#5
vesti.ru
December 12, 2001
The Belovezhskaya Pushcha Pact: Ten Years After (Vesti.
ru)
An interview with Sergei Shakhrai
(therussianissues.com)
Q. Do you think it was possible to keep the united state of the Soviet republics?
A. It was possible before [the communist coup in] August 1991. It might have been possible in a looser format, without the three Baltic states and without Georgia. After the August [coup] it was no longer possible. In fact, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the spine of the state power in the country. But in August and September of 1991 all the republic abolished their communist parties and Russian President Yeltsin signed a decree abolishing Russian communist party in November. So it was only logical that together with the collapse of the communist framework, the framework of the unified state collapsed, too. The three presidents gathered in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha acted as a surgeon who recognized the death of a doomed patient and told the news to the relatives. To blame the surgeon who registered the fact of death, to put a blame on him for this death is at least stupid.
Q. But why did the patient die?
A. Mid-age people must remember that in 1990-1991, an envy virus was spreading across the USSR. They kept saying in the Urals: we've had enough feeding Central Asia; in Georgia and the Baltics, they kept saying: Moscow takes all we produce. This envy virus was so strong that after the Belovezhskaya Pushcha agreements were signed nobody protested, as they all thought they would be better off being independent. All federations based on the ethnic principle, collapsed - Yugoslavia by way of a civil war, Czechoslovakia, in a peaceful way, and the Soviet Union in a way of a relatively peaceful transformation. And the energy of eruption, of dissolution was so powerful that in over 5 years after the Belovezhskaya Pushcha no integration had been possible.
Q. After the Belovezhskaya Pushcha agreements had been signed, were not you afraid that they would send troops and you all would be arrested?
A. First, everybody knew there was no Union army any more. Besides, we all saw we were guarded by the KGB's ninth department. Rather, we felt somewhat depressed as if we had just buried a close relative. On the other hand, we had a feeling of liberation, a feeling that we had found a way out. People did not have to kill each other. The deputies who came to Moscow on Dec. 12 to attend a Supreme Soviet session shared the same feeling as they realized they saved the nation from a civil war.
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