RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL Russian Political Weekly
Vol. 6, No. 16, 25 August 2006
A Weekly Review of News and Analysis of Russian Domestic Politics
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HEADLINES
* THE FADING LEGACY OF THE FAILED 1991 SOVIET COUP
* GORBACHEV REFLECTS ON THE COUP
* FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR ASSESSES THE COUP
* NEW COUNCIL POINTS TO DIVISIONS IN CHECHEN REPUBLIC’S LEADERSHIP
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POLITICS
THE FADING LEGACY OF THE FAILED 1991 SOVIET COUP. PRAGUE, August 18,
2006 (RFE/RL) — Through the winter of 1990-91 the glue that held
together the Soviet Union was becoming unstuck.
On August 20, 1991, a meeting was scheduled to sign a union
treaty that would give the republics more independence. But two days
before, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s chief of staff and
other Politburo members arrived at the presidential dacha in Crimea
putting the president and his family under house arrest.
This move unleashed a chain of events that threatened to
engulf the country in a bloody civil war.
"I call on you, my comrade officers, soldiers, and sailors,
do not take action against the people — against your fathers,
mothers, brothers, and sisters," Russian Soviet Republic Vice
President Aleksandr Rutskoi, a decorated hero of the war in
Afghanistan, appealed to the Soviet armed forces on August 19, 1991.
"I appeal to your honor, your reason, and your heart. Today
the fate of the country, the fate of its free and democratic
development, is in your hands," Rutskoi said.
Rutskoi’s plea was for the most part heeded. Tanks took
up positions, but no soldiers fired on the thousands of Muscovites
who had taken to the streets to oppose the plotters.
"Just after 8 a.m., [human rights activist] Yury Samodurov
rang and told me to switch on the television," activist Yelena
Bonner, widow of Nobel Prize laureate Andrei Sakharhov, told RFE/RL.
"I switched it on and saw all those people and everything that was
happening. I began to phone everyone. It emerged that I was now the
center of a rather large circle of people. I told them all: ‘Go
to the Moscow City Soviet.’ Nobody really knew what was going on.
Then, around 9 or 10, they called from the City Council to say that a
lot of our people were there and that they were heading for the White
House. Of course, I went to the White House as well."
Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin provided the
defining symbol of defiance. Standing on top of a tank, with the
Russian flag in the background, he called for mass resistance.
Gradually, the tide turned. The coup crumbled and Gorbachev
returned to Moscow from Crimea to find a starkly changed balance of
power.
And as Yeltsin told Radio Liberty just after the coup, the
Soviet Union had changed in Gorbachev’s absence.
"I think it is important too that President Gorbachev has
returned to a different Russia, to a different country," Yeltsin
said. "It seems to me — and yesterday I spent half the day with him
discussing the future course of reforms and economic transformation
— that he has at last understood that without democracy, without the
development of democracy, without radical reforms — and not the sort
of quiet reforms during which coup d’etats of this sort can
happen — that we can’t go further. It seems to me too that he
has understood the need in fact to end the ruling role of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union."
But building democracy in Russia — to say nothing of most of
the other post-Soviet republics — has proved a daunting task.
The war in Chechnya, clampdowns on media and NGOs, the Yukos
affair, the appointment rather than election of regional governors,
the hobbling of all political opposition are all black marks against
Russia’s democratic record in the last 15 years.
James Nixey, the manager of the Russia and Eurasia program at
Chatham House, thinks Russia’s experiment with liberal democracy
is over.
"If you look at President [Vladimir] Putin’s very high
approval ratings and if you look at the fact that living standards
have risen quite considerably since 2000 and the fact that you have a
leader who is strong and independent and doesn’t give off the
same kind of vibes as President Yeltsin, then that is actually far
more important to [Russians] than the appointment of governors or
NGOs," Nixey says.
And gone today is the neat demarcation between the plotters
and those camped outside the White House, between democrats and their
opponents.
In 2004, Putin awarded one of the coup plotters, former
Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, Russia’s Order of Merit
medal for "high achievements in useful, societal activities."
A recent poll by the Moscow-based Levada Center shows that,
with the benefit of hindsight, people’s attitudes toward the
plotters and the August 1991 events have changed somewhat.
Fifteen years after the events, 52 percent of Russians say
that both the plotters and Yeltsin had been in the wrong.
Yury Levada, the head of the polling agency, says that
democracy these days is not high on Russians’ list of priorities.
"People don’t [think] of democracy and democratic
institutions, universal elections, and other [things] as very
important," Levada told RFE/RL. "The subject of concern for Russian
people is family, the economic situation, finances, inflation,
unemployment, criminality, and other [things]."
