You ever see someone try to fix a collapsing
mansion with like a single roll of duct tape?
Oh yeah. just the absolute worst tool for the
job. Right. Picture this massive sprawling estate.
The foundation is violently cracking. The roof
is actively caving in. The plumbing is completely
exploded. Exactly. And the person in charge runs
out, not with steel beams or concrete, but with,
you know, ordinary office supplies thinking,
yeah, this will hold it together. It's just total
denial of the physical reality. It really is.
And that is exactly what happened to the Soviet
Union in 1991. You, the listener, sent us the
Wikipedia article on the state Council of the
Soviet Union, which is this desperate blink and
you miss it government body. Right. It existed
for barely four months right at the end of the
Cold War. Yeah, barely four months. So our mission
for this deep dive today is to figure out how
a superpower tries to patch a mortal wound with
bureaucratic committees. You specifically mentioned
you were looking for those aha moments to understand
the mechanics of history, which is a great way
to look at it. You want to see the gears turning
without getting buried under an avalanche of
dry dates. Exactly. So, OK, let's unpack this
because we're going to look at the actual administrative
reality of a collapse. And, you know, when we
think of the fall of the Soviet Union, our minds
immediately go to those really dramatic sweeping
visuals. Oh, for sure. The protests in the streets,
people standing on tanks. Right. The lowering
of the hammer and sickle flag over the Kremlin.
But what we're really dissecting today is the
hidden machinery behind those visuals. The paperwork
behind the protests. Yeah. Basically, how does
a massive, heavily centralized bureaucracy actually
try to catch itself while it's, you know, in
a terminal freefall? Because the central premise
here is almost absurd, right? You've got an existential
crisis, the whole system is breaking down, and
the grand solution they come up with is a council.
A committee. the ultimate bureaucratic reflex.
But what really blew my mind reading through
the sources you provided is that the origin of
this council wasn't even born out of an emergency
at all. No, not at all. And what's fascinating
here is that to understand the absolute chaos
of 1991, we actually have to rewind the clock
a couple of decades. Wait, a couple of decades?
Yeah, back to the early 1970s. The concept of
a Soviet state council had been sitting in a
drawer for years and it was born out of pure
unadulterated diplomatic vanity. So it wasn't
designed to save a failing state. No, it was
designed to fix a seating arrangement. That is
wild. OK, walk me through this. So in the early
1970s, Lena Brezhnev was the head of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union. OK. And as head of
the party, he's the guy, right? The de facto
leader. Exactly. Everyone domestically and internationally
knew he was the man making the decisions. He
was the center of gravity. But on paper, Within
the incredibly rigid intricacies of formal diplomatic
protocol, he was actually outranked. He was ranked
third, which is just I mean, it's wild to conceptualize.
It really is. You are the unquestioned leader
of one of the two global superpowers. You control
a massive nuclear arsenal. But when it comes
time for like official state banquets or global
photo ops on the tarmac. Yeah, you are essentially
standing in the bronze medal position because
the rules of international diplomacy do not care.
about unofficial power dynamics, they only care
about constitutional titles. Right. So who was
actually number one on paper? The first position,
the formal head of state, belonged to Nikolai
Podgorny. He was the chairman of the Presidium
of the Supreme Soviet. OK. And then the second
position, the head of government, belonged to
Alexei Kosygin, the chairman of the Council of
Ministers. So Brezhnev, despite holding all the
actual leverage, is relegated to the third tier.
Just because his title was purely within the
political party? not the state apparatus itself.
I love trying to picture this in a modern corporate
setting. Oh, it translates perfectly. Right.
It's like you're the true undisputed CEO of a
Fortune 500 company. You make every strategic
decision. But technically, your HR title is like
senior advisor. Yeah, exactly. So every time
you go to a major industry conference, the events
team legally has to seat you at the third table
behind the head of PR and the chief operating
officer. And you just have to sit there. eating
your lukewarm chicken, seething about the fact
that the PR guy gets to shake hands with the
keynote speaker first. That would drive anyone
crazy, especially an autocrat. Well, human ego,
even at the geopolitical level, is a profound
driver of history. And Brezhnev supporters decided
they needed to fix this discrepancy. But they
couldn't just walk up to the United Nations and
ask them to change global protocol, right? No,
the UN wouldn't care. So they decided to try
and change the fundamental structure of the Soviet
government itself, just to accommodate his ego.
