By Steve Painter
The defeat of last week's disastrous attempt by the Stalinist old guard to turn back the clock opens a new political phase in the USSR. In particular, it marks the first big victory for mass political action over the repressive bureaucracy which has dominated Soviet political life since the mid-1920s. STEVE PAINTER looks at some factors shaping the events of last week and their implications for the future.
The quick collapse of the August 19 coup attempt will undoubtedly lead to important shifts in the political situation. Initially, the advantage has shifted to Boris Yeltsin in his long struggle with Mikhail Gorbachev for a faster pace of change to a capitalist economic system and for more devolution of power from the central authorities to the republics. But vastly more important in the long run is the emergence of mass political action as an important factor in Soviet political life.
The victory of mass action over the bureaucratic machine could be an important step towards mass political involvement, which is still embryonic after decades in which no independent political initiative was tolerated.
While credit for the defeat of the coup has largely centred on the Russian soviet and particularly Boris Yeltsin, in fact they were only one of several vital factors. It should be noted that while the protests around the soviet and elsewhere drew tens of thousands, they were relatively small by the standards of Eastern Europe or Tienanmen Square in 1989. The legacy of decades of enforced political passivity still weighs heavily on the USSR.
The biggest underlying factor in the defeat of the coup was the state of division and uncertainty that pervades all levels of government and society, including the army, the KGB and the Communist Party. The overwhelmingly conscript army was not a reliable force for repression against the people, and some troops openly went over to the forces opposing the coup.
Casting around for reliable forces, the Stalinists appear to have sent in paratroops whose tanks, designed to be airlifted, were too light to break through barricades. Even among these troops, there was collaboration with the protesters.
After the coup, the USSR may stand roughly where the eastern European states did after the mass protests of 1989. With the political authority of the Communist Party severely weakened, if not entirely broken, the non-Communist politicians will get more of a chance to show what they can do. If eastern Europe is any guide,
this will be a disillusioning experience for many ordinary people as living standards continue to decline, prices and unemployment also rise, and the process of economic decline continues amid attempts to apply monetarist-"rationalist" economic theories which have contributed to the present international recession.
Of course, there are important differences between eastern Europe and the USSR. Above all, the non-Russian republics have been strengthened in their struggle for greater power within the Soviet federation, or complete independence from it.
The new union treaty, which was due to be signed on the day of the coup, seems to have been the immediate spark, as it devolves many powers away from the USSR to the constituent republics. The treaty, intended as the new basis of the Soviet federation, will almost certainly go ahead quickly, though the republics might use their stronger position to press for further concessions from the centre.
Ironically, as is shown by the economic collapse of Yugoslavia following the weakening of the central banking system in the mid-1970s, the shift of power from the centre could actually make the economic situation worse if it seriously adds to the disruption of the USSR's internal trade.
Gorbachev's failure
Gorbachev has paid the price for several years of substituting political manoeuvre within the bureaucracy for the essential task of building a mass base committed to democratic reform and socialist reconstruction. While Gorbachev still declares himself a communist, and may be hoping for a revival of Communist Party fortunes with the disgrace of the old guard and a strengthening of the liberalising wing, his early popularity has been frittered away, and the initiative has passed farther to the right, to Yeltsin and others.
Because of his manoeuvres between the various factions, many people now regard Gorbachev as weak, Moscow resident Nina Borodyenko told Green Left Weekly by phone after the collapse of the coup last week.
Some, such as Soviet leftist Boris Kagarlitsky, hold harsher opinions. He argues that Gorbachev was never anything more than a product of the Soviet bureaucracy's attempt at necessary and belated self-reform, and that his political course was dictated by this. In his attempts to balance the interests of various parts of the bureaucracy, he deliberately avoided any attempt to develop mass political activity and organisation in support of democracy and socioeconomic reconstruction.
Whether or not this judgment is too harsh, it is certainly true that Gorbachev failed to fulfil the promise of his early period, when he aroused hopes of reform in the direction of a genuinely democratic socialism. While he has delivered greater political democracy, he has built no mass political base from which to fight the economic sabotage of the old guard and the increasing strength of the mafia and the black economy.
Yeltsin
But what of the alternative to Gorbachev? If Kagarlitsky has a low opinion of Gorbachev, his view of Boris Yeltsin is no better: "He's first of all a bureaucrat and a populist", he told Green Left Weekly in January.
According to Kagarlitsky, Yeltsin is a prisoner of sections of the bureaucracy that hope to become part of the ruling stratum in a capitalist USSR, and these forces are none too committed to democracy, though they did serve as the focus for opposition to the coup. These people "are frightened of repression because they fear that they could be among the repressed. But in fact they want repression for everybody else."
Their role is parallel to that of elements in eastern Europe, such as Lech Walesa, now drifting steadily rightward and even towards dictatorship after being prominent in the democratic movements of 1989 and earlier. The initial movements against Stalinist dictatorship accommodated all sorts of political forces, often with very little in common, and some with precious little commitment to democracy or social justice.
According to Kagarlitsky, the people most likely to inherit from Gorbachev want a right-wing dictatorship because there is no other way they can carry through the huge changes necessary to restore capitalism. Yeltsin could end up presiding over a very repressive regime because the project of the "liberal" forces around him "would mean mass unemployment, a dramatic cut in living standards and complete destruction of the system of social guarantees and social security". This "cannot be carried out without mass repression, which could even reach the levels of the Stalinist repression".
People power
Gorbachev has faced growing discontent for some time, as the disintegration of the old system gathered pace, with only the black market emerging to replace it. According to Kagarlitsky, by early this year Gorbachev was "the most hated person in the Soviet Union". But until the coup, his demise seemed unlikely because there was no obvious alternative except, perhaps, Yeltsin — who, while he had won elections, was also a product of the bureaucracy and had also avoided mobilising mass support unless
absolutely necessary for his own ends.
The limited mass protests of August 19-22 offer hope for the future because they offer a glimpse of the possibilities when large numbers of people act in their own interests. In this case, relatively small protests succeeded because they provided a focus for a very broad, passive opposition to the return of the old guard.
Perhaps, as a result of this, larger numbers of people will be encouraged to take political action not only in defence of democratic freedoms, but around broader economic and social issues.
Such a process appears to offer the best hope for the emergence of a genuinely democratic alternative to both the Gorbachev and Yeltsin wings of the disintegrating old bureaucracy.