2T - Revolution and counter-revolution in the USSR: opposition to Gorbachev's policies
Learn why reform produced rival centres of power, how economic and national crises intensified, and why the failed August coup accelerated a collapse completed in December 1991.
Opposition from both directions
Gorbachev faced opponents who wanted incompatible outcomes. Conservative party officials feared that glasnost and democratisation were undermining Communist authority. Military and security leaders worried about the loss of superpower influence, the collapse of allied regimes and the weakening of the Union. Economic managers could resist reforms threatening their positions. Some conservatives wanted to halt change; others accepted limited reform but rejected political pluralism or republican independence.
Radical reformers argued that Gorbachev was moving too slowly. Boris Yeltsin became their most prominent rival leader after his removal from the Moscow party leadership in 1987 and political return through elections. He attacked privilege and demanded more decisive economic and political change. In July 1990 he left the Communist Party, publicly distancing himself from the organisation Gorbachev was still trying to reform.
Yeltsin's strength also came from institutions. Russia, the largest Soviet republic, declared sovereignty in June 1990, asserting the priority of its laws. Yeltsin was elected Russian president by popular vote in June 1991. He could claim a direct mandate that Gorbachev, elected Union president by the Congress, lacked. The dispute was consequently about which government should control laws, taxes, resources and administration, not merely a personal quarrel.
Gorbachev tried to hold the centre between these pressures. Compromises with conservatives alarmed radicals; concessions to radicals alarmed conservatives. Foreign Minister Shevardnadze resigned in December 1990, warning of the danger of dictatorship. The shifting balance made government unpredictable and reduced confidence that Gorbachev could carry out a coherent programme.
The war of laws
The conflict in which republican and Union authorities issued competing rules and claimed that their own legislation took priority.
National movements and coercion
The USSR was a union of republics, not simply Russia under another name. National movements drew on different histories and grievances. In the Baltic republics, memories of incorporation into the USSR in 1940 helped turn demands for cultural and environmental protection into demands for sovereignty and independence. Glasnost made public discussion of earlier coercion and the secret Nazi-Soviet agreements more possible. The Baltic human chain in August 1989 demonstrated organised mass mobilisation; Lithuania declared independence in March 1990.
Other conflicts did not follow the same pattern. In Nagorno-Karabakh, competing Armenian and Azerbaijani national claims produced violence from 1988, exposing the centre's inability to manage territorial disputes. In Georgia, national mobilisation was intensified by the army's violent suppression of demonstrators in Tbilisi in April 1989. Nationalism could therefore mean a demand to leave the Union, a dispute between communities, or a challenge to local leaders associated with Moscow.
Gorbachev did not consistently renounce coercion within the USSR. Economic pressure on Lithuania and lethal Soviet actions in Vilnius and Riga in January 1991 deepened mistrust. The responsibility of particular leaders for particular orders remains an issue for evidence, but the political consequence was clear: coercion undermined claims that reform would create a voluntary, democratic Union.
A March 1991 referendum offered a renewed federation. Most voters in participating republics supported a reformed Union, but several republics boycotted the official vote. The result cannot be treated as either unanimous consent to the existing USSR or unanimous support for dissolution. Gorbachev pursued a new Union Treaty to devolve powers while preserving a common state. Conservatives feared that this would destroy the Union; independence movements increasingly doubted the centre's promises.
Economic crisis and the August coup
By 1990–1991, shortages and disruption were becoming more severe. Partial market reform had loosened old controls without securing reliable alternative supply arrangements. Falling production and fiscal difficulties increased pressure on government. Republics withheld resources or contested central decisions, while economic dissatisfaction strengthened strikes and rival political movements. Political fragmentation made coordination harder, and economic failures further damaged political legitimacy.
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