Historical Backdrop for Moscow Airlift
Long after most of us are in the ground, 1991 will be viewed by historians as one of the most eventful and significant years in world history. Six events that either culminated in or happened during 1991 had a significant long-term effect on the history of the world. All were woven into Moscow Airlift‘s plot.
When the year began, the Soviet Union was financially, economically, culturally, and politically in trouble. Its citizens, emboldened by Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika and glasnost and the declarations of independence by its own republics and the defections from the Warsaw Pact, were becoming more vocal in their opposition to Communist Party rule. They clamored for better quality Soviet made and Western consumer goods along with an improved standard of living. Shortages of everything from food to medicine were part of the daily fabric of life.
The problems the Soviet Union faced in 1991 were the culmination of years of attempting to compete with the West while dedicating twenty percent of its economic output to defense. The core of President Reagan’s strategy to end the Cold War was to bankrupt the Soviet Union by forcing it into an arms race it couldn’t afford. The Soviet Union didn’t have the resources – money or technology – to keep up with the West. The deployment of stealthy aircraft made its entire air defense network obsolete. Add a viable missile defense known at the time as Star Wars and suddenly, the Soviet Union’s fleet of ICBMs was obsolete. New equipment deployed by modernized NATO and U.S. armed forces made them technologically and qualitatively superior to what the Red Army and its allies could field.
Gorbachev was trying to convert the Soviet economy to one that could compete in the world and needed a currency that could be used as the basis of financial transactions. His problem was simple to explain, but difficult to fix. Valuing transactions with the Soviet Union was extremely complex and potentially risky because the ruble was not traded on Western currency exchanges, so its value was impossible to establish. Western governments and businesses had little faith in the stability or the long-term value of the Soviet currency.
Compounding the currency exchange problem, the Soviet Union faced was its historically low foreign currency reserves at the beginning of 1991. It had been selling natural resources, primarily gas and oil to the west to earn U.S. dollars and British pounds to pump up its reserves. Gorbachev was depleting those reserves on foreign goods faster than they were earned. In short, the Soviet Union was running out of cash and the financial and economic problems culminate in “event 1.”
Inflation was high and on the verge of going out of control. During the year, the Soviet 50- and 100-ruble notes issued in 1961 were withdrawn from circulation, effectively devaluating the ruble. Soviet citizens could only convert old rubles for new ones at a rate of 500 rubles per month. At the time, the Soviet Union didn’t have a banking system like what we have in the West. Many if not most citizens hoarded cash in their homes because they didn’t trust Soviet banks to protect their cash. The reissue of new rubles made their life savings almost worthless.
This created event #1: the Soviet Union was in deep trouble financially and Gorbachev and many in the West knew it. What we didn’t know was how bad it was. The closest description Western businessmen would use is that the country needed to go through a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in which what few assets would be sold off to pay off its debts. However, for the U.S.S.R., it was far more complicated problem in that the country didn’t have the government mechanisms to solve the financial crisis.
Another historic problem is that the Soviet Union and now Russia can’t feed itself. This problem continues to plague Russia to this day. 1990 figures show the Soviet Union’s farm production had been dropping an average of five percent per year while the population grew at three percent over the past three years. To make up for the shortfall, the Soviets bought grain and meat from the West, primarily the U.S. and Canada.
Event #2 occurred in In January 1991, just before Desert Storm began when the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed a historic agreement in which the Soviet Union guaranteed it would buy a minimum of four million metric tons of wheat from the U.S. every year. When the agreement was signed, Gorbachev knew the country would be hard pressed to find the money to pay for the grain.
In June 1991, the United States faced pressure to cut off grain sales to punish the Soviet Union for its repressive actions in the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Nevertheless, the U.S. offered $1.4 billion in loan guarantees to pay for the grain. If these guarantees hadn’t been made, the Soviet government wouldn’t have enough to feed the country. This is the second significant event that influenced the development of Moscow Airlift’s plot. A potential food shortfall and emergency shipments is the genesis of Operation Deny Famine.
