| Author | Valery Tishkov |
| Publication | Searching for Peace in Europe and Eurasia - 2002 |
| Year | 2002 |
Keywords
USSR, multiethnic state, ethnic tensionsHistory and Legacies of the USSR: The Demise of a Multiethnic Experiment
In spite of being relatively peaceful, the dissolution of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics generated a lot of social and ethnic tension as well as violent clashes and internal wars. What was the nature of this multiethnic state and of the Soviet ethnic engineering, and what were the reasons for the breakup? What are the legacies of the USSR that embedded painful memories, old and new cleavages, and potential conflict?
By the end of the nineteenth century, Russia spanned 22.5 million square kilometers of territory, peopled by 128.2 million inhabitants with a rich cultural mosaic, and with ethnic Russians comprising less than a half of the population (Table 3.1). This multiethnicity has evolved over the course of historic territorial expansion through military conquests, colonization, and development of new lands carried out by the state. But the major agents of colonization were those who sought to escape serfdom, tyranny, and lifelong military service—peasants, religious dissidents, individual entrepreneurs, etc. The dominant ethnic component of the state was Eastern Slavs, whose cultures were to give rise to the ethnic identities of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians. From the early times, the population of Russia also included Finns, Balts, Turkic, and other non-Slavic groups. The ethnic mosaic grew particularly complex after the sixteenth-century annexation of the Volga area and the colonization of Siberia. In the seventeenth century, the state added the Ukraine, West Siberia, and a part of the Caucasus; in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, East Siberia, Caucasus, and Central Asia were included. With respect to non-Orthodox people, the policy of the Russian monarchy was that of social oppression and cultural assimilation. Appropriation of lands inhabited by indigenous peoples was widely practiced. A system of various taxes and levies was applied to this category of the population, as well as the practice of nonequivalent goods exchanges.
Unlike the classic colonial empires, Russia's metropolis was not so geographically distant from the colonized peripheries, whose population was extremely diverse with respect to levels of modernization and political consolidation. The so-called indirect-rule method was applied: many of the areas and cultural communities in the territory were granted differing degrees of autonomy and self-government. Serfdom and compulsory military service applied mainly to the ethnic Russian population. Several centuries of interethnic contacts resulted in a high degree of mutual cultural influence and integration, especially between the Slavic and Turkic peoples. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the periphery of the empire saw the growth of nationalist movements echoing in spirit the East European social democratic movements that embraced the peoples within the three major imperial entities: the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian.
After the overthrow of the monarchy in February 1917, Finland and Poland acquired their political independence from Russia. In the early years of the Bolshevik rise to power, independence was proclaimed by the Ukraine, the Transcaucasian republics (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Abkhazia), and the Baltic countries (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia). Movements for autonomy sprang up among other regions of Russia.
Table 3.1 Major Ethnic Groups of the Russian Empire, 1897
Ethnic Group * | Number (in thousands) | Percentage of Total |
| Russian | 55,670 | 43.4 |
| Ukrainian | 22,380 | 17.5 |
| Pole | 7,930 | 6.2 |
| Belorussian | 5,890 | 4.6 |
| Jew | 5,060 | 3.9 |
| Kazakh | 3,800 | 3.0 |
| Finn | 2,660 | 2.1 |
| Tatar | 2,230 | 1.7 |
| German | 1,790 | 1.4 |
| Uzbek | 1,700 | 1.3 |
| Lithuanian | 1,660 | 1.3 |
| Azerbaijani | 1,480 | 1.2 |
| Latvian | 1,435 | 1.1 |
| Georgian | 1,350 | 1.1 |
| Bashkir | 1,320 | 1.0 |
| Moldavian | 1,120 | 0.9 |
| Mordva | 1,025 | 0.8 |
| Estonian | 1,000 | 0.8 |
| Chuvash | 845 | 0.7 |
| Kirgiz | 600 | 0.5 |
| Udmurt | 420 | 0.3 |
| Tajik | 350 | 0.3 |
| Total | 128,200 | 100% |
The Bolshevik Experiment
In contrast to their political opponents who advocated "one and indivisible Russia," the Bolsheviks supported political movements among the non-Russian peoples, viewing them as allies in the struggle against absolutism. The Bolsheviks' declarations received an enthusiastic response from nationalist activists in the periphery and provided the new power with support from the non-Russian population. At this point, in declaring itself to be an internationalist movement, Marxism in Russia actually included in its program the doctrine of ethnic nationalism. This doctrine can explain the rise to power experienced by the Bolsheviks all over the country and their victories in the civil war. Two postulates were particularly attractive to the multiethnic country:
- 1. The doctrine recognized that a nation as an ethnic group has a set of inalienable characteristics, including its own territory, common language, and a distinct sociopsychological mentality
2. The doctrine established that a necessary condition for the existence and development of a nation was the existence of an ethnic group declared to be an "indigenous nation" within their "own" statehood
Lobbying for Borders and Status
The early history of Soviet ethnic policy shows a mixture of missionary projects and local rivalries, reflecting momentous power dispositions. Motives behind major decisions on granting autonomy and establishing republics were determined by political raison d'être rather than by any conscious "nation killing" strategy. That is why this policy seemed to have so many inconsistencies. There was a combination of aspirations to reward formerly "oppressed nations" and to keep the state under Soviet rule. These motives lay behind the unification of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan into the Trans-Caucasian Federation in 1922 after they were "sovietized" in 1920–1921. A tense situation developed in the case of the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan–Nagorno Karabakh. Long and heated debates about its affiliation were resolved by the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party in 1920 after the head of the government of Azerbaijan, Nariman Narimanov, threatened to stop the deliveries of kerosene from Baku.
