THE BIZARRE events of August ethnic war, but a war of territorial conquest — the first in Europe since 1945. As
19-21 in the Soviet Union raise a far as the army operations are concerned, it has been a classical land war in which certain Yugoslav republics — first Slovemultitude of questions that cannot be answered with the ment and making certain policy con-
It cessions to them.
was these moves that provoked Yeltsin's "declaration of war"" against Gorbachev in February 1991. For the first time, nia, now Croatia - are treated as hostile information now available. One countries and their population as the ene-
What has been surprising has been the lukewarm response by the rest of Europe the liberals began calling for Gorbachev's ouster.
Gorbachev liked to describe himself as a "centrist" figure. In the increasingly polarized Soviet reality, to the agony of the Croatian population. However, on the basis of what is Serbia has been relying on divisions in the EC, while its propaganda machine busily foments the image of Germany and Austria bent on recreating a kind of Fourth Reich or at least a new Habsburg Empire.
Milosevic is thus counting on European political confusion and inertia to implement the Chetnik plan forged in World War Two for a Greater Serbia (possibly under a Yugoslav name) shorn of all undesirable nationalities: Albanians, Croats, Hungarians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Muslims, in accordance with the old recipe: kill one third, expel one third and assimilate one third.
### Peace conferences
Every attempt by other Yugoslav leaders to form an alternative model for Yugoslavia - that is, as a confederation of sovereign states — has been sabotaged by Milosevic's Serbia. This is why no peace conference, held in Yugoslavia or in the Hague, will succeed unless and until this regime is defeated.
Its downfall can only be envisaged as the result of a combination of efforts; an economic and political isolation of the regime in Belgrade by Europe as a whole, which would aim to underpin and support resistance by the threatened republics and provinces in Yugoslavia itself and, equally important, the growing rejection of war in Serbia itself — whose potential was shown in the massive March 1991 demonstrations throughout Serbia.
The issue of whether a considerable part of Europe today can look forward to war as its future is being decided in Croatia today. The recognition of every one of Yugoslavia's federal members as a sovereign state in its own right, and within its borders as defined by the last (1974) Yugoslav constitution, and safeguards for the rights of national minorities living within them, form the sole basis for a lasting peace. It is also a precondition for a new, voluntary association of the peoples of Yugoslavia. * known now, the following analysis tentatively presents Itself.
DAVID SEPPO — August 25, 1991
HE COUP came as a surprise to almost everyone. Its astoundingly inept planning and execution almost tempts one to believe that it came as a surprise even to its authors. Of course, there had been much talk of a coup and several coup scares over the past two years. There were also periodic conservative offensives against Gorbachev in higher party bodies. But they all ended in defeat. Meanwhile Yeltsin and his allies moved from victory to victory, gaining strength with every renewed attack by the conservatives against them. This largely explains why, despite all the signals, including a public warning only a week earlier by former Gorbachev aide Yakovlev, the coup caught people off guard.
But in retrospect, both the coup, at least in principle (as opposed to the way it was realized) and its timing are not difficult to explain. In the fall of 1990, Gorbachev abruptly broke off his recently formed alliance with Yeltsin and the liberals and moved towards the conservatives, both in his policy, but especially in the appointment to high positions of several conservative figures, some of whom later led the coup.
Gorbachev's shift was partly motivated by his fear of the social and economic consequences of the liberals' proposed "shock therapy" (the "500-day plan"). But in light of the events of August 19, it seems probable that, like Allende in the months preceding his overthrow, Gorbachev was trying to avert a break with the conservatives and the possible threat of a coup by bringing their representatives into the governthis meant that he had no appreciable political base of his own. If he remained unchallenged for so long as leader, it was because both liberals and conservatives believed they could use him. The liberals saw in him the leader of the reform wing of the bureaucracy, with whom they wanted an alliance, and a man who, given his past and leadership of the CPSU, could keep the conservatives - and especially the apparatuses of repression — under control. The conservatives, despite their distaste for his reforms, had no alternative program of their own and saw in Gorbachev a man of some domestic and international political stature who could serve as a rampart against a total liberal victory. Caught between the liberals and conservatives
When Gorbachev embraced the liberal programme in the summer of 1989, he lost his value to the conservatives. Conservative pressure mounted with it the danger, overt or implicit, of a coup that convinced Gorbachev to move back to the centre (which no longer existed). When Gorbachev appeared to be making common cause with the conservatives, it was the liberals who turned on
Unlike the conservatives, they could not back themselves up with the threat of armed force, but the miners, for reasons partly coincided with liberal aims, struck for most of March and April demanding the resignation, not only of Gorbachev, but of his government and the Soviet parliament. In this, they were joined by a significant number of workers from other sectors and regions, most notably the Byelorussian workers, who struck in April.
