12 Days: Coronation of Charlemagne and the collapse of the Soviet Union

Summary

This The Rest Is History Christmas Day episode pairs Charlemagne’s coronation in Rome on 25 December 800 with Mikhail Gorbachev’s resignation on 25 December 1991. The first half explains how papal insecurity, Frankish military power, Carolingian legitimacy needs, Irene of Athens’s rule in Constantinople, and Roman sacred geography combined in a new western imperial claim.

The second half compresses the Soviet Union’s endgame into the failed August coup, Boris Yeltsin’s rise, Ukraine’s independence vote, republican agreement, Gorbachev’s televised resignation, and the lowering of the Soviet flag. The pairing treats empire-making and state dissolution as institutional processes whose decisive ceremony became visible only after authority had already shifted.

Key Claims

• The eighth-century papacy turned toward the Carolingians because Byzantine protection in Italy weakened while Lombard pressure increased, and the Frankish dynasty gained sacred legitimacy in return.
• After an attack by Roman opponents, Pope Leo III sought Charlemagne’s protection; Charlemagne later restored him and presided over a settlement that strengthened both men.
• Charlemagne’s conquest, territorial scale, Frankish-papal alliance, Rome’s prestige, and the contested status of Irene’s rule were used together to justify a revived western imperial title.
• The Christmas Day coronation made papal ritual central to Roman Imperial Legitimacy, although Einhard’s claim that Charlemagne was surprised is treated skeptically by the hosts.
• Gorbachev’s simultaneous political and economic reforms weakened old controls without producing a stable replacement, while worsening material conditions reduced his domestic authority.
• The failed August 1991 coup left Gorbachev formally restored but enabled Yeltsin to ban the Russian Communist Party, dominate the center, and embody an alternative Russian sovereignty.
• Ukraine’s independence referendum and the agreement among Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian leaders removed the institutional basis of the union presidency before Gorbachev formally resigned.
• The post-Soviet economic shock and loss of status shaped later Russian support for order, Putin’s collapse narrative, and Chinese Communist warnings against combining political and economic opening.

Key Quotes

“would not have entered the church” - Einhard’s later claim about Charlemagne’s supposed ignorance of the planned coronation, which the hosts doubt.

“geopolitical tragedy” - the episode’s compressed rendering of Putin’s later description of the Soviet collapse.

Connections

• Charlemagne, Pope Leo III, and Irene of Athens - ruler, pope, and eastern empress whose positions shaped the western coronation.
• Holy Roman Empire and Roman Imperial Legitimacy - later imperial order and the contested grounds of its Roman claim.
• Mikhail Gorbachev / 米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫, Boris Yeltsin, and Soviet Union - final union president, Russian rival, and dissolving state in the 1991 branch.
• Dual Sovereignty State Dissolution - mechanism through which Russian and union authority became incompatible.
• Failed Coup Authority Transfer - process by which the August coup accelerated Yeltsin’s rise and Gorbachev’s eclipse.
• 160. The Fall of the Soviet Union - fuller later episode covering the same Soviet endgame.

Contradictions

• No settled contradiction is adopted. The Soviet half broadly corroborates 160. The Fall of the Soviet Union but gives greater attention to the symbolism of Gorbachev’s broadcast, signature, and the Kremlin flag change.
• Calling the coronation the dawn of the Holy Roman Empire is useful as an origin claim but does not erase later fragmentation, the break before Otto I, or continuing Byzantine Roman identity.
• Charlemagne’s prior knowledge, the timing and political use of the Jerusalem delegation, Leo’s reported mutilation and recovery, leader motives, post-Soviet economic causation, and the influence of the collapse on later Russian and Chinese policy remain episode-attributed or source-scoped.