Seize the Moment

by Richard Nixon

  While Gorbachev had temporized, however, the reform movement had taken on a momentum of its own. Independent democratic political parties took root. The press refused to be shackled again. The Communist party suffered a hemorrhage of resignations, with 25 percent of its 20 million members breaking ranks in a pell-mell struggle to escape a sinking ship. Despite their minority status, pro-reform factions in the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People’s Deputies managed to hamstring some antidemocratic legislation. All fifteen republic governments declared their sovereignty and asserted the supremacy of their laws over those of the center. Six republic governments held free and fair elections, with their new leaders openly challenging the Kremlin in what Gorbachev called a “war of laws.” Among the people, fear of the once-mighty regime evaporated. Massive prodemocracy rallies—numbering in the hundreds of thousands—took place in Moscow and other cities, some even in defiance of explicit decrees from Gorbachev. This trend culminated in June 1991 with the resounding victory of Boris Yeltsin in a free presidential election in the Russian republic.

  When the Communist hard-liners temporarily ousted Gorbachev two months later, they soon discovered that the smooth overthrow of Khrushchev in 1964 could not be reenacted. Before Gorbachev, Soviet leaders could intimidate the entire country by repressing a few dissidents. But Gorbachev’s reforms had corroded the system. While the coup leaders controlled the levers of power, those levers no longer flawlessly operated the machinery of repression. Kryuchkov, Yazov, and Pugo gave the orders to crack down, but their subordinates opted not to carry them out. Even if the coup had not collapsed within sixty hours, it would have soon degenerated into a replay of the downfall of the East German regime, with massive demonstrations and general strikes in Moscow and other major cities overwhelming the capacity of the state to suppress them with force.

  Gorbachev failed at first to understand that he returned from captivity to a changed nation. Even before the coup, he had two political strikes against him. The first was his responsibility for the collapse of the Soviet economy. No Western democratic leader could possibly survive the fallout after a 15 percent drop in the economy over one year. The second strike was his position atop the Communist establishment. He won no friends by ruling the house that Stalin built and perpetuating the system of parasitical privileges for the Soviet elite. Yet while down in the count, he was not yet out. He could have gotten ahead of the pitcher if he had resigned from the party, accepted genuine democracy, accelerated market-oriented reform, and permitted self-determination for the republics immediately upon his return to Moscow. Instead, by proclaiming that he would “fight to the end for the renewal of the party,” he went down without swinging.

  Just as history has bypassed communism, it has also bypassed Communists. Gorbachev faced a rapid erosion of his political position until he finally was forced to leave office. Before the coup, Gorbachev’s only constituency was the Communist party. After the party betrayed him and the reformers scorned him, he was left with a constituency of one—himself. In viewing Gorbachev as indispensable, many in the West assumed that any alternative to him would be worse. In fact, the alternative—Boris Yeltsin—may turn out to be better.

  History will view Gorbachev as a transitional figure, a bridge between a system based on communism and one based on freedom. He was too closely associated with yesterday’s tyranny and today’s disorder to lead tomorrow’s reforms. While he took the crucial first steps down the road toward peaceful change, the people will make the rest of the journey without him. As a reforming Communist, Gorbachev followed Bismarck’s maxim, “If there is a revolution, we would rather make it than suffer it.” For seventy-five years, Gorbachev’s party made a Communist revolution, while the people suffered it. In August 1991, the people made their own democratic revolution. And now Gorbachev had to suffer it.

  • • •

  While the upheaval in the Soviet Union swept the old regime away, no revolution can wipe the slate of history clean. Vestiges of the past stand alongside opportunities for the future. All-too-familiar problems confront the new noncommunist leaders: the deepening economic crisis, the redefinition of relationships among the elements of the former Soviet Union, and the construction of a viable postcommunist political system. Toppling a corrupt old regime was far easier than erecting a just new order. In the euphoria of the moment, we must not forget that along with great opportunities, Soviet reformers now face profound dangers.

  In any revolution, two battles must be fought, one over ideology and one over control of the state. The democratic forces have won the first and prevailed in the first major clash of the second. The looser restrictions on the Soviet press had made the Soviet Union, as one hard-liner acidly remarked, “the most anticommunist country in the world.” But the victory of freedom will not be secure until new democratic institutions are firmly in place. Events will take many different turns. Since our interests will be profoundly affected by how they play themselves out, we cannot afford a policy of passively wishing the reformers well from the sidelines.

  All former Soviet republics have claimed sovereignty and asserted the supremacy of their laws over Moscow’s. It is inevitable that virtually all will follow up with full declarations of independence. Managing economic ties forged during seventy-five years of union, such as electrical power grids and natural gas pipelines, will require some kind of mechanism until the republics get on their own feet economically. The new leaders will rule neither a federation nor a confederation but rather will oversee a loose economic commonwealth. The center will coordinate, not govern, the actions of republics. While it may control defense and foreign policies initially, the republics will take over even these tasks as they acquire the necessary capabilities. As they do so, the Soviet Union will complete an evolution from an evil empire to a voluntary commonwealth of free and equal nations.

