RL 298/91 August 24, 1991 A LESSON IN INEPTITUDE: MILITARY-BACKED COUP CRUMBLES Stephen Foye As a result of ineptitude and a lack of popular support, a military-backed coup attempt that initially appeared ominous was quickly transformed into a farce. Post- mortems have been dominated by perplexity over the coup's course, but it nevertheless appears that the coup's failure, at least in the near term, has destroyed the Soviet right wing as a political force. The sudden and mysterious unraveling of an attempted coup d'itat in the Soviet Union has been greeted with both joy and perplexity throughout the world. In fact, what had initially appeared to be a triumphant grab for power by a military-backed junta seems, in retrospect, to have been a bumbling misadventure launched by mediocre men who were incapable either of inspiring or intimidating the society they hoped to control. Lacking charisma and bereft of compelling ideas or policies, the eight members of the self-appointed Committee for the State of Emergency appear also to have lacked the stomach for the brutal seizure of power that was probably their only hope. Poorly conceived and feebly pursued, the attempted coup suffered from a number of internal flaws that were quickly laid bare and exacerbated by the unfathomable temporizing of the conspirators. Not the least of these was the limited support that the coup leaders enjoyed within the armed forces. Ultimately, their failure to gain the loyalty even of the troops was but a reflection of their similar inability to cow the population. This tragicomic operation, embodying as it did so many of the contradictions that characterize the rapidly changing Soviet society of today, was not without its ironies. It could properly be characterized as a military coup lacking the support of the army, launched, implicitly at least, in defense of a Communist Party apparatus that, in the end, refused to support its actions. The forces that participated in the attempt to usurp power, moreover, temporarily unseated the man by whose hand they were forged and who, it was feared less than six months ago, might himself stand at their head in a right-wing coup of his own. That man, Mikhail Gorbachev, has emerged physically unscathed but with his domestic power base shattered and with disturbing questions arising over his own still murky relationship to the conspirators. Meanwhile, Boris El'tsin, the man whom Gorbachev once dismissed from the Politburo, has ascended to the rank of world statesman on the ruins of the routed right-wing forces with whose cause Gorbachev had at several important points associated himself. Splits Lond Apparent The serious divisions that afflicted the Soviet armed forces on the eve of the coup attempt had long been clear to Western and Soviet observers. The domestic and foreign-policy reforms launched under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev following his accession to power in 1985 quickly split the defense community into conservative and liberal camps. Conservative sentiment crystallized especially among senior commanders and political officers, with the High Command generally trying to maintain the leading role of the Communist Party and staking out antireformist positions. Liberal sentiment, on the other hand, was most prevalent among junior and middle-level officers, who, with increasing intensity, opposed the military leadership on a number of issues ranging from political and economic liberalization to the need for radical military reform. A cleavage in the officer corps along generational lines was soon apparent. At the same time, Gorbachev's reforms also inspired a flowering of long-suppressed nationalist sentiment throughout the Soviet Union. This development further undermined the cohesion of the armed forces and increased their general alienation from society. Burgeoning nationalism left the army--which was already scorned by liberals as a vestige of Stalinism--alienated and antagonized by growing antiimperial sentiments on the non-Russian periphery. At the same time, national self-awareness "infected" the draft pool, exacerbating interethnic tensions among conscripts and turning the already sullen conscript army even more firmly against the overwhelmingly Slavic officer corps. The rise of Boris El'tsin and the emergence of a progressive Russian nationalism further increased tensions within the army, and large numbers of officers gravitated towards the Russian leader--many apparently voted for him in the RSFSR presidential election--despite the stern admonitions of the High Command. Gorbachev's "Bargain with the Devil" While Gorbachev and his allies were the instigators of reform in the USSR, the Soviet president's policies quickly led not only to accelerating democratization but also to the economic and political disintegration of the Soviet empire. A product of the Party organization who apparently hoped to reform the central apparatus of power rather than destroy it, Gorbachev increasingly became a drag on the reform process that, at least in the West, was associated almost entirely with his name. As the year 1990 wore on, political power, insofar as it existed, moved inexorably from the center to the more democratically oriented republics. It