Some did not want to go back home at all. In 1989–1990, claimed the memo, seven Soviet officials working in Geneva had refused to go back to the USSR after their state-negotiated and party-approved contracts expired. They signed contracts on their own instead, continuing their employment abroad. These “defectors” refused to stay in touch with the Soviet diplomatic mission in Geneva or take orders from its management. The revolt in the Soviet Foreign Service and among Soviet citizens working in international organizations was indicative of the party’s failure to keep its ideologically disillusioned managerial class in line. Once people in a position to obtain real benefits ceased applying for membership and began to leave the party, the writing was on the wall.11
YELTSIN’S ABANDONMENT of the party did not mean any loss of privilege. By the time he made that move, he was already head of the Russian parliament, with a good salary, a large office, and a chauffeured limousine assigned to him. He was not in fact the first former party official to become an official in the new democratic institutions. The first to do so were party officials in the Caucasus and the Baltic republics, which were in de facto revolt against the center by the summer of 1990.
The first steps taken by Gorbachev and his allies toward the democratization of the authoritarian system did little to mobilize public support for his effort to reform the USSR from the center. Instead, they gave the Soviet nationalities an opportunity to assert themselves and threaten the integrity of the union into which they had been brought by force. Gorbachev and his backers and opponents both in the USSR and abroad all believed that the national question had been resolved in the Soviet Union. Unlike the masters of the collapsed British, French, and, most recently, Portuguese empires, the Soviet leaders had managed to keep the non-Russian nationalities together for an astonishingly long time without maintaining the external trappings of an empire. It all came to an end in the late 1980s.
The ethnic clashes that began in early 1988 between Azeris and Armenians in Nagornyo-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, caught believers in the success of the Soviet internationalist experiment by surprise. In the fall of that year up to 2 million people participated every month in demonstrations organized by national leaders, mostly in the Baltics and in the Caucasus. The central authorities often resorted to force to stop ethnic clashes and restore order. The main threat to the Union came, however, not from the Caucasus but from the Baltic provinces, which had been occupied in 1940 and fully reintegrated into the empire after World War II. On August 23, 1989, activists of Baltic pro-independence organizations demonstrated their strength by organizing the Baltic Way, a human chain stretching from Tallinn (Estonia) to Riga (Latvia) and Vilnius (Lithuania). This was done to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which had led to Soviet annexation of the region—a seizure of territory never formally recognized by the United States.
In late 1989 the Lithuanian Communist Party declared its independence from the Central Committee in Moscow. Not only was the party losing power, but the party state that Gorbachev and others served and were proud of was coming down all around them. The protests, especially numerous that year in the Baltic states and the Transcaucasian republics of the USSR, were sparked mainly by proposed amendments to the Soviet constitution that would have given the all-Union parliament the right to override republican laws it found incompatible with those of the Union and unilaterally decide issues of secession from the Union. In March 1990, the newly elected parliament of Lithuania declared the republic’s independence from the Soviet Union. By the summer of 1990 most of the Soviet republics, including Russia under Yeltsin’s leadership, had declared sovereignty, which meant that republican laws took precedence over those of the Soviet Union. The outer forms of empire, disguised as a voluntary union, were still intact, but the drama of its disintegration had begun to unfold before the frightened and confused government officials in Moscow.12
Russian national mobilization began in earnest in early 1989 not in the Russian Federation but beyond its borders as a reaction to the rising tide of local nationalism in the Baltics, Moldova (Moldavia), and other non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union. It soon spread to Russia proper, but in a most unexpected way. Russian liberals, whose power bases were Moscow and Leningrad, began to move toward a political alliance with the Baltic republics, which had declared their sovereignty. The leaders of the Russian democratic movement shared their Baltic colleagues’ liberal economic views and now decided to copy their political strategy in order to promote the sovereignty of their own republic. In the spring of 1990, campaigning for a seat in the Russian parliament, Yeltsin embraced the idea of Russian sovereignty—a notion that under the circumstances meant shifting more political and economic power to the republics. It was a brilliant political move that helped expand Yeltsin’s appeal beyond the Moscow and Leningrad intelligentsia.