  Another potential course of events leads toward a more troubling destination: the eventual rise of a new imperial center based not on communism but on Russian nationalism. History offers few examples of one-round victories even for causes as noble as the August 1991 revolution. The situation in the Soviet Union is unstable and the ultimate outcome unpredictable. The Soviet scene is strewn with political tinder that could ignite into a conflagration. A Russian imperial tradition stretching back four centuries, a cadre of more than 15 million defrocked but unrepentant hard-line Communist bureaucrats still in positions of power, a Russian republic dominant in resources and military might, a national mosaic that scattered tens of millions of ethnic minorities in the newly independent and often highly nationalistic republics, a people increasingly desperate as the economy plunges into a deep depression—all these could spawn a variety of deadly scenarios. While these threats appear distant as we savor the victory over communism, the difficulties in achieving economic recovery could bring them closer.

  The initial steps taken by Gorbachev and Yeltsin in the aftermath of the coup have directed events along the path toward some kind of commonwealth. The replacement of the Communist-dominated Congress of People’s Deputies with a new republic-appointed interim Supreme Soviet and Moscow’s acceptance of all republic declarations of independence and sovereignty in September 1991, including freeing the Baltic states after fifty-one years of Soviet domination, laid the cornerstone of the new order. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States on January 1, 1992, established this new framework. Moreover, as long as Yeltsin remains committed to establishing democracy in Russia and the legendary capacity of the Russian people to endure difficult times is not exhausted, the temptations inherent in the Russian imperial tradition or other forms of political extremism will be kept in check.

  But the current situation is replete with potential dangers. Leaders other than Yeltsin might tap into a vein of political radicalism at some point. The people might not continue to support moderates such as Yeltsin if economic conditions fail to turn around in the near future. Four other facto
rs could also turn events down a darker path:

  —A dangerous logic supports an eventual alliance between the remnants of the Communist party and extreme Russian nationalists. Because both suffered severe reverses after the August 1991 revolution—the dissolution of the party and the breakup of the traditional Russian empire—they are natural allies against the new noncommunist leaders. An obvious strategy would be to portray the democrats as leaders who “stabbed Russia in the back” and to seek a resurrection of the center’s power as a means to restore Great Russia and to provide a new mission for the country.

  —In addition to their overwhelming support for democracy, the Soviet people harbor a traditional desire for order imposed from above. This impulse continues to insinuate itself into popular thought even today. Opinion polls indicated many Soviet citizens had disdain for Gorbachev’s inability and unwillingness to govern with what they called “the strong hand.” Many wanted him not only to take decisive action but also to crack heads to make his policies stick.

  —Interethnic tensions that crosscut every corner of the former Soviet Union represent an explosive source of conflict. The potential battle lines are drawn not only between the Russians and the non-Russians but also among the non-Russians. Gagauzi are pitted against Moldavians; Armenians against Azerbaijanis; Abkhasians, Ossetians, Adzhars, and Meshketi Turks against Georgians; Kazakhs against Uzbeks and Turkomans; Tadzhiks against the Uzbeks; and scores of other smaller ethnic groups in each former republic against those in the majority. Over the past five years, these conflicts sometimes turned into violent clashes that killed 1,000 people, injured 8,500, and sent 700,000 fleeing their homes. More such violence—particularly if directed at ethnic Russian minorities—could easily feed the rise of extremism and provide an ideal pretext for intervention by a newly assertive imperial center.

  —Despite their victory in the August 1991 revolution, the reformers are not an invincible movement. They lack political unity and administrative talent. Some analysts estimate that more than three hundred new anticommunist parties and groups—such as the Democratic Union, the Popular Front, Constitutional Democrats, Social Democrats, Movement for Democratic Reforms, the Russian Democratic party, the Democratic party of Russian Communists, and the Republican party of Russia—have sprung up nationwide. Their administrative weakness undermines their ability to take over the vast bureaucratic empire of the state and leaves them vulnerable to more organized and better marshaled political forces. The fragmentation of empire has been followed by the fragmentation of parties.

  Perilous historical analogies can be drawn to the tumultuous change sweeping the former Soviet Union. We could see a replay of the Bolshevik Revolution, with a fragile democratic order crushed by a reactionary coup. We could see a reprise of the fall of the Weimar Republic, with an economically wounded democratic government gradually eclipsed by ultranationalists promising renewed glory. We could see a variation on the toppling of the Fourth Republic in France, with colonists under siege in a distant outpost conspiring in a coup with imperial hard-liners at the center. The restoration of Communist rule in the republic of Tadzhikistan through a coup is a sign of the kinds of dangers that could lie ahead.

  These are not grounds for panic, but they are powerful arguments against complacency. In fact, though the creation of the new commonwealth is a promising development, the rise of a new imperial center will remain an ominous outlying possibility in the longer term.

  Promoting the principle of democratic self-determination should be the hallmark of our policy. For a multinational state ruled by a dominant nation with long-standing imperial traditions, a direct contradiction exists between democracy and unity. In the wake of democratic reform, smaller nations will inevitably exploit democracy to free themselves from the unity imposed by the center. And if the center insists on political unity, it will be inexorably driven to dismantle democracy. We must recognize that the defeat of Moscow’s imperial rule was an indispensable precondition for securing the triumph of freedom and democracy.

