Stalinism: It’s Origin and Future. Andy Blunden 1993

According to Selyunin, the Army numbered 5 million, “but we can afford to feed only around 1 million” and Yuri Ryzhkov, a member of the Supreme Soviet said that 80% of all machine building in the country is arms-related. Meanwhile draft dodging had increased by a factor of 27 in two years, as Soviet troops were brought back from Eastern Europe. General Yazov complained to the Supreme Soviet in July “Soon we will have no armed forces”, and denounced attempts by the Republics to ensure that their nationals did not serve outside their home territory. ^[204]

Alexander Yakovlev, resigned as an adviser to Gorbachev, and warned that the “party of revenge” had “not disappeared” and the KGB leader Vladimir Kryuchkov was saying publicly that he believed that the CIA was manipulating Gorbachev.

The newspaper Nezavisimaya commented that “the Defence Ministry will defend the status quo to the very last”, and fears grew that “hard-liners” based in the military would intervene to halt the dismemberment of the Union being negotiated between Yeltsin and Gorbachev.

In the early hours of Monday 19 August 1991, the day Gorbachev was due to return from his holiday in the Crimea to sign the treaty, tanks moved into the streets of Moscow, Gorbachev was detained, allegedly ill, and the Soviet Vice-President Gennady Yanayev assumed the powers of President, control of the media, banned political parties and demonstrations and declared a six-month state of emergency.

The “Emergency Committee” included the Minister of Defence Marshall Dmitri Yazov, Minister of the Interior General Boris Pugo, head of the KGB Vladimir Krychkov and Soviet Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov – all of whom had been appointed to their post by Gorbachev. (Among the state forces, only a section of the Air Force failed to support the coup). Promising continuation of “reforms in all fields” and continued withdrawal from Europe, the coup leaders denied that Gorbachev had been removed from power. Economic spokesman Tizyakov insisted “the policy of the reforms toward a market economy will not be reversed”. Their aims were to “save the economy from ruin, and the country from hunger, to prevent the threat of a large-scale civil conflict with unpredictable consequences” and to “liquidate criminal military formations”, but amid frequent references to patriotism and the nation, referred not once to Socialism, Communism, or the Communist Party.

Boris Yeltsin set himself up in the aptly named “White House”, seat of the Russian Government, where some tanks loyal to Yeltsin gathered, and established telephone communication with President Mitterand of France, the British Prime Minister Major and US President Bush. The US TV network CNN relayed his messages to the Soviet people. In the event, even Soviet television and Izvestia broadcast Yeltsin’s speeches.

Yeltsin spoke from atop a tank outside the White House and called for Gorbachev to be allowed to address the nation and for his reinstatement, and appealed for an indefinite general strike. But despite the fact that Soviet miners had struck for six months against Gorbachev, and in support of Yeltsin’s demands, there was little response to his strike call. About half the miners in Russia’s largest coalfield, Kuzbass, came out; at Vorkuta, Siberia’s largest coalfield, only five mines responded. Oil workers in Tyumen, Ukraine, debated the call and decided not to come out. This lack of response to Yeltsin’s call-to-arms must be seen in the context of the massive scale of industrial action among the Soviet workers over the preceding two years.

Crowds rallied outside the White House, but not in large number, and the crowd was more reminiscent in its composition of Soviet dissidents than of workers such as the miners. According to the pro-Yeltsin journalist, Artiam Borovik, interviewed by CNN: ‘The majority of the workers here supported the attempted coup. They’re actually afraid more of perestroika. So far it’s only brought them more misery. [The people on the barricades] were mainly young ones, like myself, students, intellectuals, professionals’. Yeltsin’s guards were hired from a private security company.

Leonid Kravchuk in the Ukraine and Nursultan in Kazakhstan ‘neither condemned nor supported’ the coup; Western leaders said aid would be stopped while they “watched the situation unfold; Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia said they were in no immediate danger; Lech Walesa said the coup showed the need for continued US military presence in Europe; and the Pope said he hoped Mr Gorbachev would “get well soon”. The Portuguese Communist Party, and Saddam Hussain, welcomed the coup; the North Koreans supported it; the Albanian CP feared a similar coup themselves; many others hedged their bets or waited for a few days.

