By Patricia H. Kushlis
Twenty years ago today the heads of the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus met in a nature preserve in Belarus to form the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). Their declaration sounded the Soviet Union’s death knell although the international recognition of the independence of the three Baltic Republics in early September in the wake of the failed coup against Gorbachev had presaged the final blow. President Mikhail Gorbachev formally disbanded the USSR on December 25, 1991 and the red flag with the yellow hammer and sickle on it was lowered from over the Kremlin for the last time. (Photo left by PHKushlis, Church of the Apostles, Kremlin, December 1991).
That surprise December 8 announcement was one of those events that remain etched firmly in my brain. Not because it came as such a shock in the overall scheme of things Soviet at the time. By then, the empire’s impending dissolution had been obvious and imminent. The question had become when, not if.
It had been argued that if Gorbachev had only agreed to recognize the illegal incorporation of the Baltic Republics into the Soviet Union under Stalin and released them from bondage in 1989 or thereabouts that a Soviet Union of 12 republics could have continued to exist. Whether accurate or not, it hadn’t happened and the independence movements that had begun in the northeastern tip of Estonia had spread like wildfire throughout the European republics and the Caucasus thereafter. (Photo right by PHKushlis: Soviet mouse caught in Estonian blue, black and white trap, 1991).
Perhaps the real reason I remember the December 8 declaration so vividly was because I was in Moscow when the announcement was made. It came via a grainy black and white newscast in Russian on the small television in our hotel room shortly before dinner while thawing out from a bitterly cold walk to see the White House where Yeltsin’s government was still housed.
It happened over the three day Finnish Independence Day holiday weekend.
The US Embassy in Helsinki and Finnish schools had been closed, of course, in honor of the Finnish holiday on December 6. Finnair had a special flight and hotel stay offer and we had wanted to see Moscow again after a hiatus of 11 years before leaving the neighborhood after four years in Finland.
Some cities retain their historical character even as they change over time.
Moscow is one of them. Others, like Hong Kong, are always, it seems, reinventing themselves into something entirely new. The Russian White House and the new US Embassy compound had been built after our departure in July 1980. Renovations of the Kremlin cathedrals and parts of Red Square represented stark improvements over what I remembered during the final days of the Brezhnev regime – near the ending of the era of stagnation. By 1991, the long lines at the entrance to Lenin’s Tomb had been replaced by longer lines that formed in front of MacDonald’s where prices, it seemed, were a good tenth of those in Helsinki. (Photo by WJKushlis, Russian White House, December 1991).
Some of the city’s oldest buildings had been spruced up almost Potemkin-style for the 1980 Olympics. Given the harshness of the weather and the troubled state of the country’s economy it was no wonder that the entire Soviet Union always seemed to need a fresh coat of paint and usually a full-scale make-over.
A city in transition
Moscow of 1991 was a city in transition – from one that had been frozen in the past for over seventy years by a repressive regime which had imposed a militarized economy perched on a single wobbly petroleum leg into one with vibrant possibilities and an uncharted future. Whether it was a city on the move – and in what direction - was a different story that I’m not sure can be answered even today. (Photo left: Moscow 1991 Kremlin and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by PHKushlis)
As the lid had come off, the city and the country had been hit with a petty crime wave. Bands of gypsy children - waiting to attack the unsuspecting - frequented underground passages. Taxis to and from the airport were unsafe. Foreigners traveling on Soviet trains were gassed and robbed in the middle of the night. In truth, Moscow had never been as crime free as its Communist proponents claimed – but personal crime of this brazenness had been largely kept underground and tucked out of sight just ten years before.
What's Mine is Mine and What's Yours is Mine Too
The mentality – what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine too – still permeated the country – likely brought on by the years of corruption and deprivation under a Communist economic system in which virtually everything had been made illegal. When the lid came off, the society had little internal intrinsic restraint to draw upon – the system had become so rotten. Everyone broke the law simply to be able to live.
Yet the lifting of past authoritarianism had also produced a healthier attitude toward authority as evidenced by the attractive young Russian woman ostentatiously flirting and joking with a guard at the entrance to the Kremlin. That kind of interaction would have been unthinkable before Gorbachev had come to power and it did hint at the possibility, at least, of a brighter - if not radiant - future.
The US quickly recognized what was called “The Creation Agreement” that had been signed near Brest that snowy day which abolished the Soviet Union and created its successor.
In fact, I had no more returned to Helsinki when the phone rang. It was a Washington colleague asking me to return to the Soviet Union immediately – or actually as soon as I could get a visa - to help with the media for an imminent and previously unplanned high level visit – one in which Secretary of State James Baker would visit Moscow and the Central Asian Republics to offer American assurances of recognition of the Agreement forming the CIS that had been signed in the Belarus woods that blustery day. My visa came through in record time – and I was headed back to Moscow on what seemed like the next plane. Hardly long enough to unpack - let alone wash clothes.
Those were indeed exciting and singular times. There was no way I would have missed the chance to witness such history in the making.