The Daily Tar HeelMonday, August 26, 19915
Bungled Soviet coup
ByDaciaToll
Assistant Slate and National Editor
; As the primary engineers of last
week's bungled Soviet coup fled the
capital city, they left behind a newborn
' vitality among Soviet reformers and
propelled the reformist leader, Russian
President Boris Yeltsin, to national-hero
' status.
Without the aid of a crystal ball, the
overall direction of this vast, turbulent
' land will remain, in many ways, diffi
cult to predict. But worldwide experts
' in Soviet history, politics and econom
ics are venturing opinions about the
nature of the country's uncertain future.
. "The post-coup Soviet Union will
finally rid itself of all the obstacles to
'development that were vestiges of the
' ' old system," said Judy Shelton, a former
' economic adviser to Yeltsin and author
of "The Coming Soviet Crash."
"It was a dramatic case of right ver-
. sus might," Shelton said. "Reformers
" finally reached a point where they were
willing to die for their cause, and now
their cause gets to reap the benefits."
r. With the strengthening of the reform
s movement comes the weakening of the
conservative opposition in the KGB,
' the military and the bureaucracy.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
made a dramatic step Saturday toward
- dismantling the Soviet Communist Party
when he formally resigned as head of
the party.
"The forces of resistance have col
lapsed and are completely discredited,"
'" said Myron Rush, a state department
-consultant and Soviet specialist at
Cornell University.
Americans voice mixed reactions to news
of Soviet coup failure, Gorbachev's return
The Associated Press
In coffeehouses and churches, on
editorial pages and street corners,
Americans spoke with excitement,
disdain and fear about the Soviet
shakeup that one man likened to the
battle for American independence.
"It's the most exciting thing that's
happened over there," said Los Ange
les stock trader Kevin Lewis, 36, as he
watched a Buddhist archery ritual at a
local park. "Die coup made the people
much stronger than they thought they
were."
'To me, it's almost like the Ameri
can Revolution without the fighting,"
said Jerry Wensloff of Roswell, Ga.,
relaxing Saturday night at Reggie's
British Pub and Restaurant in down
town Atlanta. .
"1 think it's going to unite the world
because it leaves China, 'North Korea
and Cuba as Communist powers," said
Wensloff, a computer company owner.
"China can't stand alone against the
whole world."
On the heels of a failed coup by
hard-liners. President Mikhail
Gorbachev resigned Saturday as Com
munist Party chief and dismantled the
party that held the Soviet Union in its
stern grip for 74 years.
The failure of the coup and
Gorbachev's freedom from house ar
rest in the Crimea was a direct result of
heroic efforts by Boris Yeltsin, presi
dent of the Russian republic.
"I was impressed with Yeltsin's
courage," said Michael Walsh, a rail
road brakeman from Des Moines.
"Boy, when he was on top of the tank,
he was golden. What amove. He made
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Soviet Shake-up
The age-old Soviet institutions of
intimidation and coercion proved inef
fective in stifling the newly democratic
character of the Soviet people.
"Everyone is thumbing their nose at
things they used to quake in fear over,"
said Robert Ruben, a UNC Soviet po
litical science professor. "The old KGB
empire has no fangs, no claws.
"There is a taste for blood in the
Russian Parliament," Ruben said. Rus
sian leaders wanted to purge govern
ment of those members who had failed
to stand by Yeltsin in his defiance of the
coup's conspiracy.
A DEFIANT YELTSIN
Boris Yeltsin, head of the Russian
republic and the foremost opponent of
the coup, rallied hundreds of thousands
of reformers to resist the putsch and to
reinstate Gorbachev.
His tactics succeeded in splitting off
some military units, thereby damaging
one of the coup's major strongholds of
power. Those defections, and statements
of support for Yeltsin from senior mili
tary off cers, sent a shudder through the
armed forces.
"Gorbachev is bristl ing a bit," Shelton
said. "He owes his soul to Yeltsin. The
Soviet people view Gorbachev as a vic
his entire career crawling on top of that
tank." .
But others worried about what lay
ahead. "I'm really afraid there's going
to be civil war over there," said Nancy
Leonard, 29, an administrative assis
tant in Chicago.
Alexandra Astor, 55, of Omaha.Neb.,
who left Kiev in the Ukrainian republic
in 1974, praised Gorbachev.
"I still think Gorbachev is a great
man, and he deserves our respect and
what hedidisunbelievable," said Astor,
a researcher at the University of Ne
braska Medical Center in Omaha
"What I worry about is Yeltsin," said
her husband, Peter Astor, 64, an engi
neer. "The more he will have power, he
will approach dictatorship," Peter Astor
said. "Gorbachev has lost a lot of pres-'
tige, but he is still a good man," said Al
Barnett, 76, as he sunbathed Sunday on
a bench at Boston's Faneuil Hall mar
ketplace. "He has done more for Russia in the
last few years than anybody else did in
all the 76 years I have been alive,"
Barnett said.