Yeltsin appealed to the soldiers: “Soldiers, I believe, at this tragic hour you will take the right decision. The honour of Russian arms will not be covered with the blood of the people”, and 5,000 troops and about a dozen tanks did join those outside the White House. One of Yeltsin’s supporters, speculating on a possible attack commented: ‘Of course, we could not hold them off for more than five minutes’.

By the next day, the crowd outside the White House swelled to some thousands and erected barricades. 50,000 demonstrated in Moscow chanting “Yeltsin, Yeltsin, shame to the Communists”. But in a city of ten million, this was not huge. Large crowds turned out on the streets of Leningrad against the coup swelling to a demonstration of 200,000. Former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevadnardze and the dissident poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko joined Yeltsin and addressed the crowds, as Yeltsin, warming to his rhetoric, demanded the ‘conspirators’ capitulate. The fax machines and telephones buzzed, and there was no attempt by the ‘conspirators’ to take control of communications. The ‘conspirators’ had reportedly ordered 250,000 pairs of handcuffs from a factory in Pskov but they showed little resolve to use them.

Within three days the coup was over, as an increasing number of its figures were inexplicably unable to appear in public. At 10:30pm on Tuesday, it was announced that Pavlov was ill and had stood down. The Yazov was suddenly taken ill, and according to rumour Kryuchkov had left the group.

At 1am Wednesday tanks sped towards the White House and attempted to push through the barricades. Youth hurled Molotov cocktails and stones. Three people were killed in the brief exchange before the attack stopped. The Speaker of the Russian Parliament phoned the Kremlin and received assurances that the attack would not proceed.

Yeltsin announced to the assembled Parliament that the coup leaders were en route to Vnukovo Airport, and troops began to withdraw, a soldier telling a bystander “We’re leaving. We’re leaving forever”, and on Wednesday morning Gorbachev returned to Moscow; resigned as General Secretary of the CPSU and ordered the state to seize the property of the Party, accepting the culpability of the Party in the illegal coup.

But Gorbachev the centrist continued to talk the language of compromise, declaring himself a social democrat , while the whole world knew that the Centre was gone, in more ways than one. The state had struck back against his reforms and had fallen flat on its face. The ‘conservative’ wing of the CPSU, who had been appointed to their positions under Gorbachev’s leadership, had been ignominiously defeated by Yeltsin. In the main, the working class had stood by passively, while Yeltsin, megaphone in one hand and a hot-line to Washington in the other, had called the military’s bluff.

Yeltsin had ‘rescued’ Gorbachev like the greyhound rescues the hare. Eduard Shevadnardze commented that Gorbachev was:

‘still a prisoner – that of his character, his ideas, his way of thinking and acting ... it was he, and nobody else, who had fostered the junta – by his connivance, his lack of resolution and tendency to manoeuvre. his unselective approach to people, indifference to his true comrades-in-arms, lack of confidence in the democratic forces and lack of belief in the fortress whose name is the people. That very people who had changed thanks to the perestroika that he himself began. ... In the final analysis, the President was defended by those he had not trusted; Boris Yeltsin, the “so-called democrats”, the people of Russia and Moscow ... the conspirators had taken many things into account ... perestroika had liberated us from the fear and we are now a different nation’ ^[205]

The powerful and industrialised Ukraine declared its independence, as did Byelorussia; Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania applied to join the United Nations and banned the Communist Party and were soon granted diplomatic recognition by the US; Moldavia was expected to follow very soon; even Uzbekistan and Kirghizstan declared their independence; the President of Tadzhikistan was thrown out, accused of supporting the coup. The Western states were by now busy establishing diplomatic relations with the individual republics. Yeltsin meanwhile declared that Russia would act to defend Russians living in the other Republics.

By the Monday the Congress of People’s Deputies voted to end central government and grant independence to any of the Republics that wanted it, and ‘suspended the activities’ of the Communist Party. Gorbachev and Yeltsin and an overwhelming majority of delegates supported these proposals. The sacked Soviet Foreign Minister, accused of supporting the coup, complained that Yeltsin’s witch-hunting of Stalinists was reminiscent of Stalin’s show-trials of the 1930s.

In the space of a couple of weeks, the Union Treaty rapidly transformed itself into a complete break up of the Union into so many independent republics. Gorbachev, as leader of the Union, was being left as leader of a body with no money, no power and no point. The only central functions that remained afterwards were the Olympic team and the central command of the nuclear arsenal. Increasingly Gorbachev was being accused of complicity in the coup and of being the main obstacle to the reform program.

