Yuri VORONIN, Doctor of Economics, Professor, Chairman of the Commission of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR on budget, plans, taxes and prices, First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation (in 1991).
President of the Russian Federation V. Putin in 2005 in his message to the Federal Assembly characterized the collapse of the USSR as the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century. “I continue to insist that this is a tragedy... after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 25 million Russian people ended up abroad in one night”, - the head of state said during a discussion at the Valdai Club in October 2015 and reaffirmed at the Valdai Forum in Sochi on October 2, 2021.
This perfectly fair assessment nevertheless requires detailed argumentation. Which, unfortunately, is not known to everyone.
Let me remind you that after the failure of the State Emergency Committee in August 1991, in November Novo-Ogarevo resumed the process of consultations between representatives of the republics on the draft Union Treaty.
But the political situation in the country after the August events was already different. Each of the leaders of the Union republics, in his separatist zeal, afraid that power in the country could completely pass into the hands of B. Yeltsin, tried to outstrip others, speeding up the exit from the USSR and thereby doing a great disservice to the true conspirators - the breakers of the USSR. Only seven participants remained at the negotiating table about the fate of the Union: Russia, Belarus and five Central Asian republics. The rest simply stopped taking part in it. And by December 1, practically everyone had fled from the USSR, except for Russia and Kazakhstan. And the President of the USSR M. Gorbachev continued to write messages to parliamentarians of all republics, urging them to discuss and sign the Union Treaty.
Meanwhile, the analysis of even the latest version of the draft Union Treaty, carried out by experts working with me, showed that his it was simply impossible to sign for a number of conceptual provisions.
In the new version of the Treaty, everything that could speak of a socialist society was removed; the term "socialist" was replaced by "democratic". The goal of the new type of state was declared to be "the formation of civil society" - you know as you know. The realization of these "goals" would in fact mean a quiet coup d'etat, carried out against the will of the people, expressed in the referendum on March 17, 1991. And most importantly, the draft treaty excluded the USSR Constitution from the legal system, crossed it out.
The Russian group consisting of Burbulis, Gaidar, Kozyrev, Shakhrai took very active care of the further fate of the “new” Union, which prepared the meeting of Belovezhskaya Pushcha between B. Yeltsin and L. Kravchuk.
On December 8, 1991, three political adventurers - the presidents of the RSFSR B. Yeltsin, the Ukrainian SSR L. Kravchuk and the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the BSSR S. Shushkevich announced the dissolution of the USSR and the creation of the CIS - the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Under the main document - the Agreement on the Establishment of the CIS, which states that "the USSR as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality ceases to exist", there are signatures of B. Yeltsin and G. Burbulis (from Russia), L. Kravchuk and V. Fokin (from Ukraine), S. Shushkevich and V. Kebich (from Belarus). This event, which took place in deep secrecy from the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples, went down in history as the Bialowieza betrayal.
I well remember the December days of 1991, when G. Burbulis, S. Shakhrai, E. Gaidar, A. Kozyrev, who returned from Belarus, vied with each other who of them was the author of the document on the termination of the existence of the USSR, which of them made the greatest contribution to This process was put into circulation a stamp, which subsequently marked everything that did not happen in "democratic" Russia: in 1991 - they allegedly "saved the crumbling Soviet Union from the nightmare of a civil war".
E. Gaidar attributed the authorship of the Belovezhskaya document to himself at all angles, it was his hand that allegedly wrote the text. AND he “perpetuated” this betrayal in his memoirs: “…if someone wants to find out who is responsible for the Belovezhskaya agreement, I will not deny it - it was written from beginning to end by my hand”.
But how could Sergei Shakhrai give the palm of the authorship of the Belovezhskaya document to Gaidar - as the people's deputies of the RSFSR called him with "humor" - "a lawyer for particularly delicate squiggles of B. Yeltsin." He said that it was he, S. Shakhrai, who proposed, prepared all the formulations and wrote documents on the collapse and termination of the existence of the USSR. In all interviews, he firmly convinced that the USSR allegedly "died" before Belovezhie, and in the government residence "Viskuli" "they, like doctors, only recorded the fact of the death of the USSR..." Is this the top of the legal cynicism?
