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The summer p of 1991 was a breakthrough for the declining Soviet Union. The era of the beloved Mikhail Gorbachev ended in the West, because glasnost and perestroika did not fill the store shelves, but they caused the process of disintegration of the Empire. The Soviet tanks came back with long columns from Europe, Germany was already a country, from Poland to Bulgaria, the communists were losing power and new governments were turning away from the Kremlin.
The Soviet Union already existed, but it was squeaking already. The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic unilaterally declared its independence in March 1990 and Estonian even earlier. But Gorbachev's biggest concern was the prospect of losing the USSR. Former secretary general of the CPSU, then president of the Soviet Union, he realized that the independence of Ukraine meant the end of the USSR. And at the same time his political career.
At the end of July, George H.W. was in a hurry to help Gorbachev. Bush, who with his wife spent a few days in the Moscow Dacha of the Soviet President. In the cordial atmosphere, sipping Georgian wine, the US President expressed his horror with the vision of the collapse of the USSR – in his view the Yugoslav version could have been repeated. So Bush promised to help – support the integrity of the USSR and the authority of Gorbachev himself.
On August 1, there was a historic event – for the first time in history, the President of the United States arrived in Kiev, and one of the points of the visit was his speech to the parliament then to the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR. As the cavalcade with the presidential limousine swept the streets, she was greeted by American flags and jubilant crowds. But there were also protesters, because Bush senior refused to meet the leaders of the independence movement. However, even they did not expect the president of America to call on Ukrainians to support the unity of the USSR and to be loyal to Gorbachev. Bush did not take the word: the independence movement called "suicidal nationalism" and scared Kyiv with the ghost of satrapy replacing the rule of the enlightened Mikhail.
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