Before Gorbachev’s perestroika, few Russians, including Yeltsin himself, had associated themselves with the Russian Federation, the largest Soviet republic, which nevertheless lacked its own Communist Party or Academy of Sciences. Why bother, if the Communist Party of the USSR and the all-Union Academy of Sciences had their headquarters in Moscow and were not only run by Russians but also dominated by them? Yeltsin admitted his original lack of strong attachment to Soviet Russian institutions in an interview that he gave in late 1990: “I recognized myself as a citizen of the country [[the Soviet Union]] and not of Russia. Well, I also considered myself to be a patriot of Sverdlovsk, inasmuch as I had worked there. But the concept of ‘Russia’ was so relative to me that while serving as first secretary of the Sverdlovsk party obkom I had not turned to the Russian departments on most questions. I would first turn to the Central Committee of the CPSU, and then to the Union government.”13
Yeltsin was not the only politician now playing the Russian card. His conservative opponents did so as well, rallying around the idea of creating a Communist Party of the Russian Federation on the model of party branches in the non-Russian republics. The idea gained momentum in the first months of 1990, in reaction to the formation in late 1989 of the Democratic Platform within the CPSU, led by Yeltsin and other supporters of radical reform. Members of the all-Union Politburo did not know how to react to the new developments. Gorbachev himself was on both sides of the issue. “If there is an RCP [[Russian Communist Party]],” he told his colleagues at a Politburo meeting on May 3, 1990, “then it will press harder on the communist parties of other republics, and they will say: why do we need the CPSU at all?” A few minutes later he rebuked a secretary of the Central Committee who had voiced his opposition to the creation of a Russian Communist Party: “If we refuse [[concerning the RCP]], the Russians will say: we gathered them (the non-Russians) for a thousand years. And now they’re telling us what to do! Get out of Russia, as far as possible!”
Gorbachev did not want the creation of a separate Russian party organization, as it might well strengthen chauvinistic tendencies in Russia and nationalism in the non-Russian republics; moreover, it could turn into an organizational platform of conservative opposition to his reforms. But neither could he say no. As Nikolai Ryzhkov, the head of the Soviet government, remarked at the same Politburo meeting, “If we go against the formation of the RCP, our place within it will be taken by the Yeltsins.” Gorbachev wanted to stay in control, no matter what happened in the Russian party. He offered to resolve the issue at the forthcoming twenty-eighth party congress in June 1990. That month a separate Communist Party of the Russian Federation was born. As expected, it became a bastion of ultraconservative anti-Gorbachev opposition within the all-Union Communist Party.14
For Gorbachev and his associates, the rise of Russia either in democratic garb, represented by Yeltsin, or in communist trappings, embodied by his conservative opponents, was a nightmare coming true. The growing assertiveness of the Russians had the potential to forge a distinct identity that would not fully overlap with the Soviet one and would break the Russian attachment to empire
—past, present, and future—that kept the Union together. The threat of Russian sovereignty had been discussed in the Politburo as early as the summer of 1989. Vadim Medvedev, the leading party ideologue at the time, spoke out against giving Russia sovereign rights already conceded to other republics: “If we fashion it like the other republics, then the transformation of the USSR into a confederation is inevitable. The RSFSR [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic]] is the core of the Union.”
