A history of Russia

by Riazanovsky

  The Russian republic acquired a remarkable, idiosyncratic leader in the person of Boris Yeltsin, an associate of Gorbachev, similar to him in his Party background and career, but much different in his extravagant manner and his populist and charismatic appeal. Dismissed on November 11, 1987, from his position as head of the Moscow Party organization for his criticism of the slowness of Gorbachev's reforming activity, Yeltsin made an unprecedented career in the Russian republic, culminating in his landslide election as its president on June 12, 1991, a stunning display of democratic procedure and popular support which neither Gorbachev nor any other leader in the central government could claim. Elections had already brought other liberals to office in the Russian republic, especially in its great cities, with Anatolii Sobchak becoming mayor of Leningrad and Gavriil Popov, of Moscow. It is worth noting that Yeltsin resigned from the Communist Party on July 12, 1990, and Sobchak and Popov on the following day. Liberalism was combined with nationalism and a religious revival as historic towns, places, and streets regained their old names and as religious services, including public religious services, multiplied. The day Yeltsin was elected president, the Leningrad voters also decided that their city should again become St. Petersburg. Immense problems, of course, continued; indeed, the entire dazzling change acquired a certain operatic quality, while the basic processes of economic and social life were grinding down. The mere administration of the R.S.F.S.R. became a near impossibility, with everyone from the Tartars on the Volga to the Yakuts in eastern Siberia and the nomadic tribes of the far north laying claim to their historic rights, their diamonds, or their reindeer. The excruciating interplay between Gorbachev and Yeltsin, with its repeated reversals of positions, ranging from close collaboration to determined

  attempts by each to drive the other out of politics, came to occupy center stage on the Soviet scene.

  Eastern Europe and the World

  Just when everything was beginning to unglue at home, Gorbachev and the Soviet Union lost eastern Europe, which, in turn, contributed mightily to a further ungluing. In retrospect, there appear to be two main explanations for the stunning events of the miraculous year of 1989: the enormous extent of the opposition - indeed, hatred - of the peoples of the satellite states to their communist system and regimes, and Gorbachev's decision against any Soviet army intervention in defense of his communist allies. It was the extent to which communism was bankrupt and despised in eastern Europe that most outside observers failed to take into account. As to Gorbachev's decision, the Soviet leader apparently initially naively believed that there should be perestroika in the satellite countries, as well as in the Soviet Union, and that restructuring would only strengthen the system. But once the system unraveled, and at a terrifying speed, he concluded that nothing could be done to save the old order. As he thundered against Soviet hardliners who accused him of betrayal, only tanks could block change in eastern Europe, and tanks could not be used forever.

  Thus 1989 witnessed the collapse of communism in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and, of course, East Germany, which was to disappear entirely through absorption into the Federal Republic of Germany. Masses of refugees crossing newly opened frontiers, the once-formidable Berlin Wall acquiring souvenir status as it was being disassembled piece by piece, the corpses of Ceausescu and his wife, executed immediately after the overturn in Rumania, and so many other episodes and details will be enshrined in history books and human memory for ages to come. While each national case had its own peculiarities, such as the tremendous importance of West Germany for what happened in and to East Germany or the unique role of Solidarity in Poland, there were also common characteristics. Above all, communist regimes proved unable to survive intellectual and political freedom - glasnost, if you will - and, especially, free elections, beginning with the election in Poland on June 5, 1989. Even in the controversial cases of Rumania and Bulgaria - perhaps especially relevant for the Russian future - where much of the establishment seems to have survived well, the issues are the continuation of privilege and the brakes that old personnel may put on the democratic development of these countries, not the fear of a return to the days of Ceausescu and Zhivkov.

