Textbooks often tell the Soviet story as a revolution from below in 1917 and a sudden collapse in 1991. The records show more hands at work.
This chapter follows who helped the Bolsheviks to power and what they wanted in return, then the accounts of why the Union fell, side by side.
Lines marked “according to” are one side’s account. Where records from opposing sides agree, the link is shown as confirmed by both.
15 Mar 1917
March 1917, the third year of the World War. A revolt in Petrograd ends the monarchy, and a Provisional Government promises to keep Russia fighting Germany. In Zurich, the exiled Bolshevik leader Lenin wants Russia out of the war. So does the German government.
In agreement with the Imperial Duma We have thought it well to renounce the Throne of the Russian Empire and to lay down the supreme power.
16 Apr 1917
In April 1917 Germany let Lenin and about thirty exiles cross its territory to Sweden and on to Petrograd. Both sides recorded the deal: Lenin’s group said a Swiss socialist negotiated it with the German ambassador; the German files show the General Staff approving it. A German report soon noted that Lenin was “working exactly as we would wish.”
Lenin's entry into Russia successful. He is working exactly as we would wish.
The German Foreign Ministry’s own files, published in 1958, show it authorizing one million roubles for the go-between Alexander Parvus in 1915, and its State Secretary later crediting German funds for building up Pravda. In July 1917 the Provisional Government accused Lenin of being sent by Germany. How much money flowed, and how decisive it was, historians still debate.
It was not until the Bolsheviks had received from us a steady flow of funds through various channels and under different labels that they were in a position to be able to build up their main organ, Pravda
According to Antony Sutton, Wall Street money helped the Bolsheviks too, for example $1 million from the Red Cross mission leader William Boyce Thompson. U.S. embassy records from December 1917 point the other way, to American money for anti-Bolshevik newspapers. Both are shown with their sources; Sutton’s claim is marked disputed, the embassy reading is still a draft.
that he (Thompson) contributed $1 million to the Bolshevik Revolution for propaganda purposes.
7 Nov 1917
On 7 November 1917 the Bolsheviks, through the Petrograd Soviet chaired by Trotsky, deposed the Provisional Government. Lenin headed the new government and promised immediate peace.
The Provisional Government has been deposed. State power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies--the Revolutionary Military Committee, which heads the Petrograd proletariat and the garrison.
3 Mar 1918
At Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 Soviet Russia gave up its western lands. The Soviet congress that ratified it called the terms “imposed on us as an ultimatum and with undisguised violence”. According to Ludendorff, Germany’s war chief, sending Lenin was militarily justified “for Russia had to be laid low”, and the peace eased the Eastern Front “to an extraordinary degree”.
The situation on the Eastern Front was eased to an extraordinary degree by the Peace of Brest-Litovsk of the 3rd of March, and the preliminary peace of Buftea of the 5th of March.
30 Dec 1922
On 30 December 1922 Soviet Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasian republic founded the USSR; Stalin presented the treaty. Article 26 let any republic leave. Nobody could use it for 69 years.
Each of the united Republics retains its full liberty to leave the Union if it so desires.
26 Apr 1986
From 1985 Gorbachev launched perestroika and glasnost. Oil prices collapsed from late 1985, Chernobyl exploded in April 1986, the last troops left Afghanistan in February 1989, and in November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell; according to Washington, Gorbachev’s loosening of Eastern Europe set that in motion.
On April 26, 1986, a sudden surge of power during a reactor systems test destroyed Unit 4 of the nuclear power station at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union.
8 Dec 1991
Yeltsin beat back the hard-liners’ coup in August 1991. On 8 December, in a Belarusian forest, Yeltsin, Kravchuk of Ukraine and Shushkevich of Belarus declared the USSR finished. U.S. records and Gorbachev’s own resignation speech both tie the accords to the end, so that link is confirmed by both sides.
Dear compatriots, fellow citizens, as a result of the newly formed situation, creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, I cease my activities in the post of the U.S.S.R. president.
Washington, Gorbachev and Shushkevich: the August coup. Gorbachev in 2006: Chernobyl. Yegor Gaidar: the oil price collapse. Putin in 2022: Lenin’s right to secede. Historian Serhii Plokhy: Ukraine’s referendum. The Reagan Library credits SDI with ending the Cold War, a view others dispute. Bush said America won it; Putin called the collapse a disaster for Russians.
Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory.