RL 308/91 August 29, 1991 The Circumstances that Led to the Conservative Putsch Dawn Mann Summary: The attempt at a conservative putsch was a response to both immediate and long-term political and economic developments, as well as an attempt to salvage the privileged positions of its organizers and their supporters. Six years of perestroika, democratization, glasnost', and "new thinking" in foreign policy had led to rising conservative anger, which had, in recent months, been more openly expressed and more frequently acted upon. The imminent signing of a new Union treaty and the steadily worsening economic situation, together with Gorbachev's complaisance towards conservatives in spite of their actions, were major contributing factors. There has always been opposition to the reforms enacted under Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership, and now that the oft predicted coup d'itat has been attempted, there will be those who trace its root cause to 1985 and the election of Gorbachev as CPSU general secretary. Certainly there was conservative opposition to Gorbachev's election as general secretary, and the subsequent struggles waged within, against, and around the Communist Party-controlled political and economic apparatus have been well documented in both Soviet and Western analyses. But, while some reasons for the attempted putsch certainly predate 1991, more recent events, as well as the specter of an uncertain future, lay behind the decision of the coup's organizers to act now. The Immediate Causes The immediate political and economic factors that precipitated the abortive coup d'itat launched on August 18 by the eight members of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR (the Emergency Committee hereafter) are fairly easy to enumerate. Chief among the political factors was the impending conclusion--the signing ceremony was scheduled for August 20--of a new Union treaty, a treaty that would have granted de facto recognition of the secesssion of six republics from the USSR and stripped the central government of nearly all its powers.1 For the key men involved in the coup, the demise of the center meant a curtailment of the powers exercised by the institutions they headed. True, within the context of the "war of laws," the scope of their authority was already limited, because republican governments were simply refusing to abide by central directives, but the new treaty would have ended this war by granting supremacy to republican laws, an outcome that was interpreted by many central authorities as a defeat. The USSR Supreme Soviet, the USSR Cabinet of Ministers, and leading members of the Communist Party have, for many months, maintained a voluble stream of criticism of the terms proposed in successive drafts of the Union treaty. Representatives of the armed forces, the KGB, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs have repeatedly emphasized the need to maintain unified, national forces.2 The Union treaty called for the dissolution of the current Supreme Soviet. The functions of most of the national ministries would have devolved to their republican counterparts, and the KGB, MVD, and armed forces would have had to share decision-making power with the republics too. On the eve of the putsch, the government and the legislature spoke out yet again, in quite forceful tdbms. The presidium of the USSR Cabinet of Ministers issued a statement lamenting the absence from the latest draft (released on August 15) of any specific measures to resolve the food and energy crises and to ensure the functioning of a unitary monetary and banking system.3 In a statement published on August 19, Anatolii Luk'yanov, the chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet, demanded that the Supreme Soviet (and possibly the USSR Congress of People's Deputies) be convened to discuss the omission from the draft of several specific recommendations that the legislature had insisted be included.4 In addition to the testimony of Gorbachev, RSFSR President Boris El'tsin, and others that the signing of the Union treaty was a key factor in the decision of the conservatives to act, several of the early documents issued by the Emergency Committee reflect its members' obsession with the preservation of the USSR.5 In particular, the committee's "Appeal to the Soviet People" is replete with references to "the mortal danger looming large over our Motherland," "the extremist forces that have embarked on a course toward liquidating the Soviet Union," the "trampling" of the results of the national referendum of March 17 on the future structure of the USSR. The same document also contained a promise to hold a nationwide debate on the draft Union treaty, "since the fate of numerous people in our great Motherland will depend on what becomes of the [Soviet] Union." However, the signing of the Union treaty was not the only political factor that prompted the organizers of the coup to act. Conservatives had expressed their anger and dismay over other recent political developments. The most notable were RSFSR President Boris El'tsin's banning on July 20 of the workplace activities of political parties, which the All-Union Army Party Committee (among many others) was