Russia (48 page)

He had hoped for an orderly transition from authoritarian Communism in the countries of the Bloc but, except in Bulgaria and Romania, the reformed socialism that he promoted was rejected and, rather than the gradualism which he envisaged, change came in a rush. Gorbachev also intended to maintain the strategic balance in Europe but with excitement at the prospect of reunification running high on both sides of the German divide Chancellor Kohl moved to absorb East Germany and so reunite his country. The United States affected indifference, Britain disliked the idea and so did France; but neither was disposed to invoke its powers under the Four Power Treaty to prevent German reunification. Gorbachev was entitled to send in troops to maintain the divide and might well have received some support from the West had he done so. But he shrank from it. It would have ended the detente with West Germany, which had become a pillar of Soviet foreign policy. So Gorbachev, who might have prevented unification, allowed it to happen, and confined himself to seeking economic concessions from Kohl to help bolster the now tottering Soviet economy. It was a modest price to pay for Soviet complaisance, and a major political triumph for the German leader.
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So it was that by the end of 1990 the unification of Germany, which had been unimaginable even a year before, became a fact. Concerns emerged in west Germany about the cost of absorbing the east, and in the east about the loss of full employment, the erosion of cultural values in which many East Germans had taken some pride, and the inflow of carpetbaggers. But by then it was too late.

There were to be other disappointments in what had been the outer fringes of the Soviet Empire. In June 1991 COMECON was precipitately wound up, at which regional trade ground almost to a standstill. The new regimes in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia tried to reorient their commerce from the East to the West but failed. The Warsaw Treaty Organization, linchpin of the Bloc’s defences, was also to become a dead letter, allowing the United States to lead its allies towards an eastward expansion of NATO. In Yugoslavia, deteriorating economic conditions were already fostering nationalist breakaway movements in Slovenia and Croatia, setting the country on a slide to dissolution and bloody civil war, while in the Soviet Union itself the unpredictable Boris Yeltsin, who had so recently been excluded from the political arena, contrived to find a new political space for himself by posing as a Russian patriot.

He had argued that if constituent republics of the Soviet Union like Lithuania or Kazakhstan had an autonomous political life it was anomalous that Russia, the Union’s largest constituent by far, should not. Gorbachev could not challenge his logic, and so in March 1990 Yeltsin was able to stand for election to the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federal Republic. He was elected, and soon chosen to be its chairman. Having created a new political platform, he proceeded to claim sovereignty for Russia and to encourage the Baltic republics and others to claim their independence too. Yeltsin contributed to the dissolution of the Union. But the sharp economic deterioration had given him and the other nationalist politicians their opportunity.

In June 1990 Estonia, one of the more prosperous Soviet republics, proclaimed itself independent in the economic sphere. Lithuania went further, claiming a right to veto all Union legislation, and Uzbekistan, one of the most populous Soviet republics, declared itself sovereign. The once stable Soviet economy was descending into chaos as social distress and inflation rose. Shopping was becoming more and more difficult, necessities of life increasingly expensive, while many employees suddenly lost employment perks and privileges which they had come to take for granted. In August 1990 Gorbachev reacted by setting up a commission of the Supreme Soviet to draft a plan for economic recovery. There were deep divisions of opinion about what should be done, and the argument soon crystallized into a struggle between radical reformers and those who wanted to revert to the old ways. Yeltsin, an instinctive politician, agreed to co-operate. He supported the radicals and was politically helpful to Gorbachev for a time. A 500-day plan for the regeneration of the country, largely the work of an economist called Stanislav Shatalin, was tabled. It called for measures to
control inflation, the stabilization of the ruble, the end of price controls, and privatization of the huge state sector.

Similar to the ‘shock therapy’ advocated by the Harvard economist Jeremy Sachs in Poland, it implied a devolution of economic control which was problematical in the Soviet Union as it had not been in Poland. This was not only because it threatened the interests of powerful
apparatchiki
and to trigger popular discontent, but because the Soviet economy was several times larger than Poland’s as well as more complex, and its geographical spread immense. It demanded some careful co-ordination if it were not to become dysfunctional. Furthermore, the isolation
of
many enterprises made them as vulnerable as Canadian ‘company towns’, threatening a series of local social disasters if they should suddenly become bankrupt. The plan also threatened the disintegration of the Union. So the weight of opinion began to shift towards the conservatives. Gorbachev sent the Plan back to be redrafted in a less extreme form. This angered those who wanted the speedy implementation of radical reforms, and several ministers resigned. It also bolstered the separatist cause in some republics, especially those adjacent to the West.

