Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

At the highest level of the CPSU, the nationalist-imperialists naturally had allies, who were becoming increasingly alarmed at Gorbachev’s policies. When he tried to negotiate a new Union Treaty, which would radically redefine the relationships between the Union and the constituent republics, they decided to strike. On 19 August 1991, they formed an Emergency Committee, put Gorbachev under house arrest, and declared a state of emergency. They brought tanks into central Moscow to take the White House, home of the Russian parliament. They neglected, however, to arrest Yeltsin, who clambered on top of one of their tanks and denounced their coup, declaring it a ‘crime against the legally elected authorities of the Russian Republic’.

13. Yeltsin interrupts Gorbachev at the podium, August 1991

This was the decisive moment. Uncertain which authority was legitimate, the army commanders declined to fire on civilians. Without their support, the Emergency Committee could not get a grip on the situation. Their coup collapsed, and within a few days, Yeltsin had outlawed the CPSU. Ukraine declared its independence, and its example was soon followed by most other republics.

The Soviet Union could not survive these blows. In December 1991, Yeltsin met with his Ukrainian and Belorussian counterparts and issued a declaration that ‘the USSR, as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality, has ceased to exist’. They announced they were setting up a Commonwealth of Independent States and invited the other Soviet republics to join them.

On the Kremlin roof, the hammer and sickle was taken down and replaced by the red-white-blue tricolour, which had been the flag of Russia’s merchant navy before 1917. There was no double-headed eagle on it, which implied that Russia was renouncing its claim to empire. But what was to take its place? What was Russia now? The clash of symbols and narratives continued. The post-Soviet regime took a long time to decide what should be the new national flag, what should be the words of its national anthem, whether Lenin should remain in his Red Square mausoleum (he did), what its principal cities should be named (Leningrad became St Petersburg again, but the surrounding province remained Leningradskaia oblast), whether Nicholas II should be buried with full national honours (he was, in July 1998, but Yeltsin decided to attend only at the last moment, and the Patriarch stayed away). Even the country’s official post-Soviet name, the Russian Federation (Russia), betrayed ambivalence over its status. In the new era of free speech and civil freedom, these issues were passionately debated in public.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was greeted by most of its nationalities as liberation. For Russians, it was more like deprivation – the loss of much of what they regarded as their homeland. Besides, the disappearance of the CPSU removed the cement that had enabled the state to function. Without it, the President and parliament were left facing one another without a mediator, and with no way of getting a grip on the regional strongmen or the new financial magnates. Yeltsin failed to persuade parliament to agree to a new constitution, and instead dissolved it in September 1993. Many of the deputies refused to accept his decision, declared his decree illegal, and deposed him as president. Paramilitary organizations came out to support them, and Yeltsin suddenly faced an armed rebellion in his capital city. He responded by summoning tanks to storm the White House. This time, Pavel Grachev, the Defence Minister, agreed, but insisted that Yeltsin sign a written statement taking responsibility for the bloodshed.

This confrontation finally ended the Soviet era, but it also exposed the continuing weakness of the Russian state, its failure even to ensure its own monopoly of violence. That failure continued to be in evidence in the following two decades. Without the CPSU, the component cells of a state were left floundering, looking for a new legal and symbolic framework which would impart structure and purpose.

In this vacuum of legitimate authority, a full-scale economic reform finally took place. Launched by a bright and arrogant group of young economists, devotees of the radical free-market ‘Washington consensus’, it soon provided yet another example of a Western panacea which proved disastrous when applied to Russia. They launched a mass programme of privatization and freeing of prices, which provoked hyper-inflation and transferred most productive resources into the hands of enterprising and ruthless businessmen – the ‘oligarchs’. The state, meanwhile, was left impoverished and without a reliable method of levying taxes: it could not even pay schoolteachers and pensioners on time. Unable to rely on the police to keep order, firms employed their own private security firms or paid money to protection gangs.