How Russians feel about the 25th Anniversary of the end of Communism in Russia

By Slava Tsukerman

Last week was the 25th Anniversary of the coup of August 19-21, 1991, an attempt to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev from his post as the President of the Soviet Union.

Almost all of the members of the Soviet government of the period were involved in the plot. The plotters called themselves the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP).

On August 19, Mikhail Gorbachev was confined to his house in Faros, Crimea, where he had been vacationing. It was announced that Gorbachev had resigned due to an illness, and a state of emergency was announced in the Soviet Union.

The coup started on the eve of the signing of the New Union Treaty, which was planned for August 20. The Treaty, proposed by Gorbachev, the President of USSR, with support of Boris Yeltsin, the President of the Russian Republic, and Nazarbaev, the President of Kazakhstan, called for redistributing power to the leadership of republics, as well as for the resignation of most of the Soviet top members of the government.

The main reason for the coup was the desire of these members of government to save their positions. Also they wanted to stop Gorbachev’s reforms and to save the Soviet Union in its existing form.

Yeltsin and his Russian Republic government team refused to obey the Committee’s (GKChP) decrees. Thousands of Muscovites blocked entries to the Russian parliament building where Yeltsin and his close associates had been staying during the coup. The reaction of the people in many cities of Russia were similar. Vladimir Putin, back then a member of a liberal Leningrad administration, was among those who opposed the Committee. It looked like all of Russia didn’t want the return of the past.

The members of GKChP were demoralized and, in order to avoid casualties,
decided against storming the Russian Parliament, defended by the crowds of Muscovites.

The outcome of the coup was opposite to the plans of the plotters: one of the plotters committed suicide, others not only lost their positions, they went to prison. And what is most important, failure of the coup brought the Communist rule in Russia to an end. On August 23, 1991, Yeltsin issued a decree suspending the activities of the Communist Party (which had back then 20 million members!) and, on November 6, 1991, the party was banned and its property was confiscated.

Also, because of the coup, the signing of the New Union Treaty became impossible, which resulted with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is difficult to underestimate the importance of this event for the modern Russian history. Enough to say that not long ago President Putin called the collapse of the USSR “the greatest geo-political catastrophe of 20^th century.”

 

Nevertheless the poll run this month by the Levada Center revealed the surprising fact that 48% of Russians do not know what happened in Russia in August 1991.

Only 8% of the respondents think that the failure of the coup meant the victory of the democratic revolution that put the end to the Communist power.

30% of respondents consider the failure of the coup to be an event tragic for Russia.

35% think that it was just one of the regular episodes of the fight for power.

27% have no answer to the question.

To the question: “Do you think if the GKChP back then had managed to capture and hold the power, would you personally live better, worse, or about the same as now?”

16% of the respondents answered that they would live better,

19% – worse,

23% believe that nothing would change and

43% don’t have an opinion.

 

To the question: “If such an event (an attempt to return to the Soviet system) happened today, would you defend Russian democracy?”

16% answered “yes”,

44% answered “no” and

41% had no opinion.

 

This Friday, August 19, virtually nothing indicated that the country remembers that August events. Russian official media presented some coverage of the events of August 1991, but with restraint and without any discussion or comments. The Moscow city government initially rejected the request to hold rallies in honor of the suppression of the coup. It was the first time in history for such a ban. City Hall allowed holding only two small outdoor events, limiting the number of participants up to 100 people. No official government representatives participated in the events.

In comparison with the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 2014, more than one million people took part in the celebrations in the streets of the German capital.

Russia has always viewed August 1991 differently.

Certainly some Russians remember those days as an event during which people shook off the oppressive system. But for many the collapse of the Soviet Union represents the victory of West over Russia in the Cold War. Therefore, Russia never really celebrates these events. For the majority of Russians the meaning of these events is connected to the loss, the chaos, the weakness, growth of crime, the turbulent politics and a series of economic crises of the following decade.

People in the street don’t blame conservative communists of GKChP for the collapse of the Soviet Union. They blame reforms of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Today the words “liberal” and “democracy”  have become kind of curse words in Russia. Most of the top political positions in the country are taken by the individuals with KGB background, who easily could be members of GKChP.

The mass nostalgia is for the Soviet past and even for Stalin’s rule.

A political analyst Dmitry Evstafiev wrote in an article in the pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia:

“The events of August 1991 became a kind of ‘uncomfortable’ episode for the majority of Russian population. And the more liberals sought to remind about the date, the more majority of Russians has tried to forget these dates. The Russians are not ‘do not remember’ about August 1991. We remember all. We just want to forget about August 1991.”