ok if several muslim leaders get their way and they're already taking the law into their own hands marking sure rezoned and recruiting young muslim men to enforce the rules in a battle for london's boroughs and there's a revolution rolling into los angeles and it's a type of socialism americans are really sinking their teeth into because this meal comes with food for thought so those are just some of the stories we've got in store for you next week that you will not want to miss along with of course more news and interviews until then that is it for now for more on the stories we covered go to our team dot com slash usa follow me on twitter at warren lester and have yourself a fantastic weekend. which was the same of you are going go right to the locker room of the old we're going to the movies changed everything twenty years ago call me a story hardliners attempt to derail me kolker the child's efforts to reform the

soviet union. will. bring you the latest and certainly from around the world. we're going to the future of harvard. if you. started. to.

follow in the welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle the coup 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 is played out differently. in each. story. crosstalk the events of august one 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 indeed we know the world we go to make like petro he's professor of politics at the university of rhode island all right gentlemen this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want but first let's have a look at the failed coup of one thousand nine hundred one.

on august nineteenth one thousand nine hundred one instead of tuning in to the soviet national anthem citizens across the u.s.s.r. 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 in auslan 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 gorbachev had already been removed and detained in his militia in the crimea with motivated the plotters to overthrow the existing order was the new union treaty designs decentralized political power within the u.s.s.r. and indirectly weaken 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 by that time and began to see or change as often happens in russia's history with when these reforms start accumulating 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 maurice yeltsin then considered a political maverick and reformist led russian parliamentarians in opposition to the coup that's what it clearly got all the decisions in decreased 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 committees actions down 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 that can collapse with a minor loss of life on august twenty first. 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 the status quo ante let's go back where we had before nonstarter didn't go anywhere got no traction in society at all and the second thing was simple planning bad planning ironically instead of her being more of a child's performance project and reinvigorating the power of the communist party the coup plotters he sent their own political to my real political power shifted to yeltsin quickly to ban the party and a few months later the soviet union ceased to exist must attorney for cross-town

are to. 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 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 course of that we can't it was a singular moment because it revealed in the. precise moment. beautifully tied up way up how important the communist party had become and of course just a significantly it launched the political fortunes of boris yeltsin. ok jeffrey i

mean we do 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 the communist party being all powerful very very powerful security forces a very powerful army the plotters hallow all the tools they needed to pull it off but it was an utter utter failure how do you account for that i mean it wasn't because they lacked resources know it wasn't i would say the absolutely decisive factor was the the generals were reluctant to fire on peaceful civilians they'd 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 in order to do so was with illegal definitely legal whereas now we had two powers confronting each other the soviet union in the person of the emergency committee and russia and the person of

the else him with corporate 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 there he was basically put out of business and then he comes back with who 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 track to the beginning was the 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 any cough complaint letter he got which of us on parliamentary expressions to them. he told them where to go and that was important but what was also crucially important was that you had the legitimacy of having be the elected president of russia just a couple of months earlier if they wanted to cool

a you know earlier. chance of success what do you think about that nickel i mean the timing of it all here because i mean 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 shortages there was a it was a 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 it would have made any difference. on the one hand i don't think it would have made any crucial difference to the prospects of the communist party to reassert itself i think its days were 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. perhaps under the leadership of the congress party i think. it's unlikely that that would have succeeded and even before the coup in itself but all these events the this integration of the union accelerated nevertheless there was already a considerable hesitation of several states several republics to join the reform union treating so i think it would have been a slow but gradual dissolution and perhaps there wouldn't even have been as much impetus in favor of reforms as there was in the immediate aftermath of the coup which he also tried to seize but didn't actually parlay into political and economic

success let me call you if you were to jeff around this because if you bring up a point today i think are still very much argued in i'll go i wish we had stephen cohen on the program because he is 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 part communist party reform bill to be able to lead. a more popular be legitimate in the eyes of the population i left original you do that oh and actually create create a future a better future because they were to get in and go have. no i don't think it was reformable and that's seems to be proved by the fact that called woodchopper was a very constructive and intelligent reformer did his utmost to reform it and failed the climate 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 cave more scope to private enterprise but that

merely sucked goods out of the state enterprises and so called shortages even worse still to g.'s everywhere and the other of course was the nationality problem which often tended to give the national republic 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 republic gorbachev's nationality reforms inside the communist party gave new strength to russia and the the coup 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 they're paid the emergency committee they would be dealt with under the laws of russia when you think about that archie the whole reform ability of the communist party to 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 really a spent force idea here. i don't think it could have been reformed it but i think

