The Soviet Union’s disintegration is the history of a red tape society’s collapse. Experts in Russia and the West fear what they could unearth by studying this phenomenon. They might have to address the possibility that a similar process could emerge in other countries.
Valdaiclub.com interview with Alexei Fenenko, Leading Research Fellow, Institute of International Security Studies of RAS, Russian Academy of Sciences.
What was the catalyst behind the collapse of the Soviet Union?
I think the Soviet Union’s collapse was not a spontaneous process, but rather a conscious effort by the Communist Party and government apparatchiks to dismantle the country. This process took place against the backdrop of complete public apathy. I don’t remember a single act in defense of either the Soviet Union or its Communist Party (CPSU).
The history of how the Soviet Union was dismantled is not well studied in Russia or the West. Ideologically tinged myths about “the struggle between the Communists and the Democrats” prevail in most publications on the subject. I don’t think this is an accident. The Soviet Union’s disintegration is the history of a red tape society’s collapse. Experts in Russia and the West fear what they could unearth by studying this phenomenon. They might have to address the possibility that a similar process could emerge in other countries.
And what caused the collapse?
The events of 1991 were engendered by processes that began back in the 1960s and 1970s. In 15 - 20 years, these processes matured and produced results.
First, the Soviet Union reached nuclear weapons parity with the United States. The Soviet elite developed a sense of external security that was unprecedented in Russian history. This feeling allowed them to subject the country to experiments free from the fear of foreign interference.
Second, the Soviet leadership gave up the idea of reforming the economy. Alexei Kosygin’s reform of 1965 was the last attempt to change the economy. Had it proved successful, it would have dealt a serious blow to the interests of the state planning and the state supplies committees. They stood to gain from the Prague Spring of 1968, which was cut short when Soviet troops entered Czechoslovakia. This made Brezhnev’s leadership apprehensive of change and froze Kosygin’s reforms. The first oil price shock in 1973 exacerbated this by allowing Moscow to perpetuate the economic management systems of the 1940s.
Third, a powerful sector of the shadow economy took shape. This was a system of producing and distributing goods that officially – did not exist. After 1968, the heads of major enterprises concluded that it was impossible to reform the system during the lifespan of the current generation, but they should make de facto, that is, illegal, changes. They launched active cooperation with their shadow counterparts.
Initially, the Soviet leadership was tolerant of this practice. The shadow economy was making up for what the planned economy lacked, primarily by producing goods that were in short supply. But the shadow economy needed patrons and the republic’s elites quickly merged with the shadow sector. This fueled their desire for guarantees against the central authorities’ actions.
Fourth, the regional elites’ separatism grew stronger. In 1976, Brezhnev was for a period declared clinically dead and so lost control over domestic politics. The leaders of the republics agreed with Yury Andropov, chairman of the Committee for State Security (the KGB), on its reform. Before 1976, the KGB had been subordinate to the Council of Ministers. The reform turned the agency into a ‘national/republic’ ministry, i.e. subordinate to both the center and the republics. Each republic acquired its own KGB and the center’s control over the republics waned.
Fifth, the conflict between the Communist Party and the government bodies became more acute. The relationship between them was complicated, to say the least. Formally, the Communist Party could not issue orders to the Council of Ministers. It was only in a position to appeal to its “party conscience.” The 1977 Constitution proclaimed the CPSU “Soviet society’s leading and guiding force,” that is, the mainstay of power in the country. But if the party held supreme power, then what role did the Supreme Soviet, the Council of Ministers, the state planning and supplies committees and the regional executive committees play? That is why the backstage debates occurred in the 1970s on reducing the party’s role.
Sixth, the 1977 Constitution made decision-making the CPSU Central Committee Politburo’s prerogative. State institutions were relegated to the background. But the Politburo members were too old and ill to carry the burden of such stress and responsibility.
Seventh, since the mid-1970s, the country lived without a real leader. Once again, Brezhnev retained little control after he was briefly declared clinically dead in 1976. Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko were frail when elected, and Mikhail Gorbachev was considered a weak politician without a team before he rose to power. A system can function without a truly competent leader for 10-12 years. Ten years after 1976 brings us to 1986, the year the Soviet system started to collapse.
All these processes were further exacerbated by Andropov’s term in office. At the time, criminal proceedings were launched against high-profile officials (the Medunov case, the Churbanov case and the Yeliseyevsky Gastronom case, to name a few). The Uzbek case opened – looking into the links the republic’s leaders had to the shadow economy. The republics, primarily the Baltic ones, had to make larger payments to the union budget. The elites, including the local nomenclatures, were on thin ice: a criminal case could be initiated against anyone given the shadow economy. The country came under the threat of a nomenclature disaster.
Gorbachev was serious when he said history left us little time. In the mid-1980s, the Soviet leaders were afraid that events could get out of control. Everyone wanted change. The debates focused on the extent to which the Soviet system should be reformed.
Did society want change? Was it ready?
