Transcript 20 Years On: Perspectives on the Fall of the Soviet Union Sir Rodric Braithwaite, GCMG British Ambassador to the Soviet Union and subsequently to the Russian Federation (1988- 92) and Chairman, UK Joint Intelligence Committee (1992-93) Ambassador Jack Matlock US Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1987-91) and Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (1983-86) Chair: John Lloyd Contributing Editor, Financial Times and Director of Journalism, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford 3 November 2011 The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/ speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions, but the ultimate responsibility for accuracy lies with this document’s author(s). The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. Transcript: 20 Years On: Perspectives on the Fall of the Soviet Union John Lloyd: Good evening, and welcome to this session. My name is John Lloyd, I’m a contributing editor to the Financial Times; more to the point, twenty years ago I was the bureau chief for the Financial Times in Moscow. This has been something of a sell-out event, and no wonder, because we have two of the savviest political operators in the western world, who were the right men, at the right time, in the right place. They were in the Soviet Union in Moscow as ambassadors at the time when, a little more than twenty years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev went on television and told his fellow countrymen and women that the more than seventy years of a mixture of idealism and nightmare has come to an end. They were, both of them, well prepared for the posts they held; they had had a lifetime, really, of preparing to be – which was the summit of their diplomatic careers – ambassadors to Moscow. Jack Matlock, on my right, had many posts in Africa and elsewhere. He was ambassador in the Czech Republic; but, he was in Moscow many times, first as a third secretary, then as a minister, as a temporary ambassador, and then, finally, in 1987, he became appointed by President [Ronald] Reagan. He was Ambassador for four years, leaving just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he is retired. After that, he wrote a wonderful memoir called Autopsy of an Empire in 1995, and he is still a fairly frequent journalist and intervenes in public debates, not just about Russia. Sir Rodric Braithwaite also had many posts – Italy, Indonesia, Poland – but he too went time and again to Moscow. He, like Ambassador Matlock, was captivated by the country as well as horrified by it. Like Ambassador Matlock – annoying to those of us who make our life by the keyboard – he is a tremendous writer, he’s written books like Afghantsy, on the Afghan war, which is the most recent one; Moscow 1941 – self-explanatory – a tremendous evocation of the city under siege, or about to be under siege; and World Upside Down (sic) [actual title: Across the Moscow River: The World Turned Upside Down (2003)]. So, this is quite an occasion. These two men were both very close to Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom they could talk fluent (sic) in his language. Ambassador Matlock was American ambassador was top dog, since he was the other superpower; and, Sir Rodric – who may disagree with that [laughter] – did what ambassadors for Britain are told to do by, or were told to do by Lord [Douglas] Hurd – who might he here tonight – that is to ‘punch above their weight,’ and he certainly did, helped, not a little bit, by the ‘Iron Lady’ – so called by the Soviet Red Army’s newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) www.chathamhouse.org 2 Transcript: 20 Years On: Perspectives on the Fall of the Soviet Union – and her relationship between the right wing conservative and the man who used [Vladimir] Lenin to justify his actions; one of the more extraordinary relationships in the modern world. So, there are no set speeches. We’ll go for an hour: the first half an hour, conversation here; the second half hour, conversation with the hall. And, so let me start with Ambassador Matlock. You famously had wind of the coup against Gorbachev before it happened, I think in June – the coup was in August – what did you do with that information, and did you then think ‘this is the end’? Jack Matlock: Actually, I began to see the possibility of the end well before that. I sent my first message to Washington in July 1990, eighteen months before it happened, recommending that we make contingency plans for a break up of the Soviet Union. But the incident that you mentioned happened in June 1991 when [Boris] Yeltsin, who had just been elected president of Russia, was visiting Washington. And, the mayor of Moscow came to me and during a conversation on other things wrote a note saying a coup was being organized against Gorbachev, and that he wanted to get word to Yeltsin, who was actually meeting with our president that day in Washington. And I, simply, I wrote, also, ‘Well, who’s behind it?’ And he gave me four names. We sent that, obviously, immediately to Washington, and when President [George H.W.] Bush presented it to Yeltsin, he said, ‘We must warn Gorbachev.’ So, I received a classified telephone call from Washington asking me to warn Gorbachev; but, I pointed out, we could not confirm these names, it included the prime minister, the minister of defence, the chairman of the KGB, and the chairman of parliament. John Lloyd: Oh, all of them correct. [Laughter] Jack Matlock: Yes, yes. So, I said I really can’t go in without confirmation and name them. They said, ‘Well, of course not.’ I said, ‘Of course, my source must not be named, and ‘Of course not.’ So, I did get an immediate appointment, and I www.chathamhouse.org 3 Transcript: 20 Years On: Perspectives on the Fall of the Soviet Union told Gorbachev we had information which was more than a rumour, but we could not confirm it, that a conspiracy was developing which could unfold at any time. I tried to steer him away from the idea that this was an intelligence report, though I learned later [Anatoly] Chernyaev put in his notes that I said we had intelligence, which was not correct. The next day, when Bush was talking to Gorbachev on the telephone, he mentioned we got the information from [Gavriil] Popov, the Moscow Mayor. Now, obviously, this meant that when the coup did occur, Popov was on the list of those to be arrested. Later, I must say, when I talked to Popov about all this, after it was all over, asking if I could write and speak about it, he agreed, and he said maybe it was a good thing, because [Vladimir] Kryuchkov saw that he had a leak, he had to stop his planning, and that could have contributed to the failure of the coup. When you speak of ‘unexpected developments’ that was certainly one of them. John Lloyd: Ambassador Braithwaite, you were hugely supportive of Gorbachev. Your late wife, Gill, was on the barricades, when it was dangerous to be so, when the White House, the Russian parliament – and Yeltsin inside it – was surrounded by tanks, an attack expected. Did you also at that time, the latter part of the year, did you also think ‘this is crumbling now, it’s gone beyond saving’? Sir Rodric Braithwaite: Well, I don’t want to go too far into history, but I was in Moscow in 1964, and at that time it was clear the system wasn’t working. And that is, it was clear to [Nikita] Khrushchev, which is he tried to reform it, it wasn’t only clear to me. And, the subsequent history of the next whatever it is years – twenty years, twenty-five years – there was one piece of evidence after another that the thing wasn’t working. It wasn’t working because of star wars and [Ronald] Reagan, it wasn’t working because the system didn’t work; so, that’s the first thing. The second thing: throughout the time I was there, there was (sic) talk of coups, and the sort of people named were actually the sort of people Jack’s mentioned, they were the obvious sort of candidates, you know, the usual suspects. So, there was a piece of intelligence – very secret – in the beginning of 1989 that Marshal [Dmitry] Yazov, the defence minister who did run the coup, had tried to shoot Gorbachev. And, when he was observed casting his vote in the www.chathamhouse.org 4 Transcript: 20 Years On: Perspectives on the Fall of the Soviet Union election which then took place, he was asked by a western journalist—one of your colleagues—whether he tried to shoot Gorbachev or not, and he said, ‘No.’ So, there was a continual fear – and a perfectly justified fear – that these hard men would do to Gorbachev what they had, after all, done to Khrushchev.