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

Ukraine in August, was ratified Christmas day of 1991.
So I was a witness to these events. I'm sure some of the officers in the embassy were
witnesses, but perhaps not in the same way. I'm certain that the collapse of the Soviet
Union was an action brought about by the people of the Soviet Union; it was not
significantly affected by outside forces.
Q: Well, during this time, even prior to the coup, were the Baltic states seen as something
different than sort of the west of the Soviet empire? I mean, they didn't really quite fit, or
am I saying something that really isn't true?
MILLER: They were insignificant in the larger picture.
Q: Insignificant, except in a small something leaves, such as Formosa leaving China.
This can ...
MILLER: Yes, that's right, less significant is more accurate. The long standing desire of
the Baltics to be independent was understood. The ability of the Soviet system to keep
them inside was also understood, that they had the ability to do that. Whether they would
permit them to go their own way really depended on everything else. This issue is
something that I know about from the legislators from the three states, city-states that
were in the last Supreme Soviets, who I knew really well.
The leaders in the Baltic states faced the same dilemma as those from Russia and the core
republics of the Soviet Union in the last Supreme Soviets as to whether there could be a
reformed Soviet Union. The Baltic leaders could see the possibility of ethnic or even
national separate or autonomous identity within a reformed democratic Soviet Union.
That was the debate, and it was still in 1990 a live issue. What had to go was the Stalinist
experience and all the excesses of the previous 70 years.
Yeltsin had the clearest view, the simplest view, in a way, the primitive view, which was
Russia by itself was big enough, and the problems of Russia were enough to focus on.
The other republics, states, and regions could go and we'll bring them back later.
Q: Well, was anybody taking a look at, which is the last thing that politicians would do,
really, but looking at the economic system? The Soviet Union had put great resources
into – a couple years later, I was in Kyrgyzstan and seeing big helicopter factories that
were no longer operative. But it was not a well-put-together economic system, but it was
an economic system, and all of a sudden you start going your own way, you've got
tremendous dislocations.
MILLER: Yes, that was very clear.
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