In Indianapolis, Rep. Lee Hamilton,
D-Ind., a member of the House Foreign
Relations Committee, said the West
cannot rely on Gorbachev to carry
through democratic reforms.
"I think that in the last couple of
years he has been indecisive," Hamilton
told the Indiana Democratic Editorial
Association on Saturday. "He has zigged
and he has zagged."
, Bob Hass, of Berkeley, Calif., said
' giving aid to the Soviets would "be
throwing money into a pit at this point
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tim and Yeltsin as a hero. A hero looks
valiant while a victim looks weak."
Ruben points to an unofficial trans
ference of power between the two fore
most Soviet leaders.
"Yeltsin has become number one and
Gorbachev has become number two,"
Ruben said. "It's as if time in Moscow
and with Yeltsin had been running fast
forward. For Gorbachev, it was in slow
motion. When Gorbachev returned, he
had fallen behind and was unable to
absorb the years of change that had
taken place in three short days."
Many experts expect the enhance
ment of Yeltsin's political stature to
spill over so that he will now be able to
dictate economic reform.
But it was the five years of
Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika
reforms that made the defiance of the
Soviet people possible, Ruben said.
LOOKING TO ECONOMIC AND
SOCIAL REFORM
As the reins to the chariot of reform
now fall into the hands of Boris Yeltsin,
progress looks to be rapid and irrepress
ible. Already, with Gorbachev's an
nouncement to resign from the Com
munist Party, Soviet citizens took to the
streets, demolishing statues of former
premierCommunist leaders. Riled Rus
sian citizens graffitied the walls of the
KGB building, signifying an unprec
edented spirit of dissent among the So
viet people from the old regime.
"We can expect Yeltsin's economic
agendatoprevail,"Shelton said. "It will
be a much faster, much purer laissez-
... like handing it over to the Mafia."
Doug Kulisich, 43, of Seabrook,
N.H., a Vietnam veteran who was
washing windows Sunday at Boston 's
Exchange Place, said President Bush
should concentrate first on the home
less in America.
"Bush should walk around the
streets of Boston and see everyone
sitting in the street with their tin cans
and signs that say 'Please Help,'" he
said.
But college student Beth Berg, 23,
of Alameda, Calif., near San Fran
cisco, said the Communist Party's
demisemeansmassive military spend
ing will no longer be needed.
"Everyone should gain," he said.
"Money will be freed up so it can be
spent on fighting poverty and other
problems."
The Seattle Times said the Baltic
states of Lithuania, Latvia and Esto
nia should be prime benefactors.
"Now is the time to help the Baltic
states pull free of Soviet domination
and let them, as sovereign nations,
become part of the emerging nations
of Europe," it said in an editorial.
Rabbi Alvin Sugarman of The
Temple in Atlanta, who has worked
with Soviet Jews, said the real victory
belongs to the Soviet people.
"I was really pleased to see the will
of the people come to the forefront,"
he said. "I thought of the Germans
under Hitler, and how they kept say
ing wecouldn't do anything, and won
dered what might have been. Granted,
they are two different societies ... but
I couldn't help but think of that paral
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Yeltsin's reformist political fire
faire system. If it's not explicitly illegal,
it's OK."
Although the path is cleared for more
radical economic reform, the magni
tude of the existing Soviet financial
crisis threatens the success of any re
form. "Economic reform cannot go for
ward without a stable economy, " Rush
said. 'The problems run so deep
three digit inflation, an erratic ruble ...
The forces of progress and democ
racy are truly irreversible now, Ruben
said.
"They were not only tested, but
strengthened," Ruben said. "You just
can't exaggerate just how important
this is."
WHY THE COUP CRUMBLED
In the wake of the coup, many Soviet
experts have taken a retrospective look
at the political mistakes that preceded
the failure.
Most charge the coup's failure to the
sheer ineptness of the coup's engineers.
"It's inconceivable how incompe
tent they were," Ruben said. "It's aclear
case of the gang that couldn't shoot
straight."
The coup leaders lacked the courage
to take the bold actions necessary for a
successful military putsch.
In contrast to the Chinese episode in
Tienanmen Square, where tanks crushed
an unarmed resistance, the Soviet tanks
refused to attack.
"Quite simply, the Soviet army re
fused to shoot on its own people," said
Janos Radvanyi, director of the Center
Lithuanian leader asks Soviet officials
to annul 1940 annexation documents
The Associated Press
VILNIUS, U.S.S.R. Amid a
groundswell of international support for
the breakaway Baltics, Lithuania's
president called Sunday for the Soviet
parliament to annul the last documents
relating to the three republics' annex
ation. Byelorussia, a pillar of the Soviet
Union's traditional Slavic heart, on
Sunday became the sixth republic to
declare independence and dealt a final
blow to efforts to keep the country's
historic center together.
Byelorussia, the Ukraine and Russia
formed the Slavic core of the country
once known as the Russian empire,
which became the Soviet Union after
the 1917 revolution.