Faced with mounting political pressure, the evident failure of the government's and the accelerating general disintegrasin of the cent deal his her and Form 5 sin struck a new deal. This took the form
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is therefore wary of taking appearances for reality and drawing any firm conclusions.
International Viewpoint #212 • September 16, 1991
SOVIET UNION of the April 23 "declaration of ten" between Gorbachev and the leaders of nine republics, promising a union treaty with a heightened role for the republics and new democratic elections to the Soviet parliament. It also made clear that adherence to the union would be strictly voluntary. Finally, the document called for an end to political strikes and the strict observance in the interval of all existing laws.
Negotiations led to a draft of a union treaty that left a very weak central government, whose powers even to collect taxes were in doubt. While there were many interests involved in the coup, the interests of all the major participants were closely bound up with the preservation of the integrity of the USSR. This was the unifying element of the conspir-
The new Yeltsin-Gorbachev alliance completely eliminated any use the conservatives had for Gorbachev. A legal coup was attempted on June 17 when Prime Minister Pavlov, one of the original eight coup leaders, asked parliament for extra powers to deal with the economic crisis, powers that would obviously be taken from Gorbachev.
Three other future conspirators, KGB head Kryuchkov, Interior Minister Pugo, and Defense Minister Yazov, all supported Pavlov. In his speech, spoke of a CIA plan to undermine the Soviet Union and the illusion of aid from powers, who viewed the Soviet Union's collapse as inevitable. Gorbachev counterattacked, calling Pavlov's request ill-conceived and charging conservative forces with trying to destabilize relations between the president, the government, the parliament and the republics. Again, Gorbachev won the battle in parliament.
Attempt to prevent signing of new union treaty
Legal means having failed, only force timed to catch Gorbachev on vacation and to prevent the signing of the union treaty scheduled for August 20. The conspirators seemed concerned to maintain a constitutional facade.
the Prime Minister and the heads of the main apparatuses of repression, the plotters included Vice President Yanayev, former head of the trade union "sick" Gorbachev. Yanayev personifies the conservative wing of the civil administration, people lacking the skills to emerge from the period of reform with their privileges intact, if transformed (the trade union apparatus had traditionally been the dumping ground for mediocre bureaucrats). Starodubtsev, president of the Farmers' Union, was probably meant • to represent the agricultural sector, and • above all its conservative managers.
Baklanov, first deputy of the Defence Council, was a known opponent of defence budget cuts. Tizyakov, President of the Association of State Enterprises, was the industrial counterpart of Baklanov.
the a up is it answered rection on.
No important potential opponents of the coup, except Gorbachev, were arrested. Five hours passed between the announcement of the coup and the first appearance of the armed forces in Moscow. The coup leaders did not assure control of transport (for example, the international airports continued to function more or less normally), telecommunications (foreign media, amazingly, called into the besieged Russian parliament and broadcast from it; the national television news programme on August 19 even reported Yeltsin's call to resist the coup, as did Pravda) or the electric power grids (the defenders of the Russian parliament themselves turned off the electricity to black out the building).
To explain all this away as "errors" is hardly convincing. The KGB may be many things, but it is not amateurish. It might be that the conspirators were indecisive, a fatal flaw in any coup, because they had failed to assure the loyalty of apparatuses of violence, and
Army commanders fail to support coup
From the start, key senior military officials did not support the coup, including the commander of the air force, the top naval commander in the Baltic fleet based in Leningrad, the commander of the Leningrad military district, a senior commander of the whose elite troops were critical to the coup's success, commanders of two of the four guards divisions of the Moscow district. The overwhelming majority of army officers seem to have remained
But this does not yet explain why, despite this critical weakness, the conspirators proceeded. One hypothesis is that they felt that, given the profound dissatisfaction in the army and population with the general situation in the country, they could present the country with a fait accompli and the rest would just fall in
Indeed, "coup" may not adequately describe what was attempted, since the entire government, except Gorbachev, seems to have participated in it. Except for the apparance of tanks in Moscow, government business went on as usual. But one has to admit that there still is no satisfactory explanation for what took place.