utterly opposed to; and Gorbachev's new CPSU program, which Party conservatives tore apart at the Central Committee plenum in July, 1991.6 Other political events that surely antagonized the conservatives include: Gorbachev's decree putting state property under his control (thereby weakening the power of the ministries), the forced resignation of RSFSR Communist Party First Secretary Ivan Polozkov, the formation of the Democratic Party of Communists of Russia, and El'tsin's decree on executive power, which allowed him to appoint regional administrators in advance of lmCB15R$H elections this fall. Simultaneouqin the political sphere, things were happeni7/--or not happening--in the economic realm. Although economic indicators have been falling for a long time, the torrent of bad news intensified during the weeks that preceded the putsch.7 Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov's claim to the contrary notwithstanding, economic data for July released by the USSR State Committee for Statistics on August 14 indicated that the economy was not stabilizing, which was supported by the statements of various cabinet ministers throughout July and August.8 The chairman of the USSR State Committee for the Procurement of Food Resources reported that, halfway through the harvest season, the state had received only one-fourth of the planned deliveries.9 Not only is this year's grain crop expected to be substantially smaller than last year's, but farmers are refusing to sell it to the state at prices the state can afford.10 With winter already on the way in Siberia, the USSR Minister of Petroleum warned that the Soviet Union would have to stop exporting oil--an important source of hard-currency earnings--and perhaps even begin to import it, and at a press conference on August 13, Pavlov predicted that electricity would be in short supply for the next five years.11 On "Construction Day," August 11, the USSR State Committee for Statistics announced that only three of 331 sites scheduled to be completed in 1991 had been finished and that housing construction had fallen by 21 percent compared with the same period last year.12 On July 30, the USSR State Bank revealed that the money supply had increased by 41.6 percent during the first half of 1991 and that the budget deficit stood at 60 billion rubles, almost twice as large as planned.13 Viktor Gerashchenko, the chairman of the USSR State Bank, confessed on August 9 that he would have to order the issue of at least an additional 80 billion rubles to cover the deficit--some 45 billion rubles more than had been forecast.14 There were many signs during the summer of 1991 of a resurgence of conservative forces and of increasing anger among conservatives over the course Gorbachev was pursuing. Attacks on Baltic border posts continued unabated. Leading officials in the RSFSR Communist Party, together with a group of high-ranking military officers and ultranationalist Russian writers, announced plans to form a "Movement of Patriotic Forces," whose aim was spelled out in a document entitled "Slovo k narodu" (Word to the People), which was published in Sovetskaya Rossiya on July 23.15 The reactionary wings of the CPSU--the Bolshevik Platform and the Communist Initiative Movement--began to organize more formally. The evidence was sufficiently alarming for both Shevardnadze and Yakovlev--just days before Gorbachev's arrest--to utter fresh warnings of the likelihood of a coup. Propitious Circumstances? There were a host of other contributing factors that affected the deliberations of the conspirators and help to explain why they thought the coup was justifiable and could succeed. Gorbachev's absence from Moscow was certainly one; as Eduard Shevardnadze has observed, given what was happening, Gorbachev should never have left Moscow.16 It was much easier for the conspirators to isolate Gorbachev in Foros. (Furthermore, it being August, Gorbachev was not the only one who was out of town: a number of officials were too, and the Supreme Soviets of both the USSR and RSFSR were in summer recess.) A second factor was Gorbachev's falling popularity, which could have tempted the putschists into thinking that his arrest might be greeted with approval. The conspirators were probably also influenced by the demonstrable inability of the democratic forces to work together and their less than wholehearted support for Gorbachev. Yet another factor was widespread anger over the increasing difficulty of everyday life. The Emergency Committee attempted to turn this anger into support for itself by promising an almost immediate end to shortages, ration coupons, rising prices, and the housing crisis. The leaders and supporters of the putsch must also have been suffering from a growing sense of betrayal. Last fall, under pressure from conservatives in the government, in the defense-industrial complex, and in the military, Gorbachev withdrew his support for the radical "500 Days" plan for economic reform, a decision that marked the beginning of his famous "turn to the right." From September, 1990, until April, 1991, Gorbachev cultivated the conservatives and can even be said to have indulged them.17 His subsequent "defection" from their camp and his formation of