Gorbachev, who had failed to grasp one nettle, now reached out to snatch at another: he sanctioned the use of force against the national movement in Lithuania. On 17 March 1991 special units of Soviet forces stormed the television tower in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, which had been occupied by separatists. There were fifteen fatalities. Intended to be a discreet and bloodless operation which would deter nationalists across the Union, the implementation had been clumsy. Gorbachev moved quickly to disown it; Yeltsin, perhaps afraid that he might be purged or eliminated if the leader’s new ‘hard line’ prevailed,
²⁰
called for a ‘declaration of war’ against the Soviet leader. On 28 March he mobilized a large crowd of demonstrators in Moscow in defiance of a ban on demonstrations.

With strikes and calls for his resignation flaring up right across the country, Gorbachev changed tack yet again. He accepted the idea of allowing the constituent republics an autonomy verging on independence, and joined forces with Yeltsin. Seventy per cent of Russian voters who turned out for a referendum on 17 March endorsed the idea of ‘the preservation of the Union of Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of the individual of any nationality will be guaranteed’.
²¹
The contorted language of the document reflected Gorbachev’s disposition to be all things to all men, but it could not quite disguise the contradiction in terms. Nevertheless, on 23 April 1991 representatives of nine constituent republics agreed that there should
be a new Union treaty. Four months later it was ready for signing. Meanwhile Yeltsin’s hand had been strengthened further by a substantial victory in the Russian elections held that June.

The same month the Soviet premier, supported by the ministers of Defence and the Interior, went to the Supreme Soviet asking for Gorbachev’s presidential powers to be transferred to them. The country was on the brink of disaster, they argued, and Gorbachev’s inadequate leadership was central to the problem. Retrospect lends some credence to their claims. Nevertheless, the leader once again succeeded in talking his way out of trouble. He said he was working to create a socialism which was both humane and democratic. Vague rather than convincing, he nevertheless persuaded enough members to endorse the idea of another Party congress, to be held in December. At that point, he conceded, the question could be raised of his being constitutionally removed from office.

The loss of the European satellites had done the Soviet president no good politically, but what really undermined his position were the fast-deteriorating economic and social conditions, and the fact that, to an increasing extent, he was held responsible for the deterioration. The unfortunate public looked about for a figure that might save them and, since Gorbachev had lost credence and most of the other Soviet ministers and officials seemed colourless, Boris Yeltsin became the chief beneficiary of this change of mood. His popularity seemed to be founded less on the ‘liberal’ cause which he espoused than on the fact that he seemed decisive. But other decision-makers believed that the country would be ruined unless strong action was taken urgently.

Gorbachev was on holiday in the Crimea when, on 18 August, an ‘Emergency Committee’ of leading ministers tried to carry out a
coup d’etat.
Unfortunately for them, the army was divided and, though Gorbachev was placed under house arrest, some KGB and army units ordered to arrest Yeltsin and other oppositionists refused to do so. In the hours of uncertainty that followed Yeltsin rallied the opposition, called for Gorbachev’s release, and posed on a tank for the benefit of the cameras. He was backed by several figures of political substance including the mayor of Leningrad. Together they called for Gorbachev’s restoration. The organizers of the coup might well have prevailed had they been ruthless. But, like Gorbachev himself, most of them shrank from shedding blood. The only fatal casualties were two conspirators, including the Minister of Defence, who committed suicide in the wake of the coup’s failure. At that point no one sought to take the poisoned chalice of the leadership from Gorbachev’s weak grasp. However Yeltsin had used the interregnum and
his position of Russian president to suspend the Russian Communist Party and seize its assets. He then stood by like an
éminence grise
while the tragedy played on to its conclusion

