so new york's insatiable stories that sell lauren lyster are t. washington d.c. . and if that's going to do it for now we want to stories we cover get r.t. dot com slash usa and stay right here for morning. issues that some of you are going. to be changed everything twenty years ago communist party hardliners attempt to do real me hoping to shelter for reform the soviet union. marvin here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture of.

the earth. play. live. live live. live nation free liquidations free the storage charges free

from a challenge the free. three stooges free. moseley braun to live video for your media project for free media and dollars r t dot com. you can. live. live. below and welcome across top i'm peter lavelle the food that failed but changed everything twenty years ago communist party hardliners attempted to derail me help out of a child's efforts to reform the soviet union in the coups aftermath the communist party was banned to be followed by the end of the u.s.s.r. could history of played out different. lives can. start listening. to cross talk the events of august nine hundred ninety

one i'm joined by geoffrey hosking in london he is america's professor of russian history at the university college london in oxford we have archie brown he's america's professor of politics at the university of oxford and if you know the good old we go to make light petro he is professor of politics at the university of rhode island all right gentlemen this is cross talk and you can jump in anytime you want but first let's have a look at the failed coup of nine hundred ninety one. class are you surprised at the end this is a sec. on august nineteenth one thousand nine hundred one instead of tuning in to the soviet national anthem citizens across the u.s.s.r. and woke up to a radio announcement that would start a sequence of events leading to the eventual collapse of the soviet union issued by the self-proclaimed hard line state of emergency committee the announcement stated

that mikhail gorbachev's efforts to reform the soviet union have gone into a blind alley and also declared a six month state of emergency in various regions of the country by that time. had already been removed and detained in his militia in the crimea motivated the plotters to overthrow the existing order was the new union treaty designed to decentralize political power within the u.s.s.r. and indirectly weak in the position of the all powerful communist party little did they know however the coup attempt would encounter strong resistance from many in the military as well as the general public who by that time have begun to save or change are often happens in russia's history when the when these reforms started he will leading from the top. there's a sense of. society there's obviously the sense there's no way things are going to go back to the way they used to be in order to some control of the russian

parliament building the committee ordered tanks to roll into moscow yeltsin then considered a political maverick and reformist led russian parliamentarians in opposition to the coup and that's what it clearly did all the decisions and you crazed by the state of emergency committee. shortly most of the troops either decided to return to their barracks or join the resistance and just like that the committee's actions found parliament surrounded by armed and unarmed civilians the plotters of the coup found little support either within the political elite or the constituent republics that made up the soviet union as a result the kuku lapsed with minor loss of life on august twenty first. but she was freed and returned to moscow and the soviet union would never be to see all the new. state committee for the state of emergency people all they knew they wanted to do was stop whatever was happening in its tracks but they didn't have an alternative vision that it had really anything else to propose in its place other

than status quo ante let's go back to we had before nonstarter didn't go anywhere got no traction in society at all and the second thing was simple planning planning ironically instead of curbing or of a child's performance project and reinvigorating the power of the communist party the coup plotters he sent their own political demise real political power shifted to yeltsin quickly moved to ban the party and a few months later the soviet union ceased to exist. for across party. find go to you first century local go international later twenty years ago there was this coup what does it mean now twenty years after the fact is a brand new russia it's unrecognizable from what happened twenty years ago when you teach your students when you talk to people about it what does it mean to you today sadly too little i think it's

a more significant historical event than is often recognized in contemporary russia and especially as well as in the courses that we can't it was a singular moment because it revealed in the. precise moment you know you were fully tied up way up how in impotent the communist party had become and of course just the significantly it launched the political fortunes of boris yeltsin. ok jeffrey i mean we would you agree with that i mean one of the interesting things is that you know i think all of us when we study in the soviet union is that a communist party being all power for a very very powerful security forces a very powerful army the plotters had all all the tools they needed to pull it off but it utter utter failure how do you account for that i mean it wasn't because

