MOSCOW (Realist English). Mikhail Gorbachev and his entourage were behind the collapse of the Soviet Union and the overthrow of the communist system in the Warsaw Pact countries. This was stated by the rector of the International Slavic Academy of Sciences, Education, Arts and Culture Sergey Baburin, speaking in 2020 on the air of the TV channel “Russia 1”.
“I was a direct participant in many processes of that time, but nevertheless I am learning more and more new things and I understand more and more that we do not know the whole truth. It is no coincidence that [Mikhail] Gorbachev, who returned from Foros, publicly said that he would never tell the truth about August 1991. I doubt more and more that [Boris] Yeltsin is the main figure of those events. Performer — yes, organizer — no.
Why [Nursultan] Nazarbayev thwarted Yeltsin’s attempt to destroy the Soviet Union in the spring, and in December Gorbachev did not allow Nazarbayev to Belovezhskaya Pushcha? He held him in Moscow.
Nazarbayev was against the destruction of the Union, as was [Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Belarusian SSR Nikolai] Dementey, who was later replaced by [Stanislav] Shushkevich. [Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR Leonid] Kravchuk supported them in the spring, not Yeltsin. Of course, that August has changed a lot. But today we don’t remember the whole truth about August either.
Why did the Soviet government, the leadership of the USSR, act on August 19, creating a committee of the State Emergency Committee (SEC)? Because on August 20, the assassination of the Soviet Union was scheduled, the creation of the same CIS, but with Gorbachev at the head.
At that time, I made sure that we assembled the constitutional commission of the RSFSR on August 19 to prohibit Yeltsin from signing the destruction of the Soviet Union on the 20th. And most of us were there. Thus, the State Emergency Committee, even having lost, extended the existence of the Soviet Union until December. And when they ask me, “who destroyed the Soviet Union,” I say, “Gorbachev and his team.”
Let’s remember: sometimes they talk about the republics that could have stayed. Yes, all the republics would have remained in the Soviet Union! On August 19, 1991, the leadership of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia swore the oath to the SEC, the leaders of the Popular Front in Moldova themselves dispersed a rally against the SEC in Chisinau… If Moscow had not betrayed… and the betrayal of the union center had begun earlier.
Who started creating all these separatist movements? The Popular Front operated from Moscow under the supervision of the leaders of the Central Committee of the CPSU. They began to plant, strengthen and undermine the Union republics. Who called on the Armenians to take Nagorno–Karabakh, and who called on Azerbaijan not to give Nagorno-Karabakh? They did it from the Politburo of the Central Committee, when Alexander Yakovlev arrived in Yerevan and said: “Make a decision immediately and take Karabakh from Azerbaijan.”
Since 1986, the country has been destroyed from within. And the actions of those people who finished in December 1991 looked like a conspiracy of three people. The key question is in Gorbachev himself. Is he smart or stupid? Is he a traitor or a deluded one? A fool can be forgiven, but a traitor cannot.
I happened to learn from [the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party] Todor Zhivkov, how his overthrow was organized from Moscow. And when he was honorably retired, Gorbachev summoned the man who led his overthrow, and explained to him with obscene words that it was necessary to immediately initiate a criminal case against Zhivkov, to immediately arrest him.
The then Allied leadership destroyed the Warsaw Pact. In Malta, Gorbachev agreed on this with the Americans. I’m not even talking about the fact that an investigation needed to seriously deal with the topic of how Gorbachev organized the overthrow and murder of [the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party] Nicolae Ceausescu.
If earlier I thought it was the Americans, today I know that the Americans were “for”, which is why on December 24, 1989, Secretary of State James Baker sent a note to the Soviet government, in which everything that would happen in Romania was completely taken away at Moscow’s discretion. The USA guaranteed everything!
Only after that, Ceausescu was shot on the 25th. Then the Romanian generals testified that they even gave the order to shoot at people, it was them, and not Ceausescu. And there were always representatives of Moscow next to them, and they followed instructions from Moscow to overthrow Ceausescu. After all, this has not yet been investigated.
In this respect, I say: the events of December 1991 are the end of our greatest Russian tragedy. The Russian one, because we all lived in the same civilization, and we were forcibly destroyed.
Why are they afraid today that we will become different, that we will gather again, that we will regain our social attractiveness, that we will restore a united country? Because the Soviet Union was a socially attractive alternative throughout the twentieth century, and today capitalism is collapsing, and there is no alternative. The Soviet Union could have fixed the economic and social situation.
China is an example of this. They were able to combine a political communist structure with an efficient economy. And in 1990, our starting capabilities were much more powerful,” Baburin said in an interview with the host of the Rossiya 1 TV channel Vladimir Solovyov.