Gorbachev returned to Moscow as a spent force. He joined forces with Yeltsin again, but was now the junior partner. Yeltsin, who held the initiative, would not declare his hand. He denied that he was against the ‘Union of Sovereign States’, whose constitution was being drafted, but as the negotiations over the new form of union continued he did his best to weaken its powers. When Gorbachev offered him the presidency if he backed the project, he demurred; and when a governmental crisis arose in September he pretended to be ill. The republics were demanding ever-increasing expenditure, but on 16 October it was announced that the government was spending twice the amount of its revenue. Next day Ukraine backed out of the proposed economic union and within a week repudiated responsibility for a share in any future Soviet debt. Having refused to agree to a common army, it reinforced its point by withholding food coupons to units which would not take orders from the new Ukrainian Ministry of Defence. Three other republics, of the remaining fourteen, also refused to agree to a common army

Output (GNP) fell by an eighth between mid-January and September 1991. The budget deficit was ballooning, unemployment was soaring, and inflation — which the International Monetary Fund estimated to have reached 150 per cent in 1990 — was rising by 2 or 3 per cent a week. The IMF urged long-term help but the Group of Seven, the world’s richest countries, refused to rush into any rescue plan. Then the Russian government seized the Soviet gold reserves and suspended oil exports. As investors got the scent of another Russian catastrophe, on 15 November 1991 stock-market values round the world plummeted. And, as at moments of national emergency since medieval times, the Patriarch of the Russian Church addressed the Russian people. ‘The old structures have collapsed’, Aleksei II said bleakly, ‘and new ones are not yet in place … People are losing faith in the future and in their political leaders.’

It was a form of political extreme unction, but the death throes of the Soviet Union were not yet quite complete. When Ukraine voted for independence in a referendum held at the beginning of December Yeltsin moved immediately to create an association which would be weaker still. This ‘Commonwealth of Independent States’, centred on Minsk, capital of Belarus, would constitute a single market and co-operate in military matters but have very little real power. However, the Baltic republics and Georgia refused to endorse even this shadow of a union.

Recognizing the failure of his last mission, and the impossibility of his position, Gorbachev went on television a few days later to announce his resignation and a formal end to the entity of which he was president. At midnight on 31 December 1991 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Russia’s fourth empire, would cease to exist.
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He spoke with sadness and with dignity. Not so Boris Yeltsin. He moved into the presidential offices in the Kremlin before Gorbachev had time to clear his desk, and threw a party there.

The end was untidy and brought benefit only to the scavengers of the dead state. Ukraine gained independence but lost the assured Russian market for its grain and coal, on which it had depended. Its huge Russian minority suddenly found themselves in an alien state. Kazakhs formed only 40 per cent of the population of newly independent Kazakhstan; indeed, they barely outnumbered Russians, who formed 38 per cent of its population.
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As the Soviet Union disintegrated there were widespread uncertainties not only about trade and the currency, but about the law and its enforcement, about what was licit and illicit. Lithuania tried to rehabilitate those condemned by Soviet courts for collaboration with the Nazis during the war, only to backtrack when Western countries indicated that this was politically incorrect. Concern spread abroad too — about the repayment of Soviet debt, nuclear proliferation, even about a possible nuclear holocaust.

The Soviet system need not have collapsed so precipitately, nor indeed at all. As Yeltsin subsequently remarked, the Soviet Union could have survived for many years, if not indefinitely. What, then, caused its dramatic collapse? Few of the explanations that were popular at the time hold much credence in retrospect. The Pope’s moral support and diplomacy may have helped speed the break-up of Yugoslavia, but he had little influence in the Soviet Bloc proper outside Poland, Lithuania and western Ukraine. The ‘Star Wars’ project put a strain on the Soviet budget by demanding increased military expenditure for a time but, though debilitating, it was no death blow. There is no evidence to support the idea put about by resentful Communists that the Soviet Union was murdered thanks to a conspiracy by the capitalist West. Nor was nationalism the cause. Nationalism was indeed the banner beneath which several Soviet republics left the Union, yet it turned out to be an excuse for leaving, rather than the cause. The spread of electronic communication may have rendered conventional censorship and political control futile, but only in the long term, and the
regime had ceased to be Stalinist in its oppressions long before Gorbachev came to power.