Lost chance Russia
Victor Militarev
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The putsch, 1991 (Photo: Oleg Buldakov/ TASS)
Here already many years, like me, from time to time, punches a strange feeling. We not all live in the real world. And live in some dead-end branch of a parallel world. The branch, formed as a result of a collective wrong choices. Moreover, it is unknown how this “Chimera” sustainable and how long it will last. But the real story is flowing quietly in the “main branch historical sequence”. In this main branch Russia is much more prosperous and powerful country than in our dull and rather ghostly world. This feeling often came to me in the years of Yeltsin’s rule, since the end of the ninety-third year. Then began to appear less often. But now that I have, once again, thinking about what has happened to us all in August 1991, the feeling is remembered quite clearly.
This feeling, which I now remembered has replaced a very different feelings. In the years of perestroika, I had a strange feeling of long-continued joy. Like spring, and spring is Sunny and warm, continued for several years. But it is not even that. In the restructuring I had a feeling of expanded possibilities. And, don’t get me wrong, it was not a social experience. The type that you can create your own cooperative. It was a sense that the space of possibilities in some not fully understood the mystical sense has been expanded for all of us. For the whole country. As if we are in a vast multidimensional area of multiple bifurcations. And our collective behavior affects our common future.
In August 1991, after Yeltsin’s victory, there was a sense that this space of possibilities is greatly narrowed, but not curved back on itself to zero. And all of the next two years from autumn 1991 to autumn 1993 I felt that I was “still possible.” The confidence that “we will win” did not leave me even in the besieged White house in 1993. But after the second and final victory of Yeltsin and I had for many years the feeling that I talked about in the beginning. All curved back on itself. What possibilities were left. What, if anything, “history has ended”. And we’re going on all cylinders on a dead-end track. No, it is not necessary to disaster. And just on a track is boring and the wrong reality. Moreover, I underscore that reality, “optional.” Reality, not flowing with the need of all the previous. Like all of the colorful diversity of a chance do we, with some special suicidally-stupid, I would even say, “hepatosis”, talent, chose the most gray and featureless.
Of course, “after the Crimea” everything has become much “better”. But the feeling that we continue to go down a blind alley that we have not returned to historical sequence, I can’t help. Because I am firmly convinced that the restructuring was not “the first step to the destruction of the Soviet Union.” I am sure that was restructuring, albeit largely rather clumsy, but an attempt to reform the Soviet Union, proceeding from internal grounds its development and history. The restructuring was not attempted dismantling of Soviet socialism, but an attempt of his reforms. And in the normal course of events from perestroika must have followed an evolutionary movement of Soviet society on the social democratic path. With the slow and cautious introduction of democracy and elements of market economy while maintaining all the well known advantages of the Soviet system. It was an obvious and natural path of development of our country. And implement this natural course of events prevented it “a cascade of revolutions 1991-1993.
And now we have no reliable information in order to determine what exactly happened in those “three days in August” — stupidity or treason? But it is clear that if the leaders of the putsch would be “less good”, it’s a natural development path would not be interrupted. After all, we all saw immediately subsided after the creation of the emergency Committee and Dudayevand Gamsakhurdia, and “movement”, and all the Baltic “popular fronts”. It is also clear that if any putsch would not be, and just those who were part of it, would force Gorbachev to “demonstrate determination”, similarly, would move in a natural path of development.
The vast majority of citizens of the Soviet Union arranged to the established by the time order. Gorbachev’s reforms was naturally removed accumulated over the decades, the discontent of the intelligentsia on the inability to “say what you want and to read whatever I want. The possibility of creating a cooperative business completely canalized the discontent of the potential “normal entrepreneurs”. And since all the advantages of the Soviet social state was preserved, then all the other reasons for people’s discontent, associated with the extraordinary clumsiness of the authorities in carrying out reforms, could easily be attributed to “temporary difficulties of growth.”
That is, no need of any reduction of the country doubled, or in landslide “the destruction of socialism and the creation of capitalism” did not exist. The most decisive dreams were limited to the desire to “lose Asia”, but no one even in a nightmare could not have dreamed that the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan can be different States. No one could think of to basic sectors of Soviet industry were in someone’s private ownership. Everyone thought exclusively about private restaurants, shops and gas stations. All these nightmares were realized in fact, needed just such indecisive putsch and his natural failure.
No, of course there was a political force calling for the collapse of the Soviet Union and to “the introduction of capitalism.” It was the well-known “indestructible block” marginal nationalists from Moscow-St. Petersburg “Democrats”. But this political position was maintained throughout the Soviet Union, probably all the same “14%”, that today in Russia against the Crimea.” Most of their views are not supported, and many of them openly laughed at the rallies against the “totalitarian Gorbachev regime.” As if under a totalitarian regime, there are protests.
And only after the “great August victory of democracy” we suddenly found out that all these years did not live in a reforming towards democracy and a market economy Soviet Union, and still in the “bloody Communist tyranny.” I still remember the strange mixture of comic and nauseating that occurred when the statements of the member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee Yakovlev and candidate member of the PolitburoYeltsin on the need “to ban the Communist party” and “lustration”. Similarly, the enormous perceived exoticism views “of the St. Petersburg club” of economists and liberals about “landslide privatisation”. And Yegor Gaidar, as you know, “the emergency Committee”, worked in “Pravda” and the magazine “Communist”, but, so to speak, “at the behest of the soul” has advised on economic issues, the parliamentary group “Union”.
So I guess even the participants transfer the newly acquired relics of Seraphim of Sarov in July-August of 1991, despite the fact that among Orthodox pilgrims was quite a lot of people anti-Soviet views, would seem mere nonsense everything that began earnestly to discuss came to power, the “Democrats” in 1992.
I’m not talking about the fact that both the Yeltsin coup, which led in the autumn of 1991 to the dissolution of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and in the fall of 1993 — to the dissolution of the Supreme Council of Russia, permanently eliminated the possibility of development in our country parliamentary democracy. Similarly, “landslide privatisation” in two episodes of the voucher privatization and loans for shares — permanently eliminated the possibility of development in our country manufacturing business, and just any independent small and medium business, concentrating almost all informed “people” resources in the hands of oligarchic corporations.
Yes and no, by the way, those in power never apologized to our people for the mass poverty of the majority population, emerged in 1992-1993 solely as a result of Gaidar’s reforms. And, to my great regret, we still continue to follow this laid down in August 1991 and finally completed in October 1993, dead-end road. Because neither of “our Crimea” or “Immortal regiment”, or even a mass contempt for the “14%” it is not enough to “return to the main historical sequence”.
Only when the idea of social justice will become dominant not only in our society but in our country only when our country will again become a truly social state, only when “the results of privatization will be finally summed up acceptable for the majority of our people follows, and socio-economic inequality will return to its “natural” and acceptable to most of our people scope, we will be able to tell that we have overcome, finally, the consequences of “bloody August” and as he said at the time BG, “returned the land itself”, ceasing to crawl on his belly”.
