doomed to die. The centrifugal nationalist forces within the Soviet Union did not stem from trivial origins. The Soviet nations opposed the center not out of a desire to fly their own flags or sing their own folk songs. They did so as a result of their profound traditions as sovereign nationsâsix of which had been either independent countries or part of another free countryâandof the deep and abiding historical grievances of each against the brutality of the centerâs Communist rule:
âIn Ukraine, Stalin killed 5 million peasants during the collectivization of agriculture, 10 million through forced famines, and 3 million in suppressing the postwar guerrilla resistance, while more recently the Chernobyl disaster doomed an estimated 2 million people to premature deaths from cancer and other ailments.
âIn Byelorussia, Stalin not only killed 100,000 people in purges and repression in the 1930s but also doomed 1.5 million people and 75 percent of the republicâs cities and towns to death and destruction through his half-witted military strategies in World War II.
âIn the Baltic republics, more than 150,000 Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian guerrilla fighters died resisting Soviet rule after World War II, while another 540,000 were killed in purges or exiled to Siberia.
âIn Moldavia, a young Leonid Brezhnev orchestrated the postwar subjugation of the newly annexed Romanian territory, ordering thousands of executions and shipping off 30,000 people to Siberian labor camps.
âIn the Caucasian republics, 100,000 Azerbaijanis, 30,000 Georgians, and tens of thousands of Armenians were imprisoned, tortured, or killed under Stalin, with Armeniaâs prisons so full at some points that basements of government buildings were converted into makeshift jails.
âIn the Central Asian republics, Stalin crushed the anti-communist guerrilla forces that fought Moscow into the 1930s, while Khrushchevâs âvirgin landsâ campaign triggered a massive influx of Russian colonists and Brezhnevâs harebrained agricultural and development schemes wreaked ecological disaster throughout the region.
In light of the scope of these human tragediesâwhich haveno parallels in American historyâit was totally unreasonable to expect these nations to use their growing political freedom under Gorbachev to seek a new union with Moscow as its dominant political center.
Reform leaders in the non-Russian Soviet republics have more in common with Walesa and Havel, who opposed communism from the outside, than with Yeltsin and Shevardnadze, who at first tried to reform the system from within. Lithuaniaâs Vytautus Landsbergis, Latviaâs Anatolijs Gorbunovs, Estoniaâs Arnold Ruutel, the leaders of the Ukrainian Rukh movement, and other democratic leaders at the republic level sought not only freedom but also independence for their nations. In the republics, strategies based on working within the system were discredited because to be part of the system was to betray the nation. As a result, the new republic leaders were not reform-minded Communists like Gorbachev but nationalists who led democratic popular fronts and who sought to free their nations through elections.
I must admit to a measure of skepticism when I was introduced to Lithuanian president Landsbergis, who had been a professor of musicology before entering the political arena. I tend to agree with the observation of an eighteenth-century European king who said, âThe cruelest way to punish a province is to have it governed by professors.â With notable exceptions, such as Woodrow Wilson, great professors are seldom good executives. I have found that they tend to become mired in irrelevant trivia, to flit from one intellectual fad to another, and to lack the decisiveness needed in politics. But I soon discovered in the course of our exchanges that this musician was a very strong leader who talked pianissimo but acted
âIn Ukraine, Stalin killed 5 million peasants during the collectivization of agriculture, 10 million through forced famines, and 3 million in suppressing the postwar guerrilla resistance, while more recently the Chernobyl disaster doomed an estimated 2 million people to premature deaths from cancer and other ailments.
âIn Byelorussia, Stalin not only killed 100,000 people in purges and repression in the 1930s but also doomed 1.5 million people and 75 percent of the republicâs cities and towns to death and destruction through his half-witted military strategies in World War II.
âIn the Baltic republics, more than 150,000 Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian guerrilla fighters died resisting Soviet rule after World War II, while another 540,000 were killed in purges or exiled to Siberia.
âIn Moldavia, a young Leonid Brezhnev orchestrated the postwar subjugation of the newly annexed Romanian territory, ordering thousands of executions and shipping off 30,000 people to Siberian labor camps.
âIn the Caucasian republics, 100,000 Azerbaijanis, 30,000 Georgians, and tens of thousands of Armenians were imprisoned, tortured, or killed under Stalin, with Armeniaâs prisons so full at some points that basements of government buildings were converted into makeshift jails.
âIn the Central Asian republics, Stalin crushed the anti-communist guerrilla forces that fought Moscow into the 1930s, while Khrushchevâs âvirgin landsâ campaign triggered a massive influx of Russian colonists and Brezhnevâs harebrained agricultural and development schemes wreaked ecological disaster throughout the region.
In light of the scope of these human tragediesâwhich haveno parallels in American historyâit was totally unreasonable to expect these nations to use their growing political freedom under Gorbachev to seek a new union with Moscow as its dominant political center.
Reform leaders in the non-Russian Soviet republics have more in common with Walesa and Havel, who opposed communism from the outside, than with Yeltsin and Shevardnadze, who at first tried to reform the system from within. Lithuaniaâs Vytautus Landsbergis, Latviaâs Anatolijs Gorbunovs, Estoniaâs Arnold Ruutel, the leaders of the Ukrainian Rukh movement, and other democratic leaders at the republic level sought not only freedom but also independence for their nations. In the republics, strategies based on working within the system were discredited because to be part of the system was to betray the nation. As a result, the new republic leaders were not reform-minded Communists like Gorbachev but nationalists who led democratic popular fronts and who sought to free their nations through elections.
I must admit to a measure of skepticism when I was introduced to Lithuanian president Landsbergis, who had been a professor of musicology before entering the political arena. I tend to agree with the observation of an eighteenth-century European king who said, âThe cruelest way to punish a province is to have it governed by professors.â With notable exceptions, such as Woodrow Wilson, great professors are seldom good executives. I have found that they tend to become mired in irrelevant trivia, to flit from one intellectual fad to another, and to lack the decisiveness needed in politics. But I soon discovered in the course of our exchanges that this musician was a very strong leader who talked pianissimo but acted
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