The Foreign Service Journal, December 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2021 51 George Krol retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2018, concluding a 36-year career during which he served in Poland, India, the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine, and as ambassador to Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. In the State Department he held positions as, inter alia, deputy assistant secretary of State for Central Asia and director of the Office of Russian Affairs. Ambassador Krol is currently an adjunct professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I., lectures locally on foreign policy topics and is an associate of Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Practical Lessons for Today’s Foreign Service U.S. diplomats in the former USSR had a unique opportunity to better comprehend the world and practice their craft. BY GEORGE KROL T hirty years ago this month, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist. At the time, I was a relatively junior diplo- mat, on my third overseas tour, assigned to the American consulate general in what was then called Leningrad. Little did I—or anyone else—know that the assignment would end two years later in the renamed city of St. Petersburg, in a world trans- formed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. I spent most of 1991 traveling to Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn to report on the historic efforts of the Baltic republics to reassert their independence from the Soviet system. In July a Latvian parlia- mentary contact, Mavriks Vulfsons, asked me to be in Riga on Aug. 19 because he had heard “something big would happen that day.” Driving to Riga in my trusty Chevy Nova on Aug. 18, I woke up the next morning in a city under siege. Armed Soviet security forces stood outside my hotel opposite the Ministry of Internal Affairs building and had occupied key roads and bridges. I turned on the radio and TV and heard Soviet media reporting that Gorbachev had been “taken ill,” signaling the start of the attempted coup by Communist Party hardliners that most expected would trigger a crackdown in the upstart Baltic republics. I quickly left the hotel, skirting the armed troops, and made my way to the Latvian Foreign Ministry, which was nearly deserted. I found Foreign Minister Janis Jurkans sitting alone in his office, smoking his pipe and considering his options, including a possible dash to Sweden. From his office, I was able to contact the State Department Operations Center to convey Jurkans’ message to Secretary Baker: There’s a coup underway in Moscow that may crush Latvia’s quest for independence; please do whatever you can to stop it. COVER STORY WHEN THE SOVIET UNION COLLAPSED