99 Yurii Baturin, “Kak razvalili SSSR 15 let nazad” (How they pulled down the USSR fifteen years ago), Moskovskiye novosti, December 8, 2006; Baturin, “Pochemu 25 noyabrya 1991 goda tak i ne sostoyalos’ parafirovaniye Soyuznogo dogovora” (Why the union treaty was not initialed on November 25, 1991), Novaya gazeta, December 12, 2006.
100 Bakatin, Izbavleniye ot KGB, 223, describes meeting with Yeltsin in early December to ask for cash to pay the KGB’s bills until the end of the year.
101 Baturin et al., Epokha, 167. Gorbachev did not give up entirely on November 25. At the press conference, skipped by all of the republic leaders, he expressed the hope that a treaty would be signed on December 20.
102 Transcript in V Politbyuro TsK KPSS, 724–28.
103 Quoted in Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From, 185.
104 Kravchuk told Richard Nixon in 1993 “that Boris Yeltsin’s drive for Russian sovereignty led him to believe for the first time that secession from the USSR was a credible option for Ukraine.” Simes, After the Collapse, 55.
105 In an account published in 1994, Kravchuk claimed that he first thought of the meeting and sold Shushkevich on the idea. Shushkevich has consistently claimed authorship, and Yeltsin always agreed. See Loginov, Soyuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’, 432–45. A quirky line in Shushkevich’s biography was that he taught Lee Harvey Oswald Russian in 1960–61 while chief engineer at a Minsk electronics plant.
106 Stanislav Shushkevich, interview with the author (April 17, 2000); Jan Maksymiuk, “Leaders Recall Dissolution of USSR,” http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2001/520104.shtml. Yegor Gaidar, Dni porazhenii i pobed (Days of defeats and victories) (Moscow: VAGRIUS, 1996), 149, says the source of the confusion was that Kozyrev put the draft under the wrong door.
107 Leonid Kravchuk, “Kogda Belovezhskiye soglasheniya byli podpisany, Yel’tsin pozvonil Bushu” (When the Belovezh’e accord was signed, Yeltsin phoned Bush), http://president.org.ur/news/news-140783.
108 Details from ibid.; Leonid Kravchuk, “Nekontroliruyemyi raspad SSSR privël by k millionam zhertv” (An uncontrolled dissolution of the USSR would have led to millions of casualties), http://news.bigmir.net/article/worldaboutukraine/724174; Bush and Scowcroft, World Transformed, 554–55; and Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 2:601.
109 Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 2:600.
110 James A. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War, and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: Putnam’s, 1995), 569–70 (italics added); Strobe Talbott, “America Abroad,” Time, October 26, 1992.
111 Andrei Grachëv, Dal’she bez menya: ukhod prezidenta (Go ahead without me: the exit of a president) (Moscow: Progress, 1994), 247–48; Shaposhnikov interview. There were reports after the August coup that Gorbachev was consulting Yeltsin on control of the nuclear force. Dunlop, Rise of Russia, 269.
112 Aleksandr Yakovlev, second interview with the author (March 29, 2004); Shakhnazarov, Popov, and Shaposhnikov interviews; and Loginov, Soyuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’, 473 (concerning Shevardnadze). In a memoir, Popov says Yeltsin could have combined the Russian and the Soviet presidencies, and regrets he did not try to convince Yeltsin to do so. Gavriil Popov, Snova v oppozitsii (In opposition again) (Moscow: Galaktika, 1994), 260, 269.
113 Second Yeltsin interview; interview with Ruslan Khasbulatov (September 26, 2001). Yeltsin writes in Zapiski, 154–55, that he had a mental aversion to replacing Gorbachev: “This path was barred for me. Psychologically, I could not take Gorbachev’s place.” Gorbachev observed to Shevardnadze on December 10 that if Yeltsin had been willing to take over in August, the decision could have been imposed on him. Loginov, Soyuz mozhno bylo sokhranit’, 473.
114 Yevgenii Shaposhnikov, Vybor (Choice), 2nd ed. (Moscow: PIK, 1995), 138 (quotation); Shaposhnikov interview.
115 Hough’s thesis in Democratization and Revolution, 465, is that it was all about power: “Yeltsin’s temptation to get rid of Gorbachev by abolishing his job must have been irresistible.” This ignores the fact that the disappearance of the Soviet Union downsized Gorbachev’s “job.” Gorbachev, in his memoirs, portrays Yeltsin at the time as greedy for power and two-faced, but also under the influence of dogmatically anti-USSR advisers such as Gennadii Burbulis.
