John Major was urged to cancel the Soviet Union’s vast debts in return for dismantling its massive nuclear arsenal, papers released to the National Archives have revealed.



As the USSR fragmented into its constituent republics in December 1991, the prime minister received a proposal from the newly founded European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to swap debt-relief for weapons.

The letter from Jacques Attali, head of the London-based organisation, arrived in Downing Street as political events in Moscow erupted into an outburst of independence declarations.

Major’s first year in office was overshadowed by the disintegration of the former communist superpower and the implications for global stability.



The EBRD letter suggested how to deal with the greatest dangers. “Dear John,” Attali wrote, “as you know the world’s main problems with the Soviet Union today are debt and nuclear weapons.



“I should therefore like to propose that we think about using one problem to solve another, that is to say, the organisation of debt-nuclear swap – the partial or total exchange of nuclear weapons against debt relief.

“The price of world peace might only amount to some 1% of the combined annual defence budgets of the G7 [nations].”

Overall Soviet debt was estimated to be $60bn while there were around 25,000 Soviet nuclear devices.



On the same day, 11 December 1991, Major received a note about impending Nato negotiations with the USSR and Russia over reductions in nuclear weapons.



The Foreign Office warned No 10 that French and US aims within Nato were not compatible. The Americans wanted to avoid detailed discussions before the talks; the French were eager to reach an agreed common approach. In his characteristic gift for understatement, Major scrawled on the letter: “Oh dear.”

John Major’s comment, ‘Oh dear’, on the Foreign Office letter

At the beginning of that year, Charles Powell, the prime minister’s outgoing private secretary, pleaded with Major not to be left out of the evolving drama. “On a personal note,” he explained, “I have been involved in every meeting with Mr Gorbachev since our first contact with him in 1984 and might be able to help with this one. I do not want to give an impression of trying to hang on indefinitely but I might make the visit my last and aim to move on at the end of that week.”

In August 1991, military hardliners opposed to the break-up of the USSR staged a coup in Moscow. The Downing Street files contain a transcript of the prime minister’s conversation with Boris Yeltsin, head of the Russian Federation parliament, who was besieged in the building known as the White House.

On 20 August, Major was on the line to Yeltsin explaining the actions being taken by the European Union to support transition to democracy.



“Yeltsin interrupted to say that tanks were moving towards the building from which he was speaking,” the translation of his comments recorded. “He had only five minutes or so left. He was grateful to the PM for his support … Intense efforts were being made to take the building in which he and his colleagues were blocked for the second day running.”

Yeltsin could not rule out that the building would be stormed but said “hundreds of thousands of his supporters” were out on the streets.

The coup was defeated after four days. Norma Major, the prime minister’s wife, was eager to contact Mrs Gorbachev, who had been held captive with her husband in Crimea.



“The Soviet foreign ministry [has] passed on to Raisa Gorbachev Mrs Major’s wish to have a telephone conversation,” a letter in the Downing Street files shows. “Mrs Gorbachev was grateful for Mrs Major’s sympathetic concern but because of the events of last week, she was not well, could not make a call at present. She hopes to do so in due course.”

As the USSR entered its final months of existence, the chancellor of the exchequer, Norman Lamont, warned Major in September 1991 about the risks of becoming financially involved. “The view shared among G7 countries,” he said, is “that now is certainly not the time to be risking large sums of public money in the Soviet Union.”

But the collapse of the communist system triggered pleas for food aid. In November, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, the British ambassador in Moscow, cabled London that the “chairman of the [Soviet] state bank said there was only enough money (3bn roubles) to pay wages for army and state workers for three days”.

Major sent a note to Gorbachev in early December offering extra grants for food aid and medical supplies. He also gave £20m in food aid to St Petersburg. There had been counter-arguments within Whitehall that subsidising food would disrupt the emergence of private markets.



One moral dilemma was over demands from the newly independent Baltic states for the return of £100m gold bullion that had been deposited in London in 1940, shortly before Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania were overrun by Soviet troops during the second world war. The gold had, in the meantime, been sold by the UK government.



On 20 December, David Mellor, chief secretary to the Treasury, wrote to No 10: “Having considered the issue carefully, I have concluded that the UK should return the gold or its equivalent at today’s prices.”

The USSR was formally dissolved on Boxing Day 1991.