They wanted to invent a completely new body,
the State Council. Exactly. They looked at other
Eastern Bloc countries, specifically East Germany,
Bulgaria, and Romania. Right, because those nations
had established state councils as their highest
bodies of power. Exactly. So the plan within
the Kremlin was to abolish their existing Presidium
of the Supreme Soviet, replace it with a brand
new State Council, and have Bryzhnev chair it.
This maneuver would finally give him the official
head of state title. Moving him to the coveted
number one spot in diplomatic protocol. I mean,
they were literally willing to rewrite the constitution
of a superpower just to get their boss a better
seat at the table. They were. But the bureaucratic
inertia of the Soviet system actually fought
back. The system pushed back on Brezhnev. It
did. The system was just too entrenched. When
the new Brezhnev Constitution was finally debated
and adopted in 1977, the conservatives within
the government pushed back hard. So they didn't
get the council. No, they ended up keeping the
collegial presidium of the Supreme Soviet as
the highest body of power. The state council
idea was just shelved. Wow. So it was just a
failed vanity project, a bureaucratic ghost lingering
in the administrative background. Exactly. And
this is one of those aha moments you were looking
for in the prompt. We often read history backward.
Right. Assuming every institution was built for
some profound structural reason or grand ideology.
Yeah, but sometimes a proposed constitutional
amendment is literally just about a guy wanting
to walk through a door first. That is amazing.
But that ghost of a vanity project stayed in
the drawer until history came calling with a
genuine existential crisis. And history didn't
just call. It kicked the door down. Literally.
So fast forward. We are in August 1991. The Soviet
Union is experiencing a catastrophic failure.
The August coup. Right. A group of hardline communist
officials attempts a coup d 'etat against Mikhail
Gorbachev to, you know, stop his reforms. The
coup fails, but the damage to the central authority
is terminal. The office of the vice president
is entirely abolished because the vice president
was actually one of the coup leaders. Oh, cock
away. The central government is just an absolute
free fall at this point. The structural integrity
of the state was completely shattered. Yeah,
the central authority had been fundamentally
compromised and the constituent republics saw
their opening. And just to make sure we're grounded
here, before we get into the new councils, we
need to clarify the map for a second. Good idea.
When we talk about the republics pulling away,
specifically Boris Yeltsin gaining power in Russia,
we're talking about the Russian republic pulling
away from Gorbachev's overarching Soviet government,
right? That is a crucial distinction. The Soviet
Union was a federation of 15 republics. Like
states in the US, sort of? Sort of, yes. And
Russia was just one of those republics, albeit
by far the largest and most powerful. OK, so
Gorbachev was the president of the entire Soviet
Union and Yeltsin was the president of the Russian
Republic. Exactly. They were both physically
sitting in Moscow. But Yeltsin's Russian government
was essentially seceding from Gorbachev's Soviet
government. OK, that context makes this next
move even crazier because the central authority
is vanishing, the republics are pulling away.
And so the ghost of the 1970s is resurrected.
The State Council is back. Yes. On September
5, 1991, the State Council of the USSR is officially
formed as the highest organ of state power for
a transitional period. And it holds immense authority
on paper. It can elect a prime minister. It can
choose a successor if Gorbachev is absent. But
the membership is what absolutely baffles me.
It's Gorbachev and the highest officials of the
Soviet Republic. The very people actively dismantling
his empire. Right. Here's where it gets really
interesting. You have an empire falling apart
because the constituent parts want out. And the
central government's solution is to... take the
leaders of those breakaway republics, put them
in a council, and hand them the ultimate authority
over the entire state. I know. It sounds completely
backward. Why would Gorbachev or the central
government think this was a unifying move? It
feels like you're driving a bus, the passengers
are actively trying to hijack it, and your strategy
to maintain control is to just say, here, you
take the steering wheel. Well, if we connect
this to the bigger picture, It becomes clear
that Gorbachev was entirely out of options. He
had nothing else to play. Right. This wasn't
some theoretical exercise in statecraft. It was
a desperate concession to reality. Okay, so it
was forced on him. The source material highlights
this dynamic pretty neutrally, but structurally,
the central Soviet government couldn't enforce
its will anymore. The republics already had the
de facto power on the ground. They already controlled
the streets. Exactly. The creation of the State
Council was an attempt to institutionalize that
reality within a federal framework. It's almost
like saying, you can't fire me because I'm putting
you in charge of my employment. That's a great
way to put it. By giving the republic presidents
the highest state power within a union structure,
Gorbachev was hoping to give them a reason to
stay in the union. A gamble. A huge gamble. He
thought if they became the ultimate authority
of the overarching Soviet state, perhaps They
wouldn't feel the need to completely dismantle
it. OK, so while the State Council is sitting
at the political summit trying to pretend they
still have a country to run, the physical reality
on the ground, the actual day to day economy
is turning into absolute alphabet soup. The political
crisis immediately triggered an economic crisis,
which required an entirely different. parallel
set of emergency measures. Right, because people
still need to buy bread. Exactly. So Gorbachev
establishes a four -man committee to elect a
new cabinet of ministers. Okay, let me make sure
I have these names right. You've got the Russian
Premier, Ivan Selyev, leading it. Correct. Along
with Grigory Avlinsky, Arkady Volsky, and Yuri
Lushkov. Yes, and this little group quickly evolves
into commess. The Committee on the Operational
Management of the Soviet Economy. And Silyev
is named the chairman. The naming conventions
alone tell a story of an administration frantically
trying to sound legitimate, you know? Oh, absolutely.
