Re: For nostalgias' sake, from my scr & scrm archives (003)
- From: "Captain!" <SpammersMustDie@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 02:34:50 GMT
"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urjlew@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:P1nPe.1444$N1.1271@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> ------------- 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
>
this was a good one
.
- References:
- For nostalgias' sake, from my scr & scrm archives (003)
- From: Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
- For nostalgias' sake, from my scr & scrm archives (003)
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