Vnimanie, vnimanie
General-Secretary of the Soviet Union
1985-1987:
Mikhail Gorbachev (Communist) [1]
1987-1988:
Vladimir Kryuchkov (Communist) [2]
1987: Mikhail Gorbachev (Communist) [3]
President of the Russian Confederation
1987-1988:
Boris Yeltsin (Communist) [4]
1988: Pavel Grachev (military) [5]
1988-1993:
Alexander Yakolev (independent) [6]
1993-1999:
Alexander Lebed (Liberal Union) [7]
1999: Viktor Chernomyrdin (Liberal Union)
1999-
0000:
Viktor Chernomyrdin (Liberal Union)
[1]- On April 26, 1986, the number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Pripyat exploded, causing an open-air graphite fire whose fallout began to spread over the rest of the Ukrainian SSR and much of eastern Europe. This was the worst nuclear disaster in history already, but when it entered its second stage, it would take on an even more horrible marker in humanity's history.
The exposed reactor core continued to melt down, and efforts to drain coolant tanks underneath the melting core failed. On May 4, 1986, the floor of the reactor building, melted and radioactive, made contact with the water in the coolant tanks. Instantly super-heating,
it caused a second explosion that instantly destroyed all three other reactors at Chernobyl, leveled 200 square kilometers (77 square miles), including the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev.
In one instant, nearly 2 million people were killed, with millions more dying in the days and weeks that followed. The surviving parts of the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR were almost totally evacuated, while the radioactive fallout's spread over central and eastern Europe led to mass panic that increasingly repressive measures by overwhelmed Communist governments could not contain.
The man at the top of the Soviet state, Mikhail Gorbachev, reacted the best he could, all things considered. The entire Soviet state was mobilized to an extent not seen since the Great Patriotic War, with millions being resettled in European Russia, with millions of men being mobilized from their homes or their barracks in Afghanistan to decontaminate and protect the Exclusion Zone that had been northern Ukraine just months prior.
As thousands of "liquidators" (as the personnel tasked with cleaning up much of the Exclusion Zone and preventing the spread of further radiation were called) began dying of cancer, leukemia, and, in a few cases, acute radiation syndrome within months of the clean-up, the Warsaw Pact itself began to deteriorate. The Soviet satellite states of East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia would see their governments collapse by the start of 1987, in part because of the large amount of refugees from the Exclusion Zone. By the one-year anniversary of the initial explosion, the only communist regimes in Europe besides the USSR were the ones outside the Soviet orbit: Albania (which would transition to "democracy" by the year's end) and Yugoslavia.
The Soviet humiliation, including the rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan and announcing (a sanitized) version of the situation to the world, was almost unbearable. When Gorbachev broached the subject of ending the ever-present state of repression and censorship, citing the stifling system's complicity in delaying the response to Chernobyl until it was too late, the Politburo balked.
[2]- Gorbachev "retired" abruptly, with the organs of the state saying that he, like millions of other Soviet citizens, had taken ill as a result of the winds from Chernobyl. In reality, with his main allies on the Politburo, Nikholai Ryzhkov and Yegor Ligachyov being among the millions contracting cancers in the aftermath of Chernobyl, Gorbachev was easily toppled in a palace coup by hardliners within the Central Committee and placed under house arrest.
Kryuchkov's tenure likely would have been short even without his attempt at Stalinist repression. The Soviet economy, having entered a decline during the end of Leonid Brezhnev's rule, had been in free fall since Chernobyl and the death and displacement of millions. The evacuation of most of Ukraine had led to a collapse the food supply just as Western media began to penetrate deep within the Soviet state from the former eastern bloc countries.
The attempt to arrest Moscow First Secretary Boris Yeltsin, popular among Muscovites for his sacking of corrupt party officials, on trumped-up charges led to first a riot, then a full-blown insurrection in the streets of Moscow. With Soviet military morale dangerously low, orders to move in and "pacify" the protests led to a complete breakdown in order, which quickly spread throughout the country.
[3]- Historians don't know if Yeltsin and his supporters honestly wanted Gorbachev to return to leadership, or if they cynically believed the man was dying in some dacha and would be a puppet if they could return him to power, but for the first stage of the Soviet Civil War, the anti-Kremlin forces proclaimed their goal was to restore "Comrade Gorbachev" to power. By the end of 1987, though, the Kremlin-based government would say that Gorbachev had died from his illness, showing international reporters the corpse of an emaciated Gorbachev, which post-war interviews would reveal would be the result of post-mortem work done after Gorbachev's summary execution.
[4]- Yeltsin took the opportunity to proclaim the formal dissolution of the Soviet state and himself as the leader of an independent Russian republic. The revolts in the Baltic states, plus continued unrest in the Kremlin-controlled sections of Soviet Russia led to an increasing amount of Red Army soldiers defecting, especially once the United States and NATO began to openly supply Yeltsin's forces with food and funding. The death of the Soviet dream happened quickly. On August 17, 1988, Vladimir Kryuchkov announced the surrender of Soviet forces loyal to the Kremlin and the immediate dissolution of the Soviet Union, with only the Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs (of which large portions had been depopulated) remaining with Russia.
But Boris Yeltsin would not be there to celebrate. While being shuttled to a new safe-house inside friendly territory, his car's driver had an aneurysm and the vehicle he was in crashed. He was the only casualty.
[5]- Grachev served as
de facto leader for nearly one month while various Russian forces negotiated who would take Yeltsin's place. The bumbling general, who had more value as a propaganda tool than military strategist, was quickly discounted for the role on a permanent basis.
[6]- Gorbachev's adviser would be the one to take the first steps in leading an independent Russia forward. He won
pro forma elections held in the month after the dissolution of the Soviet state, but by the end of his tenure, he would regret taking over where Yeltsin left off. It's likely that no person could have dealt with the nearly endless list of problems left in almost every sector of society in the wake of the Soviet collapse. But what
is known is that Yakolev couldn't. His presidency would be one of an increasingly beleaguered chief executive putting out as many fires as he could during his five-year mandate, with perhaps his crowning achievement being the resumption of Great Patriotic War-style efforts to "liquidate" the Exclusion Zone after the interruption of the civil war, and acceptance of the Baker Plan to prevent future collapses of the food supply in eastern Europe. But those were among the few bright spots in independent Russia's overwhelming early years.
[7]- Lebed's victory in the 1993 elections surprised no one, especially with an incredibly weary Yakolev declining any offers to remain President. The popular military officer rode to victory comfortably, helped by more than a little pressure by military and security forces "protecting" polling precincts that were thought to be hotbeds of anti-Lebed support. Within two years, he had transformed a party that he had used as a vehicle for election into the only party that mattered in Russia.
While those who had thought that the fall of communism would result in free elections and free markets were disappointed, other observers were cautiously optimistic. During the Lebed years, the economy began to show signs of life as foreign investment brought in under Yakolev began to bear fruit, helped along by the beginning of a technology boom in the West. A nationwide reckoning with the failures of Soviet socialism was undertaken and the surviving men deemed responsible for Chernobyl had very public trials that ended in execution or life imprisonment.
If the 1998 elections had been fair, it is likely that Lebed would have won a second mandate. But the young former general didn't take that chance and the resulting victory was a foregone conclusion. But by the time of his victory, he looked much older than his 48 years. Likely owing to a tour in the Exclusion Zone before the outbreak of the civil war, Lebed had contracted recurring pancreatic cancer, with a terminal diagnosis being delivered at the end of the year. The most famous victim of Chernobyl's funeral was attended by heads of state, an honor that the millions of others who had preceded him, and the millions that would surely follow him, would not have.