Because the number of claimants to "their own" statehood proved to be greater than the Bolsheviks had probably supposed, one more innovation of the "socialist federalism" was born—a kind of hierarchy of ethno-national units of the Russian matrushka-doll type. In some areas, the ethnic principle could not be strictly observed, particularly where the more powerful basis for a collective identity was religion, dynastic or regional belonging, or where the ethnic mosaic was too complex to draw up administrative lines. Such was the situation in Central Asia and North Caucasus. In 1918 in the North Caucasus, the Soviet Terskaya oblast (Tersk region) was established with territories inhabited by the Tersk Cossacks, Kabardin, Ingush, Chechen, and others. In 1921 the Terskaya oblast was reorganized into the Gorskaya autonomous republic from which separate autonomous Kabardino-Balkarian and Chechen oblasts were detached almost immediately. In 1924 the Gorskaya republic was dissolved and its remaining territory was divided into the North Ossetian and Ingush autonomous oblasts and Sunzhenskii okrug (territory) with one administrative center—the city of Vladikavkaz. In 1928, within the limits of Stavropol krai (territory), the Cherkess autonomous oblast was set up. In Transcaucasus, the Abkhazian autonomous republic joined Georgia under the Treaty of 1921. Two more autonomies emerged within Georgia: South Ossetia and Adjaria. The establishment of Soviet power in Central Asia and in North Caucasus was accompanied by cruel repression and mass migrations of the indigenous population. Several hundred thousand people, mostly representatives of the aboriginal elites and participants of the resistance basmatch and mokhadjir movements, were forced to leave their homelands.
In December 1922 the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) took shape; and in 1924 the first Soviet constitution was adopted. But the process of territorialization of ethnicity in the form of titular statehoods was not finished. The 1920s saw the continued imposition of ethnoterritorial borders in Central Asia. New republics with redefined borders drawn closer to ethnic lines was formed for the Kazakhs, Kirgiz, Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks. Up to 1936, their status and territories changed several times, especially in the Ferghana Valley. However, attempts to achieve ethnic homogeneity failed. A significant portion of the Uzbeks remained in Kirghizia and Tajikistan, and the Uzbek-populated rural regions around the predominantly Tajik cities of Bukhara and Samarkand were included in the Uzbek Republic. Because of economic considerations, vast territories with a predominantly Russian population were included in the Kazakh Republic when its status was elevated to a constituent union republic in 1936.
The Soviet Constitution of 1936 registered the state's structure as consisting of eleven union republics and twenty autonomous republics. The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact enabled Stalin to annex western Belarus and western Ukraine, as well as Bessarabia. In 1940 the three Baltic states were annexed to the USSR and in 1944 Tuva, by the headwaters of the Yenitsei River in southern Siberia, was annexed. By the time of its demise, the USSR included fifty-three national-state entities: fifteen union and twenty autonomous republics, eight autonomous oblasts, and ten autonomous okrugs. These were peopled by representatives of 128 ethnic groups, numbering from a few hundred to several million (see Table 3.2).