Already on the second day of the coup, Pavlov and Yazov had dropped out. Conservative political opposition forces, like the Soyuz fraction in the Soviet parliament, did not support the coup. Its leader, colonel Alksnis, said that he sympathized with the aims of the coup but could not accept its illegality (despite this, the Latvian government has issued a warrant for his address).
All the conspirators were party members, but the party bureaucracy as such was not represented among them, reflectthe drastic decline in its power over the past years. During the coup, the CPSU leadership did not take a public stand, though towards demanded to be allowed to see Gorbachev. In some republics, like Latvia, however, the party leaders openly supported the coup.
It was the political weakness and the internal divisions among the conspirators that played the key role in the coup's rapid defeat, not, as the Soviet and foreign media are claiming, Yeltsin's heroic defiance or popular resistance. Yeltsin's real role appears to have been limited to statements of defiance. He thus constituted a symbol of resistance and a legal rallying point for waverers and opponents of the coup.
This certainly required personal courage on his part, though to act otherwise would have spelled the end of his political career. It is also probable that, by the time the tanks appeared and Yeltsin made his first public statement, over five announced, he already knew that it was in serious trouble and that many military leaders were refusing to join it. Early statements by the US President indicate that US intelligence knew this.
Yeltsin's call to a general strike apparently went unheeded, except among the miners and in a few Sverdlosk factories. It seems that neither he nor his government took any practical steps to organize the strike. It is indeed puzzling that on the very first day of the coup Yeltsin should have called a special session of his parliament for August 21. Had the coup not ended so quickly, the only result would have been to have greatly facilitated the arrest of those deputies foolish enough to show. A more logical move would have been to ask deputies to remain in their districts to organize popular resistance.
No attempt to mobilize population
There is so far no evidence that Yeltsin took any practical steps to mobilize the population. The crowd that assembled spontaneously in front of the Russian parliament, perhaps 150,000 at its peak (compared to the million or so in Tiananmen Square), but most of the time around 20,000, became the focus of Western media attention. But it would not have presented an important obstacle
September 16, 1991 • #212 International Viewpoint to a more decisive coup leadership, even one wishing to avoid excessive bloodshed. All that was required was to cut communications and power to the building, which could then have been isolated and ignored while control over the rest of the country was consolidated.
Except for the three deaths, the entire episode had the unreal air of political theater. But if the coup was a farce, what followed was more like a Broadway musical extravaganza, replete with a fireworks display, a giant pre-revolutionary Russian flag floating through Red Square, the toppling of statues by construction workers, and a 100,000 strong chorus line to back up the star, Boris Yeltsin, who defeated the forces of evil almost single-handedly by the sheer force of his goodness and will power. Symbols are crucial in politics, and contemporary Soviet politics on the popular level are almost all symbol.
Of course, Yeltsin and the liberals emerge from these events greatly strengthened. On the second day of the coup, a somewhat cynical observer in Leningrad predicted that a liberal coup would surely follow the conservative one. Already presidential decree follows presidential decree. There is no real opposition.
The conservatives, very weak to begin with, as the coup showed, are finished as a political force. This includes the Communist Party, which was presented afterwards by Yeltsin to parliament, rather unjustly, as the real author of the coup. It did not take long for Yeltsin to suspend the activities of the Russian CP. In the Baltics it has been outlawed. Gorbachev, who pathetically declared his loyalty to
M. JEANKERS By DE ANGELIS in Il Popolo (Rome) CaW Syndicate the party after the coup only to call for its dissolution soon after, retains no power base at all, except what the republics are willing to give him. That will be very little - even the army will now probably be divided among the republics.
The latter are going to have a fine time sorting out their relations. Yeltsin's supporters cultivating Russian national sentiment. The other republics, all much smaller than Russia, may find their relations with a nationalist Russian giant even more difficult than those with the former central government, which at least had a certain commitment to redistributing wealth to the poorer regions (now condemned as "levelling"). Yeltsin's people at once demanded that the USSR president be a citizen of the Russian republic and they began to appoint their people to critical Union posts. This threatens to accelerate the breakdown of the union and the collapse of cconomic ties between the republics which will lead to truly disastrous consequences in this monopoly-dominated, highly integrated economy. Russia itself is a multi-ethnic republic. Pre-1917 Russia, whose flag is now known as the "prison of peoples". On August 21, Yeltsin pointed out to his parliament that the leaders of the Tatar Republic, a territory of five million pcople in the Russian republic that has declared its independence from Russia and desires to be a direct member of the Union, had sided with the coup. Nor was Tatarstan alone in this.
