RESTORATION WATCH # 5: RESULTS OF COUP TRIAL BELIE YELTSIN ASSURANCES THAT ALL IS WELL
(Washington, D.C.): The Russian government of Boris
Yeltsin is apparently mounting a sort of “Don’t
Worry, Be Happy” campaign — a bid to encourage its
citizens and foreign interlocutors to believe that the
worst economic and political turmoil is past and
stability, if not a flourishing and prosperous democracy,
is preordained. Unfortunately, there is nagging
evidence that such “stabilization” as is taking
place reflects more the continuing mutation of the
Yeltsin government along the Kremlin’s traditional
autocratic and expansionist lines rather than a
durable democratic and pro-Western transformation of the
Russian body politic. If so, the future course
of Russia is far less propitious than might be inferred
from the comforting assurances being served up by
President Yeltsin and his cohorts.
‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses?’
According to the 22 August 1994 New York Times,
Mr. Yeltsin announced this week that “I see that in
many regions, the economic slide has stopped.” On
this morning’s news broadcasts, National Public Radio
cited a Yeltsin interview with a Russian publication as
contending that “Russia’s political tensions are
subsiding and the dangers of regions splitting” from
the center are over.
Similar themes have been sounded recently by other top
Russian officials. On 19 August, the Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty Daily Report summarized an article
that was carried by ITAR-TASS the day before concerning
remarks by Sergei Stepashin, chief of the Russian
Counterintelligence Service (FSK):
“Speaking on the eve of the third
anniversary of the anti-democratic August 1991 coup,
Stepashin said that the situation in Russia has
stabilized. Despite complicated economic and social
problems in several regions of Russia, he said the
FSK feels ‘no concern’ over the population’s
reactions to these problems or over the possibility
of political instability.” (Emphasis added.)
And the newspaper Rossiiskiye Vesti on 18
August published an interview with Mikhail Poltoranin,
head of the State Duma Committee for Information Policy
and Communications, in which he announced — following a
meeting with President Yeltsin — that: “The
dismantlement of the Bolshevik system started by
former President Mikhail Gorbachev is practically
completed.” (Emphasis added.)
On The Other Hand…
It is ironic that these bullish assessments and
tributes to Gorbachev were served up against the backdrop
of the anniversary of the abortive coup d’etat.
For just short of three years to the day, a three-man
Military Collegium of the Supreme Court in Moscow heard
an extraordinary appeal from Russia’s Chief Prosecutor —
and delivered an even more extraordinary ruling — in
connection with the last trial of one of the August coupmeisters.
The defendant in the case was General Valentin
Varennikov. At the time of the coup, Varennikov was the
Soviet Deputy Defense Minister; among the twelve senior
officials accused of treason for their role in the failed
affair, he alone chose to go to trial rather than accept
an amnesty granted last February by the
hardliner-dominated Russian parliament.
Gen. Varennikov did so, he said, in order to
contest the charges against him and to expose the man he
blamed for “the destruction of the Soviet
Union,” Mikhail Gorbachev.
On 11 August 1994, the Supreme Court panel dismissed
the charges against the general for lack of evidence. In
doing so, they seemed particularly swayed by the findings
of Chief Prosecutor Arkady Danilov, who implicitly
disputed whether there was any coup at all.
Danilov told the court that — contrary to Gorbachev’s
story — the Soviet President had not been
detained during the coup and had been free to leave his
dacha in Crimea. According to the prosecutor, Gorbachev’s
resistance to the coup attempt was so lukewarm that his
actions could easily have been interpreted by the
plotters as a blessing.
A Potemkin Coup?
In handing down the verdict, Supreme Court chairman
Viktor Yaskin also criticized Mikhail Gorbachev’s conduct
during the coup attempt and directly contradicted the
former president’s version of events, i.e., that he was
the victim of a plot hatched by men he had appointed. According
to Yaskin, Gorbachev’s passive behavior amounted to tacit
approval of the hardliners’ plans: “If Gorbachev did
not approve, he made no effort to prevent them
from trying to save the country by introducing a
state of emergency.” Yaskin took note of
the fact that Gorbachev did not reject outright the
proposals of the senior officials and officers who flew
to his dacha and that he shook hands with them when they
left, implying that he had not objected to their plans.
This finding closely tracks with the Center for
Security Policy’s judgment during the August 1991 crisis
and throughout the months (and post-mortems) that
followed: Gorbachev’s behavior strongly suggested
that this was a “Potemkin coup,” one with which
he was in collusion for the shared purpose of
strengthening the Soviet state under his leadership.(1)
Regrettably, at the time, the vast majority of senior
U.S. policy-makers, academics and foreign diplomats found
it inconceivable that a man they perceived as an
authentic democrat and committed reformer could have been
party to such an operation — to say nothing of a
prime-mover behind it. As a consequence, appeals to
examine the implications of Gorbachev’s possible
involvement in the “coup” fell on deaf ears.(2) This in turn
led to a failure to cultivate constructive relations with
the genuine democrats in Moscow and squandered important
opportunities to ease the transition to pluralism and a
market economy and improve, thereby, the chances of its
success.
Perestroika‘s Hidden Agenda
Gen. Varennikov also helpfully established the
validity of one of the Center for Security Policy’s
other, core contentions: The former Soviet
Union’s military-industrial complex views openings to the
West — like the period of detente inspired by Mikhail
Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost
campaigns — as a useful device for obtaining militarily
critical technologies and other economic assistance.
A preeminent objective for these interests is to
facilitate and pay for the acquisition key technologies
and to reduce (if not eliminate) the lead in these areas
enjoyed by the United States. At a news conference
following his acquittal, the general claimed that the
military and other senior Communist Party officials only
went along with Gorbachev’s presidency “because
through him the West was giving our economy some shots in
the arm. That was important.”
