Jack Matlock served as U.S. Ambassador to Russia during the final years of the Reagan administration and the first year of the Bush I administration, from 1987 to 1991. During that time, according to his account, despite the many duties falling to him to perform in Moscow, he managed to visit each of the union republics, where he held discussions with their leaders as well as to hobnob with the citizenry. This particular assignment, in addition to four earlier assignments in the Russian capital, and as a Soviet affairs expert in Washington, D.C., enabled Matlock to gain an exceptional perspective on the broad USSR landscape.

Autopsy of an Empire is the perfect title for this book, which runs to 740 pages of narrative which are interspersed toward the end with excellent maps illustrating the different regions of the former Soviet Union as the author focuses on each of them in turn regarding the implications for becoming viable, independent states. The narrative is followed by several pages devoted to a list of the who’s who of the Russian personages involved in the process of the break-up of the Soviet Union, extensive chapter notes, a bibliography, and an index, for a total of 836 pages.

Matlock not only had a front-row seat to the events leading up to the dissolution of the USSR; he was actively sought out by leaders, especially from the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to act as a sounding board as they contemplated declaring independence. He established a close relationship with USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Eduard Shevardnadze. However, as he said in his section entitled ‘Acknowledgements,’ “The book devotes more attention to my experiences than objectivity would require and I personally would prefer. Yet these experiences are precisely those that only I can record in detail, and I offer them not to “prove” that I was the center of events – of course, I was not – but only to offer whatever insights my glimpses of the central events may provide.”

The book is a detailed report – as only an experienced analyst/diplomat could generate – of the critical events surrounding the final years and, subsequently, days of the Soviet Empire, beginning just months after Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev met in Reykjavik and ending a week before the attempted coup to oust Gorbachev. Thus ends the eye-witness account; but, based on extensive research and personal interviews, the author continues his narrative in a seamless fashion, to complete the timeline from the return of Gorbachev to Moscow subsequent to the botched coup to the final demise of the USSR and the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The final chapter of the book is the author’s assessment of each of the states’ likelihood to succeed as an independent state, based on his description of the internal conditions existing in them at the time they became independent.

Matlock tells the story of his wife’s conversation with a Russian friend of hers who complained in September 1992 about the price of pineapple, an item that had never been on the shelf when he had served in Moscow. The Russian exclaimed, “See how much we’ve changed! We didn’t worry about the price when we couldn’t get something, and now the price is the only problem!” [Comment: I cite this because of the Russians’ fascination with pineapple. The Russian Symbolist poets of the late 19th – early 20th century used the pineapple as the symbol of paradise. I would like to imagine that Matlock used this illustration of newly-acquired wealth because of this knowledge.]

Autopsy of an Empire is a primary source, with the exception of those chapters addressing the post-coup situation in the USSR prior to its dissolution, readily available to take the amateur Sovietologist or political science enthusiast on a journey through the figurative swamps and hedgerows and along the superhighways of the crumbling Soviet Union via the vehicle of this evenly balanced volume, in which observation leads to analysis that is focused on the implications of those observations.

As pertains to an analysis of an independent Russia (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR)), Matlock noted the following insights:

“Emotionally and spiritually, Russia still had to redefine itself if democracy was to have a chance. Democracy could develop and flourish only if the Russian nation remained content to live within its current borders and cultivate a relationship of equality with its neighbors. Attempts to reassemble the old Russia, the empire, would inevitably lead to dictatorship in Russia itself and misery for everyone in the neighborhood.” [Italics mine] (p, 676)

“An unreformed Russia will not have the strength for empire. A reformed Russia will not have the will.” (p, 678, statement made in 1995)

“…the long-term choice is between democracy and an autocracy that would threaten not its neighbors but Russia itself. Attempts to rebuild an empire would more likely trigger the fragmentation of Russia than the subjugation of neighbors.” (p. 738) [Comment: While this is a profound statement, it would appear that Matlock did not foresee the rise of a ruler such as Putin, whose ideology of revanchism would indeed not only threaten but proceed to annihilate a former member of the USSR in order to regain lost territory.]

“As for Russia, it must, in the long run, reform or fall apart. True reform is going to take time – most likely measured in generations rather than years or even decades – and there will doubtless be setbacks, but Russia, like every other nation, can fulfill its potential only as a part of the wider world.” (p. 739)

The author took a keen-witted scalpel in hand as he offered his autopsy report, to sum up this outstanding tome of contemporary history:

“Autopsy Report – The Demise of the USSR

The deceased was a being of vicious habits that his physicians set out to cure. They managed to alleviate the patient’s paranoia and curb his aggressive behavior, but the drugs administered undermined his immune system, and he eventually died from the spread of infections that would not be life-threatening to a healthy body.

Since the patient’s vicious habits had caused the death of tens of millions of people and continued to blight the lives of hundreds of millions, it was manifestly more important to cure the habits than to save patient. Furthermore, the patient’s chronic resort to power abuse had created a sclerotic system that was minimally responsive to therapeutic intervention. The responsible physicians, therefore, should be credited with fulfilling their most important objective. The fact that the patient failed to survive the treatment should be regarded as a consequence of the patient’s self-induced morbidity rather than the treatment administered.

Fifteen offspring, three illegitimate, survive the deceased. All have expressed a determination to avoid the behavior patterns that undermined the health of the deceased and from which, indeed, all suffered. However, it should be noted that the offspring may carry some of the genetic material that contributed to the deceased’s depravity. Malignancies are in fact already evident in some. Therefore, community medical authorities should keep the surviving generation under attentive, though sympathetic, observation.”

According to the nationsonline.org website:

In 1993 Georgia joined the CIS, but as a result of the armed conflict over South Ossetia (Russo-Georgian War), Georgia declared its withdrawal from the CIS on 14 August 2008.

Since 25 August 2005, Turkmenistan has also been an associate member only, to comply with its international neutrality status recognized by the United Nations.

Ukraine largely suspended its participation in the CIS beginning in 2014 and, in 2018, withdrew its representatives from all CIS statutory bodies as a result of the Russian Federation’s annexation of Crimea and Russia’s involvement in the war in the Donbas.