Table 3.2 Ethnic Composition and Demographic Growth of the USSR's Population, 1959–1989
Main Ethnic Group | Number in Thousands | Percentage Increase 1959-1989 | Percentage of Total | |||
1959 | 1979 | 1989 | 1959 | 1989 | ||
| Russian | 114,114 | 137,397 | 145,155 | 127.2 | 54.6 | 50.8 |
| Ukrainian | 37,253 | 42,347 | 44,186 | 118.6 | 17.8 | 15.5 |
| Uzbek | 6,015 | 12,456 | 16,698 | 277.6 | 2.9 | 5.8 |
| Belorussian | 7,913 | 9,463 | 10,036 | 126.8 | 3.8 | 3.5 |
| Kazakh | 3,622 | 6,556 | 8,136 | 224.6 | 1.7 | 2.8 |
| Azerbaijani | 2,940 | 5,477 | 6,770 | 332.3 | 1.4 | 2.4 |
| Tatar | 4,918 | 6,185 | 6,649 | 135.2 | 2.4 | 2.3 |
| Armenian | 2,787 | 4,151 | 4,623 | 165.9 | 1.3 | 1.6 |
| Tajik | 1,397 | 2,898 | 4,215 | 301.7 | 0.7 | 1.5 |
| Georgian | 2,692 | 3,571 | 3,981 | 147.9 | 1.3 | 1.4 |
| Moldavian | 2,214 | 2,968 | 3,352 | 151.4 | 1.1 | 1.2 |
| Lithuanian | 2,326 | 2,851 | 3,067 | 131.9 | 1.1 | 1.1 |
| Turkmen | 1,002 | 2,028 | 2,729 | 272.4 | 0.5 | 1.0 |
| Kirgiz | 969 | 1,906 | 2,529 | 261.0 | 0.5 | 0.9 |
| German | 1,620 | 1,936 | 2,039 | 125.9 | 0.8 | 0.7 |
| Polish | 1,380 | 1,151 | 1,126 | 81.6 | 0.7 | 0.7 |
| Chuvash | 1,470 | 1,751 | 1,842 | 125.3 | 0.7 | 0.6 |
| Latvian | 1,400 | 1,439 | 1,459 | 104.2 | 0.7 | 0.5 |
| Bashkir | 989 | 1,371 | 1,449 | 146.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 |
| Jew | 2,177 | 1,762 | 1,378 | 63.3 | 1.0 | 0.5 |
| Mordva | 1,285 | 1,192 | 1,154 | 89.8 | 0.6 | 0.4 |
| Estonian | 989 | 1,020 | 1,027 | 103.8 | 0.5 | 0.4 |
| Chechen | 419 | 756 | 957 | 228.4 | 0.2 | 0.3 |
| Udmurt | 625 | 714 | 747 | 119.5 | 0.3 | 0.3 |
| Mari | 504 | 622 | 671 | 113.1 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| Avar | 270 | 483 | 601 | 124.5 | 0.1 | 0.2 |
| Osset | 413 | 542 | 598 | 114.9 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| Total | 208,827 | 262,085 | 285,743 | 136.8% | 100% | 100% |
The Policy of Repression
Large-scale ethnic engineering within a single state proved possible because of its totalitarian regime. Stalinism was ruthless, showing no mercy to any manifestations of unsanctioned initiative. The late 1920s put an end to any discussion of nationality issues in the country and ushered in a long period of repression against leaders in the republics. Victims of this repression included many outstanding political and cultural figures of the Ukraine, Caucasus, and Central Asia. At the same time, the government adopted a program of measures to develop the economy and culture in the republics, and to expand the political representation of non-Russian nationalities, as well as making several other positive decisions. That was especially true with relation to the so-called korenizatsiia (nativization) policy. This policy, as well as further related programs, provided resources and guarantees for education development and for training managerial workers, civil servants, and intelligentsia from the ranks of the "indigenous nationalities." This gave an enormous boost to modernization and social improvements. But the same policy served as a tool for the system of indirect governance and for imposing communist indoctrination under strict control from the center. Thus, through this dual use of repression and privileges the regime was able to exercise control over the periphery for many decades.
The most terrible acts of genocide were committed in the form of deportations and organized hunger in the campaign against the kulaks and to effect mass collectivization. Realized in the late 1920s and early 1930s, this policy mostly affected the Ukraine, southern Russia, and Kazakhstan. In 1932–1933, 2 million people were deported from the Kuban area alone, with its relatively prosperous rural population. During the period of forced collectivization of 1931–1932 in Kazakhstan, over 2 million Kazakhs died of hunger or left their homes because of the destruction of the traditional nomadic economy and social order.
