Global Week. The former presidents of Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania met in Gothenburg on Tuesday. Ukraine's Leonid Makarovich Kravtjuk, Belarus' Stanislau Sjusjkievitj, Lithiania's Vytautas Landsbergis and the former undersecretary of Russia and one of Boris Jeltsin's closest men, Gennadij Burbulis, discussed the dissolution of the Soviet Union at a seminar organised by the University of Gothenburg.
Vytautas Landsbergis told of his conversations with Gorbatjov around the time when Lithauania, as the first of the Soviet Union's republics, declared its independence on March 11, 1990.
- It was a difficult start to difficult negotiations. Gorbatjov's reply was that he would never agree to negotiate with a part of his own country, said Landsbergis (cited in GP).
But the development was unstoppable. One after another, the former republics declared their independence. The former undersecretary, Gennadij Burbulis, had the most positive things to say about Gorbatjov.
- He was an extraordinary politician and person. All of us here are the products of the development he started.
Burbulis also said that Gorbatjov's aim to save the Soviet Union in 1991 was deemed to fail, and said the Soviet Empire at this time had become a "political Chernobyl". The pressures of the totalitarian military state ended in an explosion.
The first president of Belaruse, Stanislan Sjusjkievitj, was not as impressed by Gorbatjov.
- Gorbatjov made some terrible remarks in connection to Chernobyl, so my attitude towards him has been negative ever since (cited in GP).
Landsbergis showed a previously secret document, which is said to be a proposal from 1990 to keep the Soviet Unioin as it was, but change Gorbatjov to Boris Jeltsin.
Burbulis said he had been sad to see the country where he grew up fall apart. But this feeling was not shared by Landsbergis and Kravtjuk - their countries had always been Lithuania and Ukraine, not Soviet.
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