Serhii Plokhy is the author of the new book The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union. His other books include Yalta: The Price of Peace and The Cossack Myth. He is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, and he lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.
Q: How was your new book’s title, The Last Empire, chosen?
A: In my experience, you choose the title together with the
publisher; it’s a product of negotiations! But what I write in the book is that
I look at the Soviet Union as the last great modern empire. I put it in the
context of the disintegration of the British Empire, the French Empire.
You can use the term “empire” very broadly, but this is in
terms of the classic empires of the 18th, 19th, and 20th
centuries—[the Soviet Union] was the last one.
What is happening today is a post-colonial situation where
Russia tries to create a sphere of influence, not necessarily incorporating
those lands into the Russian Federation.
If you look at the history of other empires, there are
attempts to be present in their former colonies. That is the closest parallel. [Russia]
annexed Crimea, but that’s more the exception than the rule.
Q: What was the role of the United States in the fall of the
Soviet Union?
A: This book argues against a number of historiographical
trends that overestimate the role of the United States. On the Russian side,
there also are all sorts of conspiracy theories [such as] a CIA plot. That’s
one kind of trend I’m going against.
Here in the United States, there’s a triumphalist [view] of
the Cold War where the disintegration of the Soviet Union is seen as a symbol
of American victory in the Cold War. What I’m trying to show is that until the
very end, the U.S. policy was to keep the Soviet Union together and keep [Soviet
leader Mikhail] Gorbachev in power.
On the 25th of December 1991, there were two
major documents from the White House. One was praising Gorbachev for ending the
Cold War. Then there was the Bush address that [saw the events] as a sign of
American victory.
Q: Why was that? Why the two conflicting messages?
A: It was not irrational. There were reasons to keep
Gorbachev in power—[concerns about instability] following the disintegration of
the Soviet Union were on Bush’s mind; he had worked with Gorbachev; he liked
him; the people around Bush were suspicious of [Russian President Boris]
Yeltsin.
This is ignored by the dominant narrative on the end of the
Cold War here in the United States. I’m arguing against the triumphalist
approach, and also against the conspiracy theories in Russia.
Q. You write that you had access to new material as you
researched the book. What did it include?
A: I worked with the archives in the Gorbachev Foundation,
and that was helpful. But the most interesting material was here in the United
States, in the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library. They did fantastic work
in declassifying material. There are telephone conversations [between leaders
of the Soviet republics], memos that Bush’s staffers prepared for him. I also
worked at Princeton with [then-Secretary of State James] Baker’s papers.
Q: Looking at Ukraine, what was its role in the end of the
Soviet Union?
A: It was really crucial. Ukraine’s vote for independence on
December 1, 1991, really spelled the end of the Soviet Union. Coming from
Ukraine, it was interesting that my country played an important role, but I was
trying to understand why that happened.
President Yeltsin explained to President Bush the role of
Ukraine, how that influenced the Russian position: If Ukraine did not sign the
[draft union] treaty proposed by Gorbachev, then Russia would not sign either.
[Russia] was afraid to be outnumbered and outvoted [in the Soviet Union] by the
Muslim republics.
Once Ukraine decided it was not going to sign, Yeltsin’s
position was that Russia wouldn’t sign either. Union, then, was not something
that would attract other republics. Ukraine at that particular moment had the
key vote, and it decided to leave the union.
Looking at today, keeping Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence
is crucial for whatever plans [there are] for Russia as a major power. As
Ukraine goes, so go other former Soviet republics.
Q: What else can be learned from the end of the Soviet Union
when it comes to today’s situation?
A: One thing is that despite the fact that President Bush
and the people around him helped create the triumphalist narrative, overall
they did, in my opinion, a very good job of managing a situation that was very
dangerous.
One way they achieved that, we know from the telephone
conversations, was that he was able to create a unified front of Western
countries. Bush was speaking on behalf of them.
When Yeltsin met with the presidents of Belarus and Ukraine
and decided to dissolve the Soviet Union, the first call they made was to
President Bush.
There was no unity on Yugoslavia a few years earlier:
Germany had its own vision; the United States has its own opinion.
Today, it’s essential for Europe, the United States, and
Canada to speak to Russia with one voice. That’s one lesson that can be
learned.
Q: What do you think will happen next in Ukraine?
A: Almost every day, I thank God that I’m a historian and
not someone making predictions! If I were paid to make predictions, I would be
completely broke!
The key is the presidential elections in Ukraine that are
scheduled for May 25. That is very important to provide additional legitimacy
to the government in Ukraine. That is also the time when the government in Kiev
will have to come up with a new policy toward the east of the republic.
My understanding is that the elites in Donetsk [in the
eastern part of Ukraine] will try to use the current referendum not necessarily
to leave Ukraine. They are subsidized by the central government. They are like
the Rust Belt. They will try to gain advantages—an economic package from Kiev
to that region, which is in a very difficult economic situation.
I don’t see an incorporation of that region into Russia. But
if a workable arrangement is not made between Kiev and the two regions in the
east, there could be the emergence of a new unrecognized state in a very
difficult economic situation that can become the source of instability for the
region, and the world.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m in the middle of working on [a project about]
Chernobyl. I’m trying to look at the world’s largest nuclear disaster from the
perspective of what happened in Japan [at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors in
2011] –whether to continue with nuclear power.
It’s also about the last stages in the history of the Soviet
Union, but the questions are about the relationship between the human race and
technology, and what led to the disaster.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: We’ve talked about the reinterpretation of the [views on]
the American side; that’s something I find very important.
The main point of the book is that we look at Russia, the
Soviet Union—they behave differently. At the end, there are trends in world
history, and empires come to an end. Today, through the prism of empire,
national states, movement of borders--those are the right lessons to understand
what’s happening today.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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