In spite of all the talk of ‘reform’, in the first half of 1991 GNP fell by ten per cent over the previous year. There were further strikes in the coalfields. The ‘reformers’ became increasingly bolder and clearly anti-socialist. Gorbachev tried to hold things together by balancing between the rival wings. This only led to increased tensions within the bureaucracy. The bureaucrats were only interested in maintaining their privileges, position and income, but the crisis had effectively undermined their position. The representatives of the old Stalinist wing were alarmed and increasingly desperate.
The crisis of the regime took place against a background of growing unrest in the Republics. In Georgia, open war had broken out over the question of Abkhazia. The split in the ruling elite unleashed pent-up centrifugal tendencies that had accumulated in the Soviet Union for decades. In 1991 the authority of the centre was collapsing. Republics and even cities decreed their own prices. Barter between Republics, regions and enterprises took the place of planning. A document of the Russian Federation paints a grim picture of the situation:
The economy approaches the borderline beyond which one can speak not of economic crisis but catastrophe. The sharp fall in output that is occurring in most state enterprises is accompanied by growing inflationary processes. Management is concerned not with production, but with how to find the means to pay the wages demanded by its employees and how to supply them with food and consumer goods to spend these wages on. These problems, as well as those of material-technical supply, are increasingly being resolved by the archaic method of barter… but this cannot ensure the needed supplies, so economic links are disrupted and production is halted. The degree of uncontrollability of the economy has reached catastrophic dimensions. The planning institutions are demoralised by the uncertainties of their situation today and particularly tomorrow. Information from the grass roots is lacking. All union, republican and regional orders contradict one another, which adds to social-political tensions. (Quoted in Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, p. 416)
Gorbachev, while paying lip service to ‘socialist planning’, had embraced the concept of the market as a way out, although he continually vacillated, reacting now to one pressure, now to another, like a dead leaf blown by every wind. With no plan and no clear idea of where he was going, he had effectively lost control. The New Union Treaty was creating a new focus for tension between the different wings of the bureaucracy. Shevardnadze, now firmly in the camp of capitalist counter-revolution, resigned warning of the “onset of dictatorship”.
Matters came to a head over tensions on the national question. The economic crisis exacerbated all the contradictions between the Moscow bureaucracy and the rival bureaucracies in the Soviet republics. Each bureaucracy wanted to get control over ‘its own house’. The weakness of the centre presented these elements with a golden opportunity, which they seized eagerly. Elections in the Baltics and Georgia propelled them towards independence. The red light was flashing.
Lithuania was seething with mass protests against rule from Moscow. Lithuanian youths boycotted conscription and burned their conscription cards and Lithuanian veterans of the Soviet army returned their medals and awards. Some public organizations, unions and societies, including the Lithuanian Communist Party, broke their links with Moscow. This was followed by a unilateral declaration of independence.
Lenin’s policy on the national question was based on the principle of the right to self-determination, up to and including separation. It goes without saying that the union of the peoples of the Soviet Union was a positive development that served the interests of the workers and peasants of all the republics. But Lenin always insisted that it must be a voluntary union, free from any hint of national oppression or coercion. By rejecting the right of the people of Lithuania to determine their own destiny, the Moscow bureaucracy violated the basic principles of Leninism, and furthermore pushed the people of Lithuania and other republics into the arms of the nationalists.
The attempt to crush the Lithuanian insurrection by force was completely counter-productive. Soviet troops attacked a crowd of unarmed demonstrators in Vilnius, killing 13 and wounding hundreds more. This action only had the effect of pouring petrol on the flames. In the end, Gorbachev was forced to draw the conclusion and accept that the breakup of the Soviet Union had become inevitable. This was the basic content of the so-called Union Treaty, which was due to be ratified on 20 August.
The treaty was the result of long negotiations, begun initially in response to demands from the Baltic States, Georgia and Moldova, to leave the Union. Gorbachev’s decision to accept the Treaty amounted to an acceptance of the breakup of the Soviet Union. This was creating widespread resentment in the bureaucracy and especially in the military caste. In essence, the Treaty would leave the centre with only residual powers over foreign policy and defence. The crisis in the USSR had already unleashed extreme separatist and nationalist tendencies. They had already lost Eastern Europe. Where would it end?
What conditioned the whole situation was the absence of an independent movement of the Russian proletariat. True, there were many strikes, but, given the enormous confusion and the lack of any alternatives, the workers did not fight as an independent force. This was the determining element in the whole equation. In the absence of a mass independent movement of the workers, the whole struggle was fought out between rival wings of the bureaucracy.
The flashpoint was the move to break up the USSR with the signing of the Union Treaty. In the build-up to the meeting of the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies, the representatives of the old bureaucracy began to exert pressure on the government. Since the opposing wings were evenly balanced, a peaceful resolution was no longer possible. The conflict could only be resolved in open struggle. The blind alley of perestroika led directly to the attempted coup of August 1991.