Yeltsin supporter, Tatyana Tolstaya, explained how they viewed Gorbachev in these words:

‘Gorbachev is simply of a piece from head to toe with those who made the coup. He was always a participant in the plot: not the plot carried out on August 19, but the plot that has always existed, which is the plot of the Communist Party against the people, of parasites against their own serfs, of dictators against democracy. ... the logic of democratic development, after all, required that he too be swept from his post and stripped of his position, his perquisites, his glory.’ ^[206]

III: Towards Capitalism or Socialism?

The analysis of the significance of the failure of the Moscow Coup presented above could be summarised as follows:

• the USSR was a workers state, created by the mass action of the Russian working class under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party;
• the workers’ state suppressed capitalism and protected nationalised property relations;
• the USSR was isolated by imperialism however and cut off from the world market;
• as a result, the leadership of the workers’ state degenerated, workers’ democracy was suppressed, and the economy degenerated under bureaucratic control;
• the bureaucracy exercised a reactionary influence within the workers’ movement internationally, but the state nevertheless represented an opposite to imperialism and protected a number of deformed workers’ states and national liberation movements against imperialism;
• as the economy declined an illicit capitalist economy grew up in the USSR;
• as the power of the USSR declined, its influence in world affairs declined, facilitating the overthrow of the deformed workers states and the marginalisation of the communist parties in the West and a loss of influence in the “Third World”.
• as the authority of the central power declined, a rising counter-revolution grew up;
• the state hit back at this counter-revolution, but proved to be impotent;
• through the person of Boris Yeltsin the counter-revolution triumphed, the multi-national state disintegrated and the planned economy was dismembered;
• with the demise of the workers’ state, the bureaucracy was disempowered and its political influence was eclipsed;
• the demise of the workers’ state opened the way to the bourgeoisie taking political power.

In other words, Stalinism was overthrown by counter-revolution, but this counter-revolution did not take the form of the smashing of the state by a capitalist force – the degenerated workers’ state collapsed.

Those who rejected the ‘degenerated workers’ state’ analysis of the Soviet Union had to make a different analysis.

The IS ^[207] characterised the USSR as a capitalist state. The Socialist dealt with the fall of the Berlin Wall as follows:

‘Eastern Europe is in crisis. But contrary to the propaganda pumped out by our own rulers this does not represent “the end of communism” – for the simple reason that the regimes of Eastern Europe have never been communist. In none of them have the workers ever held power. They were all products of the Russian takeover at the end of the Second World War. In all of them, industry and the working class have been subordinated to the drive by the state to accumulate capital. None of the reforms so far have changed this one jot. Nor were they intended to. In Poland and Hungary, the real aim of the reforms is to try and drag state capitalism out of its appalling crisis by wholesale privatisation and incentives to foreign capital to invest – making the economies more like the mixture of state, monopoly and market capitalism of the west.’

Having satisfied themselves that the collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe was of very small significance, it was not difficult to reduce the failure of the Moscow Coup to a non-event.

The issue of The Socialist of August 1991, immediately after the defeat of the Moscow Coup was headlined “Workers Crush The Coup”, and described the defeat of the coup in terms of working class support for a massive general strike led by Boris Yeltsin.

The editorial explained:

‘Having defeated the right-wing coup, the working class of the Soviet Union will now find that every single problem that faced them before remains. ... The crisis in Russia is not different from the crisis of the capitalist west, but part of the same crisis. ... Both Gorbachev and Yeltsin are part and parcel of the same bureaucracy that launched the coup. ... Gorbachev and Yeltsin will use the breathing space they have just gained to try and press ahead with more market “reform”. ... The movement against the coup succeeded because Yeltsin’s call for the general strike gave millions of ordinary workers the confidence to act. Those same workers will rapidly come into conflict with Yeltsin, since his economic program is indistinguishable from Gorbachev’s’.

Thus for the IS, a capitalist regime much like those in the West was defeated by one of their own, Yeltsin, who was after all no different from Gorbachev. The only problem with the analysis was that it seems that it was nevertheless a victory for the working class who had fought under the leadership of this same Yeltsin. It is true of course that neither Gorbachev nor the “conservatives” had any alternative to “market reforms”. But to say that Yeltsin’s economic program is “indistinguishable” and that they are all “part and parcel of the same bureaucracy” missed the whole point of what was going on.

