hatred among the existing party personnel. But he did not mind about their criticisms; he understood that his popularity rose every time he was victimized by the Politburo from 1987. The more dangers he ran, the better he was liked in ordinary homes.
He had a mercurial personality. As Moscow party chief in 1985–7, he had been a bully and had sacked officials in their thousands without investigation of individual cases. But subsequently the Inter-Regional Group in the Congress of People’s Deputies since 1990 had given him an education in consultative procedures, and he learned how to listen and to act as a member of a team: this was not typical behaviour for a communist party official.
His apparent goal, after the arrest of the putschists, was the inception of a combination of democratic politics and capitalist economy in a Russia unrestrained by the USSR. On 23 August he suspended the legal status of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Russia. Gorbachev complied by laying down the office of Party General Secretary. Yeltsin’s pressure was unremitting. On 28 October he made a lengthy, televised speech to the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies declaring his intention to implement an economic programme based upon the principles of the market. A few days later, on 6 November, he issued a decree banning the Soviet communist party altogether. He stipulated, too, that the ministers of the RSFSR had precedence over those of the USSR; and he applied a veto on any USSR appointments he disliked. Between 6 and 8 November he announced the composition of his full cabinet. He himself would be RSFSR prime minister while Yegor Gaidar, a proponent of
None the less Yeltsin had yet to reveal his purposes about the USSR. Publicly he denied any wish to break up the Union, and he accepted the invitation to return to the Novo-Ogarevo negotiations. Yet Yeltsin’s aides had been working on contingency plans for Russia’s complete secession even before the August coup; and subsequently Yeltsin lost no chance to weaken the draft powers of the Union he was discussing with Gorbachev. So what did Yeltsin really want?
Gorbachev’s proposal was that the USSR should give way to a ‘Union of Sovereign States’. There would still be a single economic space and a unified military command; there would also be regular consultations among the republican presidents. Gorbachev concurred that the Union President would not be allowed to dominate the others. His despair was such that he offered to step down in Yeltsin’s favour as Union President if only Yeltsin would agree to maintain the Union. ‘Let’s talk man to man about this,’ he implored Yeltsin.32 But Yeltsin was inscrutable. There were reasons for him to keep his options open. Of special importance was the refusal of Leonid Kravchuk, the Ukrainian President, to join the discussions. On 18 October, when a Treaty on the Economic Commonwealth had been signed, Ukraine declined to send a representative.33 In such a situation, on 24 November, Yeltsin rejected Gorbachev’s request to him and to the other republican leaders to initial the Union Treaty.34
The people of Ukraine, including most of its Russian inhabitants, were terminally exasperated with Gorbachev, and on 1 December they voted for independence in a referendum. The voters cast their ballots for a variety of reasons. Supporters of radical economic reform wanted freedom to carry it out fast; opponents of such reform advocated independence because they, too, wished to be liberated from Gorbachev. And Ukrainian nationalists simply wanted independence. The result of the referendum was a disaster for the proposed Union of Sovereign States. Without Ukraine, such a Union was unrealizable.
Yeltsin arranged an emergency meeting with Ukrainian President Kravchuk and Shushkevich, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus (as Belorussia now insisted on being called), in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha near the Belarusian capital Minsk. On 8 December, Yeltsin and Kravchuk persuaded Shushkevich to agree to the formation of a Common wealth of Independent States (CIS), an even weaker combination than the very weakened version of the Union lately proposed at Novo-Ogarevo.35 The Commonwealth would maintain a unified economic area and unified strategic military forces. But it would have its central offices not in Moscow but in Minsk, and there would be no president. The declaration of the three Slavic republics presented the other republics with a
Perhaps the Ukrainian referendum was the pretext that Yeltsin had been waiting for to break up the USSR in line with a basic hidden strategy. More likely is the possibility that he simply had a keen wish to get rid of Gorbachev and to assume unconditional authority in Moscow. It may also be that, being a very impulsive leader, he was merely reacting to situations as the mood took him.
What was indisputably clear was that the game was up for Gorbachev. If there was not even to be a Union of Sovereign States, he had no function to discharge except the declaration of his retirement. He bowed to the inevitable and accepted that the Soviet republics were about to go their own ways. He did this with a heavy heart, predicting that the break-up of the Union would lead to military and political strife as well as economic ruin. But he had fought for the Union, and lost. On 25 December he gave a short speech on television. He spoke with simple dignity: ‘I leave my post with trepidation. But also with hope, with faith in you, in your wisdom and force of spirit. We are the inheritors of a great civilization, and now the burden falls on each and every one that it may be resurrected to a new, modern and worthy life.’36 The USSR would be abolished at midnight on 31 December 1991.
Into oblivion would pass a state which had caused political tremors abroad by its very existence in the 1920s. A state whose borders were roughly the same as those of the Russian Empire and whose population embraced an unparalleled number of nations, religions and philosophies. A state which had built a mighty industrial base in the 1930s and had defeated Germany in the Second World War. A state which became a superpower, matching the USA in military capacity by the late 1970s. A state whose political and economic order had introduced a crucial category of the lexicon of twentieth-century thought. From the beginning of 1992, that state was no more.
26
Power and the Market
(1992–1993)
The Soviet Union had ended not with a bang but with a whimper. Its communist party, its ideology, its flag and state anthem and its October Revolution disappeared. All this had occurred with extraordinary abruptness. Nobody, not even those at the apex of public power, had had a chance to ponder the general significance of the events in all their momentousness.
Politics remained volatile; a premium was still placed upon the swift implementation of fundamental reforms. But in the person of Yeltsin, Russia had a leader who had always been decisive. After the Soviet Union’s dismantlement, moreover, he had an incentive to display this characteristic. Having played a prominent part in the demise of the old order, he had to show that he could create a better economy and society. His room for choice in policies was at its greatest in his first few months of unrivalled power when his popularity was at its peak. The first half of 1992 was crucial for his prospects. Two main options were discussed by him and his advisers. The first was for him to call fresh elections so as to obtain an unequivocal political mandate for economic reform; the second was to proceed with economic reform in expectation of an eventual approval at elections to be held later.
Yeltsin selected the second alternative; and on 2 January 1992 he permitted Gaidar, his First Deputy Prime Minister, to introduce free-market prices for most goods in the shops of the Russian Federation. Thus the government gave up its right to fix prices for consumers. It was a big change of stance. Gaidar indicated that ‘price liberalization’ would be just the first of a series of reforms which would include measures to balance the budget, eliminate state subsidies and privatize virtually the whole economy. A transformation of industry, agriculture, commerce and finance was heralded.
