Russia

Gorbachev was open, and apparently somewhat uncertain, as to the form the new Soviet democracy should take. ‘The existence of a particular number of political parties does not represent a solution,’ he remarked in the early spring of 1989. ‘[But] we shall open up the possibilities of our system.’ ¹² Not only the Party but ‘social organizations’ were to be able to field candidates for elections, and he pledged continuing improvements to electoral practices. At the elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies held a few days later the public reacted by rejecting some candidates who had not been opposed.

As the economic position deteriorated over the summer, Gorbachev began to sound increasingly desperate about political and constitutional reform. At a plenary session of the Party Central Committee in mid-July his concern was chiefly about the Party itself and how to restructure its organization from the top. It was his most efficient instrument of government, but it was becoming increasing loath to follow him into these unfamiliar waters. ‘It is impossible to decree the Party’s authority,’ he warned. The Party was ‘lagging behind society’, and a ‘dangerous discrepancy’ would arise if it proved itself to be ‘less dynamic than the people’. ¹³However, it was difficult to know how interested the people really were in constitutional reform.

On 3 August Professor Vorontsov, a technocrat who was not a Party member, was appointed to membership of the Council of Ministers. Eleven days later a draft law to make suffrage ‘genuinely direct’ was tabled. ¹⁴To those who argued that democracy threatened solidarity, Gorbachev retorted that ‘a plurality of views cannot be an obstacle to unity of action.’ ¹⁵ The debates continued into late September. But the focus on ‘constitutional construction’ was distracting attention from looming economic and political problems. Striking miners in Siberia were bought off by pay hikes. Indeed money was thrown at every problem, demanding considerable increases in the money supply which fuelled inflation. Estonia reserved the right to veto Union legislation; there were signs of restiveness among other groups, and opposition was voiced not only by those who wanted to put brakes on the reform processes, but by some who urged a faster pace.

Foremost of these was Boris Yeltsin. Promoted to the Secretariat of the Central Committee, he was put in charge of the Moscow Party, and soon proved himself to be both dynamic and unreliable. He urged faster reform, but seemed to be devoid of political ideas or policies. He enjoyed power, but behaved in a domineering manner. To some he was the image of an heroic, patriotic man of action, to others the model of what had once been called a Party ‘careerist’, and to others again he was an alcoholic maverick. Given to offering his resignation in the expectation that it would not be accepted, he offered it once too often and was not allowed to withdraw it. So it was that in 1987 Yeltsin entered the political wilderness. He was full of resentment. But after two years of marginalization the fates were to offer him the chance of revenge.

Meanwhile the satellite countries, too, were in a state of political turmoil. Instead of gliding towards freedom, Poland had lurched into it. The transition had been smoother in Hungary, but elsewhere it was resisted. Chiefly the resistance came from established leaders who were reluctant to relinquish power, but in Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria there was a wide measure of popular indifference to the issue except among intellectuals and they were a minority. Gorbachev was placed in a strange position. He had either to breach his own principle of non-interference and force the conservatives out of office, or else allow them to continue in their unreformed ways, letting them trail behind as anomalous and unwanted appendages, like rattling cans at the back of the Soviet wedding car. Rather than be embarrassed by them, he chose to prise them out of office. How this was done using Party and KGB connections is one of the strangest stories of the late Soviet period. ¹⁶