Operational management sounds so official. And
the escalation of power for this committee is
just dizzying. By August 28th. The Supreme Soviet
temporarily gives Komsiks the exact same authority
as the Cabinet of Ministers. Which essentially
makes Ivan Sileyev the de facto prime minister
of the fading Soviet Union. Basically, yes. But
it doesn't stop there. Of course not. Komsik
is then surpassed in authority by another new
body, the IEC, the Inter -Republican Economic
Committee. And let me guess who leads that. Ivan
Sileyev again. You guessed it. He's chairman
of Compass, he's chairman of the IEZ, and he
is presiding over an economy that is structurally
dissolving in real time. I'm trying to wrap my
head around how impossible that job is. It's
completely impossible. The sources note Silev
was supposed to initiate sweeping market economic
reforms in a way that suited both the central
government and the increasingly independent Soviet
republics. Right. An inherently contradictory
mandate. He has to maintain an integrated economy
across the whole union while simultaneously initiating
marketization while the union itself is actively
breaking apart. Yeah. It's like trying to untangle
a massive sprawling server farm while all the
computers are still alive. But half the IT department
has already quit and locked the server racks
on their way out. How do you even begin to physically
manage that? You don't, because the mechanisms
of a command economy rely entirely on a commander.
Right. When Siliev first took office in this
new role, his initial instinct was decentralization.
He wanted to reduce the powers of the central
government and hand more authority over to the
individual Soviet republics. Letting them manage
their own transitions, which actually seems like
the smart political play. He's trying to adapt
to the fact that the republics hold all the cards
now. It makes sense politically, but the physical
reality of supply chains quickly destroyed that
plan. Oh, because they were all connected. Deeply
connected. When Sileyev tried to let the republics
handle their own economies, the interwoven Soviet
system instantly broke down. Wow. A factory in
Ukraine suddenly stopped shipping vital tractor
parts to a massive collective farm in Russia
because they no longer shared a cohesive currency
policy. Or they just wanted to hoard the parts.
Right. They had instituted sudden export bans
to protect their own local markets. Selyev realized
you can't have a functioning economy if 15 different
republics are writing 15 different sets of trade
rules overnight. Chaos. Total chaos. Without
a functioning center to force coordination, mass
starvation and total industrial collapse were
imminent. So his view abruptly changes? Completely.
He does a total 180 and demands that Boris Yeltsin
give back much of the central authority he had
just usurped. Wait, wait, I'm confused. You just
said the central government was practically a
ghost and the republics held all the actual power
on the ground? Siliev is a smart political operator.
Why would he think he could just demand power
back from Yeltsin? What leverage did he possibly
think he had at that point? He had absolutely
no leverage, only desperation. Seriously, he
just asked nicely. He was relying on the terrifying
reality of the looming economic collapse to convince
Yeltsin to cooperate. He was essentially telling
Yeltsin, if you don't give the center some power
back to manage the supply chains, your own Russian
Republic is going to starve. But Yeltsin didn't
blink. Not for a single second. Yeltsin had the
momentum. He had the popular support and he had
the actual resources. The republics were not
going to surrender the autonomy they had just
seized. Even if it meant economic chaos in the
short term. Selyev's attempt to rein Yeltsin
back in severely weakened his own political position.
He tried to put the genie back in the bottle.
And the genie simply fired him. Wow. By September
26, an anti -Silev faction, led by his own first
deputy premier Oleg Lobov, manages to oust him.
And Lobov succeeds him as the acting premier
of the Russian Republic. So Silev's ousting was
the glaring signal that the experiment was over.
It proved that the central Soviet government,
despite all its new councils and committees,
was rapidly losing any remaining grip it had.
The real consequential power struggles were now
happening entirely within the republics themselves.