The coup was not defcated by popular
SOVIET UNION mobilization, which was really quite minimal. A crucial question is why. Even the Moscow crowds celebrating the coup's defeat hardly surpassed the same 100,000 mark that has been reported for virtually every major pro-Yeltsin demonstration. What are the other 8,900,000 Muscovites thinking? And the tens of millions elsewhere? Why did workers, except for the miners, not go on strike? Should this be attributed to political lassitude and apathy, a sense of political impotence, or ambivalence about the coup as well as about the opposing Yeltsin camp?
According to one report, workers in many Leningrad enterprises said they were prepared to strike, if the need arose. In Moscow's factories, nothing much at all seems to have happened. Perhaps this wait-and-sce attitude reflects the people's sense of the coup's weakness, since there were almost no outward signs of it.
These questions are crucial because the next months will see the accelerated introduction of market reform. The fact that the coup was defeated mobilization on the part of the workers strengthens the autonomy of Yeltsin and the liberals in this area: they are, for the moment at least, less dependent on workclass and popular support and will soon even have their own loyal bureaucracies and forces of repression in place. They are indeed well placed to attempt
A convenient scapegoat disappears
On the other hand, it will no longer be possible to blame the deteriorating economic situation on the Communists and on the absence of "real" reform. There will no longer be conservative provocations to bolster the liberals' flagging popularity.
The market reform will cease to be an abstract symbolic issue for workers (the promise of Western wages and living standards), allowing them to define more clearly their attitudes towards it on the basis of the concrete experience of its functioning and consequences. It is also possible that the coup's defeat, despite the limited popular mobilization, will leave the population with an increased sense of its own strength and political efficacy, something the past five years of economic decline have been unable to do.
Will the population remain an essentially passive spectator to the coming transformations, as has been the case so far in Eastern Europe? Or will it follow the example of the miners, organize in defense of its interests and become the author of its own destiny? These are the key questions that will be answered by the new chapter in Soviet history that was opened by this failed coup. *
Yeltsin extends his
International Viewpoint #212 • September 16, 1991 conservative publication, perhaps Sovyetskaya Rossiya, which has been reregistered as a non-party paper, but still identifies with what it terms "honest Russian Communists". On the other wing the Communists for Democracy faction headed by Alexander Rutskoy opted for the creation of a "Democratic Party of Russian Communists" which could have a real following among middle-ranking par-
THE inglorious end of the attempted coup d'etat on August 21 has opened the floodgates for an unprecedented offensive from the liberal-democratic followers of Boris Yeltsin and his
"Democratic Russia" throughout the state apparatus, the media and most spheres of social life. These two weeks have altered the relationship of forces within the apparatus in the most striking manner; a process which is still very much in the making and the contours of which are as yet far from clear.
POUL FUNDER LARSEN — Moscow, September 4, 1991
ELTSIN, riding high on popu-
Y lar anger against the putschists, struck his first blow at the apparatus of the CPSU with a decree suspending the party's activities in the Russian Republic. This move was followed in other republics, in which the party was outlawed altogether.
At the same time Yeltsin banned the party's publications, including mass circulation dailies like Pravda and Sovyetskaya
Rossiya. A few days later, on August 25, nationalization of party property in the
Russian Republic
- real estate, print shops, and cars all included. Similar decisions have been taken in the Ukraine,
Byelorussia and Kazakhstan.
This in turn has ignited a fierce struggle among the different bureaucratic structures hoping to get a share of the CPSU property — the apparatus of the government of the Russian Republic, the Moscow and Leningrad city what remains of the apparatus behind
This "nationalization" has not been subjected to any democratic or popular control and in reality it amounts to a massive redistribution of wealth and power within the bureaucracy.
The stakes are indeed very high. In the city of Moscow, the CPSU's real estate adds up to one million square metres — the Central Committee building in the city centre is 174,000 square metres and has an estimated value of a billion roubles. Rival claims for this building have been made by the Russian Republic
Council of Ministers (who want it as their offices) and by Gavril Popov, the Mayor of Moscow (who wants to rent the building to private - primarily foreign firms). As one former CPSU apparatchik maliciously remarked: "It is strange that this is being done by people who have recently spoken so warmly about the
8 "sacred right to property. In my opinion, this is not just. Actually it is an illegal suspension of the activities of our party. Such a step is not envisaged either in the Law on Social Organizations nor in the Constitution of the USSR, but only in the Law on the State of Emergency. So it now seems we are living under the conditions of a state of emergency."
