991, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=3265&year=1991&month=8; Matlo
ck, Autopsy on an Empire, 568.

  15. Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, 510–511; Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire, 569; Anatolii Cherniaev, Sovmestnyi iskhod. Dnevnik dvukh ėpokh, 1972–1991 gody (Moscow, 2008), 957–958; Chrystyna N. Lapychak, “Bush Notes Importance of Republics in Historic Trip to Ukrainian Capital,” Ukrainian Weekly, August 4, 1991, 1; Page, “Pool Report, Pool H”; George H. W. Bush, “Remarks to the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of the Ukraine in Kiev, Soviet Union,” August 1, 1991, Bush Presidential Library, Public Papers; Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 417.

  16. Author’s interview with Leonid Kravchuk, Kyiv, September 1, 2011; Kipiani and Fedoryn, “Kravchuk: ‘Shcherbyts’kyi skazav.’”

  17. Ivan Drach, “My vitaiemo Dzhordzha Busha—iak prezydenta SShA i ne pryimaiemo ioho iak moskovs’koho ahitatora,” in Polityka: statti, dopovidi, vystupy, interv’iu (Kyiv, 1997), 324–327. Cf. “Rukh Chairman Ivan Drach’s Remarks to President Bush,” Ukrainian Weekly, August 11, 1991, 3.

  18. Author’s interview with Leonid Kravchuk, Kyiv, September 1, 2011.

  19. “Points to Be Made for Meeting with the Ukrainian Chairman Leonid Kravchuk,” Bush Presidential Library, Presidential Records, National Security Council, Nicholas R. Burns Files, Subject Files: POTUS Trip to Moscow and Kiev, July 27–August 1, 1991, no. 3.

  20. “Memorandum of Conversation. Meeting with Ukrainian Supreme Soviet Chairman Leonid Kravchuk,” August 1, 1991, Bush Presidential Library, Memcons and Telcons, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/pdfs/memcons_telcons/1991-08-01--Kravchuk.pdf; “Proposals of the Ukrainian SSR for Possible Directions of Trade-and-Economic Cooperation Between the Ukrainian SSR and USA,” Bush Presidential Library, Presidential Records, National Security Council, Nicholas R. Burns and Ed Hewett Files: POTUS Meetings, March 1991–July 1991: Moscow Summit, July 1991, no. 1.

  21. For a survey of Ukrainian history, see Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, 2nd ed. (Toronto, 2010). On Ukraine’s road to independence, see Bohdan Nahaylo and Victor Swoboda, Soviet Disunion: A History of the Nationalities Problem in the USSR (New York, 1990); Bohdan Nahaylo, The Ukrainian Resurgence (Toronto, 1999).