August Coup Attempt - 1991

Author: Linda DeLaine
Website: RL Online
Department:
Page: 3   ( 4) pages

Summary: Part III - Aftermath

Gorbachev had hoped to be able to hold the union together even in a decentralized format. In the opinion of many CPSU conservatives. Gorbachev went to far by giving too much of the central government's authority to the governments of the individual states. The August 19, 1991, coup attempt came just one day before Gorbachev and the various republic leaders were to sign his new Union Treaty. Once back in Moscow, Gorbachev acted as if he were oblivious to the changes that had occurred in the preceding three days.

As he returned to power, Gorbachev promised to purge conservatives from the CPSU. He resigned as general secretary but remained president of the Soviet Union. At the end of August, Yeltsin issued a decree which dissolved the Communist Party. Gorbachev followed suit by declaring an end to Communist Party rule. The Central Committee was done away with and all properties of the Party and the KGB were seized by the government.

The coup's failure brought a series of collapses of all-union institutions. Yeltsin took control of the central broadcasting company and key economic ministries and agencies, and in November he banned the CPSU and the Russian Communist Party. By December 1991, all of the republics had declared independence, and negotiations over a new union treaty began anew.

Both the Soviet Union and the United States had recognized the independence of the Baltic republics in September. For several months after his return to Moscow, Gorbachev and his aides made futile attempts to restore stability and legitimacy to the central institutions. In November seven republics agreed to a new union treaty that would form a confederation called the Union of Sovereign States.

In the absence of the CPSU, there was no way to keep the Soviet Union together. From Yeltsin's perspective, Russia's participation in another union would be senseless because inevitably Russia would assume responsibility for the increasingly severe economic woes of the other republics. On December 8, Yeltsin and the leaders of Belarus (which adopted that name in August 1991) and Ukraine met at Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where they created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and annulled the 1922 union treaty that had established the Soviet Union.

Another signing ceremony was held in Alma-Ata on December 21 to expand the CIS to include the five republics of Central Asia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Georgia did not join until 1993; the three Baltic republics never joined. Gorbachev finally resigned his post as President of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991. He was the eighth and last leader of the USSR. Yeltsin took over the reigns of government as the first elected president of the Russian Federation. Exactly six years after Gorbachev had appointed Boris Yeltsin to run the Moscow city committee of the party, Yeltsin now was president of the largest successor state to the Soviet Union.

Ironically, the members of the Gang of Eight did and do not see their actions as high treason as charged. Treason is the giving away of state secrets or trying to overthrow the government. If anyone committed treason, in their opinion, it was Gorbachev. His Union Treaty and its move towards democracy would have dissolved the communist element of the Soviet Union. They were simply trying to restore the ideals of Lenin which included ousting the treasonous Gorbachev.

In a recent opinion poll, roughly 28 percent of Russian citizens surveyed who were old enough to remember the events of 1991 said that they were against the coup. Fourteen percent said that, at the time, they were for it. A large portion, 31 percent, said that they didn't understand what was going on at the time. The balance of the survey participants had no opinion.

The Gorbachevs return to Moscow on August 20, 1991.

Next page Ten Years Later >Page 1, 2, 3, 4

Russia Changes
The Events of August 1991 and the Russian Constitution
A. S. Durgo (Editor)

Library Binding, 162pp.
Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated
January 1992