Gorbachev was in full agreement: “Yes to restoring the authority of Russia. But not in such a way as to make it sovereign. That would mean removing the core of the Union.” It was not clear how Russia’s “authority” could be enhanced while denying it what republics had successfully claimed. The decision was postponed, but the problem was not resolved: if anything, it became more acute. The Soviet prime minister, Ryzhkov, told a Politburo meeting in November 1989, “We should not fear the Baltic[[s]], but Russia and Ukraine. This would smell like total disintegration. And then we would need another government, another leadership for the country, and already another country.” Few could foresee in the fall of 1989 how prophetic Ryzhkov’s comment would prove only a few months later.15
In May 1990 Yeltsin was elected Speaker of the Russian parliament on the third ballot by a rather slim margin: 535 deputies voted for him, 467 against. But the declaration of Russian political sovereignty that he proposed a few months later gained the support of two-thirds of the deputies. “The center is for Russia today the cruel exploiter, the miserly benefactor and the favorite who doesn’t think about the future. We must put an end to the injustice of these relations. Today it is not the center but Russia that must think about which functions to transfer to the center, and which to keep to itself,” Yeltsin told the deputies. The new champion of Russia was born. In the summer of 1990 the Yeltsinled Russian parliament declared Russia sovereign, giving its laws priority over those of the Union. In the fall of that year, Ryzhkov told the Politburo that none of his orders were being followed. He was soon dismissed by Gorbachev as part of a cabinet reshuffle intended to crush what became known as the “parade of sovereignties.”16
WHEN MOST OF THE SOVIET REPUBLICS declared sovereignty, there was no formula in place to define the new relationships between them and the central government. The constitution provided an all-Union façade for the heavily centralized state and even guaranteed republics the right to leave the Union, but it offered no tools for managing relations between the center and the republics. In effect, according to established procedures, either a republic was in the Union and wholly under Moscow’s control, or it was out. Lithuania wanted out, whereas Russia, Ukraine, and some other republics wanted a new deal. Gorbachev did his best to stop Lithuania from leaving and the Russian parliament from electing Yeltsin and declaring sovereignty. He failed on both counts. The Soviet political and economic space was disintegrating, worsening the economic crisis and threatening the very existence of the central authorities.
The solution that Gorbachev was offered by the conservative members of his entourage in the summer of 1990 was to impose the supremacy of all-Union laws over republican ones by force. This could be achieved only by the introduction of a state of emergency. Gorbachev gave his blessing for the preparation of contingency plans. He also declared sweeping reforms: the Presidential Council and the Council of Ministers were to be abolished and replaced by a Security Council and Cabinet of Ministers under the direct control of the president. But he kept resisting pressure to introduce a state of emergency. In December 1990, with the Congress of People’s Deputies in session, close to four hundred members of the legislature voted to place the question of Gorbachev’s resignation on the agenda. They did not get a majority. Instead, Gorbachev’s close liberal ally Eduard Shevardnadze, the minister of foreign affairs, resigned after being attacked by the conservatives for selling out Soviet national interests abroad. Gorbachev, with his own career on the line, did not try to stop him. Shevardnadze warned the congress delegates of an imminent coup d’état. In a letter to his American counterpart and personal friend, James Baker, Shevardnadze stated that he had acted according to his conscience.17
A coup had indeed taken place, as Shevardnadze predicted. At the congress, the conservatives had recaptured the initiative, and Gorbachev, instead of stepping down, decided to lead the parade himself. In January 1991, without formally declaring a state of emergency, he gave carte blanche to head of the KGB Vladimir Kriuchkov, Minister of Defense Dmitrii Yazov, and the new minister of the interior, Boris Pugo, to take any measures necessary to stop the movement of Soviet republics toward sovereignty and independence. On January 5, Yazov ordered paratroopers into the Baltic republics, allegedly to facilitate the conscription of new recruits into the Soviet army. On January 11, the central media announced the formation of a pro-Moscow Committee of National Salvation in Vilnius, Lithuania. Three days later, special units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and KGB commandos stormed the Vilnius television tower, which was defended by proponents of Lithuanian independence. Fifteen people died in the attack. On January 20 Interior Ministry troops opened fire in Riga, the capital of the Latvian republic, killing four. Five days later Soviet newspapers published a decree on the joint patrolling of cities by troops of the Interior Ministry and the Soviet army. The decree provided a legal rationale for the presence of military units on the streets of Soviet cities.