Under the inside headline “Boris Yeltsin: Is he the new Lenin?” we read:

‘Soviet workers have not yet understood that their aspirations can be met only by genuine socialism based on their own democratically organised power. So until now they have been open to the sorts of compromises preached by Yeltsin, which can only open up the path to eventual defeat. We have to hope that Soviet workers learn to fight independently of Yeltsin with his Russian nationalist posturing, his dreams of the market, his compromises and his betrayals’.

The main problem with Yeltsin, it seems, was that he compromised too much! Other articles pointed out how much he enjoyed bullying other bureaucrats to illustrate the point that he was not a good workers’ leader. But the fact remained, in the view of the ISO, that he was a leader of the working class!

From this point of view, it must be quite difficult to understand why such a stunning victory for the working class leads to the blossoming of anti-Semitism, crime, Great Russian chauvinism and inter-communal warfare, not to mention unemployment and poverty.

The IS were not the only left grouping to see Yeltsin as leading a workers’ movement. The Militant, paper of the American Socialist Workers Party ^[208] headlined on 6 September 1991: ‘Soviet Workers Win Giant Victory by Defeating Coup’.

The DSP (Democratic Socialist Party) ^[209] formally defended the degenerated workers’ state analysis, but adhered to the proposition that Stalinism was capable of reforming itself, that Stalinism was capable of being ‘pushed to the left’, and consistently supported Gorbachev as a reform tendency within Stalinism, which could take the USSR towards genuine workers’ democracy.

In their editorial on May 23 1989, on the uprising in China, Green Left Weekly commented:

‘It goes without saying that every socialist country has its own road of economic and political development. That is what Gorbachev himself set out to establish in China. But the Soviet reforms have created a new world political situation and a new infectious climate of socialist democracy.

‘The Chinese students are demanding the reforms that in the USSR the Communist Party leadership already has instigated, especially attacking corruption, freeing the press and replacing leaders out of touch with the needs of the people. ...

‘The wide-ranging political and economic reforms introduced by the Soviet leadership, accompanied by the notion of New Thinking in international affairs, begins to put relations between the nations of the world on a completely new political footing. The Soviet leadership occupies a central and unprecedented position on the world political stage and other nations are forced to adjust to this new reality’.

In November 1989, Green Left Weekly had greeted the fall of the Berlin Wall:

‘The German Democratic Republic’s “October Revolution from below” has carried the world’s most economically advanced socialist state to the brink of socialist democracy’. A somewhat elusive brink as it happened.

In the period between November 1989 and August 1991 however, the DSP revised their assessment of what was taking place. They identified Yeltsin as a restorationist, and the editorial published a week after the failure of the coup made, in my view, a reasonably accurate estimation of what was going on. Under the headline “USSR: a stolen victory”, Green Left Weekly commented:

‘Once again, the abortive coup in the USSR demonstrates that undemocratic methods cannot serve the cause of socialism, or indeed the aspirations of ordinary people for a better life under any political system. The failed usurpers claimed to be acting in the name of socialism, but in fact they were merely defending their own privileged positions in a thoroughly corrupt system that is deservedly collapsing.

‘The tragedy of this collapse is that, to the present time at least, the old order appears to be giving way not to a better society but to a restoration of the inequalities and injustice of capitalism, and a very primitive and brutal capitalism at that. The fear and passivity resulting from decades of systematic crushing of independent political discussion and initiative under the old bureaucratic system have so far prevented the emergence of new political currents necessary to promote genuinely socialist political and economic aims. This is what has enabled the other main anti-democratic force in the USSR – the pro-capitalist politicians grouped around Boris Yeltsin – to steal the victory of the masses over the old guard, at least for the time being.

‘This situation is a result of the failure of the Gorbachev reform movement, after its great promise of the mid-80s, to develop a consistently democratic platform that might have given it the mass base necessary to defeat both the Stalinist old guard and the capitalist restorationists and build a truly just society with an efficient, modern, environmentally sustainable economy.

‘The people of the Soviet Union demonstrated their potential power during the coup, coming into the streets and persuading the army not to fight. But instead of that power being harnessed to a political force that could genuinely act in their interests, it was co-opted by the cynical politicians of the Yeltsin camp, who are popular at the present time mainly because they have hitherto lacked the power to carry out their program of self-enrichment.

‘Now the Yeltsin supporters and their counter-parts in other republics seem to have achieved the freedom to press ahead and sell off the Soviet Union’s resources to private interests and destroy the system of social guarantees which was one of the few positive features of the old order. It is unlikely their personal popularity will last long once this program begins to threaten the welfare of millions of ordinary people.

‘It is equally unlikely that their democratic pretensions will survive the demise of their popularity. Indeed, they are already showing their true colours by launching a witchhunt, not against the top bureaucrats who instigated the coup, but against the entire membership of the Communist Party. The banning of the activities of the Communist Party is likely to provide Yeltsin with a precedent when he is confronted in the future by working class, leftist opposition.

‘Gorbachev aroused howls of outrage from the capitalist media by reaffirming his commitment to communism and the Communist Party, though it is too early to say what this means in view of his subsequent resignation as party general secretary. For it to mean anything more than an attempt to use sections of the old bureaucracy as a base for political manoeuvre, Gorbachev would have to turn to the Soviet masses, to make a commitment to building genuinely democratic mass organs of political discussion and decision-making, such as the original soviets were during the revolutionary events that brought down the old tsarist tyranny. This seems very unlikely, and the hope for positive developments in the USSR must now lie with the emergence of new political forces’.

In November 1989, the SLL’s ^[210] Workers News greeted the fall of the Berlin Wall:

‘The mass uprising of East German workers and youth far from being aimed at the overthrow of socialism and the reintroduction of capitalism is the beginning of the political revolution to overthrow the parasitic and reactionary Stalinist bureaucracy’.

The report went on to tell how Egon Krenz had made a special television broadcast to warn East Germans of the danger posed by their fraternal group in West Germany (numbering a few dozen members), the ‘only political tendency ... calling for the working class to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucrats’.

This political revolution will now have to continue within the framework of the united capitalist Germany.

In their comment on the Moscow coup, in the form of a six-page statement by Dave North, Workers News said, inter alia:

‘Upon examining the events leading up to the August 19 coup, one has the impression that two coups were being prepared: the coup of Yanayev and Pavlov and Yazov, old-line Stalinists, and the coup of the Soviet compradors ^[211]. The measures taken by Yeltsin - throwing the Stalinists out of the factories, undermining their political positions – had certain characteristics of a political coup. One also has the impression that the warnings by the Yeltsin faction about an impending Stalinist coup were a smoke-screen for their own preparations.

‘At any rate, the Stalinists were acting out of desperation when they attempted their coup. Its limited aims were demonstrated by the measures they actually took. The main aim of Yanayev, Pavlov and the others was to merely strengthen their position against their comprador rivals, rather than actually to destroy them. It was little more than an attempt by the Stalinists to compel the comprador bourgeoisie to accept the leading position of the Stalinist bureaucracy. But they lacked any really clear or coherent aims and had no viable program. Thus, it is not surprising that the coup rapidly collapsed.

‘But I think it should be stressed, ... that any attempt to claim that the coup collapsed because there existed broad support for either Gorbachev or Yeltsin is a complete fraud. There was virtually no mass response to Yeltsin’s appeal for support for a general strike, and there was even less interest among the masses in the political fate of Mikhail Gorbachev’.

The Spartacist League’s ^[212] Workers Vanguard headlined “Soviet Workers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevolution!” in their front page story on August 30 1991. Their report began:

‘The working people of the Soviet Union, and indeed the workers of the whole world, have suffered an unparalleled disaster whose devastating consequences are now being played out. The ascendancy of Boris Yeltsin, who offers himself as Bush’s man, coming off a botched coup by Mikhail Gorbachev’s former aides, has unleashed a counter-revolutionary tide across the land of the October Revolution. The first workers’ state in history, sapped and undermined by decades of Stalinist bureaucratic misrule, lies in tatters. The state power has been fractured, the Communist Party – its bureaucratic core – shattered and banned from the KGB and armed forces, the multinational union is ripping apart as one republic after another proclaims secession.

‘But while Yeltsin & Co. now see a clear field to push through a forced-draft reintroduction of capitalism, the outcome is not yet definitively decided. ... The Soviet proletariat, whose capacity for militant action was dramatically shown in the miners’ strike of the summer of 1989, has not yet been heard from’.

