On Dec. 10, Russian-language Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP.ru) published previously classified transcripts of 1991 talks between Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic Boris Yeltsin, and U.S. President George H. W. Bush. The Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation has now asked the Prosecutor General's Office to determine whether Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's actions constituted state treason and divulging of state secrets.
According to KP.ru and the transcripts in question, during a telephone conversation with Bush, Yeltsin and Gorbachev gave the U.S. president information on how they governed the Soviet Union. Yeltsin called Bush on Dec. 8, 1991, soon after the signing of the Belovezha Accords that "buried the Soviet Union," and "reported to him for as long as 28 minutes on the accords and his country's future plans." On Dec. 25 of that year, Gorbachev also talked to Bush over the phone, following the official announcement that dissolved the Soviet Union.
KP.ru notes that both calls were recorded by U.S. intelligence services, which immediately restricted access to the transcripts. The transcripts were declassified only in 2008, and later on, copies of the transcripts were transferred to the Yeltsin Center that recently opened in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The Belavezha Accords were signed in Belarus on Dec. 8, 1991 by heads of state and the governments of the three major constituent republics of the Soviet Union: the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. The accords officially dissolved the Soviet Union and established the Commonwealth of Independent States.
KP notes that the content of the conversation between the presidents is of great interest to Chamber member Georgy Fyodorov, who submitted the request to the Russian Prosecutor General:
"Judging from the published transcript, according to these telephone conversations, Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, in fact, reported to the president of the United States about the destruction of the Soviet Union. I ask you to check the content of these conversations for compliance with the following articles of the Russian Criminal Code - ‘treason' and ‘divulging state secrets' - and, if necessary, take appropriate action."
Fyodorov admits to Komsomolskaya Pravda that his request to the prosecutor was motivated by KP.ru's publishing of talks between Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Bush about the collapse of the Soviet Union:
"The transcripts have troubled me, and in my opinion, it is necessary to check whether such actions were a deliberate and coordinated betrayal [of the state]. Therefore, I made a request to check this from the legal standpoint."
According to Russian law, the Prosecutor General should reply within 30 days on what actions, if any, have to be taken. "Stay tuned," says KP.ru.
The Belovezha Accords are a source of great controversy to millions of people across the former Soviet Union. Many Russians, including President Vladimir Putin, view them as a "great catastrophe of the 20th century." While Boris Yeltsin passed away in 2007, Mikhail Gorbachev is in bad health and has recently been hospitalized in Moscow with partial paralysis.
(AP photo)
