26 December 1991 -- Soviet Union Dissolved

Fall of the Soviet Union -- Jeffrey Lewis

Ironically, the only Soviet General Secretary of the Communist Party to be born within the USSR would be the man who would officially announce the dissolution of the nation he led. Mikhail Gorbachev was born in 1931, just in time to witness family members and neighbors hauled off the the gulags on fraudulent charges, remember loved ones starved in forced famines engineered to promote industrialization, and experience the cruel deprivations born of the Great Patriotic War. Perhaps it was these events that instilled within the future Soviet leader that shred of humanity that led to the demise of his nation. Or perhaps there had always been an innate spark of decency within. Who can tell?

Mikhail Gorbachev

Gorbachev would be the only Soviet leader since Vladimir Lenin to boast a quality education, but the last leader of that Communist state lacked the talent for brutality and absolute indifference to human suffering possessed by the first. Over the years, as he climbed the ladder to supreme rule, Gorbachev time and again helped much put-upon Soviet workers, especially agricultural labors. For example, he made marked improvements in living conditions on the vast collective farms, increasing the size of private plots of land while making these rural communities more democratic.

On 11 March 1985, Gorbachev inherited the leadership of his dying nation. To be sure, like the Russian Empire before it, the Soviet Union had long resisted disintegration by the centrifugal nationalistic urges of its member republics, its inept leadership, and dismal economy by applying overwhelming brutality and repression to stifle independent voices. The new leader thought to revitalize his failing nation by turning to a new path.

Like his predecessors, however, Gorbachev was unfortunately an ideologue, and his faith in the false promises of Marxism informed his decisions. But unlike those who preceded him in office, he hoped to save Communism not by force and oppression, but by returning to the very same humanitarian instincts which drove Karl Marx to protest. The Soviet Union and its satellite states, Gorbachev realized, was far more akin to the horrid industrial nightmares that had so offended Marx’s sensibilities than any workers’ paradise. He thought to change that.

Gorbachev reforms were real and meaningful. Press freedoms, political dissent, economic reform, slowly but surely gathered steam. Moscow ceased blocking foreign news broadcasts. Opposition parties began to form. Closed archives were opened to the scrutiny of eager historians. Repressive governments in satellite states were cast aside by pro-democracy movements.

Unfortunately, Gorbachev soon confronted the eternal dilemma which torments every revolutionary leader. On the one hand, the rapid pace of reform alarmed the old Communist Guard. They fondly remembered a time when dissent was resolved by tanks not ballots. Their resentment against Gorbachev increased and their own power diminished. On the other were the reformers, many raised to prominence by Gorbachev himself. The pace of change lagged far, far too slowly for their liking, and they gradually abandoned Gorbachev to seek a quicker path to reform elsewhere.

Gorbachev’s mission to recreate the Soviet Union was further complicated by yet another constant found on the fringes of every revolution: Those whose interest lay not in retarding or advancing reform, but rather grasping any wealth and power that chance might place within their reach. Ironically, it would be these, not Gorbachev, not the Communist Old Guard, not pro-democracy reformers who would eventually triumph.

But that is a story for another day.

Every revolution is akin to a genie newly freed from its bottle. It assumes a life and force of its own, refusing to remain responsive to the desires of the individual cracking the seal. Like every revolutionary leader, Gorbachev was to learn that lesson.

As the iron bands confining their homelands to the USSR loosened, pro-democracy and nationalist movements erupted across the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Republics, sometimes in unison, but often at loggerheads, but always clamoring for increased independence and self-determination.

The world changed on  23 October 1989. Gorbachev let it be known that no longer would the Soviet Union intervene in the internal affairs of Eastern European Bloc. Time and again since Red Armies replaced Nazi ones as the instrument of oppression across the eastern half of Europe, any efforts by populations of these Soviet satellite states had been repeatedly ground beneath the harsh heels of Red Army boots. Now they were free to chose their own paths, and, beginning with Poland, the satellite nations began to escape the the Soviet orbit. Poland had already voted its Communist Party from power in favor of a pro-Democracy coalition. Many observers, both inside and outside the Soviet Bloc waited for tanks that would never arrive. When Gorbachev instead gave other populations leave to follow suit, they did so with enthusiasm. Throughout 1990 and into the Spring of 1991, every Soviet Bloc nation in Central and Eastern Europe experienced elections catapulting either pro-democracy or nationalist parties into positions of power.

On 9 November 1989, Berlin Citizens Availed Themselves of Gorbachev's Promise Not to Intervene in the Internal Affairs

of East European Nations by Beginning the Demolition of the Hated Wall That Had Divided Their City into Two Camps Since 1961

Gorbachev had already unleashed winds of change that could never again be harnessed, but now he assured his downfall. He proposed to formally recognize the new status quo by means of treaty replacing the fiction of a Soviet nation with a voluntary confederation of independent nations. The treaty was to be signed on 20 August 1991. In early August was on vacation, planning to return to Moscow on the day of the signing. He was to be a no-show.