Immediately after the "total victory" of collectivization from the mid-1930s, purely ethnic deportations began. On many occasions the aims could hardly be explained by anything else but geopolitical fantasies of Stalin and his maniacal distrust. The first ethnic deportation was carried out against the Korean minority of the Far East, who was moved to Kazakhstan in 1935. In 1937 many Kurds and Turks were deported from the Transcaucasian republics; and in 1939–1940 mass deportations began from the newly annexed areas of Bessarabia, West Ukraine, West Belarus, and the Baltics. The outbreak of war with Nazi Germany served as the excuse to deport the Germans living in the Volga region and other areas. Similar arguments of "collaborationism" were used for further deportations during the 1941–1945 war. Completely deported from the North Caucasus were the Karachai, the Ingush and Chechens, and the Balkars. In 1943, the Kalmyks were deported, in May 1944 the Crimean Tatars, and in November 1944 the Meskhetian Turks from Georgia. The territorial autonomies of "punished" peoples were abolished and new administrative units were established.
By the time of Stalin's death in 1956, the total number of deportees constituted 2.7 million people, including 1.2 million Germans, 316,000 Chechens, 84,000 Ingush, 165,000 Crimean Tatars, 100,000 Lithuanians, 81,000 Kalmyks, 63,000 Karachai, 52,000 Greeks, 50,000 Meskhetian Turks, 45,000 Moldavians, 40,000 Letts, and 20,000 Estonians. These figures do not include those imprisoned or shot, or those who died of hunger or disease. Other sources indicate that 3.5 million people were forcefully removed from their homelands between 1936 and 1956.
The living conditions of the deportees were hard and humiliating. The most severe restriction that survived up to 1957, and for some peoples (Crimean Tatars, Ingush) up until very recently, was that they were forbidden to return to their former homes. Most other deportees were allowed to return to their native places soon after 1956. The Checheno-Ingush, Karachai-Cherkess, Kabardino-Balkar, and Kalmyk autonomous republics were reinstituted, although not with their previous borders. Part of the Kalmyk territory remained within the limits of the Astrakhan oblast, and part of the Ingush territory within North Ossetia.
During the Stalinist period, the repressed peoples had to experience tremendous physical and emotional trauma that, along with some territorial problems, has carried directly over into the political situation today, serving as a major cause of interethnic tension and conflict. The problem of these peoples was aggravated by slow and limited rehabilitation measures, and, in some instances, because of counteraction against these measures on the part of authorities and the local population. It was not until 1989 that the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the declaration "On Recognizing as Unlawful and Criminal the Repressive Acts Against the Peoples Subjected to Forced Resettlement." On 22 April 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation adopted the law "On Rehabilitation of the Repressed Peoples." Both acts were important steps toward democratization, but ironically the latter law has caused more problems than it resolved because it legitimized local territorial claims and demands for exclusive material compensation for members of deported groups.
The Policy of Prestige
Although guided by motives of prestige and propaganda, the Soviet regime invested a great deal of effort and resources in substantiating its declaration about a "solution of the nationality question." In the republics and among the smaller indigenous peoples, the development of education was strongly encouraged (written languages and textbooks were developed for fifty-seven ethnic groups). Culture in its professional forms (music, theater, literature, cinema) as well as other attributes of national statehood (academies of sciences, professional unions of creative workers, media and publishing, university education) were supported and paraded to demonstrate the success of the system. Local intelligentsia and managerial personnel, as well as influential party bureaucracy, were formed already in the prewar period through the nativization policy among major Soviet nationalities.
The 1960s–1980s were an important period in the history of Soviet nationalities. The gap that had existed in social structures of main ethnic groups was practically eliminated as a result of social mobility, together with quotas and preferences in the sphere of education. Average educational standards in the ethnic republics—in particular, the percentage of those holding university diplomas and scholarly degrees—grew considerably higher than the average national indices, outstripping the corresponding figures for the Russian majority. Rising social expectations and the growing power of the peripheral elites were accompanied in some cases by serious demographic shifts; the numerical growth among non-Russians (or, more exactly, non-Slavic and non-Baltic peoples) was much higher than that of the Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, and the Balts. From 1979 to 1989, the Russian population in the USSR increased by 5.6 percent. During the same period, population growth among the Azerbaijanis was 24 percent, Uzbeks and Turkmens 24 percent, Kirgiz 32 percent, and Tajiks 45 percent. In contrast, the natural growth among Latvians and Estonians was the lowest in the country (1.4 and 2.4 percent respectively)—which subsequently provided a powerful argument for exclusive local nationalism to "restore the demographic balance." In most republics, the 1970s were marked by the emerging process of ethnic homogenization in favor of the titular nationalities. The main reason for this development was the migration of ethnic Russians from areas of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus. Meanwhile, in such republics as the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Latvia, and Estonia, the proportion of Russians increased. In Estonia and Kazakhstan, the changing demography resulted in growing anxiety among the titulars about losing the dominant majority in their "own" republics and becoming subject to an even greater degree of Russian acculturation.