appeared that Gorbachev had initiated a process that was gradually rendering his own institutional power bases--the USSR government and the Communist Party--obsolete. In an attempt to shore up the disintegrating foundations of his own power, Gorbachev moved in the waning months of 1990 into an alliance with hard-line forces. The consequence of this cooperation, ominous in its implications, appears to have been the creation, under a unified command, of an internal security apparatus that united the forces of the KGB and Ministry of Internal Affairs with elite elements--particularly airborne divisions--drawn from the army. This apparatus appears to have had close ties with the conservative Communist Party organization. Gorbachev's own rhetoric during this period turned increasingly bellicose, and he warned that attempts to break up the Union could result in bloodshed. He also said that he intended to use the newly strengthened powers of the presidency to enforce compliance with all-Union laws. He was particularly critical of independence movements in the three Baltic republics. In January, 1991, this domestic coercive apparatus was activated in those very republics--an operation that led to numerous acts of intimidation by troops and culminated in the brutal attack on January 13 on a Vilnius television station that left fourteen dead. Gorbachev's exact role in these activities will perhaps never be precisely determined, but the claims he made at the time to have been ignorant strain credulity. He failed, moreover, to halt the activities of the marauding troops both prior and subsequent to January 13, and he never condemned those actions or punished the commanders responsible. The right-wing parliamentarian Colonel Victor Alksnis, although not an entirely reliable witness, claimed that Gorbachev was fully aware of plans to sweep aside the democratically elected governments of the Baltic republics but that he lost his nerve during the operation and "betrayed" the army. Whatever Gorbachev's role in these events, the point more pertinent to consideration of his responsibility for the failed coup is that he presided, either actively or passively, over the creation of a coercive machine firmly opposed to further political reform. The spokesmen for this machine spoke with increasing confidence and boldness in the months leading up to the coup attempt. Despite his own return to reformist positions and political alliances this past spring, Gorbachev failed to neutralize this group, and his apparent defection undoubtedly increased the sense of urgency that its members felt for the future. As has been well noted in the Western press, Gorbachev's alliance with leaders of nine of the Union republics--and particularly the impending signing of the Union treaty, which would have greatly weakened the central authorities--probably compelled the hard-line forces to take action when they did. They also appear to have been concerned about Boris El'tsin's decree outlawing Communist Party bodies in the workplace (and potentially in the armed forces) and were apprehensive that they faced a new offensive with respect to military reform in the fall. The Coup Goes Awry The coup was launched in the early hours of August 19 and inititially appeared to be a success. Gorbachev, set to return to Moscow to sign the Union treaty, was reported to have been detained in the Crimea. Tanks and armored personnel carriers streamed confidently into Moscow, and a self-proclaimed Committee for the State of Emergency announced that it had taken control of the national government. The eight-man committee was headed by Genadii Yanaev, a career apparatchik who, until the coup, had been serving in an undistinguished fashion as Gorbachev's vice president. The committee's membership included: Oleg Baklanov--a prominent defense industrialist and the first deputy chairman of the Soviet Defense Council; KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov; Defense Minister Dmitrii Yazov; and Minister of the Interior Boriss Pugo. Each of these four men were known for their hard-line views, and the three last-named, in particular, had long played high-profile roles in efforts by conservatives to reverse the reform process and quash independence drives in the republics. Almost immediately, however, it became clear that the military-backed coup faced problems. While the conspirators moved quickly to bring the media under their control, they inexplicably failed either to seize or to silence Russian Federation President Boris El'tsin. The oversight was only one of many that were to baffle Western and Soviet observers in coming days. More immediately, it was quickly apparent that support for the coup leaders was spotty, even among the troops deployed to police Moscow. CNN film footage and other Western television reports amply demonstrated that many Soviet soldiers--and not a few officers--were more prepared to mingle happily with the Russian population than to shoot at it. The image, surely well appreciated in Moscow, quickly undermined any aura of invincibility that the armed units might have possessed and raised early doubts concerning the Emergency Committee's own following within the army. Moreover, in quick succession, military units