A ‘POTEMKIN COUP’? GORBACHEV’S RESTORATION WOULD MEAN NEW LEASE ON LIFE FOR THE OLD SOVIET GUARD

(Washington, D.C.): As President Bush,
Chancellor Kohl and others in the West
demand that Mikhail Gorbachev be returned
to power, rumors continue to swirl
concerning the Soviet president’s
whereabouts and disposition. The putative
leader of the coup that removed him from
power, Gennady Yanayev, mysteriously
suggested yesterday that he “hope[d]
that my friend, President Gorbachev will
return to his office and we will work
together.”

When combined with the obvious
fecklessness of the coupmeisters (so
vividly in evidence in their 19 August
press conference in Moscow), these
developments beg a most important
question: Could this coup
actually have been orchestrated
with at least Gorbachev’s initial
assent by those institutions — the KGB,
the military and the Communist Party —
that brought him to power and that have
kept him there for six years?
Could it be that these same organizations
have acted in concert with Gorbachev
for the cynical purpose of enhancing his
ability to extort aid, technology and
enhanced political support from gullible
Western leaders?

Interestingly, a number of prominent
Soviet figures have raised just such a
possibility over the past twenty-four
hours. A defector from the Soviet KGB,
Victor Sheymov, speculated that the coup
could be a scam designed to enhance
Gorbachev’s usefulness to the Soviet
system — not to dispense with him:

Sheymov: “…I wouldn’t
exclude that Mr. Gorbachev could
be behind that coup, because he
could benefit more than anybody
else from this coup. For
instance, he recently went to
London. He was literally begging
for help, and he didn’t get too
much of it. His popularity within
the country is plummeting, and he
needs some kind of support from
his own people. In this case, he
could force people to ask
themselves a fundamental
question: What is the
alternative?”

Gary Kasparov, World Chess Champion and
arguably the single most influential
non-elected individual in the Soviet
democratic movement, said last night on
Larry King Live: “I expected [the
coup] for too long….And actually, I
believed that it was the old plan
designed last November, December. And, I
have no doubt that it was designed under
the direct leadership of Mr. Gorbachev.”

Interestingly, this view was even
echoed by a man whose democratic
credentials are less certain. According
to today’s New York Times,
former Foreign Minister Eduard A.
Shevardnadze stated that he “held
out the possibility today that Mr.
Gorbachev had gone along with the
hard-line takeover under
pressure, and could reemerge as its
figurehead.” (Emphasis added.)

Unfortunately, the West’s persistent
failure to understand the degree to which
Gorbachev has consistently
striven to preserve as much as
possible the power and control exercised
by the central authorities has
greatly contributed to the United States’
and its allies’ present susceptibility to
this sort of cunning deception. It is,
accordingly, difficult for President Bush
and his colleagues to comprehend why
those authorities would be willing to go
to such lengths to enhance
Gorbachev’s stature.

The answer is quite simple. By
making the apparent threat to Gorbachev’s
rule more real — and the alternative to
him more alarming — it is quite possible
that the Soviet Union can get more and
faster assistance from the West while
doing less in the way of fundamental,
structural reforms. Faced
with the prospect of tanks in the streets
of Moscow, Leningrad and elsewhere and an
end to glasnost and the
post-Cold War era, will Western
governments be disposed to demand
performance on political and economic
change as a precondition to aid?
Or would they be more likely to respond
to demands from Gorbachev that they must
come across with generous unconditional
aid, 100% taxpayer-guaranteed credits and
dual-use technology now — or
else?

The Center for Security Policy cannot
confidently assess the plausibility of
this scenario at this time. It believes,
however, that U.S. and allied
policy-makers should give it serious
consideration — even if such a
high-risk, choreographed initiative turns
out to have gone awry, resulting in the
genuine and permanent overthrow of
Mikhail Gorbachev. At the very least, the
evidence that gives rise to speculation
about such a possibility reinforces the
Center’s long-held view that the
West must align itself not with Gorbachev
but with those in the USSR genuinely
committed to wholesale democratic and
free market reform. Should
President Bush and his G-7 colleagues
continue to misperceive Gorbachev as one
of those committed reformers, they will
perpetuate the strategic mistakes they
have already made in propping up the
governing institutions of the USSR — and
quite possibly grievously compound those
mistakes by giving Moscow center yet
another, unwarranted lease on life. This
would be a rank betrayal of those
courageously taking to the streets
seeking to protect their elected
representatives and shouting for Yeltsin
and other republican and local leaders —
not for Gorbachev.

In particular, President Bush should
have the wisdom to recognize that it
is untenable to attribute to Gorbachev
the same sort of legitimacy — by
dint of his previous stature under an
illegitimate communist
“constitution” — as
should be enjoyed by the elected
representatives of the Russian and other
peoples. To the contrary,
equating Boris Yeltsin (whose preference
for Gorbachev over Yanayev is an
understandable tactical stance in light
of his exposed and increasingly desperate
situation) may simply play into the hands
of the Soviet central authorities in
their effort to refurbish Gorbachev’s
ersatz democratic credentials. Worse yet,
if as now seems possible, the genuine
reformers are in mortal danger as a
result of incipient physical attacks,
this misplaced legitimization of
Gorbachev could prove actually add
to their vulnerability.