Postwar

327

That is one reason why the end of the Soviet Union was and is a source of genuine regret among many Russians. ‘Independence’ for everyone else meant something gained; independence for Russia itself constituted an unmistakable loss.

328

Yeltsin received 57 percent of the vote in a turnout of 74 percent.

329

The exception was French President Francois Mitterrand, still uncomfortable with the destabilization of eastern Europe and a little too quick to acknowledge the plotters’ success in restoring the status quo ante.

330

Even in Ukraine, where many Russian-speakers had been wary of talk about national independence, the coup of August had a dramatic impact on the public mood: on August 24th the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet voted for independence, subject to a referendum, by 346 votes to 1. When the national referendum was held on December 1st, 90.3 percent (in a turnout of 84 percent of the electorate) voted to leave the Soviet Union.

331

The will, but not the means. Had Gorbachev—or the August plotters—chosen to use the army to crush all opposition, it is by no means sure that they would have failed.

332

This occasioned some ill-feeling among Czechs. On a visit to Prague in 1985 the present author was regaled by liberal Czechs with accounts of the privileges accorded by the regime to the Slovak minority. Schoolteachers from Slovakia—recruited to teach in Prague’s elementary schools and deemed by parents to be hopelessly provincial and inadequate to the task—were a particular target of resentment.

333

The appearance of a separate Hungarian party reflects the presence on Slovak territory of some 500,000 Hungarians, 10 percent of the population of Slovakia.

334

Quoted in Mlada Fronta dnes 12th March 1991. See Abby Innes, Czechoslovakia: The Short Goodbye (Yale U.P., Newhaven, 2001), page 97.

335

The political split proved easier to manage than the economic one—it was not until 1999 that agreement over the division of Czechoslovakia’s federal assets was finally reached.

336

Zagreb, Belgrade and Skopje (the capital of Macedonia) were all among the fastest growing cities of Central Europe between 1910 and 1990.

337

‘We shall kill some Serbs, deport others, and oblige the rest to embrace Catholicism’—thus the Ustashe Minister of Religion in Zagreb, July 22nd 1941.

338

On a ‘fact-finding’ visit to Skopje just after the 1999 Kosovo war the present author was ‘confidentially’ informed by the Macedonian Prime Minister that Albanians (including his own ministerial colleague who had just left the room) were not to be trusted: ‘You can’t believe anything they say—they just are not like us. They are not Christian’.

339

This was not, of course, the way things appeared to Croats and others, who could point to Serb domination of the national army (60 percent of the officer corps was Serb by 1984, a fair reflection of Serb presence in the population at large but no more reassuring for that) and Belgrade’s disproportionate share of investment and federal expenditure.