  Although very hard hit, Gorbachev reacted to the events rapidly and imaginatively. Instead of mounting any kind of rear-guard action, especially on the central issue of the unification of Germany, Gorbachev fully accepted the unification, earning German gratitude - in particular, that of Chancellor Helmut

  Kohl - as well as advantageous financial provisions for the withdrawal and relocation at home of Soviet troops and some other German aid. Moreover, the solution of the German problem and the Soviet abandonment of troublesome eastern Europe meshed well with Gorbachev's policy of peace and international co-operation. Soviet army troops finally left Afghanistan, although the Soviet Union continued to provide massive military aid to the government forces in the seemingly endless civil war. Extremely complex and long-drawn-out negotiations with the United States resulted, at the end of July 1991, in an agreement to reduce certain kinds of armaments. Commentators noted at the time that the new spirit of co-operation was even more significant than the particular provisions of the treaty. Although some disagreements and tensions remained, for example, in connection with the Japanese determination to regain some small islands in the Kurile chain seized by the Soviet Union toward the end of the Second World War or the American pressure to have the U.S.S.R. dump Castro and Cuba altogether, Gorbachev and his country were rapidly becoming respected supporters of world order. They played that role successfully in 1990 in the crisis and war following the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, although the Soviet Union did not intervene militarily, and in 1991 in the aftermath of that war when international attention shifted to the continuous Arab-Israeli conflict. It should be added that in October 1990, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Gorbachev's foreign policy could thus be considered a catastrophe, a great success, or both, depending largely on the point of view.

  Domestic Developments

  But at home, catastrophe prevailed. The optimism and confidence of the early Gorbachev years were gone. The economy kept deteriorating, leading to enormous shortages of consumer goods and even fear of famine. Major strikes, especially of miners, erupted in the Ural region, in Siberia, and in Ukraine. Specific measures, such as the decree of January 23, 1991, withdrawing 50- and 100-ruble notes from circulation and compelling the exchange of these notes under highly restrictive conditions, turned into disasters. Very poorly managed, that decree failed to check inflation or limit crime, while it hit hard the average working citizens and pensioners. In fact, proliferating decrees and directives only led to utter confusion. With the new self-assertion of the union republics and of lesser jurisdictions, it was not at all clear who owned or managed what. The same piece of property or sphere of economic activity could be claimed by the central government, a union republic, a regional administration, or a municipality. Reforming measures by all kinds of authorities were at best partial, haphazard, and difficult, if not impossible, to implement. Major general economic reform, while repeatedly promised, kept being postponed.

  Natural and man-made catastrophes together with their aftermaths, whether in

  Leaders of the communist world in Moscow, 1986. From left: Kadar of Hungary, Ceausescu of Rumania, Honecker of East Germany, Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, Chinh of Vietnam, Jaruzelski of Poland, Castro of Cuba, Zhivkov of Bulgaria, Husak of Czechoslovakia, Tsedenbal of Mongolia.

  Muscovites attending an Eastern Orthodox Christmas procession in Red Square, 1991.

  Patriarch Aleksy II of the Russian Orthodox Church blessing Yeltsin, the first freely elected president of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.

  Yeltsin being inaugurated as president of the Russian republic, July 10, 1991. Speaker of the legislature Khasbulatov stands to the left.

  Ethiopian youths standing on the toppled statue of Lenin, May 23, 1991, two days after the end of the Soviet-backed
Ethiopian regime.

  Demonstrators pulling down the statue of Dzerzhinsky in front of the KGB headquarters, August 1991.

  Children playing on a toppled statue of Lenin in Lithuania following the failed Kremlin coup, August 1991.

  Gorbachev and Yeltsin at the Extraordinary Congress of People's Deputies, September

  Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov greets Patriarch Aleksy II during the 1st public worship in Moscow's reconstructed Christ Savior Cathedral, August 19, 1995.

