Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve by George Soros

Author:George Soros [Soros, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-09-05T04:46:00+00:00

Was it possible to keep the Soviet Union together? And would it have been desirable to do so?

I am sure it would have eventually disintegrated, but I am convinced that it would have been better if the process had been slower and more orderly. Look at the dissolution of the British Empire; it took half a century to accomplish and it wasn't without conflict, but the effect was almost wholly beneficial.

But Great Britain was the motherland of democracy.

That is all the more reason why the Soviet Union needed more time for its dissolution. I do not make myself popular today when I say that it would have been better if the Soviet Union had not collapsed, just as it would have been better if Yugoslavia had not broken up. It would have made possible the transition from a totalitarian system to a free and democratic one. There would have been demands for autonomy, and eventually there would have been an independent Ukraine, for instance, but it would have occurred over a longer period of time. Ukraine would then have been a more stable and viable country when it became independent. To come into the world as a viable organism, a fetus needs nine months. The new countries arising out of the Soviet Union did not have enough time to develop. They are all premature births, and one has to wonder whether they will survive.

I was a great supporter of the so-called Shatalin Plan, or the 500Day Program as it is also known. I was involved in it from its inception. I met with Nikolai Petrakov, Gorbachev's economic adviser, on the day the task force was formed. I provided a group of eminent international economists to critique the plan, sponsored a group of lawyers to help design the necessary legislation, and brought the authors, under the leadership of Grigory Yavlinsky, to the 1990 Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington.

The idea behind the Shatalin Plan was to transfer sovereignty from the Soviet Union to the constituent republics but, at the same time, to transfer back certain critical elements of sovereignty from the republics to a newly created entity, the Inter-Republican Council. In theory, it would have replaced the Soviet Union with a new kind of union that would have been more like the European Union. In practice, it would have pitted the new authority, the Inter-Republican Council, against the old, Soviet authorities. Since the old political center was almost universally despised, the new political center would have gained popular support by doing battle with the old one.

It was a brilliant political conception that was not properly understood. Had it received international support, I am sure Gorbachev would have endorsed it. Even without Western endorsement, it was touch and go. I remember Leonid Abalkin bragging to me how he managed to sway Gorbachev against the plan. He would be the 13th member of a council uniting 12 republics; each member would have a firm territorial base except him; therefore, he would become the least powerful member of the Council.

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