1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

was the view of the embassy, too at that moment.
Q: I'm asking about various groups. What about the students? Were the students and
faculty engaged in this sort of thing?
MILLER: Yes, they were. The faculties, certainly, the most distinguished among the
faculties, were in the parliaments. The composition of those last several parliaments was
absolutely remarkable, and a really good history of the time would focus, on these figures
who were in the last Supreme Soviets of the Soviet Union and the first two parliaments of
the independent states.
Q: Well, with this set, from your perspective, what happened?
MILLER: Gorbachev was cut to pieces by Yeltsin, particularly after Shevardnadze's
departure. He lost his majority in the ruling group, the Soviet ruling group, and what was
left was the Gorbachevian rump. The coup plotters group was reflective of the greatly
diminished quality. It just wasn't any good. He had lost the leadership role and he didn't
convert the disintegration of the Politburo and the Central Committee into a majority
group in the legislature, which was where the leadership was. Political leadership had
gone from the party to the legislature. This was the great change in the Soviet structure of
the last several years of perestroika.
Q: But the party was where you thought the cream of the crop was.
MILLER: It wasn't the party.
Q: I mean, it was the Supreme Soviet.
MILLER: It was the Supreme Soviet. The Party, the Communist Party – the Party of
Power - had disintegrated. The party, as an instrument of power, had disintegrated. The
party as a reflection of intellectual allegiances remained, but it was now in splinters, it no
longer was the identity to the state. The party was the state up until 1989. After the
collapse of the single party in the last congress of the party in 1988, it was no longer the
main structural instrument of governance. It wasn't the state any longer, so the state was
somewhere out there, but the legislature was from where legitimate leadership and policy
direction would come.
Here, again, I go back to the huge mistake that Gorbachev made, which was not to run for
president and to receive legitimacy by being elected by the people. Sakharov and others
pled with him, "Run, get the new legitimacy necessary." He refused to do it, and some
people think because he was afraid he might lose. It is the view of almost all that he
wouldn't have lost, he would have won by 80 or 90 percent.
Q: It would have been between him and Yeltsin. Was that it?
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