The Last Empire (51 page)

Belarus was known in the USSR as a major producer of electronics for the Soviet military-industrial complex. It was considered a well-to-do republic, partly because of the achievements of its dairy farming, which supplied the local population with milk, butter, and cheese at a time when those products were in short supply in other parts of the Soviet Union. The Belarusian agricultural idyll came to an abrupt and tragic end on April 26, 1986, with the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, just south of the Belarusian border
in neighboring Ukraine. In the first days after the disaster, prevailing winds brought close to 70 percent of the station's radioactive material to Belarus, poisoning one-fifth of its arable land. Still self-sufficient in agricultural production, Belarus was heavily dependent on Russia and other republics when it came to energy. Ensuring supplies of Russian oil and gas was therefore the main concern of the Belarusian leaders during Yeltsin's visit to Minsk in December 1991.
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When the Ukrainian plane landed in Minsk on the afternoon of December 7, Shushkevich suggested to Kravchuk the Belarusian agenda for the political component of the forthcoming meeting: issuing a declaration stating that Gorbachev had lost the capacity to rule, that negotiations on the new union treaty had reached an impasse, and that the economic and political situation was becoming ever more grim. Shushkevich had discussed this idea with Yeltsin earlier in the day, when the Russian president arrived in Minsk. But Kravchuk seemed unimpressed and told Shushkevich that there was no need for him to come to Belarus for such a statement. Shushkevich did not know what to say. He had nothing else on his agenda. He told Kravchuk that Yeltsin would join them later in the day at the Viskuli hunting lodge in western Belarus.
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“Why Viskuli?” asked the surprised Kravchuk. Shushkevich responded that it would be pleasant to escape the pressure of everyday government business and the attention of journalists. Viskuli was one of the state-run hunting lodges built for the top Soviet leadership during the Khrushchev era. It is only eight kilometers from the Polish border, in the Belarusian part of the Belavezha Forest. Before World War I the region was part of the Russian Empire, and during the interwar period it belonged to Poland. It went to the USSR on the basis of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. During World War II, the Belavezha Forest was a theater of partisan warfare and served as a refuge for local Jews fleeing the Holocaust.
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In 1957, during Nikita Khrushchev's rule, the Belavezha Forest was declared a state reserve. That year Khrushchev first went there for his hunting vacation. The locals later remembered Khrushchev as a good marksman, second only to his Hungarian counterpart Janos Kádar. Another politician who loved coming to Viskuli was Khrushchev's successor, Leonid Brezhnev. The game most prized by Belavezha hunters was a rare breed of European bison known in Polish and
Belarusian as the
zubr
(wisent). Few hunters managed to kill a
zubr,
most being satisfied with wild hogs, but all of them tried a variety of buffalo-grass vodka called Zubrovka. In June 1991, Belavezha was suggested to Gorbachev as a venue for his meeting with German chancellor Helmut Kohl, but they met in Kyiv instead. In December, the Belarusian hosts prepared unlimited supplies of Zubrovka for the forthcoming Slavic summit in Viskuli.
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On arrival in Viskuli, the Ukrainian delegation went hunting without waiting for Yeltsin to arrive—a show of “insubordination” that was duly noted by Yeltsin's chief bodyguard, Aleksandr Korzhakov. He wrote later about the Ukrainian president, “He always sought to make a show of ‘independent' behavior; to emphasize his own independence. By contrast, StanislaÅ­ Shushkevich, as host, received his guests with demonstrative friendliness.” Shushkevich did his best to smooth over the jarring effect of Yeltsin's “goodwill gift” presented to the Belarusian parliament earlier in the day. It was a seventeenth-century tsarist charter to the Belarusian city of Orsha, taking it under Russian protection. What Yeltsin and his advisers regarded as an instance of Russo-Belarusian friendship to be emulated in the future was perceived by the democratic opposition in the Belarusian parliament as a symbol of Russian imperialism. Yeltsin's gift was met with shouts of “Shame!” The Russian president was at a loss and later blamed advisers for the incident.
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Yeltsin came to Viskuli in the company of the Belarusian prime minister, ViacheslaÅ­ Kebich. In the Belarusian power tandem, consisting of the Speaker of parliament and the prime minister, the latter was the more powerful figure. Like Kravchuk, the fifty-five-year-old Kebich had been born in what was then interwar Poland, but his career, linked with industry rather than ideology, resembled that of Yeltsin more than that of Kravchuk. Kebich rose through the ranks of Soviet industrial management to become the first director of a Minsk high-tech enterprise and then secretary of the Minsk city committee of the Communist Party. At the beginning of Gorbachev's perestroika, he became deputy head of the Belarusian government, and in 1990 he was appointed prime minister. Kebich was the establishment candidate for Speaker of the Belarusian parliament in September 1991, but in the postcoup atmosphere he failed to gain the support of the suddenly radicalized deputies and
accepted Shushkevich's election as a temporary compromise. With Shushkevich formally at the top, Kebich maintained control over the Belarusian government, composed of former managers of industrial enterprises and party apparatchiks. He hoped to become president of Belarus once such a post was established, as it had been in Russia and now in Ukraine.
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THE TRIPARTITE SLAVIC SUMMIT
began on the evening of December 7, 1991, with dinner for the three delegations. Yeltsin was late for dinner, making the others wait for him. Once he joined the group, the Russian president found himself sitting directly across from Kravchuk, and the two immediately formed a nexus, reducing the other participants, including the leaders of Belarus, to the role of witnesses to the negotiation process. Their conversation lasted more than an hour. Others participated only with occasional remarks or attempts to influence the tone of the conversation by delivering toasts hailing the friendship of the three East Slavic nations.