The essence of the issue, according to Shakhrai, was that the Soviet Union was established in 1922 by four republics: the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the BSSR and the ZSFSR. Since the Transcaucasus ceased to exist, the three republics allegedly had full legal right to fix that "the Soviet Union as a subject of international law ceases to exist." The proposal of the "greatest lawyer", Shakhraev's casuistry, was allegedly taken as the basis for the preparation of the Belovezhskaya documents. This "greatest lawyer" apparently forgot that the USSR included 15 union republics.
The references to the 1922 Treaty of the year, contrary to the legally illiterate assertion of S. Shakhrai, were drawn to the legal insolvency attention of statist lawyers. They justified this by the fact that by 1991 Treaty on the formation of the USSR 1922 was a historical, not a valid legal document. The change in the composition of the subjects of the USSR on the basis of the Constitutions of the USSR (1924, 1936, 1977) actually caused the Treaty of 1922 to become invalid and became simply a memorial.
Not only E. Gaidar and S. Shakhrai, but also the former teacher of scientific communism G. Burbulis, did not lag behind in raising their role in the preparation of the Belovezhskaya agreements. He spoke frankly: the day of the Bialowieza conspiracy “was the happiest day in my life. After all, there was no one above us now".
When the agreement on the creation of the CIS was signed, no one thought about the fate of the Russian-speaking population in the created states. With the coming to undivided power of local leaders from the titular nations, the situation of the Russians became catastrophic. Russians simply survived from houses, apartments, from their homes as occupiers. Many of them simply turned into refugees, homeless people, trying to return to their homeland - to Russia, which was not especially waiting for them.
The document signed in the Belarusian "Viskulyakh" was devoted to the coordination of the economic policy of the three members of the Commonwealth: the preservation of a single economic space, the preservation of a single currency - the ruble, the implementation of the same type of fiscal policy, the coordination of foreign economic and customs policies, etc. From the very first years of the "implementation" of the Agreement, life has shown that everything written in it was pure profanity, a lie, clouding the eyes of the peoples of the Soviet Union.
Thirty years have passed since the signing of the Agreement on the Establishment of the CIS, but still, even between two like-minded countries that have high level of integration - by Russia and Belarus - the transition to a single currency, the creation of a single payment space is still planned. The head of the Republic of Belarus A. Lukashenko believes that this issue does not need to be raised yet. In his opinion, the creation of a single currency "must come step by step." Russia is losing the main thing - the Russian world. Statistics show that today in the former republics of the USSR there are fewer and fewer people who can read Pushkin without translation.
Now the "authors" of the Belovezhskaya agreement shyly hide their eyes and try with all their might to downplay their role in the collapse of the USSR, trying to ward off the blow by switching arrows to each other. And twenty years later in general, all the heroic authors will hide behind a screen “they instructed experts to prepare documents,” although there were no experts in Belovezhie at all.
For example, S. Shakhrai interprets the events of those days today: “At first, Boris Yeltsin and Stanislav Shushkevich still hoped to persuade Leonid Kravchuk to preserve the Union in some form. However, the Ukrainian president did not even want to hear the word "Union". Finally, we found the formula "Commonwealth" as a way of coexistence of states in one economic, political, military space".
From year to year, S. Shakhrai more and more actively convinces the public that it was L. Kravchuk who was against "preserving the Union in any form." And at the same time he will not fail to emphasize that the text of the Belovezhskaya agreement was written by Ye. Gaidar.
G. Burbulis, as one of the signatories of the Belovezhskaya agreement, realizing what a tragedy happened to the peoples of the former republics that were part of the Union, trying to wash away the black stain from himself, he will have to declare: “This is the tragedy of a person whose homeland has ceased to exist”. But this, "reinforces" his thought "a specialist in scientific communism", "an optimistic tragedy", demagogically declaring that “the Belovezhskaya agreements are greatly underestimated”, that “our homeland, the Soviet Union, finally and irreversibly disintegrated in the tragic days of the August 1991 putsch”, that “a certain wisdom was needed, a certain courage on our part to find that form - , a political one, which would make this disintegration more manageable, more sparing and regulated... .." and so on, other verbiage.
G.Burbulis is forced to continue to hang "small noodles" on the ears of gullible Russians, interpreting the Belovezhskaya Agreements as "a document of impeccable legitimacy", "a masterpiece of political diplomacy," which "was based on the Constitution of the USSR and each of our republics".