In March, Gorbachev formed a Security Council, his main advisory body, which consisted almost exclusively of hard-liners. That month he also managed to secure a 76 percent vote in favor of preserving the Union in a referendum that was ignored by the newly elected authorities in the Baltics and in the Caucasus but still emboldened the Soviet president and his advisers. On March 28 he ordered troops in Moscow to prevent demonstrations in support of Boris Yeltsin. That day hard-liners in the Russian parliament were supposed to orchestrate a vote removing Yeltsin as Speaker of parliament. The attempt failed. Demonstrations in Moscow went ahead despite government prohibitions. Troops were not used to disperse them. Whereas elite Russian and Slavic units did not hesitate to fire on non-Russians and non-Slavs in the Baltics and the Caucasus, they were much less inclined to fire on fellow Slavs. Besides, Gorbachev balked at the prospect of large-scale bloodshed. He ordered the troops back into their barracks—a move welcomed by the democratic opposition (Yeltsin ceased his direct attacks on the president for a while) but condemned by the party hard-liners. Gorbachev had fooled them again by refusing to go all the way. From their point of view, he was now an obstacle to be removed.
Many in the party apparatus tried to free themselves from the party leader who had gone astray. Unlike Yeltsin, Gorbachev could not imagine leaving the party of his own free will, not only because of his oft-declared adherence to socialist ideals and belief in his ability to reform the party but also for tactical reasons: he did not want the party machine, which still possessed enormous power in the country, to turn against him. A few days before Yeltsin’s resignation from the party, had recorded in his diary a conversation he had had that day with Gorbachev: “They are concerned only with their own interests. They need nothing but the trough and power,” said Gorbachev about the party secretaries he had met earlier in the day. “He swore, using foul language,” continued Cherniaev. “I said to him: ‘Abandon them. You are the president; you see what sort of party this is, and in fact you remain its hostage, its whipping boy.’” Gorbachev was not convinced. “Don’t you think I see that? I see it,” he told Cherniaev. “But I can’t let that mangy dog off its leash. If I do that, the whole machine will come down upon me.”18
The decisive showdown was supposed to take place at a meeting of the Central Committee scheduled for April 24, 1991. Party committees all over the country were demanding Gorbachev’s resignation as general secretary of the party. But Gorbachev once again outmaneuvered his opponents. Those attending the meeting were surprised to learn from the morning newspapers that the previous day he had made a deal with his ar
chenemy, Boris Yeltsin, and the leaders of the republics, who were pushing for more sovereignty. At a meeting in Gorbachev’s compound in Novo-Ogarevo, they agreed to work on the text of a new union treaty.
Gorbachev had finally found an alternative to a state of emergency: instead of going back to the status quo ante and relying on force to restore the power of the center, he would go forward and find a formula to balance the interests of the center and the republics. That expedient would free him from the dictates of the party leaders and hard-liners in his entourage. On April 24, responding to a brutal critique of his actions at the Central Committee meeting, Gorbachev declared that he was prepared to resign. The party leaders backed down: without Gorbachev, their party would be doomed. At that moment he was their only protection against Yeltsin and his democratic entourage. The attempted party coup had failed and Gorbachev survived, but the hard-liners did not give up.19
In June 1991 Yeltsin won the Russian presidency on a promise to enhance Russian sovereignty. In the oath that Yeltsin took at his inauguration on July 10, he promised to defend the sovereignty of Russia. The empire was crumbling. The “nation-builders,” as the Harvard historian Roman Szporluk called the proponents of Russian national assertiveness, were emerging victorious in the struggle with the “empire-savers.” On the day of the Russian presidential election, Gorbachev’s adviser Anatolii Cherniaev recorded in his diary, “M[[ikhail]] S[[ergeevich]] showed himself less perspicacious than Yeltsin with his animal instinct. M.S. feared that the Russian people would never forgive him for renouncing the empire. But it turned out that the Russian people could not care less.” Cherniaev realized the hopelessness of any imperial project without Russia. “After all, there will be nothing without Russia,” wrote Gorbachev’s adviser in his diary. “There will be no Union. And in real terms the president can rely only on it, and by no means on Turkmenia with Nazarbayev!”20
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