The letter to Yeltsin

In practice, they carried out a coup d'état: In the autumn of 1991, Boris Yeltsin received a letter. A few months later, during a meeting with lots of vodka and long sauna visits, he got a "deal" with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus.
Two years ago, at the 25 anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, several of the current Cold War actors – Henry Kissinger, Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl – said that we must stop the confrontation with Russia in order to avoid another cold war. We must acknowledge that Russia also has strategic interests, they believed. US Ambassador to Moscow in 1989, Jack Matlock, says President Vladimir Putin is only responding to the US's expansion of its military presence.

Gorbachev has been a harsh critic of President Vladimir Putin. Now he takes Putin in defense, saying that the United States has provoked the conflict in Ukraine. Putin's policies have so far been completely predictable, including the inclusion of Crimea. If the United States continues its policy of European support, it could face a nuclear war with unpredictable consequences, says Gorbachev.
Mikhail Gorbachev's relaxation policy from the late 1980s required confidentiality and cooperation between the major powers. But now Western leaders say that Russia's inclusion of Crimea has changed everything: Russia has "conquered part of another country" and we cannot accept that. We must put pressure on Russia, they say – but Russians have a long and sad experience and can certainly survive sanctions while they have intensified the crisis in Europe.

But let's return to the resolution of the Cold War. From 1988 Mikhail Gorbachev had a vision of a Great Power Right (inspired by the Palme Commission of 1982 with the recently deceased Egon Bahr). Gorbachev tried to establish a European buffer zone with neutral Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary to guarantee relaxation between Washington and Moscow, but he wanted to retain some Soviet forces in East Germany to avoid a new Greater Germany (Central Europe should have the same role that Sweden and Finland had in Northern Europe, while Western Europe should have the role of Denmark and Norway). This was told by a Soviet representative in January 1989. This was known at the same time in the United States, because when I mentioned it in conversation with the former CIA commander William Colby, he told it on CNN a few days afterwards. This version was to be confirmed by free elections in Poland and Hungary, and by then-US Secretary of State James Baker. In February 1990, he promised Gorbachev that, after a German unification, NATO should not be expanded eastward by "an inch". The major forces in East Germany were the only negotiating cards of the Soviet Union, but against the promise that NATO would not expand – not even to eastern Germany – Gorbachev was willing to accept a united Germany.

In July 1990 Gorbachev also accepted that a united Germany could join NATO (with restrictions on the eastern part). But according to US Ambassador to Russia Jack Matlock, an extension of NATO to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary was completely unacceptable to Gorbachev. We had a "deal" between like parties, not between victory lord and loser, Matlock said. For Gorbachev it was a matter of honor, for Baker it was a matter of law: what was in the documents. These documents only mentioned Germany, nothing about continued NATO enlargement. Washington and Moscow agreed that the Soviet / Russia should live on, but without the Baltic republics. In August 1991, the KGB leadership and military circles made a coup attempt against Gorbachev. He was placed under house arrest. Russian Council President Boris Yeltsin emerged as the hero who saved the reform policy.

After the coup attempt Three of Boris Yeltsin's supporters – his future Prime Minister Jegor Gajdar, Foreign Minister Andrej Kozyrev and Secretary of State Gennadij Burbulis – sent a letter to Yeltsin. They wrote that Moscow had already lost the Baltic republics. It could be impossible to keep Ukraine and Georgia. Moscow was to sit with the authoritarian republics of Central Asia. This would mean that integration into the European institutions would be impossible. The three suggested in the letter that Moscow evicted Central Asia and disbanded the Soviet Union, and that Yeltsin, as president of the Russian Council Republic, should become the new Russian president. Gorbachev was to be president over nothing. In December 1991, during a meeting with a lot of vodka and sauna in Belarus on the Polish border, Yeltsin got a "deal" with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushchevich. Burbulis held in the pen. In practice, they carried out a coup d'état. This was not only Gorbachev's view, but also US Ambassador Matlock's perception of the situation. The Central Asian Republics were thrown out. On December 25, Republican leaders signed a document on the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin became new president.

Russia is not a hungry bear waiting to be hit, but a dog that has entered a corner and can bite the one who kicks it.

After a conflict in 1993, Yeltsin's artillery left the parliament in silence. But Western countries were quick to recognize the new states. The fact that Ukraine had largely belonged to Russia since the 1700th century, and that Crimea had never belonged to an independent Ukraine, was not a problem.
Valerij Tishkov, Yeltsin's first minister of nationality, told me about the letter to Yeltsin. He was a researcher at the PRIO in the 1990s, and wrote about nationalities in Russia. Gajdar confirmed the letter when I asked him. Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev confirmed that it was Yeltsin who wanted to throw them out. A few months later, in 1992, when NATO Secretary General Manfred Wörner sat down with his adviser General Klaus Wittmann and discussed NATO's strategic concept, Yeltsin called. He wanted to know when Russia could join NATO. Wörner couldn't answer that, Wittmann told me. Gajdar, Kozyrev and Burbulis had nothing to offer. They had to step down. Kozyrev was given a retreat position as representative of Murmansk (thanks to the "deal" with Thorvald Stoltenberg about the Barents region, which had broad support in Murmansk). Both Gajdar and Burbulis disappeared from the political scene. Yeltsin had thrown out Russia's grain chamber Ukraine and oil-rich Central Asia only to win the presidential office. He had not assured that the dissolution of the Soviet Union (and ancient Russia) would open the way for European integration. Russian power felt wise. A Russian general told me in the 1990s that they did not like us kicking them when they were lying down.