and commanders appeared to go over to the forces supporting El'tsin. Reports from Moscow indicated that elements within the three elite army divisions deployed in the capital--including the Taman Motorized Rifle Division, the 106th Airborne Division, and the Kantemirov Tank Division--had defected to the RSFSR president. The RSFSR parliament building, where El'tsin had holed up to face the insurrection, was soon guarded by some thirty tanks and armored personnel carriers. Soldiers still nominally under the control of the coup leaders repeatedly told reporters that they would not fire on civilians. Many said that they had no ammunition and that they had no knowledge of their mission at the time that they were sent into action. The coup leaders, in fact, appeared to make little use of the forces that were presumed to be under their command. According to initial reports from US intelligence officials, only two army divisions outside of Moscow were mobilized, and it is unclear if they did anything. Even the well-trained forces of the KGB and Ministry of Internal Affairs, who might be assumed to have been the backbone of any takeover effort, were not much in evidence. According to CNN, Pentagon sources characterized military actions in the Baltic as pathetic. Divisions over the coup attempt were quickly apparent even among senior officers. According to Western reports, Colonel General Konstantin Kobets declared before a crowd on August 19 that soldiers were not obliged to obey the orders of superior officers who supported the new government. Kobets, a deputy chief of the General Staff, was in El'tsin's service prior to the coup, and he appears to be one of the top military men whose star will rise as a result of the coup's collapse. On the same day, Russian sources reported that two top commanders in the elite airborne forces had tried to defect to El'tsin and that one had been arrested as a result. While Defense Ministry spokesmen quickly denied the reports, the confusion only reinforced the appearance of disunity at the top of the military hierarchy. In addition, the conspirators were crippled by the fact that Leningrad Military District Commander Colonel General Viktor Samsonov cut a deal early with reformist Leningrad mayor Anatolii Sobchak not to deploy troops against the local population. The coup attempt ended abruptly and ignominiously. Having failed to garner significant support from any sector of Soviet society, the coup leaders fled the Kremlin on August 21. The critical point appears to have been the night of August 20-21, when it was reported that tanks were massed on the outskirts of Moscow, poised to force their way into the Russian Federation building and arrest El'tsin, who was barricaded in. While some violence did occur that night, no concerted attack materialized, and there was a palpable sense in the Russian capital and elsewhere that the conspirators had lost their nerve. A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma... So ineptly was the coup conducted that, in its wake, observers were left questioning less the soundness of the conspirators' tactics than the soundness of their mental faculties. In fact, it appears that from the beginning the Emergency Committee represented a very narrow range of interest groups that probably included only hard-line militants within the High Command, the KGB and MVD, and the Party apparatus. Not surprisingly, this is the same group that came together during Gorbachev's alliance with right-wing forces this past winter in order to suppress independence-minded movements in the republics. The arrests that have followed in the coup's aftermath support this proposition. Those arrested include: Yanaev and Pavlov, Party apparatchiks; Yazov, the defense minister; Kryuchkov and Pugo, the heads of the KGB and MVD, respectively; and Varennikov, the hawkish head of the Soviet Ground Forces. More generally, those discredited by the coup include virtually all the people that Gorbachev chose to surround himself with since last fall. While he has not, at the time of writing, yet been arrested, the discrediting of Chief of the General Staff Mikhail Moiseev suggests the likely fate of those more considerable forces who, without openly supporting the coup, failed to make clear their opposition to it until it was over. Moiseev emerged from the coup with his reputation untarnished and was named by Gorbachev to head the Defense Ministry temporarily following Yazov's arrest. Within twenty-four hours, however, he was under suspicion of having--at least--sat on the fence during the attempted coup, and he was dismissed at El'tsin's behest from the positions both of defense minister and chief of the General Staff. Moiseev's wait-and-see attitude appears to have paralleled similar stances taken by other well-established antireform groups. The coup attempt lost momentum so quickly that both the Communist Party and the "Soyuz" faction of deputies, long the wellsprings of conservative opposition to the reform process, also refused to support the conspirators' aims. These developments suggest that the coup leadership's only viable route to power had probably lain in a rapid and brutal suppression of all democratic elements--more on the lines of Tiananmen