The question of Putin’s succession and the 2008
presidential election will be a test for Russian democracy.
"Whether or not President Putin stays in power, and changes
or adjusts or abolishes or alters the constitution to enable him to
stay in power will show us an awful lot about the true nature of
Russia," analyst Nixey says.
After 15 years of a rocky transition, Russians for the moment
appear content to waive their human rights in return for stability
and rising living standards. The drama of 1991 seems as much a part
of history today as the Soviet Union itself. (Luke Allnutt)
GORBACHEV REFLECTS ON THE COUP. Fifteen years after the failed coup
that triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union and transformed his
own life, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev talks to
RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service about the events of August 1991
and their legacy.
RFE/RL: In his annual address to the Federal Assembly in
2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the collapse of the
Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th
century." Do you agree with such an interpretation of our recent
history?
Mikhail Gorbachev: I have said this on many occasions, and I
will say it again: I agree. When, during a period of widespread
reform, glasnost came along and lit up the darker corners of the
situation in our country, it seemed as though all of society started
moving and talking. It turned out that the people had something to
say and that they had someone to speak to. At this time I had already
been saying that the way of democracy, glasnost, and economic reform
was the way to go.
Yet I also warned against the destructive nature of what was
happening. Things certainly needed to change, but we did not need to
destroy that which had been built by previous generations. We had to
deprive ourselves of some things, yes, but this was the unfortunate
cost. After the putsch, when the real danger of the country coming
apart arose, I continued to speak out in the same vein. I emphasized
that the dissolution of a country that was not only powerful, but
that, during perestroika, demonstrated that it was peaceful and that
it accepted the basic principles of democracy, would be a tragedy.
The end of the Cold War presented us with an unprecedented
opportunity to pursue a new, peaceful policy.
RFE/RL: Some observers think that the State Committee for the
Emergency Situation (GKChP) was the natural result of events then
going on in the country, an effort to restrain the destructive
processes that had arisen as a result of a systemic crisis of state
management that, in turn, was created by ill-considered and sporadic
reforms. Many of the participants of the so-called GKChP insist that
this was the case. In you opinion, how fair is this point of view?
Gorbachev: It is nonsense. The natural result of events was
the well-tuned process that was already under way in the spring of
1991. There was already the crisis that arose when people had to wait
in long lines to purchase basic everyday goods. But in the big
picture, after a long period of deliberation and debate, the
anti-crisis program had finally started to materialize.
Interestingly, it started out as a program initiated by the cabinet
ministers, but then it was joined by all the republics and even the
Baltic states, with their own special views on certain questions. The
Baltic states didn’t actually sign the document, but they decided
to implement it anyway. By this time, we had found new solutions and
ways of dealing with the situation, and we were ready to move
forward.
This was natural for the democratization of the Soviet Union,
and it was also natural for correcting the mistakes we had made
earlier, particularly our delay in reforming the Communist Party and
the federated union. The goal of the putsch was to interrupt this
process. The putschists were at the top of the reactionary
nomenklatura — remember, many in the nomenklatura went ahead and
worked with us, struggled with us. So this is my response to the
common cliche that you were referring to. These people were unable to
publicly overthrow the government, so they took a clandestine route,
which they failed in, because difficult as the times were, nobody
wanted to return to Stalinism.
RFE/RL: According to many public opinion polls, perestroika
remains more popular abroad — particularly in Europe and the United
States — than in the overwhelming majority of countries of the
former Soviet Union. How would you, as the author of that initiative,
explain such a difference in its reputation?
Gorbachev: The difference between the reputation perestroika
has in Russia and abroad is explainable. Central and Eastern Europe
gained independence. All of Europe got rid of the nightmare of
potential confrontation — moreover, a confrontation that could have
developed into nuclear war in which Europe would suffer the most
damage.
Your question mentioned the CIS countries. Without going into
detail, I can tell you that neither the majority of their people nor
their political elite desire a return to the way things were, or have
any regrets about exiting the union. Recent polls have shown that the
percentage of the population in these countries in favor of a return
to the Soviet Union is only about 5-7 percent.
Russia is a special case. The reason I say this is because
Russia lost the most as a result of the break-up, in terms of
geopolitical stature, in terms of historical merit, in terms of
political power it had by virtue of controlling other republics, and
finally in terms of economic strength, having ceased to be the center
of a major economic complex with a population of nearly a
quarter-billion people. [Former Russian President Boris] Yeltsin and
[former acting Russian Prime Minister Yegor] Gaidar’s reforms
destroyed the industrial potential of the country and reduced
millions of people to poverty. Privatization was carried out in such
a way that instead of contributing to a growing private sector, it
only resulted in corruption and mass theft. The country was in shock,
so people naturally looked back to the Soviet Union and the social
guarantees that it offered. The guarantees were modest, but at least
they were guarantees. Now, even though things are improving under
Putin, I would still estimate that about 50 percent of our people
live in poverty."