Party ideology had already collapsed by the onset of perestroika. That was the party’s own fault. In 1956, the CPSU condemned the entire Stalinist period. China inherited the Stalinist project. In 1964, the party denounced the entire Khrushchev period. In 1983, Andropov criticized the Brezhnev period for “mounting stagnation.” The party manuals of the 1970s had almost no mention of Stalin or Khrushchev. Anyone with even half a brain was asking two questions: Why does the CPSU keep silent about 80% of its history? And, what kind of system is there in the Soviet Union if every single new leader does nothing but harm to their country?
Andropov made a bad situation worse when he announced in 1983: “We don’t know the society in which we live all that well.” This led to the following question: “Who prevented you from studying your own society for so many years?” If the chairman of the KGB did not know society, then what could the public expect others to know? Such party acts undermined official ideology more than the scarcely accessible writings of Soviet dissidents or the CIA’s semi-mythical subversion attempts.
In your opinion, which domestic politicians played a crucial part in the Soviet Union’s disintegration and why?
Not a single major Soviet politician urged for a return to the Brezhnev era in the late 1980s. A conflict erupted not between the conservatives and the democrats, but rather between different groups of reformers.
Gorbachev’s primary goal was to reduce the party’s role. During his first two years in office, he backed the Council of Ministers’ “acceleration strategy” – the belated idea to expand the rights of enterprises. He also declared a course of party reform that was designed to reduce its power. To step up this transformation, Gorbachev artificially generated the appearance of two platforms within the CPSU Central Committee – Yegor Ligachyov’s conservative project and Alexander Yakovlev’s reformist project, although both individuals favored change.
Things changed after the Central Committee plenum in January 1987. Its agenda was altered a day before the opening. The plenum lashed out at the acceleration strategy by saying: “You were given two years and what do we have to show for it? The Chernobyl disaster? The Admiral Nakhimov crash?” And so, the strategy was terminated. It was replaced with glasnost – a conscious attempt to publish anti-Stalinist materials in the media. The goal was not to criticize Stalin, but rather to create a background for delegitimizing the party.
This plenum split the Soviet elite. Fighting and factionalism broke out between different groups of influence. Nikolai Ryzhkov’s Council of Ministers felt that they were playing a losing game. The CPSU split into several interest groups. The Ligachyov group wanted to moderate reform in the spirit of “acceleration.” The Gorbachev group was driven by the ideals of the Prague Spring. The Yakovlev group advocated the party’s conversion into a Western European social democracy. The fourth group urged accelerated privatization of public property and, in effect, dismantling the social welfare state. Boris Yeltsin later became their leader.
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic’s (RSFSR) leaders had always felt underprivileged in the Soviet Union. Suffice it to say that Russia was the only republic in the Soviet Union without its own Communist party and a full-fledged capital. In the 1970s, they supported “the right-wing dissidents” – the village prose writers who tried to launch debates on “the Russian issue.” In this way, the republic’s nomenclature tried to enhance its status in the Soviet Union. Yeltsin’s rhetoric proved beneficial for certain elite strata.
Yeltsin had been a party functionary since the Brezhnev period. In his speech in Vladivostok in 1986, Gorbachev advocated that officials like Yeltsin should be removed from their government posts. In fall 1987, Yeltsin’s conflict with Gorbachev lost him his spot as the Moscow City Committee’s first secretary. As of the nineteenth party conference, Yeltsin demanded the elimination of party privileges, and the privatization of public property. But who could buy property in the Soviet Union in 1988? Only three groups of people – top party functionaries, players of the shadow economy and, probably, the KGB. They stood to gain a great deal from Yeltsin’s rise.
Hence Yeltsin’s subsequent conflict with the union leaders. Ryzhkov’s Council of Ministers suggested gradual privatization through large cooperatives, that is, government-appointed organizations. The RSFSR leadership advocated the accelerated privatization set forth in the 500-day plan. The union leadership renounced this plan, and Yeltsin announced his decision to carry out the program in the RSFSR. Gorbachev’s attempt to turn the Communist Party of the RSFSR into a force countering Yeltsin fell through. This led to “the war of laws” in 1990 and the Soviet economy’s de facto destruction.
And what was the outside influence on this process?
The United States objectively stood to gain from the Soviet Union’s collapse. In 1948, Washington set itself the aim of narrowing down the Soviet sphere of influence and reducing (ideally dismantling) the Soviet Union’s combat potential. As of the late 1970s, U.S. analytical centers predicted a mounting crisis in the Soviet Union. In 1981, Washington toughened its foreign policy largely owing to these expectations. Judging from the documents, the Reagan administration was surprised to see that a serious crisis had not broken out in the Soviet Union by 1984.
During perestroika, the administrations of both Reagan and Bush maintained a professional stance toward the Soviet Union. They did not interfere in internal processes, but spoke about the end of the Cold War, the beginning of “the new era,” and signed agreements to decrease their arms stockpiles. In so doing, the Americans enhanced the Soviet elite’s feeling of external security and allowed its groups to settle accounts with each other as they saw fit. Neither Gorbachev, nor any other politician could consolidate the Soviet elite around an anti-American agenda. In the absence of a foreign threat, the elite disintegrated into conflicting groups.
