Across the Street From the Soviet Collapse: August-December 1991 Inside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow

At a recent Kennan Institute talk, Wayne Merry, Senior Associate, American Foreign Policy Council, and former U.S. diplomat, described his experiences as head of the Political-Internal section of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during the last days of the USSR. Merry described August-December 1991 as the most stressful and most fascinating period of his diplomatic career. He argued that the Embassy did a very good job of responding to a complex situation under extremely trying conditions. When Merry came to the Embassy in August 1991, the staff was in the midst of the usual summer transition period. Many of the staff members were new to Moscow, and the new Ambassador had not yet arrived. In addition, the Embassy was recovering from a major fire, and the working conditions in the building were therefore cramped and primitive.

Merry explained that he arrived early to the Embassy on the morning of Monday, August 19, and was greeted by a Russian guard who asked if he had heard that the government had been overthrown. From that point, everyone at the Embassy began working at full speed to gather information about the situation and relay it to Washington. According to Merry, transmitting classified information proved to be difficult, and most communication with Washington took place over a single, open telephone line. Despite the difficulties of communication, this information proved to be extremely valuable to the U.S. government, he argued. The Embassy staff realized very early on that the members of the Emergency Committee that had ousted President Mikhail Gorbachev were not in control of most areas of the Soviet government. Therefore, unlike some European countries, the U.S. did not immediately recognize the Emergency Committee as the new government of the Soviet Union.

The collapse of the coup and the return of Gorbachev to Moscow on August 21 escalated the decline in the power of the Soviet government and the rise of the Russian government under Boris Yeltsin. Merry recalled feeling very strongly that he was witnessing the defining moment in the history of the late 20th century. The last months of 1991 were a busy time for the Embassy as they tried to establish contacts with the emerging leaders of Russia and other republics, all while dealing with the dozens of administration, congressional, media, and NGO delegations that came to the USSR during that time. Merry described late 1991 as an extraordinary time, due to the unprecedented level of access that U.S. diplomats had to very high-level Russian and Soviet government officials.

Merry argued that U.S. policy during the collapse of the Soviet Union was fairly effective. In particular, he praised Ambassador Robert Strauss for his leadership, his extraordinary political contacts in Washington, and his good instincts for understanding political power. The biggest problem that the Embassy faced, according to Merry, was the Bush administration's unwillingness to accept the fact that the USSR was collapsing and Gorbachev was no longer in charge. It was clear to U.S. diplomats in Moscow that the USSR could not continue to exist, and Merry noted that he wrote a memo to the State Department in response to the Revolution Day celebrations in early November 1991 that began with the words "Leninism is dead." The administration, however, feared that the collapse of the USSR would have a negative impact on international security and preferred to maintain their relations with Gorbachev rather than develop a new relationship with Yeltsin. Merry argued that the successful December 1 referendum for independence in Ukraine finally convinced the Bush administration that the Soviet Union was truly no more.