RFE/RL: In Russia, it is popular to argue — and you hear
this at the highest political levels — that the end of the Cold War
destabilized the modern world order; the solid bipolar international
system was replaced by an unstable monopolar domination. Do you agree
with this view?
Gorbachev: I’ve heard this view before — that the Cold
War supposedly offered a level of stability. I’m not sure where
this view comes from — whether it is part of someone’s agenda or
simply rooted in ignorance of the situation that developed in the
mid-1980s. I was touring the country at the time and from all sides I
heard the same question: "Will there be war? Please, do anything you
can to not let it happen. Do anything, we’ll live through
whatever it takes, but just don’t let it happen." Of course, many
people forgot about this when the fear of war subsided.
The stability of the Cold War was a false one. It was tricky
and dangerous. We in the Russian and U.S. governments knew better
than anybody what the true situation was and what it could develop
into, because we knew what point we were at in the arms race. We knew
that the kind of technology that we were operating was powerful
enough to put the fate of civilization in question should there be
some sort of slip-up. We also knew that the arms race was leading to
an unprecedented depletion of national resources.
RFE/RL: How do you assess the state of democracy and freedom
of speech in Russia today?
Gorbachev: There are frequent accusations that democracy is
being suppressed and that freedom of press is being stifled. The
truth is, most Russians disagree with this viewpoint. We find
ourselves at a difficult historical juncture. Our transition to
democracy has not been a smooth one, and we must assess our successes
and failures not in the context of some ideal, but in the context of
our history. When Putin first came to power, I think his first
priority was keeping the country from falling apart, and this
required certain measures that wouldn’t exactly be referred to as
textbook democracy.
Yes, there are certain worrying tendencies. We still have
certain stipulations and restrictions that cannot be explained by
real dangers, or by the realities of life in Russia. However, I would
not dramatize the situation. In the past 20 years, Russia has changed
to such an extent that going back is now impossible.
RFE/RL: Let’s turn the clock back 15 years. You suffered
a horrible betrayal on the part of the people you considered your
comrades-in-arms, as well as, perhaps, your personal friends. Not
many people have experienced this. What personal lessons have you
learned?
Gorbachev: We need to follow the path of democracy. We need
to respect the people, and not turn them back into the herd that was
bullied for decades and centuries in our country. We cannot resolve
problems through coups. We need the people to participate in the
changes that are being enacted in the country. Democracy needs to be
effective. The law needs to be efficient. Thieves and corrupt
officials should not feel safe. We need to follow the path of
democracy toward a free, open, and prosperous country.
FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR ASSESSES THE COUP. Jack Matlock was U.S.
ambassador to Moscow from 1987 until 1991. He left Moscow just a week
before the August 1991 coup attempt. RFE/RL Russian Service
correspondent Yury Zhigalkin spoke with Matlock about his
recollections of those turbulent times.
RFE/RL: How did you first hear about the coup attempt and
what did you think?
Jack Matlock: I heard about it the morning of August 19. We
were on my wife’s farm, and my first thought was that it would
probably fail. I felt that the people who were announced as running
it, it would appear, had not prepared things adequately. I thought
there would be resistance and, in my judgment, they were not the sort
of people who would put down the resistance ruthlessly. Or, if they
tried to put it down, I thought the armed forces and others would
probably not follow the orders. I thought that society had moved to
the point that it was no longer acceptable, even in the, you might
say, power structures, to put down a popular uprising.
RFE/RL: You left your post in Moscow just a week before. Did
you have any indications that this scenario could take place or was
it just out of the blue?
Matlock: I had been told confidentially in June by the then
mayor of Moscow — he actually wrote it in notes as we sat and talked
about other things — that a putsch was being prepared. And he named
four people who, in fact, were involved later. He did this to get a
message to [Russian Soviet Republic President Boris] Yeltsin, who was
then in Washington. When Yeltsin was given the information, he said
we must warn [Soviet President Mikhail] Gorbachev. And we tried to do
so, but without naming the people involved. I think he misunderstood
the warning, didn’t take it seriously.
But when I heard that the coup had occurred and the people
who were clearly behind it — because they were on the committee that
announced it was taking control — this came not as a total surprise.
