Lembro-me como se fosse hoje: a imagem patética do "oitavo" (e final) líder da mais aberrante experiência de governança política na história da humanidade, declarando o fim do império que se manteve pela opressão, pelo crime, pela escravidão de milhões de pessoas, quando não pela eliminação física de uns quantos milhões também.
Imaginei que o mundo se tornaria mais cooperativo, e ameno, no que fui enganado em minha proverbial atitude otimista, alimentada por uma postura basicamente de Idealpolitik, ou seja, confiando na racionalidade dos homens...
Sempre pecamos por ingenuidade...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
ON THIS DAYOn Dec. 25, 1991, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on TV to announce his resignation as the eighth and final leader of a Communist superpower that had already gone out of existence.
Gorbachev, Last Soviet Leader,
Resigns; U.S. Recognizes Republics' Independence
Communist Flag Is Removed: Yeltsin Gets Nuclear Controls
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
Special to The New York Times
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MOSCOW, Dec. 25 --
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the trailblazer of the Soviet Union's retreat from
the cold war and the spark for the democratic reforms that ended 70
years of Communist tyranny, told a weary, anxious nation tonight that he
was resigning as President and closing out the union.
'I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,' declared the 60-year-old politician,
the last leader of a totalitarian empire that was undone across the six
years and nine months of his stewardship.
Mr. Gorbachev made no attempt in his brief, leanly worded television
address to mask his bitter regret and concern at being forced from office
by the creation of the new Commonwealth of Independent States, composed of
11 former republics of the collapsed Soviet empire under the informal lead
of President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia.
'A New World'
Within hours of Mr. Gorbachev's resignation, Western and other nations
began recognition of Russia and the other former republics.
'We're now living in a new world,' Mr. Gorbachev declared in
recognizing the rich history of his tenure. 'An end has been put to the
cold war and to the arms race, as well as to the mad militarization of the
country, which has crippled our economy, public attitudes and morals. The
threat of nuclear war has been removed.' [A transcript of Mr. Gorbachev's
speech and excerpts from interviews with Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Yeltsin are
on pages A12 and A13.]
Mr. Gorbachev's moment of farewell was stark. Kremlin guards were
preparing to lower the red union flag for the last time. In minutes, Mr.
Gorbachev would sign over the nuclear missile launching codes for
safeguarding to Mr. Yeltsin, his rival and successor as the dominant
politician of this agonized land.
Yeltsin's Assurance on Weapons
Earlier today, Mr. Yeltsin told his Russian Parliament that 'there
will be only a single nuclear button, and other presidents will not
possess it.'
But he said that to 'push it' requires the approval of himself and the
leaders of Ukraine, Byelorussia and Kazakhstan, the four former republics
that have strategic nuclear weapons on their soil.
'Of course, we think this button must never be used,' Mr. Yeltsin said.
Out in the night beyond the walled fortress as Mr. Gorbachev spoke, a
disjointed people, freed from their decades of dictated misery, faced a
frightening new course of shedding collectivism for the promises of
individual enterprise. It is a course that remains a mystery for most of
the commonwealth's 280 million people.
'I am very much concerned as I am leaving this post,' the union
President told the people. 'However, I also have feelings of hope and
faith in you, your wisdom and force of spirit. We are the heirs of a great
civilization and it now depends on all and everyone whether or not this
civilization will make a comeback to a new and decent living.'
Still Against Commonwealth
In departing, the Soviet leader took comfort in the world's supporting
his singular achievements in nuclear disarmament. But even more, he firmly
warned his people that they had not yet learned to use their newly won
freedom and that it could be put at risk by the commonwealth, which he
fought to the last.
'I am concerned about the fact that the people in this country are
ceasing to become citizens of a great power and the consequences may be
very difficult for all of us to deal with,' he declared, implicitly
arguing that his union could have remained a superpower despite the cold
war's end, which he helped engineer.
'We have paid with all our history and tragic experience for these
democratic achievements,' Mr. Gorbachev said, assessing centuries of
suffering across serfdom and revolution, 'and they are not to be abandoned
whatever the circumstances, and whatever the pretext. Otherwise, all our
hopes for the best will be buried.'
Mr. Gorbachev's stringent gaze and strong caution to the now
dismembered nation were in contrast to the smiling ease displayed during
this transition day by President Yeltsin, chief heir to this land's
political and economic chaos.
'They Need Some Belief'
'The people here are weary of pessimism, and the share of pessimism is
too much for the people to handle,' Mr. Yeltsin declared in an interview
with CNN. 'Now they need some belief, finally.'
Mr. Yeltsin made a point in the interview of sending Christmas wishes
to his listeners today as the West celebrated the holiday, although the
Russian Orthodox Christmas is not until Jan. 7. Mr. Yeltsin also took care
in addressing the outside world to stress that commonwealth leaders had
agreed to fulfill the disarmament commitments made by Mr. Gorbachev.