it could have been transformed into a multi-party system but actually the communist party had already lost its monopoly of power per the politburo by ninety ninety ninety one it was meeting all the once a month not once a week and power had moved elsewhere we liberated god which often he won't dare because you know he was exercising power through the presidency and through his own entourage and were lawyers ignoring the politburo or god which i wanted to do was to split on this party and lead its social democratic component here tend to do that in developer like you know if you want it actually party congress but the split never took place because there was no longer. just split. but that's i think was a possible out of the other thing i think could have happened was the creation of a different kind of union so it was out of all to him going to jump in right here to go to a break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the one thousand nine hundred one coup we can stay with r.t. . you can

see. the. wealthy british stock. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our keep.

the flow. bringing you the latest in science and technology from around. the future coverage. if you can. come back to crossfire computer a little to remind you we're discussing the events of august ninety ninety one. you can. still. pay nickel if i

can because i go to you i mean archie brown brought up a very interesting point before we went to the break about what we've got about chicago got jobs plans to split 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 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 ok and he 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 good bye to all 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 as strongly as it could have been although there were some very notable steps taken such as the abolition of the calmest mortie of the soviet union and on the day immediately after the coup on 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 recall i 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 about 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

desperately hard jeffrey it's interesting i mean we we've been talking about to russia the new russia emerging versus the soviet union it's really existed but it was really about got a bitch off in yeltsin after the coup in a lot of people will blame both political figures for making it very personal it was very about ambition is well and that are 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 years 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 backbone 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 gilts in use the new power of russia the russian federation or as it was called in the russian soviet republic

as a weapon against gorbachev the irony was that gorbachev conservative opponents did the same they set up the russian communist party in one thousand nine hundred 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 tower of struggle between or is the soviet union was. quickly going into dissolution it was about the ambitions of two men and i 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 period and you know and both of them for a lot of people in russia today twenty years out that actor extremely unpopular political figures. yes it was partly that but not all of us got rich off laterally

was prepared to give up office in order to preserve some kind of 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 communist party of 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 the could hasten the transfer of power from gorbachev to yeltsin which was not what they who thought or sort of tended of course it really hastened the dissolution of the soviet union which was also the opposite of what they intended and only there was a lot of i go ahead bill but it's really interesting you say you know what you had to say is that you know we have this communist party was 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 him de facto to reconstitute the communist party of the soviet union and i think that inheritance weighed heavily continues to work sadly the way. too heavily on the political leadership of the communist party with 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. often reflected upon doubt when you have a communist party of russia we still hear bring out let in and they talk about marx and all that and it is just it you know twenty years out of the fact that it's appeal to most russians young russians is iraq. may i say this but i don't think

this is actually recent ality well these are gonna yeah you are in charge 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 coup plotters in their declaration never mention marx all 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 deprivation 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 and the promise love me 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 r.t.

if i go to you twenty years on who was the winner and who was who did anyone win from the coup twenty years ago. will yeltsin won but he was to be in beneficiary though i agree with what was said earlier by the colloidal he didn't make the most of his opportunities in that i.q. nineties the transfer of property and not their own crisis to pre-selected buyers that helped to discredit the very idea of democracy. do you think that nikolai 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 that 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 beneficiary was the non russian republic or no one in classical way 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 corporate choice reforms if he had not undertaken those reforms of soviet union would do for it seems to be survived 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 and so i think probably not in the long run archie what do you think about that in an communist soviet union could it but i've come into existence again could it be viable. i think it could have been viable without a number of republics certainly without the baltic states but something closer to the european union to tear into the old soviet union recover show went through several stages first of all tanika shoot a federation into a genuine federation laterally 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 to what has happened because it was clearly a 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 hardly in the interests of russia because when you think about that i mean and

then this is something that the russians are meant to live and russians implemented this for twenty years as they did so many russians were founded upon themselves on on the wrong side of a border and not only russians these sentiments are sufficiently widespread in ukraine in kazakhstan and below both. probably given the emotions running at the time running 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's a sense that what they wanted was the separation that came about was produced under false pretenses in other words 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's 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 artist 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 be a little was perhaps some day ukraine it is moving along those lines it's interesting twenty years later we might get to that many thanks to my guest today in oxford london growth and thanks to our viewers for watching as you are if you see you next time and remember crossed.

him or been here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture. and the.

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