Yeltsin began by honoring the promise he had given Gorbachev a few days earlier, when he informed the Soviet president about his forthcoming meeting with the Ukrainian and Belarusian leaders. He placed on the table the text of the union treaty negotiated by Gorbachev and republican leaders in Novo-Ogarevo a few weeks earlier and on behalf of the Soviet president invited Kravchuk to sign it. Yeltsin added that he would sign immediately after Kravchuk. “I recall that Kravchuk smiled wryly after hearing out that preamble,” wrote the Belarusian foreign minister, Petr Kravchenka, subsequently recording his observations. The deal offered by Gorbachev and brought to Viskuli by Yeltsin offered Ukraine the right to modify the text of the agreement, but only after signing it. It was a trap, even if Kravchuk had been prepared to join the Union on his particular conditions. But he was not. Gorbachev offered nothing new, and Yeltsin brought nothing to Belavezha but Gorbachev's agreement. Kravchuk said no.
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Kravchuk then reached for his main negotiating weapon. To recapture the initiative, he presented Yeltsin and Shushkevich with the results of the Ukrainian referendum. “I did not even expect,” he recalled later, “that the Russians and Belarusians would be so impressed by the results of the vote, especially in the traditionally
Russian-speaking regions—the Crimea and southern and eastern Ukraine. The fact that most non-Ukrainians (and there were fourteen million of them in the republic) gave such active support to political sovereignty turned out to be a true discovery for them.”

According to Kravchuk, Yeltsin was particularly impressed. “What, did the Donbas also vote for it?” he asked.

“Yes,” responded Kravchuk, “there is no region in which the votes were fewer than half. As you see, the situation has changed substantially. We have to look for another solution.”

