The last try

The USSR had long lost all historical opportunities of making any kind of reforms. The first time it was when Sta-lin got the better of the rightists in his power play for VKP (B) [acronym for the Russian All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)] leadership. The second time was after the dictator’s death. Then there were desperate attempts to somehow improve the lamentable situation, namely reforms ordered by Aleksei Kosygin, then Chairman of the Soviet of Ministers. His reforms proved controversial and shallow, but they met with pitched resistance from the nomenklatura and ended up as yet another farce. It then became clearly apparent that the Soviets were subject to no reform by definition. However, the situation showed signs of improvement after the world oil crisis broke out and oil dollars started pouring in, in return for Soviet oil supplies. This hard currency influx prolonged the Soviet empire’s agony and created an illusion of well-being.

I might as well point out that this oil-dollar influx was directed not only at the USSR. It was then all who knew and/or cared realized the full scope of unprofessionalism of the nomenklatura in dealing with the oil dollars, compared to even the Persian Gulf countries, letting alone Norway and, partially, Great Britain. Those countries showed a markedly balanced and far-seeing approach. Take the Emirates. Today it is hard to visualize the leap this system made, demonstrating remarkable progress, all because they knew how to dispose of the oil dollars. China is an even better example. Under Deng Xiaoping, the PRC started on a road leading to deep-reaching reforms, primarily in the economic domain. The Chinese nomenklatura knew where to stop and so they avoided the catastrophe and could later retreat far from the edge of the abyss. What happened in the Soviet Union and in Communist China requires a closer look. Leonid Brezhnev’s (later Yurii Andropov’s) adviser, Fedor Burlatsky, made a trip to China and spoke with Deng Xiaoping and other ranking Chinese bureaucrats, trying to figure out and share their experience. It just didn’t work. The Soviet top-level nomenklatura did not want any deviations from the good old routine while the masses could no longer tolerate the economic chaos and empty food and grocery shelves. All of Soviet society was permeated with dissatisfaction with the existing system, except that there were various manifestations of this dissatisfaction.

US sociologist Jack Goldstone brought forth the theory of revolution as part of a conflict situation within the ruling class. In the USSR, the middle class was not pleased with the top-level nomenklatura. In fact, Mikhail Gorbachev tried to rely on the second oblast/regional party secretaries when he made a belated attempt to carry out reforms and make the Soviet bureaucracy respond to popular requirements. This would have become a reality, but for the time factor — also due to the high mobility of the bureaucratic machine. This machine had got hopelessly stuck at the time. Besides, no Soviet bureaucrat could figure out what had to be done under the new circumstances. Also, the Second World War and then the Cold War created a huge military-industrial complex in the USSR, something Stalin in his time was afraid of and struggled against its generals, relying on what he believed were good time-tested methods. (One is reminded of the NKVD-fabricated Leningrad and Aircraft cases where the emphasis, besides the usual party power play, was on the weakening of the generals’ influence.) It was a losing time. Stalin lost it. And so did Gorbachev decades later (being no match for Uncle Joe).

Everyone realized that something had to be done about the situation with the decaying Soviet Union, except that the Kremlin and Kremlin-affiliated political groups had varying views on the solution to this problem.

In the late 1980s, with the glasnost campaign underway, there emerged a national-liberation movement that received a quick impetus in the Baltic republics [generally known to Western historians and politicians as the Baltic States] and Ukraine. Shortly afterward, the [Soviet] republics in the South Caucasus followed suit. I happened to visit Tatarstan in early 1990. What with the tangible presence of Russian ethnic populace, everyone was disgusted with Moscow’s centralized command. A si-milar situation, even if to a lesser degree, existed in its next-door neighbor, Bashkiria [currently: Bashkortostan].

The great Soviet dissident and democrat, Academician Andrei Sakharov, was the first to declare that the Soviet Union could not exist the way it was. He proceeded to work out a new constitution of free European and Asian states, whereby the USSR should be reorganized as a confederation. He wasn’t destined to accomplish this pro-ject. However, some of his concepts (even if abridged) were used as the basis of the new Union Agreement slated for endorsement on August 20, 1991.