'I don't want the international community to be worried about it,'
President Yeltsin said, vowing that there would 'not be a single second
after Gorbachev makes his resignation' that the missile codes would go
astray.
The weapons are only one item in a long list of needed precautions that
the commonwealth republics must attend to if they are to establish
credibility in a decidedly skeptical world that has watched the Soviet
Union reverse its totalitarian course and collapse in a matter of a few
years.
Mr. Yeltsin is first among equals in the 11-member commonwealth. This
is a very loose political association resorted to by the former Soviet
republics because of their disenchantment with the very notion of union
and their need, nonetheless, for some common arrangement that might ease
the escape from post-Communist destitution.
The commonwealth members are free to decide their individual economic
and political plans. But they are pledged to a common military command for
joint defense needs and to certain economic denominators as well,
including the hope of a resuscitated ruble as their common currency.
Russia has already taken the lead in economics as well as defense, with
the giant republic of 149 million people bracing for Mr. Yeltsin's first
steps toward free-market reform next week. Sweeping price rises are to be
legalized on Jan. 2 as an end comes to much of the consumer-goods
subsidies that Communism maintained to make its regime minimally
palatable.
Mr. Yeltsin made a point in his CNN interview of expressing some
displeasure at the limited amount of aid that has been extended by the
outside world.
'There has been a lot of talk, but there has been no specific
assistance,' he said, offering a small smile. He quickly offered an
explanation that with the union collapsing for the last year, willing
nations probably found no clear address to which to donate.
'Now everything is clear, and the addressees are known,' he said,
beaming as if in invitation. 'And I think that this humanitarian aid will
step up now.'
A Poke at Baker
He offered the same hint of mischief in dealing with the fact that
Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d waited until he headed home from an
initial visit before talking quite pessimistically of the commonwealth's
chances.
'Mr. Baker, when he and I had a four-and-a-half-hour meeting here in
Moscow, Mr. Baker never told me that,' Mr. Yeltsin said. 'So those who
doubt as to the success of the commonwealth should beware and not be so
pessimistic,' he advised. 'We are sick and tired of pessimism.'
In leaving, Mr. Gorbachev had no kind words in the televised speech for
the commonwealth and never mentioned Mr. Yeltsin.
He reviewed his own campaign to preserve a drastically revised union.
It would have accepted the sovereignty the republics gained after the
hard-line Communist coup failed in August. This led to the fall of the
Communist Party and, tonight, of the union's most prominent defender, Mr.
Gorbachev.
'The policy prevailed of dismembering this country and disuniting the
state, which is something I cannot subscribe to,' Mr. Gorbachev told the
nation, his jaw set forward firmly in defeat as the presidential red union
flag gleamed its last behind his right shoulder.
As Mr. Yeltsin deftly acquired the Moscow remnants of the union's
powers and real estate across the last few weeks, the huge red union flag
atop the Kremlin's domed Council of Ministers building had waved mainly as
a symbol of Mr. Gorbachev's holdout resistance to the commonwealth.
The Flag Comes Down
The flag was lowered from its floodlit perch at 7:32 tonight. A muted
moment of awe was shared by the few pedestrians crossing Red Square.
'Why are you laughing at Lenin?' a man, obviously inebriated against
the winter cold, suddenly shouted in the square. He reeled near Lenin's
tomb.
The mausoleum was dusky pink against the evergreen trees outside the
Kremlin walls. Within, for all the sense of history wheeling in the night
sky, the embalmed remains of the Communst patriarch still rested.
The drunk was instantly shushed by a passer-by who cautioned that
'foreigners' were watching and he should not embarrass the reborn Russia.
'Foreigners?' laughed another Muscovite. 'Who cares? They're the ones
who are feeding us these days.'
In the Gorbachev era there were countless moments of floodlit crisis
and emergency solutions hurriedly concocted and rammed through in the
Kremlin. Previously, Mr. Gorbachev prevailed and often proved brilliant in
his improvising. Tonight, though, he was the executive focus for the last
time and he seemed brisk and businesslike, a man containing himself
against defeat.
In an interview with CNN later, when asked about his plans, he said he
would not comment now on the 'many proposals and offers' he had received.
He said he would 'have to recover a little bit, relax, take a rest.'
'Respect' From Rival
'Today is a difficult day for Mikhail Gorbachev,' President Yeltsin
said a few hours before the Soviet President resigned, when the Russian
leader was invited to describe Mr. Gorbachev's main mistakes along the
difficult road of reform.
'Because I have a lot of respect for him personally and we are trying
to be civilized people and we are trying to make it into a civilized state
today, I don't want to focus on these mistakes,' Mr. Yeltsin responded.
