Workshop organised by The Leonid Nevzlin Center for Russian and East European Jewry / European University Institute, Department of History and Civilization / Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam (ZZF)
1991 is the much ignored step-brother of 1989, especially in Western historiography. 1989, which is just now loudly remembered for its 30-year anniversary, saw the rapid, and partly unexpected, collapse, of communist Eastern Europe. It is often forgotten that the big brother of these collapsing regimes, the Soviet Union, survived that year intact, precisely because it chose not to interfere in the dissolution of its outer empire. Indeed, in the first two years of 1990, the Soviet Union was busy reforming itself, drew up new rules of engagement with its constituent republics and had its first free elections. On 1 January 1991 the Soviet Union looked troubled but not dead. On 31 December 1991 Gorbachev emptied his office, leaving the Kremlin without even receiving a formal farewell. Clearly, while long-term factors played a significant role and have found ample attention by social scientists and historians, something happened in 1991 – and that something was more than the August Putsch. We know surprisingly little about what this something was.