Abstract
The Declaration by the heads of state of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine announcing the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on 8 December 1991 asserted that negotiations on the new Union Treaty had ‘reached a dead end’ (zashli v tupik).1 The same phrase had been used in the ‘Appeal to the Soviet People’ by the leaders of the abortive putsch in August of that year to describe the fate of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms.2 Thus, within just four months in 1991, the ‘conservative’ and ‘radical’ opponents of Gorbachev both felt sufficiently strongly that his policies were going nowhere to stage coups against him.
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Notes
Izvestiya, 9 December 1991. This is a revised version of the paper delivered to the Fifth ICCEES World Congress in Warsaw on 7 August 1995. Since then a companion article has been published: see John Russell, ‘Improbable Unions: The Draft Union Treaties in the USSR, 1990–1991’, Review of Central and East European Law, Vol.22, No.4, Leiden, 1996, pp.389–416. Since Warsaw a number of works devoted the period under review have appeared, notably the two-volume memoirs of Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy (Moscow: Novosti, 1995), and Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). These and other works have been consulted in revising this article up to the end of March 1997.
Ronald. J. Hill, ‘The CPSU: From Monolith to Pluralist?’, Soviet Studies, Vol.43, No.2, 1991, pp.217–35.
V. Koroteeva, L. Perepelkin and O. Shkaratan, ‘From Bureaucratic Centralism to the Economic Integration of the Sovereign Republics’, Kommunist, 1988, No.15, p.22. For a good account of the Twelfth Party Congress in 1923, the last All-Union forum to discuss the national question, and also for a comprehensive account of the conclusion of the 1922 Union Treaty, see Richard Pipes, ‘The Establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’, in Rachel Denber (ed.), The Soviet Nationality Reader: The Disintegration in Context (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992), pp.35–86.
An excellent collection, devoted to this subject, is to be found in G. Guseinov and D. Dragunskii (eds), Ozhog rodnogo ochaga (Moscow: Progress, 1990).
An excellent analysis of formulation and implementation of Soviet national policy is contained in Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993). For a Soviet account of the persistency of Stalin’s rigid vertical hierarchy of nations, see A. Migran’yan, ‘Dolgii put’ k yevropeiskomu domu’, Novy mir, 1989, No.7, pp.195–209. Recently it was claimed that the 1922 Union Treaty was ‘ratified only in principle’: see Yaroslav Dashkevych, ‘Ukraine and the Union Treaties of 1920 and 1922’, The Ukrainian Review, Vol.39, No.1, Spring 1991, p.23.
N. Nazarbaev, ‘Istseleniye’, Druzhba narodov, 1987, No.9, pp.195–209.
B. Oleinik, secretary to the boards of the Soviet and Ukrainian Unions of Writers, was one of the first to draw attention to these three factors at an All-Union forum: see Pravda, 2 July 1988. Gorbachev acknowledges the importance of all three in his memoirs: see Gorbachev, op. cit., Vol.1, p.501.
Sovetskaya Litva, 11 June 1988, cited in Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol.XL, No.25, p.2.
The term ‘matrioshka nationalism’ was introduced by Raymond Taras in his ‘Conclusion: Making Sense of Matrioshka Nationalism’, in Ian Bremmer and Raymond Taras (eds), Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp.513–38.
As reported by Georgian deputy, E. Shengeleya, to the First Congress of People’s Deputies, Izvestiya, 27 May 1989.
Izvestiya, 10 June 1989; for an interesting interview with Alksnis, see David Remnick, Lenin’sTomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (London: Viking, 1993), pp.385–7.
A good account of this process may be found in A. Salmin, ‘From the Union to Commonwealth: The Problem of the New Federalism’, in Stephen White, Rita Di Leo and Ottorino Cappelli (eds), The Soviet Transition: From Gorbachev to Yeltsin (London: Cass, 1993), pp.33–56.
For an excellent account of this plan, see Ed A. Hewett, ‘The New Soviet Plan’, Foreign Affairs, Vol.69, No.5, Winter 1990–91, pp.146–67.
See Izvestiya, 25 September 1990. See also Philip. G. Roeder, Red Sunset: The Failure of Soviet Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), p.242.
See John E. Tedstrom, ‘The Fate of Economic Reform in the Soviet Union’, Report on the USSR, Vol.2, No.40, 5 October 1990, pp.4–5;
John Tedstrom and Philip Hanson, ‘The Economics and Politics behind Shatalin’s Plan for an Economic Union’, ibid., Vol.2, No.43, 19 October 1990, pp.1–3.
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Russell, J. (1999). Gorbachev’s Bitter Draft. In: Sakwa, R. (eds) The Experience of Democratization in Eastern Europe. International Council for Central and East European Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14511-9_3
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