The Soviet coup
Barnard, Patrick
expressed by Yevtushenko was--is--immense, almost super- human: Do not be deceived. Even at a brief temporal distance from the events of August, don't these words raise a more ominous concern:...
...Or will it follow the pattern of the late nine- teenth century: an "organic," racist nationalism of the kind that led to Hitler, feeding on myths of blood and an irrational division of the world into a hostile enmity of "us" and "them...
...Then, in 1972, he published an all-important article in the magazine Literaturnaya Gazeta, apparently about the writing of history, but actually warning that a group of right-wing Russian nationalists and slavophiles--per- haps even fascists---existed within the Communist party...
...Then it does seem to be reasonably clear that among the causes of the present upheaval, there are four interrelated factors of change that are most important: 1. The decay of communism as a unifying belief...
...And Mikhail Gorbachev, in a number of subsequent public statements, has indicated that he knew the coup was coming...
...The now disgraced hard-liners in Moscow, as well as policy makers in Western Europe and Washington, all watched the Yugoslavian crisis with anxiety because its agony represented, in miniature, exactly what they feared might happen in the Soviet Union...
...Gorbachev has set the social forces in motion, and neither he nor anyone else knows what the con- sequences will be...
...3. A general crisis of federalism...
...Surely, the issue of control over nuclear weapons, which surfaced immediately after the failed coup, reminds us that the Soviet crisis is also our own...
...was a federal state made up of a complex patchwork of ethnic groups...
...Furthermore, for months, the Russian KGB and the Soviet KGB had been working almost desk-to-desk in the same building (shortage of office space), so there was plenty of opportunity for like-minded bureaucrats to confer...
...There was an air of grave fatality to August 19, as if not just the Soviet Union, but the whole world was being swept along by a tide of Tolstoyan proportions...
...The bottom line is democracy--in nations, federations, and in the world...
...LIMITS ON LITIGATION CAPPING A GUSHER WHAT PUNITIVE DAMAGES COST he nation needs a complete overhaul of its legal system, particularly its civil adjudication: the number of lawsuits, the delay in trials, the universal fear among businessmen and doctors of doing anything new or risky for fear some innovative lawyer will sue, are all virtually overwhelming...
...Such temptations must be resist- ed...
...Just such a plan of bargaining by force has been carried out in Yugoslavia by right-wing and Communist Serbs, with bloody consequences, and all in the name of a "Greater Serbia...
...4. The weakening of established state structures through eco- nomic globalization and the communications revolution...
...He has contributed to the Nation and Newsday as well as Commonweal...
...The split must exist, too, within Yeltsin himself, and his government, which made an enormous blunder on August 26, when it warned secessionists that the Russian Republic might consider redrawing boundaries along ethnic lines...
...It was Yakovlev who, on August 16, quit the Communist party, warning of a state coup...
...How can one make sense of the swirl of events...
...In 1991, it is estimated that the Soviet GNP will have fallen by nearly 20 percent, inflation will continue at a rate of 100 percent or more, and the grain harvest will be inadequate...
...began with the signing of the new union treaty on August 20, 1991...
...Yakovlev, on August 16, had sent an unequivocal mes- sage to reformers, wherever they were in the Soviet Union...
...Obviously, it is clear now that the reformers of 1985 did not envisage the sheer scale of the transition which they began, even though they purposefully initiated a "revolution from above...
...Jacek Kuron was prophetic writing four years ago in Warsaw: "A genie is being let out of the bottle...
...Ironically, by making this choice, the coup planners only hastened the very changes they sought to avoid...
...Here, too, Yakovlev's career supplies clues about how very deep the cleavage has been between conservatives and reformers in Soviet society for more than a generation...
...Until recently at least, they have been among the most literate people anywhere, and they have their own history in the twentieth century to draw from...
...Now, as the winter of 1991 approaches, the battle between various kinds of Right and Left is out in the open, no longer confined to the precincts of a single party...
...2. The resurgence of ethnic and religious nationalism...
...Furthermore it is most likely that this trans- formation extends far beyond communist countries, since rough- ly half of the world's current federations now experience some kind of ethnic conflict...
...No doubt some Western leaders would secretly welcome a "Chilean solu- tion" for the Soviet Union, simply because they are so deeply worried about financial stability...
...And the Yugoslavian example serves as a vivid illustration of what should not be done...
...What is extraordinary about the Soviet Union--and at the same time most hopeful and dangerous--is that the reform faction that came to power in 1985 consciously set out to meet the chal- lenge of globalization...
...The overwhelming majority of the Soviet Army did not participate, a fact made obvious when U.S...
...intelligence sources said American satellites had detected no significant troop maneuvers around Moscow...
...Yakovlev was the real strategist among the reformers, and throughout the last six years of political change, his shifts have always given signs about Gorbachev's real intentions...
...For ten years, from 1962-72, Yakovlev worked in the propaganda department of the Soviet Communist party's Central Committee, the very body which appeared to evaporate in the middle of the August 19 coup...
...Within the farmers and workers, justifiably angry about the injustice of economic reform, but mindful that they must face a choice between a flawed democracy and a no more reliable strong man...
...Many journalists have described the coup as a "Woody Allen" affair, or an "operetta...
...If there are historical analogies, they are with those eras of great transition, such as the period around World War I when the Austro-Hungarian empire fell apart...
...And the Soviet Union, as well as independent republics, faces the simultaneous interplay of the factors of upheaval: the dissolution of communism, nation- alism, disintegration of the federation and attempts at confed- eration, added to the economic crisis accentuated by structural reform...