The Ukraine had declared indepen
dence Saturday, leaving Russia the sole
Slav-governed republic still officially
committed to signing President Mikhail
Gorbachev's proposed Union Treaty to
bind the 15 republics together,
The Lithuanian president, Vytautas
Landsbergis, told reporters he would
travel to Moscow on Monday if he
could arrange meetings with officials
including Russian leader Boris Yeltsin,
whose power has greatly increased since
he helped foil the coup against
Gorbachev.
Yeltsin, the Russian Federation presi
dent, has long been sympathetic to the
Baltics' cause and has issued decrees
recognizing their independence on be
half of the Russian republic.
Most of the major Western democra
cies including the United States
indicated Sunday that they were mov
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Additionally, the coup's engineers
moved slowly to impose a curfew and
crowd-control measures that might have
hampered the tens of thousands of re
formers from taking to the streets in
vocal defiance.
Shelton points to the open telephone
lines that allowed Yeltsin and his ally,
former Foreign Minister Eduard
Shevardnadze, to communicate with
President Bush and other foreign lead
ers to rally international support.
"Television and radio liberty in
formed the Soviet population and they
were willing to take to the streets,"
Radvanyi said.
Backers of Yeltsin and Gorbachev
found strong support among Soviet
workers, as coal miners across the coun
try responded to the coup by staging
their third strike in two years.
Such a powerful display of labor
unrest signaled that the proletarians, the
working class whose discontent pro
pelled the Communist Party to power in
1917, had turned decisively against it,
Shelton said.
RESTRUCTURING
THE REPUBLICS
Gorbachev was ousted the eve of his
signing of the Union Treaty, a proposal
which would have surrendered some of
the political and economic power of the
central government to the individual
leaders in the republics.
The proposed treaty threatened the
authoritative domains of all the institu
tions represented in the conspiracy
ing toward diplomatic recognition of
the republics. A few countries were
granting it outright.
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have
intensified their push for independence
since last week'scoup by Kremlin hard
liners. They started breaking away last
year.
During the hard-line coup, the Soviet
military and KGB leaders who bit
terly opposed independence for the
Baltics sent in troops to crack down
on the republics.
In the wake of the takeover, the re
publics have moved to ban their Com
munist parties, taken steps to punish the
collaborators of the coup plotters, sought
to limit the power of the KGB secret
police, toppled Communist monuments
and cheered the pul Iback of Sov iet troops
deployed during the coup.
The Baltic republics were indepen
dent between the two world wars, but in
1939 the Soviet Union signed a non
aggression pact with Nazi Gemiany,
including a secret protocol placing all
three in the Soviet sphere of influence.
An agreement in 1940 between the
Soviet Union and Nazi Germany for
malized the secret 1 939 agreement. The
Soviet parliament in Moscow has abro
gated the 1939 treaty, and Landsbergis
wants the 1940 document annulled.
"It's a formal question only, but it
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the overlords of the central economy,
the demoralized military, the state po
lice agencies and the Communist Party.
As these opposing powers fled the
country, the breakaway Baltic repub
1 ics were quick to recognize an opportu
nity. Since the bungled takeover,
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have in
tensified their push for independence.
"Everything that once depended on a
balance of power with the central gov
ernment will have to be re-evaluated,"
Ruben said. "Power has shifted to the
republics."
Shelton agreed, saying she foresees
increased autonomy and sovereignty
for the Baltic states.
"The republics will break off and
establish a federation relationship with
the central government, which dictates
limited, carefully defined functions to
fall under central authority," she said.
Some expertsenvision the more dras
tic alternative of total independence as
the only viable possibility in a post
coup Soviet Union.
"There is absolutely no question
we will soon see complete indepen
dence fortheBalticnations,"Rush said.
Russia, the largest and wealthiest
Soviet republic, is expected to inherit
several of the roles formerly delegated
to the central government.
"Russia has saved the Soviet Union
it will now be the trail-blazer,"
Shelton said.
Non-Russian republics like the
Ukraine, which lack the natural re
sources to operate self-sufficiently,
could end up being the real losers, Ruben
said.
would then be completely resolved. It
would be easier for us," Landsbergis
told journalists.
Landsbergis also appealed Sunday
for foreign countries to begin recogniz
ing his republic's independence.
French Foreign Minister Roland
Dumas said France was prepared to
establish diplomatic relations with the
Baltics but would favor doing so jointly
with other members of the 12-nation
European Community. He spoke in an
interview with the French television
network TF-I.
European Community foreign min
isters will meet Tuesday in Brussels to
debate whether the EC should recog
nize Baltic independence, the Dutch
Foreign Ministry said Sunday.
Norway and Denmark moved even
faster. They said Sunday they were es
tablishing formal ties with all three re
publics. "We had to find the right time for
establishing diplomatic relations," said
Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald
Stoltenberg. "We have followed devel
opments from hour to hour, and on
Sunday morning, the time was right."
Landsbergis said he expected the
United States to recognize the indepen
dence of the Lithuanian republic "within
a week," but the Bush administration
sent somewhat mixed signals.
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