they lacked resources no it wasn't i would say the absolutely decisive factor was that the generals were reluctant to fire on peaceful civilians they've been through that experience in georgia a couple of years previously and got into serious trouble they wanted to be absolutely certain that if they did fire on civilians the order to do so was legal definitely legal whereas now we had two powers confronting each other and soviet union in the person of the emergency committee and russia and the person of yeltsin with corporate chaff somewhere in between so the generals didn't know how to react archie what do you think about that i mean. you know when you look at got a bunch of for me at the moment you know he was he was put into the crimea he was there for a few days he looks like he'd been he was he was basically put out of business and then he comes back the coup fails but he ends up being the ultimate victim of the coup they try to overthrow him. well that's true but i think very important fact to

the beginning was that gorbachev refused to be intimidated by the people who visited him they wanted him to give the imprimatur of legitimacy to what they were doing but in fact you know as general but in a cough complaint letter he got which of us on parliamentary expressions took them so and he told them where to go and that was important but what was also crucially important was that yeltsin had the legitimacy of having to let the president of russia just a couple of months earlier if they wanted to cool a year earlier it might have more chance of success when you think about that nickel i mean the timing of it all here because the reform efforts weren't really yielding i mean maybe there was hope but the facts on the ground the economy wasn't going it was going down there was shortage is there was a there was debate but was it healthy debate was it really changing anything what about the timing if it had been a year before or six months later do you think would've made any difference. on the

one hand i i don't think it would have made any crucial difference to the prospects of the communist party to reassert itself i think it's the world already over and simply. demonstrated that it had no future in society but one of the myths that has lingered with us is this idea that if only a more reformist course had been chosen and adopted that the u.s.s.r. could have been preserved in some way. to have under the leadership of the congress party i think. it's unlikely that that would have succeeded and even before the coup would itself all these events of the

disintegration of the union accelerate it nevertheless there was already a considerable hesitation of several states several republics to join the reform union treaty so i think it would have been a slow but gradual this solution and perhaps there would need even to have been as much impetus in favor of reforms as there was in the immediate aftermath of the coup which he also pride to seize but didn't actually parlay into political and economic success let me tell you brianna if you go to jeff around this because i think you bring up a point i think is still very much argued in and i wish we had stephen cohen on the program because he has a very strong position on this jeff it was the soviet union reformable first let's take the communist party and let's talk about the territorial integrity later could it was a time communist party reformable to be able to lead be popular be legitimate in

the eyes of the population i left originally to do i don't know and actually create create a future a better future because they were going to get in and go ahead. no i don't think it was reformable and that's seems to be proved by the fact that gorbachev who was a very constructive and intelligent reformer did his utmost to reform it and failed the union collapsed as a result i mean there were there were at least two major problems one of course was the economy gorbachev's reforms gave more scope to private enterprise but that merely sucked goods out of the state enterprises and so cost shortages even worse shortages everywhere and the other of course was the nationality problem which of intended to give national republics somewhat greater freedom and they took much more than he wanted. but there's one aspect of this which i think hasn't been mentioned is very important and that is the unexpected strength of the russian republican gorbachev's nationality reforms inside the communist party gave new

strength to russia and the the crew and the conflict which followed from it was a confrontation between russia and the soviet union yeltsin when he got on that tank warned people that if their bade the emergency committee they would be dealt with under the laws of russia. but you think about that archie the whole reformer goody of the communist party slash the soviet union we'll talk about later in the program if the country could have stayed together but what about the communist party with a spent force i don't know if it. i don't think it could have been reformed but i think it could have been transformed into a multi-party system but actually the communist party had already lost this with our play of power the politburo by nine hundred ninety ninety one of us meeting all the once a month not once a week and power had moved elsewhere with god which often he won't hear of because you know he was exercising power through the presidency and through his own entourage and were lawyers ignoring the politburo what gorbachev wanted to do was to split the communist party and lead its social democratic component here tony to

do that in developer like you know he won it actually party congress but the split never took place because there was no longer. split. but that's how i think was a possible reform the other thing i think could have happened was the creation of a different kind of union and stephanie was out the baltic republics are going to jump in right here to go to a break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the one nine hundred ninety one who would have stayed rb.