an alliance with El'tsin could only have left them feeling outraged and disillusioned. Gorbachev himself made a number of political mistakes that contributed to the creation of a situation in which a coup was possible. For example, he should have stood for president in a direct election: a popular mandate to govern would have served as a protective mantle. Gorbachev should also have realized that the continuing concentration of power in one office, the presidency, would prove too tempting to a would be ursurper. Neither of these mistakes, particularly the latter, went unremarked, but Gorbachev chose to ignore the warnings. One error that Gorbachev made repeatedly was to be too tolerant of the illegal acts perpetrated by the conservatives, especially with regard to quelling disturbances in the republics.18 Finally, as everyone--Gorbachev included--has observed, he personally had selected the men who, as it turned out, organized the putsch: six of the eight members of the Emergency Committee were appointed to office by him.19 The Supreme Soviet Balks The signing of the Nine-plus-One agreement at Novo Ogarevo on April 23 threw the future territorial composition of the Soviet Union and the existential crisis facing the central organs into stark relief. The agreement, signed by nine of the Union republics, acknowledged the fact that the Baltic states, Moldavia, Georgia, and Armenia would no longer be part of the Soviet Union; it also called for new elections at the national level within six months of the Union treaty's signing.20 The negotiations at Novo Ogarevo, at which decisions affecting the future of the country were being made privately by a small group of leaders, made a number of people nervous. The members of the USSR Supreme Soviet were especially aggrieved, since it seemed to them that their power was being usurped and that they were being rendered superfluous. They also objected, perhaps understandably, to the early cessation of their terms of office. In late May, when a revised draft of the Union treaty based on the discussions at Novo Ogarevo was sent to the Supreme Soviet, Luk'yanov (one of the key supporters of the future attempted putsch) argued that the Supreme Soviet had a major role to play in the drafting of the treaty, and a number of deputies concurred.21 The Supreme Soviet, however, could not reject the Union treaty, which had already been approved by the USSR Congress of People's Deputies in December. At this point, the stage was set for a possible constitutional crisis, and, indeed, it did begin to look as though a jealous Supreme Soviet might actually provoke such a crisis. The "Soyuz" group of deputies, the largest faction wip(Z7 "!Upreme Soviet, was absolutely opposed to the Union treaty and had initiated a drive to collect enough signatures to convene an emergency meeting of the USSR Congress of People's Deputies, at which "Soyuz" hoped that Gorbachev would be recalled as president and a nationwide state of emergency declared.22 Then, on June 17, the deputies were presented with a seemingly legal mechanism for sidelining Gorbachev when Prime Minister Pavlov requested that his powers be expanded. Members of "Soyuz" immediately supported the idea, and asked USSR Minister of Defense Dmitrii Yazov, USSR Minister of Internal Affairs Boriss Pugo, and KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov to give closed-door testimony. Yazov, Pugo, and Kryuchkov, all of whom were to later be members of the Emergency Committee, were lavish in their criticism of the results of perestroika and supported Pavlov's request. Gorbachev successfully defeated this "constitutional coup d'itat," but he failed to discipline Pavlov, Yazov, Pugo, or Kryuchkov. Instead, with rather sublime disregard, Gorbachev told the deputies not "to get hysterical. [The conservatives] don't worry me."23 Despite this defeat, the Supreme Soviet did not give up its struggle vis-`-vis the Union treaty. At the end of June, the deputies asked the USSR Committee for Constitutional Oversight to review the treaty's constitutionality, hoping that there might be some constitutional grounds for rejecting the treaty. The committee, however, had to conclude that the treaty did not violate the USSR Constitution or any of the republican constitutions.24 A few days later, Gorbachev told the deputies that they were fighting a battle already lost. The Supreme Soviet, he said, had only "six months to live" and its most important remaining task was to adopt a new election law before it dissolved.25 The Supreme Soviet subsequently approved the draft but insisted on appointing a delegation (headed by Gorbachev) that was instructed to point out to republican parliaments the national legislature's objections to the treaty.26 The fifth session of the Supreme Soviet ended on July 12, with the sixth not scheduled to convene until September. On August 2, Gorbachev announced that the RSFSR, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan would sign the treaty on August 20. The Supreme Soviet's determination to interfere with the Union treaty was so apparent that El'tsin insisted, despite the objections of his own republican Supreme Soviet, that the treaty be signed as soon as possible, before USSR