May 15, 2015

Plokhy wins 2015 Lionel Gelber Prize for “The Last Empire”

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Oksana Zakydalsky

At the Lionel Gelber Prize awards ceremony (from left) are: Patricia Rubin, chair of the prize board; author Serhii Plokhy; and Stephen J. Toope, director of the Munk School of Global Affairs.

TORONTO – The one opinion of Serhii Plokhy’s new book “The Last Empire: the Final Days of the Soviet Union” with which all reviewers agree is that, as Anne Applebaum wrote, it’s “an indispensable guide to the tensions and rivalries of the present.” It has been hailed as an “extraordinarily well timed book” (Slate magazine) “with uncanny parallels to the present day” (Wall Street Journal). “The Last Empire” is the winner of the 25th annual Lionel Gelber Prize, a literary award for “the world’s best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to deepen public debate on significant international issues.”

The cover of Serhii Plokhy’s award-winning book.

The cover of Serhii Plokhy’s award-winning book.

The book explores the last months – from July to December 1991 – of the demise of the Soviet Union and examines the explanations for it, of which there have been several. The most pervasive has been the triumphalist interpretation of the Soviet collapse as an American victory in the Cold War. This view also feeds the present-day Russian nationalist conspiracy theories that present the collapse of the Soviet Union as the outcome of a CIA plot.

Although the broad outlines of what happened in the last few months are well-known, Dr. Plokhy adds new sources: diaries, memoirs and interviews collected over the past two decades. And, as the Wall Street Journal summed it up, “What elevates ‘The Last Empire’ from solid history to the must-read shelf is its relevance to the current crisis.”

The book covers an overwhelming rush of events between the summit in July 1991, where President George H.W. Bush met the leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, first in Moscow and then in Kyiv, and the lowering of the USSR flag on Christmas of that year. According to Dr. Plokhy, the true story is that the West tried to preserve the Soviet Union during its last days, and that the White House tried to save Mr. Gorbachev and the union because of a fear of the unknown. In fact, at the beginning of 1991, Mr. Bush wrote to Mr. Gorbachev “No one wishes the disintegration of the Soviet Union.”

The U.S. administration was ready to accept a partial fall of the Soviet Union, favoring a transition to democracy and free market capitalism (and the independence of the Baltics, whose incorporation into the USSR the U.S. had never accepted) – not a full dissolution of the Soviet Union. As opposed to confronting the “wild” Boris Yeltsin, President Bush valued the friendly and productive relationship with Mr. Gorbachev.

There were four main actors in the final drama: Mr. Gorbachev speaking for the USSR, Mr. Yeltsin for Russia, President Bush for the U.S. and Leonid Kravchuk, the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet chairman-turned-president, for Ukraine. Central to the discussion was the fate of a new union treaty or its modification.

The U.S. president set out his position in Kyiv in August 1991 in what became known as the “Chicken Kiev speech” about the relationship of the republics to the union: “Freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.” This speech provoked a hostile reaction, both in Ukraine and in the U.S. and underlined the indecisiveness of President Bush’s foreign policy.

There were several concurrent stories. One of them was the interplay between Mr. Gorbachev’s view of the Soviet Union and Mr. Yeltsin’s of what the Russian state should be. Mr. Gorbachev was intent on drafting a new union treaty, while Mr. Yeltsin was for dismantling union responsibilities. Mr. Gorbachev did not understand that his opponents did not want to merely restructure the USSR, but to build a new life.

The coup on August 19, 1991, disrupted developments. Aims and events remained murky for a while, and it seemed no one was in charge in the USSR. The U.S. inched toward condemnation of the coup, but then realized the rebels were not in control and there was dissension among the conspirators. The overthrow was foiled and, in the end, Mr. Yeltsin’s version of the future won out. Russian control was established as Russia decided not to put the empire first. Mr. Yeltsin made sure that more sovereign rights were acquired by Russia.

Personal relations were an important factor in these events. Mr. Bush knew Mr. Gorbachev, had been happy working with him and had achieved some successes: they negotiated a nuclear disarmament treaty and co-sponsored new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The main negotiating weapon was the Ukrainian referendum held on December 1, 1991, in which approval of the country’s independence surpassed 90 percent. Mr. Kravchuk, who was elected president in the voting that same day, buried the idea of a refurbished union when he accepted that without Ukraine there would be no Soviet Union.

On December 7, 1991, at a meeting of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine the Soviet Union was dissolved and the Commonwealth of Independent States was formed. It should be noted that the United States did not recognize Ukraine’s independence until December 25, the day that Mr. Gorbachev formally resigned. The next day, a new narrative of the dissolution of the Soviet Union was put forward by President Bush: the break-up of the Soviet Union had been the end goal of the United States all along.

Dr. Plokhy draws another conclusion from this acceptance of the triumphalist version – that it led to the subsequent invasion of Iraq. If the U.S. could dispose of the Soviet Union so efficiently, then taking over Iraq should not be a problem, i.e. the misreading of the message of the demise of the Soviet Union led to the invasion of Iraq.

The Lionel Gelber Prize, which has a stipend of $15,000, is presented by the Lionel Gelber Foundation in partnership with the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and Foreign Policy magazine. It was awarded to Dr. Plokhy on April 21 in Toronto. Dr. Plokhy had been a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize in 2011 for his book “Yalta: The Price of Peace.”

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