  Evgeny Primakov

  Aleksandr Lebed

  the case of the earthquake in Armenia in December 1988, which killed some 25,000 people and left another 500,000 homeless, or in that of the train collision and gas explosion near Asha in the Urals in June 1989, with 190 persons listed as dead, 270 as missing, and 720 as hospitalized, served to underline the manifold deficiencies, including the incompetence, of the Soviet system. Ecological issues loomed ever larger as the nature and extent of the ecological damage in the country became better known. Perhaps even more damaging to the government and system were repeated discoveries of mass graves: some 102,000 bodies found near Minsk in Belorussia in October 1988; between 200,000 and 300,000 burials outside Kiev which a special commission determined in March 1989 to contain victims of Stalin, not of the Nazis; about 300,000 more bodies in mass graves near Cheliabinsk and Sverdlovsk in the Urals, uncovered on October 2, 1989; and still others. Glasnost not only provided information about all these matters and contributed to the rehabilitation of many communists executed in the purges of the 1930's as well as of Russian cultural figures abroad, such as the distinguished musician Mstislav Rastropovich and the brilliant satirist Vladimir Voinovich, but also led to a great diversity of opinion and variety of criticism. Gorbachev and his policies were attacked from the right, from the left, and from every direction.

  Like his predecessors, Gorbachev began his career as the supreme Soviet leader when he attained the post of Party secretary as voted by the Politburo. Characteristically, as already mentioned, his initial main concern was to strengthen his position in the Politburo and, more broadly, in the upper echelons of the Party, a personnel policy that was on the whole successful, although never to the extent of giving the new leader complete control. But before long, great complications arose. The policies of perestroika and glasnost produced strong and continual opposition both by the Right, which felt fundamentally threatened by them, and by the Left, as in the case of Yeltsin, which complained that the reforming activity was not sufficiently efficacious or expeditious.

  Furthermore, the position of the Party itself was changing. Gorbachev introduced competitive elections within the Communist Party to fight stagnation and obtain supporters against the entrenched traditionalists. On January 13, 1990, he reversed his earlier stand by declaring his willingness to accept the existence of other political parties in the U.S.S.R. Following a demonstration in February of some 250,000 people in Moscow and other gatherings elsewhere, on March 13, 1990, the legislature repealed Article 6 of the constitution, which had guaranteed "the leading role" of the Communist Party, that is, its monopoly of political power in the Soviet Union. Although the reformers have been slow in creating a comprehensive political organization outside the Party, there emerged in July 1991 the Democratic Reform Movement, led by such prominent former associates of Gorbachev as Shevardnadze and Yakovlev as well as other notable liberals. And the Party itself, once absolutely monolithic, came to be under the con-

  stant threat of a major split, and thus pluralism, in the summer of 1991, most obviously in its huge Russian branch.

  The same day that Article 6 was abolished, Gorbachev, as president of the country, received the right to rule when necessary by executive decree. Combining Party and state offices was nothing new for Soviet leaders; the novelty of the latest arrangement consisted in the fact that the state position could now be used against the Party. Gorbachev had prepared his state base of power well, succeeding Gromyko to the title of president in October 1988, obtaining election to that office by the 2,250-member Congress of People's Deputies on April 25, 1989, and greatly enhancing its prominence. As the sway of the Politburo and the Party declined, close advisory bodies to the president, such as the eighteen-member Presidential Council, which lasted from March to December 1990, and especially the eight-member Security Council of the U.S.S.R., which succeeded it, acquired greater significance. The latter was composed mainly of the more important ministers of state. In the summer of 1991, speculation was rife that Gorbachev might abandon the Party altogether and stake everything on the state administration and reform. Actually, he turned in the opposite direction, winning once more sufficient Party support and apparently determined to carry it with him on his wayward way.