The economic policy of the Soviet state exerted a contradictory influence on the ethnic situation. From the very first years of Bolshevik government there was an official goal to eliminate the economic backwardness of the national republics. In the predominantly rural areas, industrial enterprises were built specifically for the purpose of ensuring the growth of the working class, which the regime saw as its main stronghold, and to improve social conditions. After World War II, modern industrial enterprises were established in the republics to help accelerate the urbanization of the population. However, such measures did not prevent the introduction in some republics of a monocultural agrarian economy, with grave repercussions on natural environments and health conditions. A specific case in point was the massive cotton-growing economy of Central Asia. In total, Soviet economic policy led to a high degree of economic interdependence between all union republics, with the Russian Republic providing large subsidies to other republics, supplying cheap energy and raw materials.
The unitary strategy of development and the imposition of Russian-language ideological presentations from the center resulted in the formation of similar socioprofessional structures and common cultural and value orientations among the various Soviet nationalities. The emergence of the "one community of Soviet people" doctrine in the country was no accident: the overwhelming majority of Soviet citizens shared the same (or very similar) social, political, and even cultural values. On the other hand, differences in cultural traditions, industrial development, demographic behavior, and political culture managed to survive all through the Soviet period. But the model that seeks to explain disintegration by reference to developmental levels and by the "winners and losers" dichotomy fails to explain the situation that existed, and contradicts the fact that it was the most advantaged and well-off republics that initiated the disintegration of the USSR. Even more difficult to accept is the thesis that cultural differences between republics stem from the very nature of their civilizational character, and that such differences could never coexist in the bosom of a single state.
While the Soviet central power was strong enough to control the local administrations, and at the same time suppress any attempts at organized nationalist movements, it was also in a position to secure the tolerance and consent of key social actors through the notion of a single multiethnic state. But as soon as the power and unified ideology weakened, the very foundation of the nationalities policy lost its hold. Ethnicity as a basis of group solidarity, and ethnic nationalism as a political doctrine, challenged the status quo.
The Fight for Sovereignty
In spite of a dominant explanatory model for the breakup of the USSR as a "triumph of nations," there was no explicit revolt or insurrection on the part of non-Russians. Mass rallies and demonstrations were full of praise—for perestroika, for Mikhail Gorbachev personally or in combination with particular demands like keeping a longtime party boss in office (Kazakhstan, December 1986), annexation of a territory (Armenia, January-February 1988), and environmental and cultural demands (Baltic republics, Moldova, Georgia in 1988–1989). What was taking place was a reassertion of individual and collective dignity, irrespective of ethnic meaning. Ethnic revolt as a stand was to be learned later; it could be traced as such only in the Baltic republics and in peaceful forms. In a situation of political liberalization, weakening state institutions, and rising local initiatives, ethnic unrest in the USSR started not as a major political cleavage but as interethnic riots and communal clashes directed mainly toward vulnerable "double minorities" in national republics. Examples are the anti-Armenian pogrom in Sumgait, Azerbaijan, in February 1988; the expulsion of Meskhetian Turks from the Fergana region of Uzbekistan in June 1989; anti-minorities riots in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe in February 1990; and other similar events. Not all major cases of conflicting ethnicity were directed at the Russian imperial center, even in the Baltic, where there were far greater reasons and legitimacy for political upheaval.
The most important influence in this course of events was to be found behind Kremlin walls. The first Congress of People's Deputies elected in 1989 could boast a remarkable representation of major Soviet nationalities. The most eloquent and flamboyant figures were sent first to the all-union parliament to speak out on the country's problems as well on the concerns of the republics and regions. The first serious challenge to Gorbachev's gradual top-down liberalization and economic reforms came from the Baltic republics—where the need for sociocultural improvements was in fact less urgent than elsewhere in the USSR. But the Baltic republics were smaller polities with articulate Westernized elites quick to grasp the opportunities of the opening society. The Balts also enjoyed relatively higher standards of living—and these they wanted to keep and to strengthen, rather than lose them through the slow movement of the larger Soviet society. Along with this reassertion came the image of the "occupied nation," which became the core of the reemerging Baltic identity.