Meanwhile the CPSU leadership has been totally paralyzed since the end of the coup, exhibiting its political bankruptcy: in the first ten days after August 21 not a single meeting of either the Sccretariat or the Politburo was convened. For the time being it is impossible to assess what remains of the party, which is under strong pressure to dissolve. One high-ranking official of the Moscow Soviet spelled out the message to the forbureaucrats in a very clear manner: if the party decides to dissolve the Mayor of Moscow will offer them cooperation in getting them new jobs and in paying temporary allowances - and if it doesn't there will be nothing. This is an offer that most of the estimated 150,000 unemployed party functionaries cannot refuse.
Credibility of Communist
Party collapses
At the same time whatever remained of the CPSU's credibility has been dealt a devastating blow by the support given the many high-ranking party officials including the first secretaries of the party in Moscow in Leningrad, Yuri Prokoviev and Boris Gidaspov.
It is unclear what remains of the party - but it is clear that it has nothing like the 15 million members it had before the coup. Some of the conservative forces (the Bolshevik Platform of Nina Andreeva and the Communist Initiative) are likely to find a rallying point in a ty functionaries. However it seems that Rutskoy has now given up on Communism and instead decided to form a Russian "Party of Frecdom".
The Yeltsinites have so far played the anti-communist card in a relatively cautious manner, although hints have been thrown out about a "second Nuremberg trial". This is small wonder given the past (often very recent past) of most leading liberals, including Boris Yeltsin himself. However a big campaign has been launched to "unmask the serious supporters of the coup" - the most prominent victim of this being the chairman of the Supreme Soviet Anatoly Lukyanov.
Behind this lies a forceful drive by the Yeltsinites to take control over the key posts and institutions hitherto belonging to the centre. In the media, the banning of the CPSU-press was followed by the liberals taking control of the central TV, TASS and the state news agency TAN, which has been merged with the Russian agency Taking control of the security apparatuses
Almost all central government and state institutions have been taken over or are now under the control of the institutions of the Russian Republic, due to a series of decrees by Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Special attention has been paid by the Yeltsinites to winning control of the army and security forces, with the KGB being divided up and vital parts transferred to the jurisdiction of the Russian KGB.
The Union government has been ousted and replaced by an interim Committee for Governing the National Economy. The composition of this committee - Ivan Silayev, Arkady Volsky, Yuri Lushkov and Grigory Yavlinsky — gives an idea of the alliance that Yeltsin is trying to bring together, one based on the "democratic bureaucracies" of the Russian Republic, Moscow and Leningrad; supported by the new business elites; and incorporating remnants of the CPSU apparatus.
Both Silayev, the Russian prime minister, and Volsky, a former CPSU apparatchik, have close links to the new layers of private entrepreneurs. Silayev is chairman of the Congress of Russian Business Circles and Volsky heads the so-called Scientific-Industrial Association. All the four have a past in the CPSU - none in high-ranking capacities — and are part of the "new nomenklatura" which has oriented towards Yeltsin. In this connection
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SOVIET UNION power
Yevlinsky is an important figure. He is known to have close ties to international capital and Western neo-liberal economists such as the Harvard economists around Jeffrey Sachs, with whom Yavlinsky drafted an economic plan for the G7 summit in London this summer. The fact that within the committee Yavlinsky has been given the responsibility for prepar ing the economic reform programme suggests that a harsh liberalization is on the
In his attempt to gain maximum control, Yeltsin has made extensive use of his power to issue decrees, which the Russian People's Congress granted The aim is to streamline a new power structure, which can work "efficiently" on all levels - that is through decrees and without too many democratic obstacles. To this end, the executive power has been strengthened at the expense of the elected throughout the Russian Republic. The head of the administration of the Soviet, appointed by and responsible to the president, has been given increased powers, which has prompted many, even liberal newspapers speak of "a return to the institution of GovernorGencrals". In addition to the new "Governor-Generals" direct representatives of Yeltsin will supervise the Soviets through the organ the Presidential Control Divisions for the of the Ukraine - the Crimea, Donbass, Kharkov and Odessa. It should be noted that before the coup, when spcaking in Kazakhstan on August 17, Yeltsin explicitly denounced the demands of the conscrvative "Soyuz" group that parts of Kazakhstan should be transferred to the Russian Republic. One Ukrainian historian commented on some of the implications of the Russian claims: "All this excites outbursts of anti-Russian feeling in the Kuban, Kursk, Belgorod and Voronezh regions and around Stavropol and Krasnodar. These, territories, which have a predominantly Ukrainian population, were handed over from the Ukraine to Russia by Kaganovich in 1925-27.5
The danger of inter-Republic conflicts on a large scale led many of Yeltsin's thoughts. The rising criticism of the chauvinist tur was expressed by, among oth-
Here's how well Coffee drile essentLu detense. econonuc functions. …Icet And plamung and what de the republes I get ?