...The problem is becoming clearer every day, so much so that even Dan Quayle has seen it...
...Furthermore, many ordinary people are rightfully angry that they have constantly had to pay the price for policies decided upon by an elite that inhabits a world far removed from everyday life...
...PATRICK BARNARD Patrick Barnard is a Canadian journalist specializing in international affairs...
...Quite the contrary, it is a coup that was never executed...
...At the current rate of increase, it will be up to 15 percent by 1995...
...The comparison, in Russian history, is with the Kerensky government born out of the revolution of February 1917...
...The failed putsch of August 19, 1991, offers a number of signals, both hopeful and dark, that much is left to come...
...For example, the health- care system in this country--which leaves some 75 million people without full coverage--already costs 13 percent of our GNP...
...To all who wished change in the Soviet Union, of whatever kind, this was an absolute signal that they should think about what they would do in the days ahead...
...In fact, the momentous changes of this past summer really began in July when civil war broke out in Yugoslavia...
...Like Yugoslavia, the U.S.S.R...
...In contrast with the Soviet Union, however, Yugoslavia had long ago attempted to build a decentralized political structure to accommodate stress between the central government and con- stituent republics...
...Leonid Brezhnev immediately decided that Yakovlev had to leave the Soviet Union, and sent him as the country's ambassador to Canada, where Yakovlev remained until the reform faction came to power in 1985...
...Even at a brief temporal distance from the events of August, don't these words raise a more ominous concern: What forces would be unleashed should this great expec- tation of the future be disappointed...
...For the Moscow conservatives who plotted their abortive putsch, the Soviet Union was about to follow Yugoslavia into chaos once radical devolution of the U.S.S.R...
...Suppose we make the assumption, as many observers already have, that we are now living through the birth pangs of the "global age...
...One of the reasons for these escalating costs--higher per capita than in any other industrial nation in the world--is what is called "defensive" medicine, i.e., many tests of an expensive nature that are needlessly done to anticipate lawsuits against the doctor or the health-care 502: Commonweal...
...Their real program was to create an open society to meet the challenges of an open world...
...Within Yevtushenko, always the enemy of chauvinism, trusting that the new Russian nationalism will be of the citizen-democrat variety, rising in his words like a "swan," and not sinking down into the mud...
...They certainly underestimated the power of ethnic nationalism in a democratized Soviet Union...
...Similarly, in both countries the waning of communism was giving birth to mighty centrifugal forces...
...The economist Nikolai Shmelyov, for one, has publicly stated that he would like to see "a hand of iron" carry out the ongoing eco- nomic transition...
...The reason for pessimism is the well-known presence in the armed forces of officers who would like to see a "Chilean solu- tion" to the economic problems of Russia and the Union: which is to say, a market economy imposed from above by a military dictatorship...
...Fortunately, the continuing debate between democrats and absolutists now must take place throughout the fragmenting empire, and not just in Moscow...
...Unfortunately, some of Boris Yeltsin's economic advisors have used language suggesting a similar view...
...More optimistically, the people of the Soviet Union still have not made their real wishes clear...
...The reform faction had some allies in the intelligence community and military-industrial complex, experts who saw economic stagnation leaving the U.S.S.R...
...The decade of the '90s will be a time when the boundaries of a number of existing countries will be redrawn...
...hope- lessly wedged between an emerging Germany and Japan...
...At the very moment that Yevtushenko voiced his joy, far away in Yugoslavia, Serbs and Croats were killing each other in a meaningless and fratricidal conflict...
...The ambiguous nature of the coup gives reasons for both despair and hope as the Soviet Union faces its long, hard winter...
...Already, one fact is certain...
...Too often, our leaders have applied a full-court press against our supposed antagonists, seemingly oblivious to the truth that to constantly seek advantage in the global age must bring trouble for ourselves...
...So, too, does the fact that the Soviet armed forces, especially at the level of the middle ranks, were the main absent parties to the putsch and are still to be heard from...
...13 September 1991:501 It is almost certain that this tension of belief exists within every individual...
...The reformers were led, of course, by Mikhail Gorbachev, but also by a very powerful figure in the bureaucracy of the Communist party, Aleksandr N. Yakovlev...
...As soon as the putsch failed, British intelligence indicated that they believed Boris Yeltsin's recent campaign to woo members of the Soviet military by appealing to their "Russian" tradition had succeeded, and that well-placed officers had protected him in the past...
...Finally, we in the West bear great responsibility for the outcome of this drama...
...An alliance of right-wing military officers and conservative technocrats is a future possibility, principally in the Yeltsin camp, though not necessarily so...
...Will it be like the citizen-demo- crat nationalism of the French and American Revolutions, repos- ing on human rights and the sovereignty of the people acting freely from below...
...In these circumstances, the crucial question is what form the triumphant nationalism will take...
...Some of the most historically minded of American observers, such as Professor Gerry Hough of Duke University, warn that the August 19 revolution was probably the first stage in a more drawn-out process...
...What was once a struggle within the party, now becomes a real question for nationalists: What kind of nationalism do we want...
...Then the new leadership set out on a path diametrically opposed to the Right within the party, seeking radical adjustment to what Gorbachev called "an interrelated and interdependent world...
...Hence their clumsy haste to act the day before, rather than waiting for the difficult winter that was sure to come...
Vol. 118 • September 1991 • No. 15