Incredibly, the fact that this might still be
an “important” objective of the old Soviet
military-industrial apparatus is as absent from the
thinking of senior Clinton Administration policy-makers
as it was from their predecessors’ during the
Bush-Gorbachev years. If anything, the top Clinton
official responsible for the safeguarding of America’s
leading technologies, Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, is
even more insouciant about the implications of
sophisticated American dual-use technology falling into
the wrong hands than were his counterparts in the Bush
Administration. For example, in the 8 August 1994 edition
of the Journal of Commerce, Secretary Brown
wrote:
“As Congress moves to take up revisions to
the Export Administration Act — the law that is the
basis of our export control system — we can expect
to see more scare stories about the risks of weapons
proliferation due to lax export controls. Well,
don’t believe everything you read. The reality is
quite the opposite.” (Emphasis
added)
If left to its own devices, the Clinton team appears
determined to use the occasion of the upcoming 27
September summit with President Yeltsin to eviscerate
what little remains of controls on the exports of
sensitive technologies to Russia.
Legitimating the Goal of ‘Saving’ the
Soviet Union
One other aspect of Gen. Varennikov’s trial is
particularly relevant to any assessment of Russia’s
likely future course. In its decision, the Supreme Court
accepted as a defense Gen. Varennikov’s explanation that
his actions were motivated by his desire to save the
Soviet Union. “In Varennikov’s actions there was no
plan to damage the defense capabilities and security of
the Soviet Union,” the Supreme Court’s Yaskin
announced. “He was guided in his actions only by
the interests of the Soviet Union.”
The Russian political dialogue increasingly
reflects an obsession with “Who lost the Soviet
Union?” What is striking is the clearly growing
nostalgia for the Old Order(3)
than is the Court’s unwillingness to hold accountable
those resisting the move toward democratic rule.
Such a view will undoubtedly not be lost on
individuals and political factions or organizations who
may even now be conspiring to regain authoritarian
control.
One such individual is probably former general and
Russian Vice President Alexander Rutskoi — a leader of
the more recent October 1993 coup attempt. In an 11
August 1994 interview with the Official Kremlin
International News Broadcast, Rutskoi publicly
congratulated Gen. Varennikov on his acquittal. He added,
when asked about the future of Russia:
“…The revival of Russia must take
place within the boundaries of the Soviet Union, for
the Soviet Union was identified with Russia, a
multinational state, a great-power state. There is no
other alternative….Some of the so-called
sovereign and independent states, have been simply
rude to Russia, breaking not only international
norms, but also violating human rights. With respect
to those republics and states, clear actions should
be taken of the following kind: borders should be
closed, relations should be built on the basis of
international norms. As regards supplies of Russian
energy, gas, oil, raw materials, trade should be
based on world prices.“I will tell you, I have no doubts about it,
that if such terms are applied to those separatist
regimes which pursue chauvinist policies with respect
to other peoples and nationalities, those living in
corresponding states would soon — immediately after
borders are closed — would take measures against
those regimes, and the problem would be resolved
within a month.”
Clearly, the implications of such threatening words
extend well beyond the non-Russian states of the former
Soviet Union. They portend trouble for others still
viewed as part of Moscow’s sphere of influence (notably,
the Baltics, the states of Eastern Europe and regional
flashpoints like the Balkans, Northeast Asia, South Asia
and the Middle East) and for Western interests in those
areas.
The Bottom Line
The vindication of Gen. Varennikov, Gen. Rutskoi’s
resurgent audacity and the rising political star of
Lieutenant General Aleksandr Lebed — a leading
nationalist who has, as the commander of Russia’s 14th
Army in Moldova, been at the cutting edge of Moscow’s
neo-imperialist policy in the so-called “near
abroad” — are all bellwethers of dangerous trends
in the former Soviet Union. It would be no less
serious a mistake this time around than it was three
years ago for Washington to take at face value the
soothing words of those to be deemed Kremlin
“reformers” while ignoring ominous evidence to
the contrary.
– 30 –
1. See, for example, George
Orwell Bush on Gorbachev-the-Democrat: Saying It Don’t
Make It So (No.
91-D 85, 21 August 1991); Center Calls
for Bush Apology for Calling Potemkin Coup Theory
‘Ridiculous’ (No.
91-P 87, 23 August 1991); Yelena Bonner
Subscribes to Potemkin Coup Theory: Center Joins Her in
Call for Gorbachev’s Resignation (
1991); Button, Button, Who’s Got Moscow’s
Nuclear Button? Renegotiate START to Give Soviet
Democrats Control (
1991); The ‘Black Colonel’ — Down, But Not
Out: Alksnis Mulls Potemkin Coup, Sees Comeback
(No. 91-P 92, 29 August
1991).
2. For example, consider this
passage from the Center’s 21 August 1991
“President [Bush] does a profound disservice
to an informed debate about the wisdom of his policy
of investing in Mikhail Gorbachev — and the folly of
not opting for the ever-more obvious alternative of
supporting those genuine reformist elements
at the republic and local levels — by blurring the
distinctions between them. At the very least, it is
incumbent upon him to explore the possibility that
Gorbachev was a party to a ‘Potemkin coup,’ if only
as a means of calibrating the wisdom of lending
further support to a man viewed with real
and understandable suspicion by so many bona
fide democrats in the USSR.”
3. See, for example, the Center’s Restoration
Watch series: #1: The Kremlin
Reverts to Form (No.
94-D 35, 15 April 1994), #2: Russia’s
Organized Crime (No.
94-D 39, 21 April 1994), #3: To Rebuild
an Empire, First Get an Emperor (
A Russian Weimar Republic is an Unworthy G-7 Partner,
Unreliable Ally (No.
94-D 70, 8 July 1994).
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