SOVIET UNION the coup, but with Russia as the dominant force; and a military one. The latter will in practice secure Russian hegemony over the army — with most officers being Russians obeying orders from Russian authorities — and by all accounts with a Russian monopoly on atomic weapons.
During the coup and the days that followed the workers movement played only a marginal role, while the left wing
- inside and outside the CPSU - was swept aside by the rapidly unfolding events. This has provoked some soulthe different groups, which are trying to come to grips with the situation. One project, made public at the end of August and receiving considerable attention on the left wing, is an orientation calling for the formation of a Labour Par-
This statement was endorsed by some leaders of the Moscow Federation of
Trade Unions, representatives of the Socialist Party and the Confederation of
Anarcho-
Syndicalists (KAZ) while other contemplate supporting groups the initiative.
According to the declaration,
"the Party of Labour must become a party politically supporting the trade unions and the workers' movement. Only such a party can become an organic part of the international
Two weeks after the coup the mobilizations, their peak only after the coup had
MARGULES
A special decree was issued on August 28 concerning the Moscow Soviet. This decree effectively strips the democratically elected Moscow Soviet of its powers and hands them over to the Mayor of Moscow, Gavril Popov. The Mayor and his apparatus are now in charge of all questions concerning the property and economic affairs of the city - including privatizations, price rises, taxes and so on. The Moscow Soviet is left with largely formal and advisory functions. 4 After some initial hesitation the Moscow Soviet has now started to organize protests against this decision.
The main stumbling block for the alliance led by Yeltsin after the coup has been the question of the future of the Union and the role of Russia within it. There is a strong "unionist" current in the Yeltsin camp who want a Union where Russia will maintain most of the functions previously performed by the centre. This touchy issue came to the forefront of the political debate when several key Yeltsin supporters - including Vice-President Rutskoy, who is a well-known Russian nationalist — suggested that the borders between Russia and the other republics should be revised if the latter chose to
These territorial claims include parts of northern Kazakhstan as well as vital parts figure of Yelena Bonner, who demanded: "the granting of full independence not only to the Baltic Republics but also to all the other Republics, including the autonomous regions such as Tatarstan, Komi, Nagorno-Karabakh and others. "6
This obviously touches on a key point, of the autonomous republics within the Russian Federation to secede are set for a head-on collision with the influential circles promoting the concept of "Great Russia" There are many political forces with an interest in playing on the Russian "national awakening" of the past few years, and which has been even more strongly manifested after the coup. This process could see surprising new alliances — as has been the case with the partial convergence of views between the "Soyuz" chauvinists and leading Yeltsinites.
However, on the level of realpolitik, a temporary consensus has been established with the joint statement by Gorbachev and leaders of ten republics on September 2.? In his speech to the People's Congress, Yeltsin distinguished between three different "unions" within this framework. An economic one, in which all present republics will participate; a political one basically along the lines laid out before failed, are over. The demonstrations by Democratic Russia in Moscow, in connection with the People's Congress, have been comparatively small. But the huge social and economic problems remain and are not likely to diminish as the "shock therapy" prescribed by Yavhave broad popular support and are trying to use this to construct what may be the outline of a new authoritarian constitution. But the outcome is far from certain. The libcrals are a heterogeneous and divided group which has not been able to create a party with real strength and alihough the conservative nomenklatura has been politically outflanked it still represents a social force in the apparatus. Obviously the big unknown are the reactions — and actions — of the working class in the period of profound turbulence which lies ahead. * 1. Kommersant, no. 35, 1991 2. Nezavisimaya gazeta, September 3, 1991. 3. Kommersant, no. 35, 1991. 4. The decree was published in Kuranty, August 31, 1991. 5. Kommersant, no. 35, 1991. 6. Kuranty, September 3, 1991. 7. It is in itself a strong indication of the shift of power towards the republican bureaucracies that this statement was presented not by Gorbachev, but by the President of Kazakhstan, Nasarbayev. 8. Moskovskaya Pravda, August 31, 1991.