But, at the same time, I didn’t believe these people were capable
of running the country and I thought that, particularly in Moscow,
there would be sufficient opposition that, unless they were willing
to enter into a bloody civil war, they could not prevail. And I
didn’t think they were willing to enter into that. And the first
time I was interviewed on television the evening of August 19, I
said, "This is not a done deal. I’m not at all sure this is going
to hold."
RFE/RL: Did you detect any real worries in world capitals
that the plotters might succeed?
Matlock: I think that most people looking from the outside
thought they had succeeded. Because I think most people didn’t
understand the degree of change that had occurred in the Soviet Union
at that time. The Soviet Union was not the Soviet Union that it had
been five years before or even two years before. It had changed very
rapidly. I had been privileged to be there and witness these changes.
You know, most people — including our governments — didn’t
really grasp that.
Now, the American government, I think at the top they
understood that this could happen. For one thing, I was reporting
these various things to them. But, on the other hand, we didn’t
want to make predictions because, for one thing, one couldn’t
predict for sure what was going to happen. Second, if we had started
predicting — even in our intelligence reports — that there might be
a coup, this would have leaked and this would have influenced the
situation in a negative way. So, there were very good reasons for not
trying to predict this. But understanding there was the possibility
that’s there, understanding that even if it happened, it might
not succeed, was not as widespread.
RFE/RL: What had principally changed in Russia that led them
to be defeated?
Matlock: I don’t think you can select a single one, but
mainly, I think, Gorbachev’s opening up created the feeling that
the system had to change, that it had not produced what it was
supposed to, and that they people who wanted to put the clamps down
wanted to turn back to the past. And that had to be resisted.
RFE/RL: Today, 15 years after this event, how would you
assess the coup?
Matlock: I think that without that attempted coup d’etat,
the Soviet Union in some form would have lasted much longer. So, if
people, think that tragedy was caused in their lives by the breakup
of the Soviet Union, then the coup brought it about. It was not going
to preserve it. I think that’s one thing.
Second, I would say it was not the breakup of the Soviet
Union that has caused so much the distress that people have felt. It
was the inability of the system to change from one system, which was
getting nowhere, to a different one. And this is a very difficult
process, one without clear historical precedent. But I’m sure
that there would have been some sort of union — not of all 15
republics. One of the things that had to be understood was that they
really had to let the three Baltic countries regain their
independence because trying to hold them was putting a stress on the
whole system. Second, there were certain other things that needed to
be done. Gradually, Gorbachev was beginning to do them, although I
think he no longer had the full support of the power structures, he
couldn’t control them anymore. And it was these structures that
turned against him, thinking that they could bring back the past,
when the possibility of doing so had passed.
RFE/RL: Do you believe that history might have turned out
somewhat differently had they succeeded? The Soviet Union could have
survived.
Matlock: Not if the coup had succeeded, no. If it had
succeeded, they would have broken away much faster. Good gracious, if
that coup had held a few more days, they would have had a civil war.
It would have looked like Yugoslavia. Is that what people wanted? No,
I’m not saying that. I’m saying if there had not been the
coup, the Soviet Union could have been preserved for longer — I
didn’t say forever or even for very long — longer in some form.
But that’s only if they had not attempted the coup.
RFE/RL: Today we may basically say that it was for the better
that the coup happened, that it was defeated, and that Russia is
moving somewhere.
Matlock: It is certainly for the better that it was defeated.
I think the whole area would be better off today, possibly — one can
never be certain of these things — if the coup had never occurred.
If the coup attempt had never occurred and if the democratization
process, which was going forward, had been allowed to proceed. Then
one would have had, I think, a less disruptive democratization than
occurred. In many ways, the Soviet Union, in the middle of 1991, with
all the problems it was having, was freer than most of the successor
states are today. That’s the fact of the matter.
RFE/RL: What is your feeling about Russia’s direction
today?
Matlock: I think that economically there have been a number
of encouraging changes. I think that the stability and confidence
that has returned is a positive thing. I think there are negative
signs from the standpoint of Russia’s future. But I would say
these are matters for Russians to decide and not matters for
outsiders to try to teach lessons, because I think every country has
to find its own way in its own way.
NEW COUNCIL POINTS TO DIVISIONS IN CHECHEN REPUBLIC’S LEADERSHIP.
PRAGUE, August 19, 2006 (RFE/RL) — On October 5, Chechen Prime
Minister Ramzan Kadyrov will turn 30, the minimum age for candidates
for the post of pro-Moscow republic head.
