Russia. A History полностью

The party also became a source of opposition, as criticism—even among Gorbachev’s erstwhile supporters—rapidly intensified. The party élite had initially acquiesced and acceded to the general secretary’s will, but increasingly came to believe that Gorbachev’s glasnost and democratization were undermining the party’s power and privilege. Glasnost had spawned a profusion of independent newspapers and journals; their shocking revelations about the atrocities perpetrated in the Stalin era not only demonstrated Stalin’s personal culpability but also exposed the party’s failure to oppose the senseless repression and terror. Nor did party leaders welcome Gorbachev’s pluralism; the profusion of organized political movements and free elections increasingly made them feel isolated and humiliated. The party élite was also alarmed by the revolutionary forces sweeping the Soviet bloc, as countries like Poland, East Germany, and Hungary openly asserted their interests and independence. The most famous challenge by the party’s old guard came in a March 1988 newspaper article by Nina Andreeva, a Leningrad chemistry teacher, who castigated the attacks on Stalin as defamatory and who denounced perestroika as a disastrous assault on the country’s basic socialist principles.

Gorbachev’s popularity also declined among the general public. Public opinion surveys showed a precipitous drop in his approval rating, while that of his critics—above all, the former Moscow party boss, Boris Yeltsin—skyrocketed. Little wonder then that, when the Congress of People’s Deputies created a presidential post in March 1990, Gorbachev decided to have the Congress (where a majority of deputies were party members) choose the first president of the USSR rather than face a general election. A popular vote meant greater legitimacy, but also greater risk. As a result, however, Gorbachev lacked the mandate given to Yeltsin when the latter, two months later, won an overwhelming majority of the popular vote to become the first president of Russia. All this emboldened the neformaly (informal political organizations) to become more assertive. ‘Democratic Russia’, established earlier (January 1990), demanded an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly of power, establishment of strict control over the KGB, creation of a ‘regulated’ market economy, and sovereignty for the Russian republic.

The mounting opposition drove Gorbachev to retreat from his radical vision and to seek the support of more conservative quarters. He became increasingly cautious, especially after the trenchant criticism openly expressed at the Congress of People’s Deputies, and sought to appeal to his base in the party. Gorbachev also spurned radical economic proposals (to replace a command economy with free markets) and created a Presidential Council that was dominated by conservative political figures. None of this, of course, endeared him to disgruntled members of the party, not to mention the more democratic, reform-minded members of the public.

The steady erosion of Gorbachev’s political power, moreover, only served to encourage the explosive nationalist movements that were gaining momentum all across the borderland republics of the Soviet Union. Such aspirations in fact had already emerged in the preceding decades, but could now burst into full view under perestroika. Indeed, perestroika—with its themes of ‘democratization and glasnost’—empowered nationalities, especially in the Baltics, Ukraine, and Caucasus, to demand more autonomy, official predominance of the indigenous language, the precedence of their own economic interests, and ultimately total independence. Gorbachev first encountered the surprising intensity of nationalist strivings in December 1986, when Kazakh students demonstrated to protest Moscow’s decision to replace the Kazakh first secretary with an ethnic Russian. Gorbachev beat a hasty retreat, exposing the centre’s vulnerability and readiness to compromise. Anti-Soviet movements were especially powerful in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the last to be incorporated into the USSR and the first to proclaim independence in 1991.

Nationalism gave rise not only to demands for independence but also to inter-ethnic conflict, especially in areas of mixed ethnic populations (often the product of deliberate, planned settlement of Russians). Although ethnic tensions were hardly new, conflicts intensified as state power seemed to weaken and as Gorbachev sought to ‘unleash’ popular forces. The violence was especially intense in the Caucasus, most notably in an Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan—the Nagorno-Karabakh region that soon became the focal point of armed conflict between Armenians and Azeris.