Not at the federal level. OK, so Suleyev's utter
failure to reign in Yeltsin proved the center
was dead domestically. But a dying empire doesn't
just have to manage its own citizens, it has
to manage the rest of the world. Right. How on
earth did they project power to Europe or the
United Nations when they couldn't even control
the tractor factories in Moscow? They did it
through pure diplomatic theater. The central
government was still trying to project an illusion
of authority on the international stage. Even
though the house was burning down. Exactly. So
the IEC, that Inter -Republican Economic Committee
we just talked about, eventually transforms yet
again. Now it's called the Interstate Economic
Committee of the Economic Community. That is
quite the mouthful. And its sole function at
this point is just trying to coordinate relations
between republics that are actively declaring
their secession from the USSR. They are essentially
managing their own divorce proceedings. Pretty
much. Yeah. But they're still trying to act like
a unified entity to the outside world. And this
leads to one of the most incredible, tragicomic
details in the entire source text. Oh, I know
exactly what you're talking about. The Energy
Charter. Yes. We are in mid -December, 1991.
The Interstate Economic Committee decides to
show the world that it still has international
intent. and relevance. So on December 16th and
17th, they participate in the signing of the
European Energy Charter alongside 35 other countries.
The Central Soviet government proudly puts its
pen to paper on a major international agreement.
But the authority of that signature was entirely
hollow because the constituent parts of the state
were ignoring it in real time. Right. The article
notes that this grand international gesture was
completely undermined. Because nine of the 12
remaining Soviet republics also stepped up and
signed the charter individually. Right. You have
the ghost of a central government signing a document
while its own constituent parts are standing
right over its shoulder signing it for themselves.
It's amazing. It is the diplomatic equivalent
of a teenager's parents signing a permission
slip and the teenager tapping the teacher on
the shoulder and saying, actually, I'm an adult.
I'll sign for myself. Thanks. Exactly. And this
raises a really profound question about the very
nature of state legitimacy. When does a government
actually cease to exist? Because legally, formally,
the Soviet Union was still a recognized state
on December 16th. Yes, but practically, mechanically.
That energy charter incident proved it was a
phantom. The international community and the
republics themselves had already moved on. The
central authority was a costume with no one inside
it. Just an empty suit. And the timeline of the
final collapse from there is just breathless.
I mean, December 16th and 17th is the energy
charter debacle. By December 19th, ComSE, that
operational economic committee, is just outright
dissolved by a decree from the Russian Republic.
Not a union decree. Yeltsin's Russian decree
simply deletes a Soviet federal committee. Incredible.
Then December 25th Gorbachev announces his resignation
as president and the union government essentially
ceases to exist. And finally, on December 26,
1991, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved
by the Soviet of the republics. Just 112 days.
That's it. That was the entire lifespan of the
State Council of the Soviet Union for September
5th to December 26th, an institution that started
in the 1970s as a petty scheme to get Leonid
Brezhnev a better seat at a banquet lay dormant
for a decade and a half and was suddenly revived
in 1991 as an emergency life raft for a drowning
superpower. And it sank in less than four months.
This is the exact aha moment you were looking
for, though. We often assume that institutions
create power. We think the title, the office,
the constitution is what gives a government its
strength, but the state council proves the exact
opposite. Power creates institutions. And when
the actual power leaves, when the physical control
of the economy and the trust of the constituent
parts evaporates, the institution is just an
empty shell. It's just paper. Yeah. No amount
of renaming, restructuring or forming new emergency
councils can mandate unity if the underlying
reality has fractured. The structure only exists
because we collectively agree it does. which
leaves us with a pretty chilling thought to carry
forward. Well, we've talked deeply today about
the bureaucracy of this collapse, right? The
committees and the paperwork. But what happens
to the physical assets when the legal fiction
of a state vanishes overnight? That is the scary
part. On December 25th, Gorbachev resigned. On
December 26th, the state legally dissolved. Think
about the thousands of nuclear warheads sitting
in silos across Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Russia.
Just waiting there. Think about the millions
of active -duty soldiers, the global spy networks,
the submarines patrolling the oceans that suddenly,
legally belong to a country that no longer existed.
It's a terrifying implication of a bureaucratic
collapse. In those chaotic 24 hours, while the
politicians were busy dissolving the paperwork
of the empire, who was actually holding the steering
wheel for all those weapons, When the paper state
vanishes, the physical reality remains. Something
for you to mull over the next time you see a
massive system start to fracture. Thank you for
joining us on this deep dive. Keep asking great
questions.