Old Guard hardliners had long recognized the young upstart reformer as a threat to the Communist ideology which has sustained them for decades. Now, with his signature on a treaty, the last vestiges of their authority would fade into oblivion. They had finally mustered the resolve to remove the troublesome Gorbachev. After six years of trying to remake the Soviet state into an entity more palatable to its citizens, Gorbachev had begun to realize the futility of his efforts. It was a bitter lesson his hardline Communist opponents would learn in three eventful days.

On 19 August 1991, eight Communist hardliners announced Gorbachev ill and no longer capable of completing his duties. They would henceforth steer the Soviet ship of state. Reform minded newspapers were closed. A coup d'état was in the making, but the planners had already failed before they had even begun. The plotters had ensured Gorbachev’s noninvolvement. After failing to cajole and bully the Soviet leader to support their efforts, coup members ensured a fuming Gorbachev remained securely incommunicado in a Crimean dacha under the watchful eye of the KGB. Coup plotters had discussed the arrest of Gorbachev’s estranged former protégé, the frequently drunken and surprisingly inept yet remarkably charismatic former Boris Yeltsin, but somehow neglected following through. They would ruefully regret the oversight.

Boris Yeltsin

Opposition to the coup began to gather at the White House as the Russian parliament house was called. Pro-reform politicians and Soviet citizens en masse protested the illegal conduct of the “Gang of Eight” as the coup leaders would come to be called. No less importantly, for all its many sins -- and they are indeed numerous -- the Red Army has historically remained loyal to civilian authority. Coup leaders deployed the famous 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division to take up positions within Moscow in support of their bid for power. To their chagrin, one of the division's elite tank battalions announced its loyalty to the reformers and assumed defensive positions outside the White House.

Crowds Cheer the Crew of Loyal Red Army Tank During the Failed August Coup. Note the Protesters are Flying the Russian Tricolor Rather Than the Soviet Flag

This defection would prove a key factor in Boris Yeltsin becoming a chapter rather than a footnote in future history books. Climbing atop the turret of Tank 110, Yeltsin gave what would prove the most inspired and influential speech of his very long career, demanding that the rebels stand down and Gorbachev be allowed to address the nation. In a astounding display of incompetence, coup leaders allowed Yeltsin’s speech to be broadcast over state media that evening.

On the following day, 20 August, coup leaders positioned military forces under their command in position to attack the loyalists. Massive bloodletting was expected by all to follow, but the next day, the 21st of August, the hardliners suffered a failure of nerves that would have resulted in Stalin sending the entire lot to the gulags. Insurgent troops were ordered to stand down and return to their barracks. What had begun as coup d'état died as failed farce.

When coup leaders had last seen Gorbachev, they had been his jailors. Now they came to him as petitioners. He refused to meet with them. The insurgents were fortunate they did not have to face the harsh Soviet justice they had sought to restore. None served more than 18 months before given amnesty. Some even returned to government after the fall of the Soviet Union or joined the new economic elite that replaced the Communist Party in the new Russia.

While the coup failed to outright slay Gorbachev hopes of a new and improved Soviet State, it did mortally wound the dream.

Ironically, the coup mounted to prevent Gorbachev from further weakening the Communist Party’s control of the Soviet Union prompted the Soviet leader to inflict the fatal blow the conspirators sought to avert. On 24 August, three days after the coup’s collapse, Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and disbanded its Central Committee. Communist positions within the Soviet government were dissolved. But the party’s decline did not end there. On 29 August, the Communist Party, the last entity still uniting the bickering republics, was officially banned throughout the Soviet Union. Once that threat was severed, disunion rapidly followed.

Over the next three months, the various Soviet Republics fled the sinking ship of state, leaving the USSR nothing but an empty legal fiction. Gorbachev, having much earlier realizing the futility of his early quest to create a new humane Soviet state with a human face, did not resist the inevitable. In mid-December, Gorbachev met with Boris Yeltsin who had parlayed the popularity won by standing down the August Coup plotters into winning Russia first presidential election. Reality had trumped his idealism, Gorbachev confessed. The Soviet leader had accepted defeat, and change of plans was in order.

In the early morning hours of 25 December 1991, Gorbachev spoke to his splintering nation in a televised address, announcing his resignation: "I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." He went on to declare his office extinct. All political and military authority inherent to that office were transferred to Russia’s President Yeltsin. At 7:32 pm that evening, shortly after Gorbachev’s departure, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin walls for the last time.

The next day, the remaining members of the Union's Supreme Soviet voted both itself and the USSR out of existence.

Actually, ignore all that. Singer/songwriter/comic book artist Jeffrey Lewis has already put all this to music, so just listen to him tell the story.