Many observers both in Russia and abroad have long considered
it a given that Kadyrov will be named to succeed incumbent republic
head Alu Alkhanov before the end of this year, even though Kadyrov
has denied harboring any such ambitions.
A recent visit to Chechnya by a large Russian government
delegation, whose members were cited in the Russian press as
unanimously lauding Kadyrov’s role in expediting reconstruction
of the republic’s war-shattered infrastructure, has also been
widely interpreted as reflecting Moscow’s backing for Kadyrov.
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, however, who has years
of first-hand experience of developments in Chechnya and elsewhere in
the North Caucasus, suggested in a recent interview with RFE/RL’s
North Caucasus Service and a subsequent article published in "Novaya
gazeta" on August 14 that the Russian leadership has finally lost
patience with Kadyrov, and that the government ministers who traveled
to Grozny in July ordered him unambiguously to toe the line.
Politkovskaya further claimed that several Chechen law
enforcement bodies have "mutinied" against Kadyrov and refused either
to continue making the requisite payment of a percentage of their
monthly salary into the Akhmed-hadji Kadyrov Fund, named after
Ramzan’s slain father, or to renew their oath of loyalty to
Ramzan.
Kadyrov said in an interview published in "Nezavisimaya
gazeta" on August 14 that he does not consider himself mature enough
to assume the role of republic head, and he claimed — not entirely
convincingly — that he dreams of quitting politics altogether.
Aleksei Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Center was quoted
by "Novye izvestia" on August 15 as suggesting that Moscow may shunt
Kadyrov sideways into some kind of honorific post such as
Russia’s permanent representative to the Organization of the
Islamic Conference.
Meanwhile, Alkhanov has launched what appears to be either a
last-ditch attempt to preclude, or at least delay, his dismissal, or
alternatively, a move coordinated with Moscow to discredit Kadyrov
and provide grounds for removing him. On August 11, Alkhanov issued a
decree establishing an advisory body that will focus on human rights
issues, law and order, and the interaction between Chechen government
bodies and federal agencies in the sphere of economic and social
security. Those are all areas in which Kadyrov and his subordinates
are widely charged with have ridden roughshod over legal norms.
Alkhanov’s August 11 decree transforms the republic’s
Security Council into a Council for Economic and Social Security. His
stated rationale for doing so, according to "Nezavisimaya gazeta" on
August 14, was the law enforcement organs’ failure to reduce the
scale of endemic corruption by arresting offenders and bringing them
to trial.
Alkhanov simultaneously appointed as secretary of the new
council his former chief adviser German Vok, who headed his election
campaign in Grozny in 2004. Kadyrov was quoted by "Nezavisimaya
gazeta" on August 14 as saying neither he, other government
officials, nor the Chechen parliament were informed in advance of the
impending reorganization of the Security Council. But Alkhanov could
not have undertaken that reorganization without the prior approval of
the Kremlin.
The first session of the new council took place on August 15
and focused on the situation in those districts of southern Chechnya
that border Georgia, according to chechnya.gov.ru. Local pro-Moscow
administrators have accused Russian military units deployed there of
violations ranging from restricting the access of local residents to
their homes to illicit logging. Vok rejected attempts by Vladimir
Ponomaryov, deputy commander of the Federal Border Service
Administration, to deny or downplay the seriousness of those
violations, regnum.ru reported on August 16.
Vok further announced the creation of a commission that will
address the "misunderstandings" between the Chechen civilian
population and the Russian military. The primary cause of such
"misunderstandings" over the past seven years has been the
indiscriminate recourse by the latter to violence against the former.
But some observers claim that since the death of
Kadyrov’s father in a terrorist bombing in May 2004, police
formations subordinate to the younger Kadyrov have superceded the
Russian military as the primary perpetrators of seemingly arbitrary
killings and abductions of civilians. Thus if Alkhanov were to
announce that effective measures have been enacted to prevent such
abuses by the Russian military, the blame for any future crimes of
that nature would devolve onto the Chechen government law enforcement
agencies for which Kadyrov as prime minister is ultimately
responsible.
Just days after the creation of Alkhanov’s new council,
Kadyrov’s office issued orders to the Interior Ministry to
investigate reports that local bureaucrats are extorting money from
residents of Argun and Gudermes (Kadyrov’s home town) to finance
reconstruction work there, kavkaz.memo.ru reported on August 15.
It was not clear whether those payments were in addition to
the statutory requirement that all Chechens employed in the public
sector pay a percentage of their monthly salary into the Akhmed-hadji
Kadyrov Fund, which finances reconstruction projects, among other
things. Kadyrov warned that any bureaucrat found guilty of extorting
money will be punished. (Liz Fuller)
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