if. it was the target for. this street still keeps its eclipse the balance time to reveal that the soviet files oxy so. much more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to look for asians are on the day.

can. you. imagine crossed our computer a little to remind you we're discussing the events of august ninety nine you want. to. see. painted on a bank and if i go to you i mean archie brown brought up a very interesting point before we went to the break about we got about a got a bunch of plans to split up the communist party into competing factions me but isn't that still kind of a an old style a mentality reform from the top down i mean because we saw during the coup a lot of spontaneous spontaneity and where people are saying no we're not going to go back to the old days and actually you know civil society became very very

fertile with ideas again i mean got a child by then was already out of step with the changes in society. i can do i tend to agree with that point of view that you just articulated. i think. if goodbye told had somehow managed to push through his version of reforms the net result would not have been progressive change over time it would have been a dead weight on society for even longer sadly what happened in the aftermath of the coup was that the impetus for reform that yeltsin attempted to seize was not thoroughly problem gaited strongly as it could have been although there were some very notable steps taken such as the abolition of the communist party of the soviet union and on the day mediately after the coup the raising of the try of the tri color flag as russia's national flag these were all symbolic events and there was

a great deal of fervor in the air at the time as as will all work and recall but sadly that got dissipated and i don't think you know even the communist party in its in its much weak in the form has managed or managed i should say at that time to throttle significant changes especially regionally so i think if if there had been an attempt to. to undergo a gradual transition the results would have been even less impressive you know desperate we had jeffrey it's interesting i mean we we've been talking about to russia the new russia emerging versus the soviet union still existed but it was really about going to charge in yeltsin after that who in a lot of people will blame both political figures for making it very personal it was very about ambition is well and that a lofty ideas kind of got lost to the side because it was just a power struggle between two men. well that is partly true but there was

a great deal going on as well one has to remember that the communist party of the soviet union was not just it wasn't an ordinary political party it was the administrative executive backburner of the soviet union and therefore splitting the party up was never likely to work it seems to me it could not have been transformed into a normal political party so change had to be very radical guilt sin used the new power of russia the russian federation or is it was called in the russian soviet republic as a weapon against gorbachev the irony was that gorbachev's conservative opponents did the same they set up the russian communist party in one thousand nine hundred that being a russian communist party before and one should remember that the present communist party in russia is the inheritor of the russian communist party not the communist party of the soviet union it's much more like a normal political party and it's been a kind of permanent opposition ever since the collapse of the soviet union archie

what do you think about when we look at the power struggle between or is the soviet union was. quickly going into dissolution it was about to the ambitions of two men are they to go back to my original question i mean because we we see they were very close at one point and then they had a huge following out and it's very interesting when people ask me about that creed and you know and both of them a for a lot of people in russia today twenty years out a factor extremely unpopular political figures. yes it was partly that but neverless coverage of laterally was prepared to give up office in order to preserve some cardiff union i mean i think he had certain convictions and to go back to what we're talking about a moment ago it wasn't a question of having factions within the party it was actually splitting the party into several different parties the congress party the soviet union had nationalist stalinist liberal social democrats conservatives it could have turned into a member of different parties and so that would have been a fundamental change transformational change but of course that could hasten the

transfer of power from gorbachev to yeltsin which was not what they who thought of sort of tended of course it greatly hastened the dissolution of the soviet union which is also the opposite of what they intended it only quietly i was in but i had there were but it's really interesting you know what jeff had to say is that you know we have this communist party with the administrative apparatus of the state is well how could you separate the two go ahead. well. my sense of the communist party at the time was although technically yes what we have today is the russian communist party is the inheritor of a of another organization but for all practical purposes the leadership at the time desired. to reconstitute the communist party of the soviet union and i think that inheritance weighed heavily continues to it sadly the way. too heavily on the