It didn’t work out, either, and nor could it have done, considering the resolute refusal of the Baltic States and the Caucasus republics, with the Ukrainian leadership going through the motions of participating. Pravda published the final draft text on August 15. Gorbachev, in his Moscow television appearance (August 3, 1991), said the agreement would be signed, August 20, by Belarus, Kazakhstan, RSFSR, Taji-kistan, and Uzbekistan. The leaders of Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan postponed the signing of the agreement until the fall. The Soviet Union was ready to fall apart and the attempted coup on August 18, 1991, dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s.

Conspiracies do not emerge spontaneously. They are hatched. The same applies to GKChP (State Emergency Committee) during the abortive coup in 1991. KGB bosses had been trying to constitutionally impose a state of emergency since late 1990, but they received no support from either Gorbachev or the USSR Supreme Soviet. Therefore, in spite of tanks on the streets and the danger of the Moscow White House being taken by storm, the whole event resembled a flopped vaudeville. The trembling hands of Vice-President Yanayev and the alcoholic intoxication of Council of Ministers Chairman Pavlov showed that the putsch was a nonstarter. The plotters were even unable to establish full control over Central Television. In an August 19 evening news bulletin, television suddenly shows Sergei Medvedev reporting on the White House situation, in which Yeltsin reads out the just-signed decree “On the Unlawful Actions of GKChP.” A similar TV report, which said, in particular, that

Prosecutor General Stepankov had instituted criminal proceedings against GKChP members, finally thwarted the coup attempt. This became so obvious that in the morning of August 21 Defense Minister Yazov ordered armored vehicles to be withdrawn from Moscow.

In legal terms, the collapse of the USSR began on August 24, when the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed a declaration on independence. This was followed by what is known as parade of sovereignties. The existence of the USSR became just impossible after referendums on independence in Ukraine and Armenia. Lilia Shevtsova, a leading research associate at the Moscow Carnegie Center, rightly noted in a Moscow Echo radio broadcast: “The USSR died in all the dimensions in which it had existed: as a civilization (nucleus of the world system of socialism), as an empire, and as a state. GKChP, an attempt of the top Soviet nomenklatura to save the Union, was the last fit of its death throes. The Bela Vezha Agreements, signed in December 1991, only confirmed its formal demise… The coup plotters only speeded up the flight of constituent republics from Moscow. President Levon Ter-Petrosyan of Armenia, until then an advocate of integration, said: ‘It is now time to put an end to the calls for staying behind in a Union where everything, even a national fascist putsch, is possible.’”

There are quite a few of those in the neighboring Russia who like talking in terms of alternative history. What would have there been, if… The then Russia’s President Vladimir Putin called the USSR collapse the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. In our view, both the First and the Second World Wars were really tragedies for the entire humankind. The sinking of the So-viet Union into historical oblivion was, rather, proof of the downfall of the whole system of barrack-room socialism. All the Soviet party-and-state nomenklatura managed to do was create a motorized Genghis Khan, much to the fear of the entire world. Memories of the terror that the Soviet monster inspired are still warming the hearts of those who feel nostalgia for a great empire. That is the only “positive” thing.

Russia and a number of other former Soviet republics have seen the nomenklatura avenge itself. “After hammering the nail into the USSR’s coffin, the Russian elite, including those who considered themselves democrats, reproduced autocracy – in liberal clothes this time. The Russian matrix has revived in a narrower geographical space, casting off the Soviet nomenklatura, which had lost its wolfish instincts, and the stagnant communist idea. To save the system at the expense of killing the state was really a unique trick. We are reviling Putin for his authoritarian manners. But all Putin did was sweep the floor in the house that the Yeltsin team had built after grabbing the Kremlin keys from the putschists’ feeble hands,” Shevtsova noted. There also are a lot of those in the Ukrainian government who are longing for the past and trying to follow the Rus-sian example. But history always repeats itself as a farce. Are our powers-that-be still unaware of this? It is quite an instructive example.