In 1989-1991, the epicenter of the nationalist earthquake shifted from region to region. In October 1988, the three Baltic states gave birth to national fronts that soon became channels of separatist feeling. Gorbachev’s acquisition of emergency powers in early 1990 prompted Vytautas Landsbergis, head of the Sajudis nationalist movement in Lithuania, to proclaim independence on March 11, 1990. Historian Geoffrey Hosking said, “With these moves the Baltic republics became the focus of the struggle between those who wanted to preserve the Union and those who wished to emancipate themselves from it.”561
Nationalism triumphed in the Lithuanian CP before it triumphed in Lithuania as a whole. During Gorbachev’s three-day visit to Lithuania in January 1989, Algirdas-Mykolas Brazauskas, head of the Lithuanian CP, flatly told him that nationalist sentiment was so strong only an independent Lithuanian Communist Party could hold popular support. In elections on March 25, 1989, the Sajudis movement trounced the Lithuanian CP. In December 1989, the Lithuanian CP seceded from the CPSU.562 By then, ethnic crises were breaking out simultaneously in far-flung regions. Gorbachev had his hands full. In January and February 1990, near Baku, Azerbaijan, Azeri pogroms against Armenians left twenty-six Armenians and six Azeris dead.
As a first response to the Lithuanian proclamation of national independence, Gorbachev imposed an economic blockade.563 The USSR passed a Law on Secession in April 1990, spelling out the details of a legal separation process for republics and raising the political and economic cost of secession by allowing subnational units to secede from the seceding nation. The new Soviet law also provided for a five-year transition to independence for any seceding state, and made USSR approval of secession necessary. Events, however, overtook the law. On January 12-13, 1991, the Soviet Army shot at nationalist demonstrators in Vilnius, Lithuania, killing fourteen and wounding many more. A week later in Moscow, 100,000 marchers protested this repression. A short time later, new violence in Riga, Latvia, exacerbated the Baltic crisis. In late spring 1991, Gorbachev abandoned repression. Thereafter, he focused on re-negotiating the Union Treaty.564
In the struggle against Gorbachev’s version of perestroika, both Ligachev and Yeltsin tried to harness Russian nationalist sentiment to their respective aims. A Communist-nationalist alliance was natural insofar as Russian nationalism resented the “Westernizing” aspects of Gorbachev’s reforms, its slavish devotion to the Western capitalist market, its borrowed social democratic ideas, its sycophantic deference to the West as “the civilized world,” and its downplaying of Russia’s unique history. For many decades, a fault line in Russian politics had “Westernizers” on one side and “Slavophiles” on the other. That fault line persisted through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.
Yeltsin first thought of himself as a Soviet, not a Russian patriot, but as his devotion to market reforms grew, he saw the potential benefits of playing the Russia card. In 1990 he said, “I soon understood that there would be no radical reforms at an all-Union level…and so I thought to myself: If the reforms cannot be carried out at that level, why not try in Russia?”565
As Yeltsin began appointing young pro-market whiz kids to top posts in Russia, they began to realize, in Hough’s words, that “decentralization of power to the republic level would give them personal control over privatization.”566
In 1989, many republics of the USSR had declared sovereignty, but this did not yet mean full and formal secession from the USSR. In the last twenty-one months of the USSR’s existence, real declarations of independence came in waves. Lithuania declared independence on March 11, 1990, Latvia on May 4, 1990, and Georgia, on April 9, 1991. The second wave occurred in August 1991: Estonia declared independence on August 20, 1991, the Ukraine on August 24, Belarus and Moldova on August 27, Azerbaijan on August 30, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan on August 31, Tajikistan on September 9, Armenia on September 23, Turkmenistan on October 27, and Kazahkstan on December 16. The Russian Federation never officially declared independence. The secession of other republics simply left it independent, willy-nilly.567
When given a chance to express a view, the overwhelming majority of the Soviet people wished to keep the Union. On March 17, 1991 in a non-binding referendum in all republics except the Baltics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldava, 76.4 percent of the voters approved the preservation of the Union.568 In Russia, 71.4 percent approved, in the Ukraine, 70.3 percent, in Belarus, 82.7 percent, and in Azerbaijan and in each of the Central Asian republics, over 90 percent.569 These huge majorities mattered little to Yeltsin’s “democrats.”
The abandonment of multinational unity at home had a parallel in the abandonment of international solidarity abroad. Betrayal after betrayal of liberation movements and newer socialist states occurred in Gorbachev’s last years. On the eve of Secretary of State James Baker’s visit to Moscow in May 1989, Gorbachev told President George Bush of his decision to stop arms shipments to Nicaragua, even though the country remained terrorized by the attacks of U.S.-backed contras.570 Beginning in 1986, Gorbachev’s sympathy and solidarity with Cuba began to wane. In December 1988, he was thankful571 when an earthquake in Soviet Armenia required him to cancel an oft-postponed trip to Havana. In April 1989, the visit finally occurred. Gorbachev told the Cuban National Assembly that he opposed “any theories or doctrines that justify the export of revolution.”572 In reality, the policy that Gorbachev was discarding was not the export of revolution but international solidarity in the defense of existing revolutions. Despite an outwardly warm public reception in Havana, the gulf widened between Cuba and the Gorbachev leadership. Not inclined to abandon principle, socialist Cuba did not budge. The next year Gorbachev cut off about $5 billion in yearly aid, including deliveries of oil and other necessities. Between 1990 and 1993, together, the collapse of the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), a tightening of the U.S. blockade, and the Soviet betrayal caused Cuba’s GDP to plummet by 50 percent.
Meanwhile, Gorbachev’s team boasted that their foreign policy based on “new thinking” was succeeding. This made sense if one measured success only in terms of increased “peacefulness” and “stability” of US-Soviet relations. Unde-niably, unilateral Soviet disarmament lowered the odds of a U.S.-USSR thermonuclear exchange. Even so, the disintegration of the Soviet Union increased the odds of a disaster arising from the erosion of security over nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.
Unilateral Soviet concessions and surrender did reduce other areas of Soviet conflict with the U.S. Of course, the Gorbachev men did not see their policy as surrender. Top foreign policy adviser Chernyaev believed that the betrayal of South Africa and Nicaragua was of little consequence compared with the consolidation of the U.S.-USSR relationship. Chernyaev also saw victory in each cherished moment when leaders of the West bestowed acclaim on Gorbachev. He faithfully noted when “Mikhail” established a first-name basis with “George”[Bush, the elder], “Margaret”[Thatcher], and “Helmut”[Schmidt]. Gorbachev and Chernyaev believed the new U.S.-USSR alliance marked a “most critical” change in world politics, “a new path toward civilization.”573 The gloss that Gorbachev applied to the abandonment of international solidarity was nowhere more frankly and succinctly stated than in Gorbachev’s notes for his Revolution Day message for November 7, 1990: