Gorbachev the Revolutionary: the End of the Soviet Union

Abstract

In late 1990, feeling trapped and politically impotent, Gorbachev considered cutting a deal with conservatives in the Party, army and KGB. The period of this ‘winter alliance’ saw a marked swing back towards the use of threat and violence in a vain attempt to restore the powers of the centre. Gorbachev never really had the heart and stomach to be a dictator, though. Massive protests in Moscow in March 1991 catalysed his doubts about his new allies. He thus turned instead towards constructing a new basis for the USSR through negotiations with elected republican leaders, including Boris Yeltsin. This ‘betrayal’ triggered the August coup, when a collection of the leaders of the Old Guard tried to hold the Union together — and in doing so doomed it. The coup was defeated, but this was not to prove a victory for Gorbachev. Instead, it led to the end of the USSR, its fragmentation into new, often unstable states and the dissolution of the CPSU. Perhaps this was inevitable. It is hard to see how Gorbachev could have achieved his dream of a reformed, modernized and dynamic USSR still within the grip of the Party and Marxism-Leninism. In many ways, perestroika fits neatly into centuries-old patterns of Russian history, of cycles of attempted reform, chaos and then conservative reaction. Yet, as will be discussed at the end of this chapter, Gorbachev’s painful revolution can be regarded as a distinctive phenomenon.