Service Under President George H.W. Bush
Reagan’s Vice President, George H. W. Bush, won election to succeed him. The first President Bush also found need for the counsel of Strauss. In the Soviet Union, President Mikhail Gorbachev was attempting to reform the communist system and forge a new relationship with the United States. His efforts faced opposition from hard-liners within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, while newly elected leaders in the Union's constituent republics agitated for more and more autonomy. President Bush appointed Strauss to serve as Ambassador to the Soviet Union, in hopes that Strauss's proven skills as a negotiator would ease the transition to a new era. The Soviet Union was also starting to transition from a dictatorship to a democracy, making it important to show that party membership should no longer be a requirement for political office and that political opposition should no longer be considered treason but rather, to use a British term, "loyal opposition", making Bush's selection of one of his own opponents especially significant. It was reported that Bush told Strauss that Bush had selected Strauss because Strauss said that he had voted against Bush and intended to do so again.
In August 1991, only weeks after a state visit by President Bush, reactionary members of the Communist Party and a few high-ranking officers of the military and KGB attempted to seize power and restore the old dictatorship. The coup collapsed, but Gorbachev's leadership had been fatally injured. Strauss presented his credentials to President Gorbachev only hours after Gorbachev resigned his post as Chairman of the Communist Party. While Strauss served in Moscow, the first elected President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, emerged as the most powerful figure in the fragile union. With the agreement of the elected presidents of the other constituent republics, the Soviet Union was officially dissolved and replaced by a loosely associated Commonwealth of Independent States.
In December, Gorbachev resigned the presidency of a super-state that had ceased to exist. Strauss was quickly re-appointed as Ambassador to the largest of the Soviet Union's successor states, the Russian Federation. With Strauss's assistance, President Yeltsin quickly established amicable relations with the United States. Strauss resigned this post shortly after the 1992 presidential election in the United States and returned once again to private law practice with Akin Gump.
Read more about this topic: Robert Schwarz Strauss
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