political leadership of the communist party which prevents them from becoming for making that final transition to social democracy which every leftist meaningful leftist political party in europe that emerged from marxism has undergone it's very interesting jeffrey what do you think about that because it. reflected upon that when you we have the communist party of russia we still hear ring out let it in they talk about marx and all that and it is it you know twenty years after the fact if you took peel the most russians young russians is zero. may i say yes but i don't think this is actually recent ality well this is gonna yeah. exactly terry jeffrey go ahead well i don't think this is really about communism a tool communism wasn't involved in the coup remember the kook lotteries in their declaration never mention marx or lenin or communism they talked about the integrity of the soviet union and one has to remember that whilst many other non russian nations welcomed liberation from the soviet union the russians saw it as

a good provision and the russian communist party really represents two strands in russians thinking about their own country it represents of course soviet imperialism but it also represents the russian orthodox church the promise largely understanding of russia's history and it's an uneasy combination of the two and that's one reason why it hasn't really been all that effective it's trying to bring together two incompatible narratives about russia and persuade ordinary people that they should vote for that party ok don't argue find out who you twenty years on who who was the winner and who was who did anyone win from the coup twenty years ago. will yachts and one but he was the main beneficiary though i agree with what was said earlier by the kaleido he didn't make the most of his opportunities in an ikea ninety's the transfer of property and knocked on prices to pre-selected buyers that helped to discredit the very idea of

democracy or you think what do you think about that i mean other than yeltsin was anyone else a beneficiary from the failed coup. i believe that in the longer term perspective the history of this was a good thing in the same sense that going through a feverish night and breaking through the fever allows one even though you know one is the one is weakened by the illness one gradually becomes better i believe that it would it was indeed better to have gone through this feverish episode than to drag out the illness and i'm not sure what the ultimate result would have been what we have now is preferable to that continued uncertainty. but another beneficial rains the non-inertial republic line when it has taken away and form their own nation state jeffrey what do you think about that maybe minus the baltic republics is what was there any possibility that union could have stayed together under any

circumstances. well i think what drove the union apart was the very determination and radical nature of god which us reforms if he had not undertaken those reforms of soviet union would do for it seems to me survive possibly for a long time even including the baltic republics after gorbachev started one can imagine a union treaty which would have created a more decentralized union probably as you say without the baltic republics. but without the back burn which it had in the communist party of the soviet union it would have been a very unstable place so i think probably not and in the long run archie what do you think about that in one communist soviet union could it look i put into existence again could it be viable. i think it could have been viable without a number of republics only without the baltic states but something closer to the european union today than to the old soviet union because the show went through several stages first of all planning a shoot a federation into

a genuine federation but latterly he was prepared for a much looser kind of union something much more like the e.u. and that i think would have been possible and possibly preferable for russians through what has happened because there was clearly yeltsin's interest to get himself into the kremlin gorbachev vote to deprive russia of its centuries old links with the other countries and to have russians stranded in other countries where they were no longer. equal citizens or many cases was only in the interests of russia because what do you think about that and then this is something they do russians implemented and russians have lamented this for twenty years if they did so many russians will found it on themselves on on the wrong side of the border and not only russians the sentiments are sufficiently widespread in crane in kazakhstan and below the. probably given the

emotions running at the time very high the time it's difficult to imagine another outcome particularly because local elites were very busy taking advantage of the situation at the same time there is a considerable frustration with the way things turned out because there is a sense that what they wanted was the separation that came about was produced under false pretenses and others people wanted some sort of freedom and autonomy they didn't want it to be difficult to visit their uncles and relatives across the border they don't understand why one has to go along with the other so i think that sort of ambivalence continues. although now things have become so entrenched that it's hard to think of a clearer way to reintegrate again but i do think arties point about of the model of a closer association along the lines of the e.u.

ease of viable one and seems to be the model that the new customs union between russia kazakhstan get a little with perhaps someday ukraine is moving along those lines introducing twenty years later we might get to that many thanks to my guest today in oxford london a growth in thanks to our viewers for watching as you are the scenic family member across town. if. you can. one. of if if if.

if if. if. it was in order. to. this industry still keeps its secrets the balance times and reveal that the soviet files and oxy the and.