Square. Such an approach would have placed primary responsibility for repression on the more reliable security forces and might, in the short term at least, have forced a dazed population into submission. It would have left little time for disaffected soldiers to defect and, if thoroughly conducted, might have left them no opposition to rally around. At the same time, the coup effort would probably have quickly won the support of the Communist Party and "Soyuz," thereby broadening its power base, and might have swept many top-ranking officers with conservative political beliefs, such as Moiseev, into active support for the insurrection. Western observers have offered a number of explanations for the temporizing of the coup leadership. According to a commentary in The New York Times, some US government officials have suggested that the conspirators were forced to launch the coup effort twenty-four hours before they had planned, thus forcing them to rely on troops and commanders whose loyalty to the coup was not assured. The change of plan not only meant that reliable KGB and MVD forces arrived on the scene too late but that the entire operation misfired and lost the coup leadership valuable support among groups that sympathized with its aims. But, tactics aside, the men leading the coup effort appeared unwilling to use the necessary violence that might have assured their hold on power. There are a number of explanations for this. As Norman Davies has observed, USSR President Gorbachev never gave up the position of Communist Party general secretary and so continued to control appointments to positions of authority. "It is hard to imagine," Davies writes, "that by 1991 many real Stalinists could still be lurking in the upper echelons." At the same time, with the erosion of his authority and popularity, Gorbachev surrounded himself increasingly with men who were as mediocre as they were conservative. The coup attempt reflected the fact that the Yanaevs, Pavlovs, and Yazovs were distinguished neither by their intelligence nor by their decisiveness. The more dangerous men of the security forces and army who stood behind them apparently never had their day. In fact, the political impotence of the pro-Communist Soviet right wing has been demonstrated again and again in recent months. In the RSFSR presidential elections held earlier this year, the Party offered no fresh faces or ideas, and the tired performances of former Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov and former Minister of Internal Affairs Vadim Bakatin only demonstrated the Party leadership's inability to adapt to changed political circumstances. Later, in June of this year, a laughable "coup d'itat" headed by Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov was easily defused by Gorbachev. While many in the West marveled at another Gorbachev victory, few recognized that these so-called right-wing forces were an integral part of the political fabric--not to mention the political psychology--that maintained Gorbachev in power and that Gorbachev, like them, was in many important ways an embodiment of the old Soviet Union rather than the new. Gorbachev's own inability to grasp this fact was made clear in the days following his release, particularly when his actions are contrasted with Boris El'tsin's. Gorbachev immediately defended the Communist Party and said that it could still be an instrument of democratic reform. Boris El'tsin outlawed the Communist Party in the RSFSR. Gorbachev appointed three conservatives to head temporarily the KGB, Armed Forces, and Ministry of Internal Affairs. Boris El'tsin fired them and appointed more forward-looking officials in their place. Gorbachev's actions, in fact, implied his dangerous isolation from objective developments in the Soviet Union. It is entirely conceivable that the ringleaders of the coup had, over a number of years, become similarly isolated, and that they really believed their call for a government of national salvation would find support among the population at large. In the long run, a military-backed dictatorship--however well implemented--could not have solved the Soviet Union's political and economic problems, nor overcome the growing force of democratization in the RSFSR and the other republics. Yet the ineptitude of the conspirators precluded even the chance of short-term success. In republican capitals throughout the Soviet Union, the fall of the conspirators is being treated, with justification, as the gateway to a new era of independence and democracy. Yet, as experience in Eastern Europe has demonstrated, that path will be long and hard, and will give birth to different problems that, in turn, will produce new threats to the democratic process. So discredited is the Communist Party in the Soviet Union today that, at present, there exists no right-wing group with any claim to popular support. In the coming months and years, however, that situation is likely to change. If powerful security services are maintained in the RSFSR and other republics, a situation could arise in which antidemocratic political demagogues--no longer operating under the discredited banner of the Communist Party--could again join with the armed forces to threaten the people.