Event #3 is the combination of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Together, these constituted the largest military operation since World War II. After a month-long bombing campaign, the Allied Coalition ejected the Iraqi Army from Kuwait in 100 hours.
Trying to buy time for his regime and to show that perestroika and glasnost were working, Gorbachev allowed a plebiscite on March 22nd in which the citizens of the U.S.S.R. would vote on if their individual Soviet Socialist Republics should remain part of the Soviet Union. Amazingly 77% of the population voted against remaining a member of the U.S.S.R. In Ukraine, the population, even in the eastern part of the country, overwhelmingly voted to leave the Soviet Union. This is Event #4.
Event #5 is the attempted coup in the Soviet Union. Several members of the Politburo tried to take power in August 1991 to prevent Gorbachev from dissolving the Soviet Union at the end of the year. Even though the newly and relatively freely elected Russian Parliament voted overwhelmingly for the change, hardliners within the KGB and Communist Party saw it as a threat to their power. The events depicted in Moscow Airlift follow the timeline of the attempted removal of Gorbachev. What’s fiction are the actions of the books’ characters during the coup.
Event #6 is the official death of the Warsaw Pact on July 25th, 1991, which was the termination date in the original treaty. However, the pact’s demise began when in a December 1989 speech at the U.N., Gorbachev announced he was unilaterally reducing the number of troops in Eastern Europe and his country was going to assume more of a “defensive posture.” The reality was the treaty had been dead for almost a year because its member states had voted for independence from the Soviet Union in 1990 and most of the Red Army had come home. Three countries – Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary – were members of the Desert Storm/Shield coalition and sent troops to Saudi Arabia.
As per the terms of the March 1991, plebiscite on December 26th, 1991, The Russian Federation came into existence with Boris Yeltsin as its president and Mikhail Gorbachev was out of office. Yeltsin was now leading a nation in financial, social, and political trouble with absolute zero experience as a democracy in Russia’s and the Soviet Union’s history. Many of the former Soviet republics had already declared their independence from the Soviet Union and used the creation of the Russian Federation as an excuse to move farther from Moscow’s influence.
One of the more interesting rumors about the end of the Soviet Union is an assertion made by Sergei Treyakov, a senior KGB officer who defected in 2000. He claimed the last official head of the KGB – Vladimir Kryuchkov – supposedly sent US$50 billion worth of Communist Party funds to an unknown location in the last days of the Soviet Union. The funds still haven’t been found. One can only wonder if Gorbachev could have used those funds to help solve his country’s financial problems in the late 1980s.
Almost before the ink was dry on the creation of the Russian Federation of Socialist Republics, Ukraine declared its independence and wanted no part of Russian hegemony. At the time, elected leaders stated the country’s desire to become a member of the EU and ultimately NATO. In 2014, in a national referendum, a decisive majority of Ukrainians in every oblast voted to move farther from Russia and begin the political, economic journey to qualify to become a member of the EU and eventually, NATO.
After spending 23 years trying to install a regime favorable to Moscow or to destabilize the Ukrainian’s attempt to create a functioning democracy, Putin realized that the Ukrainians were not going to bend to his will and accept Russia domination. Shortly after the 2014 Olympics, Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2014 and then again in February 2022.
In October 2024, the largest war on the European Continent since World War II is approaching its third year and shows no sign of ending. The Ukrainians are steadfast in their determination to be independent and join the EU and NATO. Putin has pushed all his chips on the table to prevent this from happening.
Time will tell, but time is not on the side of the Russians if for nothing else, freedom is a powerful motivator. Beginning in 1775, the Founding Fathers of the United States fought the richest and most powerful country for eight years and four months to a standstill before the British finally agreed to allow the Thirteen Colonies to become an independent.
Marc Liebman
Originally written in March 2018
Updated in October 2024