  It is not easy to evaluate or even simply present Gorbachev's policy. Often it seems impossible to distinguish his own projects, plans, and aims from the political and other tactical concessions and compromises he had to make, and even from extraneous elements imposed on him by other political forces in the Soviet Union. The net result was a tortuous course most notable for its meandering between reform and restraint. To mention only some of his last turnings, in October 1990 Gorbachev endorsed the so-called Shatalin plan, associated with the economist Stanislav Shatalin and meant to establish within five hundred days a market economy in the U.S.S.R. But at the last moment he held back and in the subsequent weeks and months adopted instead a conservative and even reactionary policy, characterized by hard-line key governmental appointments and the granting of new powers to the police and the army acting as police. It was at that time that Shevardnadze resigned as foreign minister in protest and warning and was replaced by the former ambassador to the United States, Alexander Bessmertnykh, apparently without any change in the nature of Soviet foreign policy. Yet spring and summer brought another turning, with Gorbachev more enthusiastic than ever in the cause of economic and general reform, ready to condemn even Marxism as such on occasion and full of promising plans for the Soviet Union, although still without specifics or a timetable.

  However, it may be most appropriate to end this brief discussion of pere-stroika where it began, that is, with the economic crisis, and for that to turn to Gregory Grossman's compelling presentation of the nature and the problem of

  the Soviet economic collapse in his testimony to congressional committees on June 25, 1991.*

  One can hardly recall an instance in modern history in which - major war or its effects apart - the economic condition of an important country plunged so deep so fast as has that of the Soviet Union in the last few years. Less than a decade ago, serious Western observers could still seriously consider whether the global economic competition would eventually be "won" by the East, with all that implied for the world's future. Today, equally serious people equally seriously advocate Marshall-like assistance from the West in the hundreds of billions of dollars lest the Soviet economy (and polity and society) fall even deeper into destitution and disorder, with all that would imply for the world's future.

  Although the present economic condition is indeed catastrophic, it has not been quite as unexpected as one might have assumed from appearances alone. In fact, the underlying forces of rot and ruin have been at work for decades, albeit concealed by the secretiveness of the dictatorial regime and the silence of an intimidated population (but for a relatively few dissidents). Among such long-term, corrosive trends one might mention the huge diversion of national resources to military and imperial ends; heedlessly wasteful depletion of natural and human reserves for economic growth and progress, combined with lags in civilian technological advance and improvement in quality; inability to feed the population without massive imports; enormous physical degradation and contamination of the environment with major effects on human health; growing sclerosis of the centralized system of economic planning and governance, aggravated by rigid price-wage controls and monetary mismanagement; steady growth of a large underground economy intimately linked with widespread official corru
ption and (with time) major organized crime; deterioration of work incentives and work morale, not to say initiative, enterprise (except in the underground), and sense of responsibility. And consequent steady retardation of economic growth, and actual decline.

  One could extend this dismal list of the underlying economic factors (not to mention the political, social, and ethnic ones) that have been propelling the Soviet economy for decades towards its historic moment of deep crisis. That moment arrived under Gorbachev, not because Gorbachev is the most skilled economic reformer the USSR could have sooner or later produced - very likely he is not - but because it is difficult to imagine another communist leader, and it would have to be one, who could have more quickly and thoroughly discredited the shams of the past.

  But Gorbachev has not yet destroyed, if indeed he intends to fully destroy, either the old ways of running the economy or the social groups that have tra-

  *Slightly abridged statement of Gregory Grossman (Berkeley) submitted at the Joint Hearing of the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives and of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.

  ditionally run it, namely, the Party apparat (himself being its titular head) and the state's nomenklatura, or the idea of socialism itself. Which is one reason why the economy is currently in such deep trouble.

  But first we should note the economic agenda that has informed and inflamed Soviet politics since Gorbachev took over in March 1985. (A) The first urgent problem that Gorbachev addressed was reducing the military-economic-technological gap vis-a-vis the West. He attacked it in the traditional Stalinist way with the same institutions and the same people… and failed, wasting resources and 1-2 years' time in the process. (B) Then he turned to the idea that apparently had been germinating in his mind for some time, namely, the boldest institutional reform yet, perestroika (as well as its concomitant, glasnost) to attract the educated to his side to help him discredit the past.