  Democratic self-determination involves two elements. First, nations must be allowed to exercise their right to choose their own destinies through democratic means. To reject this right a priori would deny our own heritage. Second, nations that exercise that right must uphold democratic values—especially in terms of respect for the rights of minorities—in their own societies. To insist on the first but overlook the second would open the door to new tyrannies at the republic level. While it involves close case-by-case judgment calls, promoting democratic self-determination is the only approach to the Soviet political crisis consistent with our fundamental values.

  The worst mistake we could make would be to build up the power of the center. Those who wanted to prop up Gorbachev in order to avoid the dangers of “instability” misunderstood the situation. There are two kinds of stability—the dynamic stability of a system based on consent and the rigid stability of one based on coercion. The history of Moscow’s domination of the republics proved that rulers can maintain stability through force. But the lesson of Gorbachev’s limited reforms was that the system could not survive after the screws of state repression had been loosened. As a result, real and enduring stability for the former Soviet Union lies in a decentralized system based on democratic self-determination. We should not sacrifice democracy or self-determination on the altar of stability. While the risk of some instability is a price worth paying for freedom, stability at the price of freedom is not worth the cost.

  Instead of inadvertently helping the antidemocratic forces at the center, we should be guided by a simple principle: if you want reform, help the reformers; if you want democracy, help the democrats. By launching a few key initiatives, we can enhance the prospects for the democratic evolution of the post-Soviet system:

  Expand contacts with democratic republic governments. We should extend a hand of cooperation—and when appropriate, diplomatic recognition—to those who respect democratic values. By associating ourselves with democratic nationalists and distancing ourselves from undemocratic leaders, we can exercise a subtle but constructive influence over the political evolution of the republics. As democrats take power, U.S. policymakers should meet with them, not just for photo opportunities, but also for substantive discussions to hammer out agendas for mutual cooperation.

  We should give a cold shoulder to undemocratic republic leaders, especially those that tolerate or encourage persecution of ethnic minorities. Some ethnic tensions and violence are inevitable. Moscow’s henchmen in the republics have stoked these passions for decades as part of their divide-and-rule strategy. Moreover, during the decades of totalitarian repression, these nations lacked the opportunity to work out their differences through mutual accommodation. Our policies should reach out to help those leaders who are part of the solution rather than the problem.

  Encourage republics to make a clean break with the Communist past. We should remind new democratic leaders of the need to remove systematically Communists who still hold positions of power. As Franz Kafka warned, “Every revolution evaporates, leaving behind only the slime of bureaucracy.” Before reform can succeed, Soviet society must be cleansed of the slime of seven decades of communism. For the most part, the Soviet people know this lesson better than we do. They know that communism pervades virtually every level of society through ubiquitous party functionaries. They know that ridding the country of its Communist icons—such as statues of Lenin and hammer-and-sickle emblems—is not enough. They know that real reform in the former Soviet Union can only come when holdovers from the old regime are swept out of office.

  Those who criticize Yeltsin for supposedly conducting “witch-hunts” against Communists should remember that the world applauded the purge of Nazis in postwar Germany and the war crimes trials at Nuremberg and that peace under Soviet communism killed twice as many people as the wars of German Nazism. Like Nazism, communism is a malignant cancer, and it must be cut out root and branch.

  Press nondemocr
atic republic governments to hold free legislative and presidential elections. Despite the victory of democratic forces in the August 1991 revolution, only a handful of republics of the Soviet Union have governments chosen in free and fair elections. As a result, the United States should not only press for rapid democratic evolution among the former republics but also link the level of our contacts and cooperation to their progress toward democracy. The National Endowment for Democracy, for example, should place top priority on projects enhancing party organization and media diversity in these areas. Because of his legitimacy as the elected president of Russia, Yeltsin dictated the postcoup agenda to Gorbachev, thereby forcing the Soviet president to move decisively toward democratic reform. If other republic leaders follow in Yeltsin’s footsteps in facing the voters, together they could form a united front that could win any battle over the shape of the new Soviet commonwealth.

  Expand educational and cultural exchange programs with the former Soviet republics. Throughout the former Soviet Union, a desperate desire exists for contact with the West and particularly the United States. In light of this democratic revolution, we should aggressively advance people-to-people exchanges, placing special emphasis on developing a program that sends U.S. teachers to work in schools and universities in the former Soviet republics. We should work to distribute books about democratic government and market economics. Most important, instead of phasing out Radio Liberty, we should increase its broadcasts, dedicating much of the additional time to teaching actual skills—such as accounting—that will be needed in a market economy.

  Channel humanitarian aid through international relief organizations or democratic republic governments. The United States should never send humanitarian aid through the central government. Much of the assistance sent to the victims of the Armenian earthquake and the Chernobyl disaster never reached the intended recipients but got lost in a maze of bureaucratic red tape. Even worse, recent Western grants of food assistance have been distributed through the KGB, which exploited them for political purposes. In the future, if we want our help to reach the most needy, we need to work with those in the republics who share our values.