And still, why wasn’t it possible to prevent the Soviet Union’s disintegration? Why did attempts like the August coup fail?
The main reason for these failures was the elite’s psychology in the final years of the Soviet Union. It was formed not during the Stalinist era, but rather in the red tape eras of Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Merely being gifted did not guarantee a politician a brilliant career. The ability to maneuver and adapt were more highly valued. But it was not the kind of environment in which simply struggling to survive posed any difficulty. During the Brezhnev era, the losers were sent abroad as ambassadors or, in the worst case, to “do responsible party work” in the provinces. This elite was incapable of putting up a fight.
The possibility of Gorbachev’s removal was the primary intrigue of the late 1980s. A discussion on his removal started in the CPSU lobby in late 1986. On the eve of the nineteenth party conference, the media reported that such a discussion had taken place. But Gorbachev was not removed for fear of other groups gaining influence. Regardless, Gorbachev did not risk direct elections for the Soviet president in 1990. Instead, he was elected by the Third Congress of People’s Deputies. The presidents of union republics, including Yeltsin, were elected in direct elections.
The State Emergency Committee’s (GKChP) defeat was pre-determined by the Baltic events in January 1991. Witnesses say Gorbachev verbally ordered the military to storm the TV center in Vilnius but later refused to admit he had done it. After that, the military said they would not accept any orders unless made in writing. So the Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov demanded that the GKChP issue a written order to storm the White House, but he did not receive one. Mindful of the Vilnius and Riga experience, he refused to attack the White House.
How did the Soviet Union’s collapse influence the situation and stability in the regions?
The 1922 Union Treaty was contradictory. The treaty sealed the republics’ right to secede from the Soviet Union, but did not specify any procedures by which this could happen. There was no mention of autonomous republics’ rights to leave the union, or autonomous territories’ and regions’ rights to change their status. It was the status issue that the majority of conflicts and disagreements in the Soviet Union evolved around.
Gorbachev’s relations with the leaders of union republics had never been easy. In March 1985, his nomination was opposed by the three first secretaries of the republican Communist parties – Vladimir Shcherbitsky of Ukraine, Heydar Aliyev of Azerbaijan, and Dinmukhamed Kunayev of Kazakhstan. Before long, interethnic conflicts broke out in their republics. Kunayev was removed from his post in 1986. Debates heated on the return of the Crimean Tatars in 1987. In 1988, a conflict flared up in Nagorno-Karabakh. The republic’s leaders blamed Gorbachev for engineering tensions to remove objectionable leaders.
The situation deteriorated in 1990 when Article 6 of the Constitution was rescinded. Communist party leaders in the republics were looking for a new source of legitimacy. In 1990, the majority of the Soviet republics adopted declarations of sovereignty that proclaimed the supremacy of these republics’ local laws over union legislation. The union center did not recognize these declarations. Moreover, on April 26, 1990, it had the Supreme Soviet adopt the Gorbachev-initiated law on the right of the autonomous republics to take part in the discussion of the Union Treaty. This act fueled separatism in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, the Chechen-Ingush Republic, and Tatarstan.
The 1991 August coup wrecked the signing of the Union Treaty. The republics started adopting declarations of independence rather than sovereignty. The union center did not recognize them either. But this time, autonomous republics began to adopt these declarations. It is sufficient to mention Nagorno-Karabakh and Trans-Dniester, as well as Chechnya and Tatarstan in the RSFSR. These games eventually led to the signing of the Belovezh Accords.
And in a broader sense, how did the collapse of the Soviet Union affect the system of international relations?
Its collapse still determines the character and tone of international relations. Declarations of sovereignty and independence were on shaky legal grounds. All the former republics, including Russia, required foreign recognition of their 1991 borders, as well as the legitimacy of their leaders. This is why they all instantly announced their intention to develop a partnership with the United States. The Russian leadership also needed Washington’s help withdrawing nuclear weapons from the former union republics. Yeltsin wanted to be recognized as a legitimate leader in his struggle with the Supreme Soviet.
The United States helped Yeltsin in this respect, but, in exchange, the Bush and Clinton administrations hoped to receive concessions on strategic issues, such as the rapid reduction of Russia’s strategic potential. However, Russia did not agree to unilateral disarmament. It preserved its military and industrial complex and a nuclear potential comparable to that of the United States.
A potential conflict emerged. The Yalta-Potsdam system was eliminated, but its physical basis, represented by Moscow’s and Washington’s nuclear weapons parity, remained intact. This explains numerous statements by U.S. experts that the Cold War did not end well for the United States. Washington’s attitude toward Yeltsin changed in 1994 – from ‘Democrat Number-One’ into the head of a neo-imperialistic regime – because he and other Russian politicians refused to agree to the accelerated reduction of the country’s strategic potential.
I believe this potential for conflict will become apparent in the next 10 to 15 years.
Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.