“We, as founders, had the right to make a decision that was in line with a historic moment. The historical moment was that the Soviet empire was disintegrating and crumbling before our eyes. And this decay took on an uncontrollable, uncontrollable form. And we were obliged to find a way out, first of all, to prevent a bloody redistribution of the legacy of the Soviet totalitarian empire". In truth - Judas wants excuses!
Over the years, it is very strange to read the philosophical fabrications of some would-be "philosophers" that "The main creator the collapse of the USSR was the people. " A slight twist is immediately made: “the truth about the causes of national catastrophes depends ... .. from the moral, intellectual, spiritual health of the ruling elite (Doctor of Philosophy A. Tsipko) ". So who destroyed the Soviet Union - the people or the ruling elite?
Under the document on the collapse of the USSR stands and L. Kravchuk's signature, elected on December 5, 1991, the President of Ukraine. This fact fundamentally changed the balance of power. What kind of Gorbachev's "new" Union for the now "independent" L. Kravchuk could we talk about? Therefore, he firmly stood on the position that he would not sign any Union Treaty. L. Kravchuk, as he himself frankly stated, "has accumulated fatigue from the Soviet Union." Reading these pearls of L. Kravchuk, a graduate of the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee, I thought all the time that Hetman Mazepa would be incredibly happy about a "coup d'etat of this magnitude". The Mazepovism in Ukraine has not died yet !! L. Kravchuk's Mazepovism on a sinusoid is more and more frankly and clearly manifested from year to year in his assessments of Belovezhie.
And suddenly: on June 5, 2005, speaking in the Ukrainian Rada and seeing the socio-economic and political “progress” in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union, L. Kravchuk bitterly said that “if he knew what would happen in Ukraine, he I would rather have my hand cut off than sign the Belovezhsk agreement".
I think that there are few such pearls confessions; the first president of Ukraine L. Kravchuk should prepare for the fact that, sooner or later, he will be held accountable for the collapse of the Great Power.
Analyzing the Belovezhskaya collusion, I would like to cite one more very significant fact. In October 1992, I headed the delegation of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation at the celebration of the Independence Day of Turkey. These days I had many frank conversations with the then Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich. Of course, all of them to one degree or another concerned the events in Belovezhskaya Pushcha.
S. Shushkevich said that S. Shakhrai, E. Gaidar, A. Kozyrev and especially G. Burbulis they constantly “pissed off” B. Yeltsin to prepare his own version of the treaty in opposition to M. Gorbachev. And when Burbulis in one of the meetings, S. Shushkevich recalls, suddenly uttered the words: “Would you agree to sign the following phrase:“ The USSR as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality ceases to exist ”, we all agreed with this. Earlier, S. Shushkevich continued, we understood very well internally that we want real independence for our republics, "we have enough guardianship", but we never stipulated this thesis among ourselves aloud. And when such words had already been uttered, and even from the Russian side... They formed the first paragraph of the Belovezhsky statement.
Over the years, Shushkevich became more and more frank: "...the agreement on the creation of the CIS is Russia's recognition of the independence of the Republic of Belarus for the first time since 1794, that is, since the third partition of the Commonwealth".
I personally still hear the words of S. Shushkevich, said to me when in October 1992 we were with him on the celebration of the Independence Day of Turkey, about the criminal conspiracy that took place in December 1991: “Everything was decided on the basis of a good evening bath”; this "victory" - the collapse of the empire was well noted...". True, later he began to disown this. But in Turkey, I didn’t pull Stanislav Stanislavovich, as they say.
Since then, a capacious phrase has been circulating in the former USSR: "They figured it out for three, but millions have a headache".
Thirty years have passed and here S. Shushkevich opened his heart and in an interview with “Gazeta.Ru” bluntly stated that the work on the agreement on the collapse of the USSR took place under a bottle of cognac. Correctly people say - "in order to lie, you must have a good memory".
A huge blame for the collapse of the Soviet state lies personally with the President of the USSR M. Gorbachev. He at that time possessed all direct legal and official powers to arrest conspirators-traitors: Shushkevich, Yeltsin and Kravchuk in Belovezhskaya Pushcha and to bring them under Article 64 to criminal liability for treason. After all, M. Gorbachev, on the Constitution (Basic Law) of the USSR, took the oath to preserve the integrity of the Union State, he was the President of the USSR. He had all the powers on his face, but he simply did not fulfill them out of cowardice. And as soon as, without fulfilling his direct duties, he should be held accountable and he personally.
