Re: For nostalgias' sake, from my scr & scrm archives (003)

An interesting post. True story about Yanayev: one of my wife's
parents was having tea with the guy (before the failed putsch), when
the discussion turned to protesters. Yanayev insisted that in such
cases tanks be brought out, and protesters killed/run over. He was
asked if he would even have the tanks run over ladies. "No lady would
be out on the streets demonstrating," was the reply.

Yeltsin at that time was still a decent, intelligent, idealistic guy,
quite alert and even micromanaging things. Not yet the drunken
semi-aware puppet of Berezovsky et al that he would later turn out to
be.

regards,

BM


Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj wrote:
> ------------- Original Article --------------
> From nikst@xxxxxxxxxxxx Sun Oct 13 03:29:51 EDT 1996
> From: nikst@xxxxxxxxxxxx ( )
> Newsgroups: soc.culture.russian.moderated
> Subject: Modern Russian History
> Date: 5 Oct 1996 21:03:47 -0000
> Lines: 130
> Message-ID: <m0v9hbX-000421N@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Boris YELTSIN: is/was he hero?
> The expert about Yeltsin's figure
> *********************************
>
> Date: 04 Oct 96 11:01:14 EDT
> From: Raymond Smith <104152.775@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Yeltsin and the 1991 Coup
>
> David,
>
> I'd like to offer a few comments on Amy Knight's views on Yeltsin
> and the August 1991 coup. I was political counselor at the U.S. embassy
> in Moscow at the time.
>
> I agree with her that the coup was a last ditch attempt by Gorbachev's
> subordinates to stem the tide of reform in the country, prevent the
> signing of the Union Treaty, preserve their own power and prevent the
> breakup of the Soviet Union. That was my analysis at the time and what we
> cabled Washington the Monday morning the "emergency committee" made its
> announcement. We told Washington that the coup would fail only if there
> was sufficient public opposition that the willingness of the military to
> carry out the committee's orders would be called into question. We said
> that U.S. policy should be to support the reform process that had been
> underway by having nothing to do with the coup leaders. That is the
> policy the USG followed, after some earlier waffling by the President,
> although I frankly have no idea what role our advice played in forming
> the policy. Later that morning, we were telephoned from the White House
> and the Charge, Jim Collins, was asked to come over to meet with Yeltsin.
> He asked my view. I told him we should. He got Washington's OK and we
> did.
>
> For whatever it was worth, Kryuchkov et al could not have been
> unaware that the U.S. Ambassado's car, flag flying, was going to the
> White House, not to the Kremlin. As it turned out, we met with Kozyrev,
> not Yeltsin, so I personally did not see Yeltsin during the days of the
> coup. Kozyrev acted like someone who thought the coup was for real.
>
> Another personal observation. Early Wednesday afternoon, as evidence
> was accumulating that the coup was failing, I was driving on Leningradsky
> Prospect, when traffic suddenly halted. As I watched, an armored division
> crossed the Prospect and headed out of town. A lot of the tanks were
> opened up and crews were lounging at the top, waving casually to people
> on the street. I happened to notice that the car of Moscow's mayor Popov
> was also blocked in the traffic and he and his guards were watching the
> procession. I went over and asked him what was going on. He said the
> military was leaving. I asked what would happe n to the coup leaders. He
> said they would be put on trial. For what it's worth, Popov did not act
> like a man who thought all this had been a sham. Of course, he might also
> have been duped. In any case, to my knowledge, this was the firs t hard
> evidence that the coup had collapsed.
>
> Did Gorbachev orchestrate the coup attempt? I doubt it. The Union
> Treaty was the centerpiece of his policy vis-a-vis the republics, a
> genuine effort, although one perhaps doomed from the start, to peacefully
> forge a new type of relationship between the center and the republics,
> while keeping the Soviet Union intact as a country. The coup leaders
> believed the Treaty turned over so much power to the republics that
> breakup of the Soviet Union was inevitable (an d they may well have been
> right). To preserve their own power and, lets give the devils some due,
> perhaps motivated also by a smidgen of patriotism toward the Soviet
> Union, they mounted the coup. They may well have hoped to gain Gorbachevs
> acquiescence after they had presented him with a fait accompli. That is
> fundamentally different, however, from arguing that they acted with his
> foreknowledge and approval. The subsequent suicides of several key
> military and party leaders also argue against the conclusion that all of
> this was prearranged.
>
> Did Yeltsin act heroically? Yeltsin is a complex and contradictory
> figure. I have always been skeptical about viewing him as a born again
> democrat. But events have shown that when faced with what he perceives as
> a crisis he summons his energy and his will and tries to rise to it. That
> is what he did during th e coup. He provided a rallying point without
> which there would have been no public resistance and no reason to have to
> contemplate, and therefore wonder about, the use of the military against
> Moscow's civilian population. I give no credence to Kryuchkov's
> assertions that the military would not be used.
>
> Of course, that is what he would have told Yeltsin. Anyone familiar
> with how the Soviet Union handled Hungary and Czechoslovakia, not to
> mention domestic troubles, would have had to be a lot more naive than
> Yeltsin to buy that bridge.
>
> Would the military have obeyed orders? Hard to say. At the time, we
> thought those elements of the military that had been exposed to that
> small element of the Russian population that was out in the streets in
> opposition had been compromised. Some thought there could be a KGB
> division bivouacked outside of town in isolation that would be ordered in
> to strike quickly enough that it would not have time to begin to question
> its orders. That is how earlier generations of Soviet leaders would have
> acted. What was different about the emergency committee? In my view,
> unlike their predecessors, these guys had lost their belief in their
> right to rule, even if they had not lost their desire to retain power.
> When faced with opposition, they lacked their predecessors will.
>
> Yeltsin did not.
>
> Why did attempts to prosecute the coup leaders collapse? Time will
> tell, maybe. I suspect they were able to cut a deal because they knew
> things that could be a major embarrassment for Yeltsin and other key
> figures. What they knew need not have had anything to do with the
> abortive coup attempt. Anyone in a leadership position in the Soviet
> Union probably had been involved in doings that would be hanging offenses
> in many other countries.
>
> The fact that Yeltsin played an heroic role in August 1991 does not
> make him a democrat. Like most Russians, Yeltsin believes at a gut level
> that power cannot be shared. August 1991 gave him the opportunity to get
> it all, and he went for it. He acted unconstitutionally in December 1991,
> opting like Lenin at Brest Litovsk for total power over a more limited
> geographic area. He acted unconstitutionally in October 1993 when he
> dissolved the legislature. Whether these unconstitutional acts furthered
> some elements of reform and were in the U.S. interest can be argued, but
> it seems pretty clear to me that, rather than promoting constitutionalism
> and rule of law in Russia, they reinforced the authoritarianism that is
> so engrained in the political culture. I am not certain how one strikes a
> balance between the genuine, albeit flawed, reform that has gone on under
> Yeltsin and the underlying authoritarianism that persists. Under this
> regime, have some of the fundamental political values that have separated
> Russia from much of the rest of the world begun to shift, or have they
> been reinforced? I think Yeltsins place in history will be judged on the
> answer to that question and outsiders like us will be arguing about it
> for quite a while.
>
> Johnson's Russia List
> 5 October 1996
> djohnson@xxxxxxx - nst -
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Poka yedinstvennyi konkurent ostalsya u Borisa Nikolayevicha -
> - eto Pyotr Pervyi". -- Anatoly CHUBAIS

.

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