After that new managers had taken over in the west, old promises were soon forgotten. The Americans began to talk that the United States had won in the Cold War. In 1999, NATO expanded to the east with Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Now the Russians no longer had any cards on hand. The people of Yeltsin lost all credibility. They were to be replaced by supporters of St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak: his deputy Vladimir Putin, his legal adviser Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov (now head of the president's staff). James Baker suggested a Russian membership in NATO. Maybe he had a bad conscience because it was not as he had promised in 1990. Gorbachev and later Foreign and State Ministers, as Yevgeny Primakov told Russia had been deceived. The architect of the United States' Cold War policy, George Kennan, described NATO enlargement as a misreading of "epic dimensions." Enlargement would destabilize Europe, he said. Russia withdrew from cliff to cliff. With the 2004 NATO enlargement – with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – Western military power was in ancient Russia. From 2008, Americans began talking about an expansion to Georgia and Ukraine. With the western backing of the opposition in Ukraine, it was enough for Moscow. Phone calls posted on YouTube (with US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and EU Catherine Ashton) seemed to prove that the US had been directly involved in a coup d'etat. Elected President Viktor Yanukovych had to flee. His corruption was criticized, but the coup started a violent conflict between Ukrainians in the west and east, and usually presidents are replaced in presidential elections – not through the street parliament.

Yanukovych had become elected president because of eastern Ukraine's high population and the previous regime's corruption. When people from Western Ukraine took over power with violence, it got the glass to run over in Moscow. The talk of banning Russian was a threat to eastern Ukraine, and a western presence in Crimea was a direct threat to the Black Sea Fleet. Russia is not a hungry bear waiting to be hit, but a dog that has entered a corner and can bite the one who kicks it. The problem today is that the new politician generation in the West doesn't even realize that nuclear weapons are a reality. The Norwegian intelligence chief even expressed astonishment that Vladimir Putin raised the question. When Henry Kissinger, Helmut Schmidt and Mikhail Gorbachev say that Western politics today is irresponsible, it is because a Western control of Ukraine could cause Russia to back down. In addition, if the United States enters the military, nuclear weapons must be used.
Many believe that Russia as a nation was born in Kiev, and that parts of today's Ukraine have always been part of Russia. The very word "Ukraine" comes from the Slavic "kraj", which stands for "border country". Ukraine was not a state of its own – it was the border country between Russia and Poland, between the Eastern Church and the Western Church, between different identities. In our 1990s talks, a Russian general stated the following: "Ukraine will return to Russia!", But he also added: "Eastern Ukraine, that is. Western Ukraine can go to hell. " I mentioned this in a NUPI report 20 years ago. It fit Samuel Huntington, who quoted it in his book The Clash of Civilizations (1996). But this division between the East and the West, between Ukraine's identities, opens up for a serious conflict if one goes against one another. German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said last year that what the Western powers are doing in Ukraine is insane, and he warned against a new world war. A solution to the crisis in Ukraine must take place in cooperation between the EU and Russia.

Gorbachev said so recently that the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a work of haste. The Crimean issue was never discussed. The fact that Crimea was part of Russia from the 1700th century did not matter to Yeltsin when power was at stake in Moscow. The fact that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave away Crimea as a birthday present to the Council of Ukraine in 1954 did not matter in Soviet times. All the republics were ruled from Moscow. In 2014, Crimea had in practice been separated from Moscow for only 23 years (shorter than the time East Germany was separated from West Germany), while Crimea had belonged to Russia for over 200 years. For the Crimean Russian majority, it was as natural to belong to Russia as it was natural to the majority of East Germans to belong to one Germany. For the elite in Russia, Crimea is as Russian as Florida is American in the United States, and Florida became part of the United States only in 1845 (long after Crimea became Russian). The United States conquered Texas and California (and New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and Arizona) from Mexico in 1845-1848. We have been told that Russia is an empire. Russia has conquered lands from other peoples – but so has Denmark-Norway, which has conquered Sami land, and lands from the Inuit, while the United States has conquered all of America from the Indians and a third of its land from Mexico. If Spanish-speaking Texas had left the United States and taken Florida with them, surely Washington would have raised their eyebrows. If this Texas-Florida had allied with China, and China had begun training military forces in Texas (as the United States does in Ukraine), the United States would have gone to war.

Tunander is a research professor at the Department of Peace Research (PRIO).
hello@prio.no.