Were the Belovezhskaya adventurers afraid that M. Gorbachev might, as they say, kick up and arrest the adventurers? They were afraid, and how! As S. Shushkevich told me later, in case of urgent need, just in case, a helicopter was prepared to fly to Poland, to seek support in the West.
So, in 1991, the Soviet Union split into 15 sovereign states. The economic ties of the former republics acquired international status and began to be valued in US dollars!
It is not surprising that the “gravediggers of the Union” first informed US President George W. Bush (senior) of their decision and only then USSR President M. Gorbachev.
Later in his memoirs "A Changed World" George W. Bush emphasized that Yeltsin called him directly from the hunting lodge, will reveal the ins and outs of the demolition workers of the USSR and write:
“On December 8, 1991, Yeltsin called me to inform me of his meeting with Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich, the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus... “A very important event took place in our country today. And I would like to inform you personally, before you learn about it from the press”, - he said with pathos. Yeltsin explained that they had a two-day meeting and came to the conclusion that “the current system and the treaty on the Union, which everyone is pushing us to sign, do not satisfy us. So we got together and signed a joint agreement a few minutes ago”.
In other words, he told me that, together with the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus, they decided to destroy the Soviet Union. When he finished reading the prepared text, his tone changed. It seemed to me that the provisions of the signed agreement that he outlined were specially formulated in such a way as to get the support of the United States: they directly set out the conditions for which we stood for recognition. I didn't want to prematurely express our approval or disapproval, so I simply said, "I understand".
“This is very important”, - Yeltsin responded. “Mr. President”, - he added, “I must tell you confidentially that Gorbachev does not know about these results... ...Of course, we will immediately send him the text of our agreement, and, of course, he will have to make decisions at his own level. Mr. President, I was very, very frank with you today. Our four countries believe that there is only one possible way out of the current critical situation. We do not want to do anything in secret - we will immediately release the statement to the press. We hope for your understanding. Dear George, I am finished. This is extremely, extremely important. According to the tradition that has developed between us, I could not wait ten minutes so as not to call you".
George W. Bush on the same day - December 8, 1991 - called a press conference and announced that "the USSR no longer exists," that the United States won the Cold War. "At the same time, he stressed that"... ..the United States spent five trillion dollars on the liquidation of the Soviet Union".
The Bialowieza adventurers were in a hurry to legalize their agreements in order to make the process irreversible. Already on December 10, Kravchuk and Shushkevich convened the Supreme Councils and ratified agreements on the creation of the CIS.
On December 12, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR also began to consider the documents of Belovezhie. Meanwhile, the Constitution of the RSFSR, in force at that time, attributed the resolution of issues of constitutional significance (and the liquidation of the USSR, undoubtedly, was just such a question) to the competence NOT of the Supreme Soviet, but of the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR.
Speaking at the session of the Supreme Soviet, Boris Yeltsin convinced the people's deputies that the collapse of the USSR was not an arbitrary decision of the three leaders who retired in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, but an "objective, world-historical" process, a natural consequence of the processes that have been developing in recent times. Realizing the acuteness of the moment, B. Yeltsin made a crafty attempt to reject accusations against the signatories of the Belovezhskaya adventure that they allegedly liquidated the USSR without permission. To torpedo the Belovezhskaya agreements, Boris Yeltsin insisted on the hypocrisy, it "means to enter into direct confrontation with the peoples who have made their choice, including the union referendum (emphasis mine - Yu.V.)." It was difficult to imagine a more sophisticated Goebbels lie!
No less sophisticated at the meeting of the Supreme Council, S. Shakhrai spun like a hot frying pan. He was so lying that the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet R. Khasbulatov was forced to “softly” ask him from the rostrum.
The legal essence of the issue was that without a preliminary change in the Constitution of the USSR, not a single body of the RSFSR, let alone an official, had the right to sign any document on the termination of the Treaty on the formation of the USSR. Otherwise, as happened with Yeltsin, his actions became unconstitutional with all the ensuing legal consequences.
Not only the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, but also the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR had no right to ratify the Agreement on the formation of the CIS and denounce the Treaty on the formation of the USSR. The 1922 treaty on the formation of the USSR did not provide for its denunciation by the republics that were part of it at all. The approval, amendment and addition of the Union Treaty was subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress of Soviets of the USSR.
The Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, which "ratified" the Belovezhsky agreement, exceeded its powers and, contrary to Art. 104 of the Constitution of the RSFSR, considered and decided issues related to the competence of the Congresses of People's Deputies of the RSFSR and the USSR.
In total, the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR violated more than 30 articles of the Constitution of the RSFSR in force at that time, which contained a mention of the USSR.
Today hardly anyone remembers the roll-call vote of the people's deputies of the RSFSR on the collapse of the USSR. And there is something to remember. Only five people's deputies, members of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR - Baburin S.N., Isakov V.B., Konstantinov I.V., Polozkov S.A., Lysov P.A. - found the courage to openly oppose the collapse of the USSR and vote “against” the ratification of the Agreement on the Establishment of the CIS.
The veil of the vote of many communists "for" the ratification of the Agreement on the Establishment of the CIS, and in fact for the collapse of the USSR, Cosmonaut V. Sevast'yanov, a member of the "Communists of Russia" faction, who, from the rostrum of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, on behalf of the communists, called for voting "for", opened twice the Hero of the Soviet Union. It was a reaction to the fact that Gorbachev was destroying the country. He said: "The main thing is to get rid of Gorbachev - and then we will get together again and decide everything!" Naivety, and nothing more.
In those tragic days for the country, the position of the President of the USSR M. Gorbachev also turned out to be very strange. He simply resigned himself to the collapse of the Great Country.
On the evening of December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev addressed the citizens of the Soviet Union with an Appeal in the Kremlin television studio. It begins not only very primitive, but also legally illiterate for a graduate of the law faculty of Moscow State University, for the leader of a Great Power:
"Due to the current situation with the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, I am terminating my activity as president of the USSR".
This alone completely, clearly and frankly knocks out all the arguments of M. Gorbachev, which he began to put forward, especially in recent years, that he did everything to preserve the Soviet Union. He resigned himself to the collapse of the Great Power.
All the historical "positive moments" that M. Gorbachev spoke about in his statement after the signing of the Belovezhskaya agreement - "the creation of a single economic space" and so on. - were instantly forgotten after 1991, when the collapse of the Soviet Union and America's victory in the Cold War marked the beginning of a new American ideology - triumphalism.
But an equally important factor that ensured the victory for the non-democrats who stood up for the collapse of the USSR was the fact that behind all the actions of B. Yeltsin and his entourage, behind M. Gorbachev's back in the collapse of the USSR, there were powerful forces located abroad. The then US President George W. Bush stated this directly and frankly: “The greatest victory has been won over the USSR, moreover, by the hands of his internal opposition” (emphasis mine - Yu. V.). Now it became obvious to everyone that the West was acting in Russia through the hands of "agents of influence."
The truth and shame of the collapse of the USSR, in my opinion, is as follows: the direction and the conspiracy were not just, but as a result of betrayal, venality, stupidity and mediocrity of the top political leadership was deliberately accepted both from the side of M. Gorbachev and his entourage, and from the side of B. Yeltsin and his entourage.
So, the main consequence of the destruction of the USSR is not just the disappearance of the Union, it is the collapse of Russia itself - the thousand-year-old state that was built and cherished by our ancestors since the times of Yaroslav the Wise, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Lenin, Stalin. The territory of Great Russia was reduced by 30%, the population was reduced by half - from 300 to 150 million, there was an artificial dismemberment of the Russian and other peoples of Great Russia.
Sociological surveys, especially in recent years, show that more than two-thirds of the country's population has an extremely negative attitude towards the collapse of the USSR. Moreover, it is surprising that the growth in the number of those interested in the return of the Soviet Union is characteristic of absolutely all age categories of the population. Moreover, more than half of the Russians surveyed are sure that the collapse of the USSR could have been avoided by clearly fulfilling the Constitution of the USSR and the will of the peoples expressed in the referendum on March 17, 1991.
The collapse of the Soviet Union is a global tragedy . While Europe was integrating, creating a single legal, economic and political space, Russian non-democrats did their best to destroy the Great Power, the country in which they grew up, defended by our fathers and grandfathers. This tragedy became a misfortune for millions of people who suddenly found themselves abroad. This became a tragedy for the Russian economy, which fell into a socio-economic crisis that has lasted for more than twenty-five years.