The programmatic context of so-called national movements in the USSR was diffuse and rapidly changing. Few of the leaders of the periphery linked their position with Gorbachev and his program. Many more switched loyalties and doctrinal baggage to become nationalists. Ethnic nationalism was attractive to former communists because its vision of a uniform and disciplined society in which leaders define what constitutes the popular will mimics the totalitarian pretensions of Stalinism.
The center proved ill-prepared to conduct negotiations or make the concessions necessary to meet these challenges. Its reaction was directed primarily at the policy of force and punishment. While some Communist Party leaders and academic experts were trying to transform the official policy toward the periphery, adherents of force were suppressing the rising local opposition in Tbilisi (April 1989), Baku (January 1990), and Vilnius (January 1991). There was a strikingly limited arsenal of arguments and appeals that central authorities could use to confront the newly permitted expressions of long-accumulated complaints and expectations. Such an inconsistent policy served to provoke greater dissatisfaction, destroying illusions about the ability of the center to provide responsible governance and freedoms to the nondominant nationalities and peripheral territories.
The ethnic policy of the perestroika period proved a failure, exploited by Gorbachev's opponents in Moscow and by opponents of Moscow in the periphery as the main argument to abolish the Soviet Union. The demise of the state could at the same time be considered a great achievement of the leaders of the main non-Russian groups who were able to realize their aspirations peacefully. The irony of the situation is that the initiator of this disintegration was in fact the Russian Federation and its leader, Boris Yeltsin, who was brought to power by radical democratic groups and could register significant victories in the Russian republican elections of 4 March 1990. On 12 June 1990, the Russian Congress of People's Deputies adopted the Declaration of Sovereignty for this largest and most powerful of the Soviet republics. The political meaning of this document was explicitly directed against Gorbachev and the USSR's power structure.
This could be interpreted as a clash of two strategies and of two political blocs on the question of how to proceed with reforms and democratization. But it was also a power struggle between Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Yeltsin undertook radical steps to expel Gorbachev and his other former Politburo compatriots from the Kremlin. He rejected the compromise economic-reform plan adopted by the Supreme Soviet in October 1990. Russia's Supreme Soviet reaffirmed the primacy of its own legislative acts for the territory of this republic. The leadership of the Russian Republic blocked all efforts of the union center to reorganize the structure of the entire country. Other republics followed suit.
On 16 July 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine passed its Declaration of Sovereignty, which called for full autonomy and for a separate army. Declarations of sovereignty and the supremacy of the authorities of the various republics were announced and established throughout much of the union. Periphery leaders urged skepticism and disregard for the efforts of Gorbachev and the All-Union Supreme Soviet to work out a new Union Treaty. In spring 1991, Gorbachev initiated the Novo-Ogarevo process to keep together at least those parts of the country where leaders were ready to negotiate a new and looser formula for the union. Three meetings were held in Novo-Ogarevo (near Moscow) in May, June, and July where republican leaders and leaders of ethnoterritorial autonomies (such as Abkhazia in Georgia, Tatarstan and Bashkiria in Russia) bargained fiercely for their own interests amidst efforts to work out the text of the new treaty. The dialogue resulted in the agreed text of a new Union Treaty—which, however, did not prevent the Russian Republic from recognizing the independence of Lithuania a week later.
The August 1991 coup was an attempt to reestablish Communist rule in the country. It was also a question of the ongoing disintegration of the country, viewed by conservative, nonreformist forces as an unacceptable price for liberalization. The territorial integrity of the Soviet state was actually the main issue of the coup. This was to become a painful reality after Russia took the lead in the process of dissolving the Soviet Union. After that time, the political focus shifted from the nearly accomplished Baltic secession to the complete breakup of the Soviet polity.
The coup failed, leaving in its wake a high degree of political enthusiasm among the winning Russian democracy. Yeltsin, indeed, not only played the central political role in defeating the coup, but used the opportunity in effect to mount a countercoup, usurping the powers of the union president and other central institutions. Thus it was Russia that was the key actor in the demise of the USSR. Even Baltic independence could have been questionable without the support it got from the Russian democratic movement. The demise of the Soviet Union was a political improvisation not preceded by any assessment of the decision and its possible consequences. But basically it was to the good.