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9
The struggle for the state apparatus
International Viewpoint #212 • September 16, 1991
SOVIET UNION budget allocated to what remains of the centre, and to arms expenditure, all signified the loss of jobs and privileges. This "conservatism" of a part of the state apparatus could find a resonance with that, more "classical" in form, of a part of the neo-Stalinist apparatus of the CPSU and the trade unions which senses itself menaced by the application of the economic
MANY questions remain unanswered about the aborted coup that could have led to a repetition of the Tiananmen Square drama in Moscow. Part of the explanation for the defeat of the coup lies in the mobilization galvanized by Yeltsin and the visceral popular rejection of the old system. But it is difficult to understand the amateurism of the putschists - who failed to arrest Yeltsin and others at the same time as Gorbachev - given that at their head were the highest leaders of the apparatuses of state repression. The speed of the defeat, and the reluctance of the generals to fire on a crowd much less numerous than that in Beijing, give an impression of confusion about the very objectives of the coup.
CATHERINE VERLA - August 29, 1991
HE break up of the system has
T accelerated since the beginning of the 1990s with the discrediting of perestroika as a project for the
"modernization" and humanization of the bureaucratic system. The deterioration of the economic situation implied "radical"
remedies and rumours of a coup d'etat had already circulated, in the context of a polarization in which Gorbachev had lost his popular base.
Significant divisions appeared in the state apparatuses, in the first place the army and the party. They reflected the movements from below which have shaken the system to its roots; the weakening of the powers of the centre in relation to the republics to be confirmed by the new treaty of union; the loss of power by the party/state, was announced before the coup by the political regroupment between liberals and
Communist reformers led by Shevardnaze and Yakovlev; and the loss of control of the economy. This explains the extreme fragility of the putschists. But what was the socio-political logic of the coup?
The press has generally characterized the coup
"conservative"
"right as
Or wing", led against a left supposedly incar-
Yeltsin. But there are several nated by of "conservative" and several varieties rights.
The putschists made no appeal to mobilization; evidently they were counting on the passivity of a population profoundly discontented by the degradation of everyday life, a sentiment to which they appealed by announcing lower prices and referring to the dangers of famine linked to the reforms. Their main stated
10 objective was the maintenance of a
Union, equipped with a powerful centre, and a strong law and order line in internal policy. But they did not explicitly disassociate themselves from the liberal market projects.
In international policy the most that can be discerned in the statements of the putschists is a contempt for western "aid" to the Soviet Union and a "patriotic" point of view; the participation of General Kryuchkov (head of the KGB), who had denounced the plot by foreign secret services "seeking to destabilize the Soviet Union" last winter, supports this interpreation. The coup did not represent an 'anti-imperialist" turn, nor was it conser vative in the sense of a return to the old
Mutant bureaucrats
The putschists seem to be "mutants" between the old system of non-capitalist dictatorship, of which the administrative machinery has collapsed, and the new pro-capitalist dictatorship that is emerging. Speculative as this may be, it does allow us to underline the real ambiguities of the coup, linked to the different cleavwith the reinforcement of those who have opted for reconversion in the "market economy".
All the bureaucrats are pragmatically guided by the defence of their material interests. The putschists represented firstly those who are attached to the maintenance of a strong central state apparatus and to whom the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact, and, even before the coup, the affirmation of sovereignty by the republics, the drastic reduction of the and political reforms (as, for example, Yeltsin's decree, made before the coup, against the Party organizations in the workplaces; there also, the loss of jobs can be counted in the millions).
The Russian Communist Party (RCP), created by these latter conservatives, the United Front of Toilers (UFT) of Leningrad, the Interfronts based principally on the population of the non-Russian republics were, in this respect, potential allies of the putschists. They could support their jargon of pseudo "defence of the interests of the workers" and of the USSR, on the line of their programme (with, on the international plane, the classic "internationalist" discourse). But they were not the obvious initiators of the coup and do not seem to have been mobilized to defend it either. They appear to have adopted a waiting posture; the least one can say is that they do not have the wind in their sails. They have nonetheless been designated as guilty for the coup and are suffering in full the effects Frontiers of market Stalinism and state capitalism