Yeltsin then took a different tack, referring to the common history, traditions of friendship, and economic ties linking Russia and Ukraine. Petr Kravchenka was under the impression that the Russian president was sincere in his attempt to save whatever was left of the Union. “But Kravchuk was unyielding,” recalled Kravchenka. “Smiling and calm, he parried Yeltsin's arguments and proposals. Kravchuk did not want to sign anything! His argumentation was as simple as could be. He said that Ukraine had already determined its path in the referendum, and that path was independence. The Soviet Union no longer existed, and parliament would not allow him to create new unions of any kind. And Ukraine needed no such unions: the Ukrainians did not want to exchange one yoke for another.”
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Gennadii Burbulis, Yeltsin's right-hand man, also credited Kravchuk with burying the idea of a new union. “Here, indeed, Kravchuk was the most insistent and the most stubborn of all in rejecting the Union,” he remembered later. “It was very hard to convince him of the need for even minimal integration. Although he is a reasonable man, he felt bound by the referendum results. And Kravchuk explained to us a hundred times that for Ukraine there was no problem of a union treaty—it simply did not exist, and no integration was possible. It was out of the question: any union, even a reformed one, with or without a center.” The discussion had reached an impasse. Yeltsin's legal adviser, Sergei Shakhrai, later remembered that the representatives of Rukh in the Ukrainian delegation grumbled, “There's nothing at all for us to do here! Let's go back to Kyiv.” According to a different account, Kravchuk allegedly said to Yeltsin, “And who will you be when you return to Russia? I'll return to Ukraine as the president elected by the people, and what will your role be—that of Gorbachev's subordinate, as before?”
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Kravchuk believed that the turning point was reached when, in response to his refusal to sign the union treaty, Yeltsin declared that without Ukraine he would not sign it either. It was then that they began looking for a new structure to take the place of the Soviet Union. Petr Kravchenka credited the Ukrainian prime minister, Vitold Fokin, with changing the course of the discussion. Fokin could not directly contradict Kravchuk but found another way to express his opinion. As Kravchenka recalled, “Fokin, constantly citing [[Rudyard]] Kipling, began to speak of the call of blood, the unity of fraternal peoples, and of the fact that we had the same roots. He did so very correctly, in the form of gentle remarks and toasts. And when Kravchuk started up and began to dispute, Fokin cited economic arguments.” Only then did Kravchuk allegedly say, “Well, given that the majority is for an agreement . . . let's think what this new structure should be like. Perhaps, indeed, we shouldn't disperse.”
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The conversation around the table moved into a more constructive phase. Yeltsin insisted that the meeting should produce something more than talk. The Russian president suggested that the experts work out a draft agreement of a treaty between the three Slavic republics, to be signed by the leaders the next day. Everyone agreed. ViacheslaÅ­ Kebich later remembered that Yeltsin asked Sergei Shakhrai and Andrei Kozyrev whether they had anything prepared. They responded that they had nothing but very preliminary drafts. He ordered the Young Turks to get together with the Belarusians and Ukrainians and draft a new agreement. When the experts left, Yeltsin vented his hatred of Gorbachev, who, according to the Russian president, had lost credibility both at home and abroad, making Western leaders worry about the uncontrolled disintegration of the Soviet Union and nuclear arms on the loose. According to Kebich, Yeltsin told the gathering, “Gorbachev has to be removed. Enough! . . . No more playing the tsar!”

For the Belarusians, the outcome of the meeting was a complete shock. They were preparing a statement intended to warn Gorbachev that if he did not accommodate the republics, the country would fall apart. At most they were contemplating the possibility of forming a looser union . . . but no union at all? No one in the Belarusian leadership had expected such a turn of events. “After dinner almost the whole Belarusian delegation gathered in Kebich's little house; only Shushkevich was missing,” recalled one of Kebich's bodyguards,
Mikhail Babich. “They began to say that Ukraine did not want to remain in the USSR, and so we had to think of what to do now; how to draw closer to Russia.” It would appear that the strategic decision was made on the spot: Belarus would follow Russia into a new union or out of the existing one. After dinner, the Belarusians invited members of both delegations to relax in a steam bath. The Ukrainians declined, but most of the Russian delegation, including Gaidar, Kozyrev, and Shakhrai, accepted.
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The Russo-Belarusian bond grew even stronger as the Young Turks, accompanied by Petr Kravchenka and other Belarusian experts, gathered in Gaidar's cottage after the sauna to work on the text of the agreement. The Ukrainians did not come, but their position was the elephant in the room that no one could ignore. It was taken into account even in the proposed title: “Agreement on the Creation of a Commonwealth of Democratic States.” “Union” was out; “commonwealth” was in. At dinner that evening, the Ukrainians had been particularly insistent on outlawing the word “union.” “Kravchuk even asked that the word be prohibited,” recalled Gennadii Burbulis. “That is, it should be stricken from the lexicon, from consciousness, from experience. Given that there was no union, there was no union treaty either.” The word “commonwealth,” on the other hand, did not have negative connotations; in fact, it had positive ones. Petr Kravchenka wrote later that at their drafting session he and his colleagues “thought of the British Commonwealth of Nations, which seemed just about the ideal example of postimperial integration.”