The Spartacists’ characterisation of Yeltsin as an ex-Stalinist restorationist concurs with the author’s, but they emphasise Yeltsin as an actual agent of imperialism:

‘Boris Yeltsin is not a “Westerniser” – he is an extreme Russian chauvinist who intends to sell out the Soviet Union to the West. He is connected to a far-right, racist outfit in the US called the Free Congress Foundation (whose East European operatives include notorious Nazi collaborators) which takes credit for “training” him and his staff on how to seize power. His laws are being drawn up by advisers supplied by the US government. ...

‘Yeltsin may wield the pen and the microphone, but his orders came on the direct line from the White House on the Potomac to the “White House” on the Moskva’.

The Chinese Communist Party traced the beginning of the problem from Khrushchev’s political liberalisation after the famous speech to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. In November, a document of the Chinese CP was leaked which denounced both Gorbachev and Yeltsin for launching a “white terror” against CPSU members. Gorbachev they characterised as “a traitor who has been violating the principles of Marxism for more than six years”.

Criticising the ‘conspirators’ of August for failing to “take resolute measures” and their lack of effective leadership, the document predicted the USSR would slide into greater social chaos, which could not be avoided by the introduction of capitalism. The success of China in avoiding this fate they said was due to the continued leadership of the original leaders of the Revolution: “under the leadership of the Communist Party we have three million troops and they have all sorts of experience, especially in suppressing counter-revolutionary turmoil”.

Poland’s President, Lech Walesa commented:

‘Today Yeltsin seems a hero; in a week or a month all that may change. His decisions may turn out to be bad ones. But I’ve a lot of respect for him. What he’s achieved is quite simply a revolution. Take Poland: at the round table talks in 1989 we made a pact with the Communists, and that’s how our revolution began. For some of the signatories that was just a start; they wanted to get rid of the Communists. The same thing will happen in Russia.’ ^[213]

Granma, the paper of the Cuban Communist Party commented:

‘Whatever happens in the Soviet Union, we will not move away from the path we have chosen. We will continue with our independent, Cuban, socialist line. It is impossible to deny that these are unfortunate and bitter moments, which we would have preferred never to have experienced. Some hastily write the epitaph of the Communist ideal and ridiculously underestimate us and our ability to resist .. We were and are prepared to resist’.

The implications of the change in the balance of forces in the Soviet Union were immediate and practical for Cuba: on September 12 the symbolic detachment of Soviet soldiers stationed in Cuba was withdrawn.Granma commented:

Interviewed by Tomas Borg in July 1992, Castro commented:

‘No, I wouldn’t describe Gorbachev [as part of the dagger-wielding conspiracy that killed the Soviet Union]. What took place in the Soviet Union was an incredible act of self-destruction. It is undeniable that the responsibility for that self-destruction lies with the leaders of that country. Now, some destroyed it consciously and some unconsciously. I can’t say that Gorbachev played a conscious part in the destruction of the Soviet Union because I have no doubt that Gorbachev’s aim was to struggle to perfect socialism. Imperialism would never have been able to break up the Soviet Union, if the Soviets themselves hadn’t self-destructed. That is to say that socialism didn’t die of natural causes: it was suicide, it was murder of socialism’. ^[215]

Two articles have been provided on this site, one from 9 August 1991, one from 30 August 1991, reflecting the analysis that Communist Intervention was making of these events. In neither case does the analysis differ in substance from what is said here. ^[216]

The State and Counter-Revolution

The Soviet state was created by the Russian Revolution of October 1917. Its essence was the Red Army, built under Trotsky’s leadership in the Civil War. The social function of this state was to defend the nationalised property relations of the USSR against capitalist restoration, by foreign imperialist invasion or by domestic counter-revolution.

In August 1991, it faced its ultimate challenge, and fell flat on its face. The state possessed the technical power to destroy all human life on Earth. It employed thousands of secret agents and two million soldiers. Like a Russian David, Yeltsin confronted the Soviet Golliath with a pitifully small force of mostly unarmed, mostly middle-class demonstrators. While Yeltsin was clear enough on his status as executioner of the Russian Revolution, the imperialists were blissfully unaware of what was going on. They had put their bets on Gorbachev’s perestroika. Thousands of intelligence agents had been trying to organise a counter-revolution for decades, and when it came, they didn’t recognise it.

One of the problems confronting the ‘conspirators’ was that they had no other policy, apart from Gorbachev’s perestroika. They had the technical capacity to suppress the counter-revolution, but they had no confidence that such action would do anything other than plunge the Soviet Union, and themselves, into even deeper economic and social chaos.

Consequently, they capitulated to Yeltsin.

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