Supreme Soviet could reconvene.27 Conclusion The putsch was by no means inevitable, but the attendant circumstances were certainly auspicious. For whatever reason--ignorance, naiveti, haste--Gorbachev, his advisers, and the USSR Supreme Soviet proceeded, step-by-step, to create a system in which constitutional barriers to the abuse or the seizure of power were lacking. Indeed, starting in 1989, the constitutional changes affecting the country's national governing institutions that were enacted, combined with the absence of corresponding safeguards, had already tempted the conservatives into thinking that they could act legally. The organizers had already tried in June, using constitutional means, to increase their power to make law, and they took some pains, at least initially, to present their latest coup attempt as constitutionally legal.28 In the aftermath of the coup, the USSR Supreme Soviet has acted to correct some of its constitutional lapses: the special expanded powers granted to the president in September, 1991, have been revoked and new constitutional admendments are to be made.29 Although deputies to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies voiced concern that yet another attempt at a constitutional coup could be launched at the congress' extraordinary session, due to open on September 2, events since August 18 have shown that the popular mood is such that any attempt of this sort is destined to fail. FOOTNOTES: 1 The final draft of the Union treaty was published in Moskovskie novosti, No. 33, August 18, 1991, pp. 8-9." 2 On the military's position, see Stephen Foye, "Gorbachev's Return to Reform: What Does it Mean for the Armed Forces?" Report on the USSR, No. 28, 1991, pp. 5-9. 3 TASS, August 17, 1991. 4 TASS, August 19, 1991. 5 See Gorbachev's address to the RSFSR Supreme Soviet, Central Television, August 23, 1991, and El'tsin's interview with Russian Television on August 25, 1991 (the text of which was published by TASS, August 25, 1991). The first documents of the Emergency Committee were published in Pravda, August 20, 1991. 6 See the interview with General Mikhail Surkov, a member of the Politburo and head of the All-Union Army Party Committee, in Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 10, 1991. 7 See Keith Bush, "The Economic Problems Remain," Report on the USSR, No. 36, 1991, pp. 37-39. 8 TASS, August 14, 1991; Dawn Mann, "Draft Party Program Approved," Report on the USSR, No. 32, 1991, pp. 1-5. 9 Pravda, August 9, 1991. 10 Tim Ash, Keith Howe, and Robert Lewis, "USSR Harvest Failure Forecast," Report on the USSR, No. 34, 1991, pp. 1-3. 11 Pravitel'stvennyi vestnik, No. 34, 1991, p. 2. 12 Radio Moscow, August 11, 1991. 13 Izvestia, July 30, 1991. 14 Financial Times, August 9, 1991. 15 On this and other signs of growing conservative discontent see, Scott R. McMichael, "Moscow Prelude: Warning Signs Ignored," Report on the USSR, No. 36, 1991, pp. 8-11. 17 See Alexander Rahr, "Gorbachev and El'tsin in a Deadlock," Report on the USSR, No. 7, 1991, pp. 1-5; Stephen Foye, "The Case for a Coup: Gorbachev and the Generals," Report on the USSR, No. 2, 1991, pp. 1-5. 18 See, for example, Stephen Foye, "Gorbachev Denies Responsibility for Crackdown," Report on the USSR, No. 4, 1991, pp. 1-3. 19 Yakovlev said on several occasions that Gorbachev was "guilty of having constituted a team of traitors" and must explain "why he surrounded himself with people capable of treason" (AFP, August 26, 1991; The European, August 23-25, 1991). Shevardnadze told Newsweek (September 9, 1991) almost exactly the same thing; so did El'tsin: "You cannot absolve him of his guilt in the coup. Who chose the officials? He did.... He was betrayed by his closest people. Almost all the cabinet members. They betrayed him. He chose them himself." (Reuters, August 23, 1991). Gorbachev went on at some length about his responsibility in his speech before the USSR Supreme Soviet (Central Television, August 26, 1991). 20 Pravda, April 24, 1991. On the agreement, see Roman Solchanyk, "The Gorbachev-El'tsin Pact and the New Union Treaty," Report on the USSR, No. 19, 1991, pp. 1-3. 21 Izvestia, May 23, 1991; TASS, May 23, 1991. 22 See Elizabeth Teague, "The 'Soyuz' Group," Report on the USSR, No. 20, 1991, pp. 16-21. 23 For details, see Dawn Mann, "An Abortive Constitutional Coup d'Etat?" Report on the USSR, No. 27, 1991, pp. 1-6. 24 TASS, July 8, 1991. 25 Russian Television, July 10, 1991. 26 The USSR Supreme Soviet maintained that: both Union and autonomous republics should be referred to as subjects of the future federation; there must be provisions for Union property and federal taxes; deputies to the future Supreme Soviet should be directly elected; the Supreme Soviet confirm the membership of the USSR cabinet and other bodies; and neither the USSR nor the republican Supreme Soviets should have the authority to suspend each others laws. For the debates, see Izvestia, July 11, 12, and 13, 1991. 27 Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 14, 1991. 28 Carla Thorson, "Constitutional Issues Surrounding the Coup," Report on the USSR, No. 36, 1991, pp. 19-22. 29 See the resolution adopted by the Supreme Soviet on August 29, 1991 (TASS, August 29, 1991).