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. cable. hello and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle the party is finally over at least it was twenty years ago the end of the communist party of the soviet union was the final step before the collapse of the u.s.s.r. itself one of the party's positive and negative legacies could have it be formed itself and change the course of history. can. start. the process of the end of the communist party of the soviet union i'm joined by ronald suny and ann arbor is a professor of social and political history at the university of michigan in princeton we have mark bystander he is professor of politics at princeton university all right gentlemen this is cross-eyed i mean you can jump in anytime you want mark if i can go to you first in princeton the primary reason why i'm

doing this not only is it a twentieth anniversary of the end of the communist party of this oh you mean but to remind people of the events of nine hundred ninety one and how much it really changed the world and how we how the world has. moved on from of one great epic conflict to maybe another epic conflict and we can throw in the economic crisis here what is the most important legacy of what happened twenty years ago in the country that i'm living in right now russia well i think for there's a there's a global legacy obviously the end of the cold war the end of the. vision of the planet within russia russia had been ruled soviet union had been ruled by a party state essentially and then the communist party ended in essence and as it unraveled in essence that control over the state unravelled and also its control over the public sphere also and it so there was a whole rush of of movements. tendencies that just took over the public sphere that

you know couldn't make itself felt under the common and under communist rule right all the time do you do you think it's underestimated the day when we think about it to be the all powerful communist party of the soviet union and it was pointed out just a second ago it's global ramifications because it just wasn't the the soviet union itself it was an entire of what people would call an empire some people even called an evil empire this conflict between the west and the communist world came to an end when the communist party finally collapsed and peacefully and out. right maybe that's one of the latencies is that there wasn't a civil war there wasn't a great deal of bloodletting there were some ethnic conflicts in different places like when i go in the car barking george in code you can stand but it was a relatively smooth deflating of the of the system i would say that one of the legacies of the soviet party rule two to emphasize what

mark just said is that the party was so much a monopoly of communication of political activity that there was no room for alternatives to appear so that when the party sort of the sooner great when gorbachev loosen things up there was really nothing there to take its place and so the weak civil society allowed again for eventually the state to rebuild and to become more authoritarian mark what i studied and martin mallya and he used to always tell me that when totalitarian societies and states collapse the collapse totally do you agree with that statement because again we were all looking at the we how powerful the soviet union the communist party was so between was but once it collapsed everything else went with it and it was the coastal collapse. well you know actually the state didn't collapse in many ways the state actually fragmented so they're little pieces of the state and in fact in some places the you

know members of the college here are actually still in power such as in kazakhstan so i think. you know exaggerated. plus you know i think they were all various ways in which the institutions that were there under communism played a major role in the whole transition process that didn't totally disappear in fact ironically the communists were in the forefront of the movements that did the soviet union so if you look at the leadership of the estonian popular front if you look at the at the leadership of the alternative movements communists actually were very prominently represented within them well it's interesting well if i know about you but if we look at you i've always limited to the communist party of russia the russian federation is that they never took the the it failed to take the path of european socialism i mean we may still talk about lenin here they talk about marx. the stuff they did use the vast majority of the people in this country are not

interested anymore though i have to point out that it does still do well in elections and we can talk about why daddy is but it's certainly not a huge amount of power and it will never be that again i mean it's interesting that is that we have earlier in the early eighty's and early in the ninety ninety one it was the communist party that unraveled itself but then once it's finally collapsed when it was banned it didn't want to really reform itself any further as my she got very rigid. it's not quite the same party that is the party that gorbachev ruled over this great big soviet communist party was made up of all kinds of different factions there were conservatives he gets off types there were more reformers there are quite radicals. you know it so he was sort of in the center he moved gradually rather steadily however toward social democracy and by august one thousand nine hundred ninety one you can say that he was like a european social democrat he then failed in the coup the coup which then led to

the olsen's rise and what was left of the communist party what became the new russian federation communist party was basically the right wing of the old party so they they are in some ways a kind of semi fascist party they are very nationalistic they're very authoritarian and they don't have much in common with kind of european social democracy or i would say we did a regional rather democratic radically democratic aims of karl marx and mark if you think they'd go a bit provocative you did glasnost and perestroika destroy the communist party of the soviet union. i'd have to say the two glasnost destroyed the commies part of the soviet union the commies party the soviet union was built as an instrument basically to control the state and to control the public sphere and once you opened up the public sphere that the communist party really couldn't control it that the the debates that tore the communist party apart were essentially over the

impact of class notes and a lot of people talk about the economy and how the economy and economic competition destroyed the communist party. there is some truth in that in that but i think that that really wasn't the central element of what happened in fact i think the soviet union could have survived for a long time had no no pressing economic crisis what it had was a legitimate secret and. that's where. you know in in. you know when chernobyl occurred for instance and it just highlighted the the gulf between the party and and the truth and so it was basically already you know six or seven months after glasnost started they were very difficult abates taking place within the politburo there were splits that already occurred and all of the subsequent debates kind of flowed out of what were the consequences of glasnost credit be controlled and so on and so the party died

because it couldn't make this transition from the into a competitive. i would say marketplace of ideas well it's actually i mean let's look at the legitimacy issue because i think a lot of people agree with mark there what was the major from point of legitimacy for the party because it looks like it went from a communist ideals of lenin marx and engels and all that to legitimize its rule because it won the second world war but decades later you can still keep saying well it's because we won the war that's why we want to have exclusive power i mean and a certain point you just can't keep playing that card over and over again right there it's true that even with all that there was a kind of if we go go ahead go ahead round go ahead there were. there was there was a kind of we were in a way of the ideology it was a kind of disillusionment that sort of started at the top among some party

officials like gorbachev and shevardnadze a lot and also among the intelligentsia more progressive or liberal intelligentsia within the party so that that actually happened but there's something that's important to remember the soviet system disintegrated or was was reformed radically by gorbachev and successfully before the soviet union itself collapse in other words the system has to be separated from the state itself by one thousand nine hundred ninety already you have a multi-party system operating you have you do have a marketplace of ideas very rough glasses allowing of course all kinds of opinions quite radical opinions to flourish you have the beginnings of a market economy you have the end of censorship you have the end of the monopoly of the communist party that then eventually bad that that could have survived it is that would have been hard but of course the soviet union had suffered and survived other great disintegrating events like world war two this was not as radical and

destructive a moment as that and then came this other moment that is the failure to achieve the union treaty in one thousand nine hundred one yeltsin's move after the coup and then the ultimate conspiracy the kind of coup that yeltsin and others carried out to destroy the soviet union as a state mark what do you think about that i mean the the loss of legitimacy because . yeah i was going to say i don't agree with ron on that i think by by the time that nine hundred ninety i think events had already gained a momentum that they were pushing not only to the disintegration of the soviet union but also i think they were pushing towards the the breakup of the of the communist party so by nine hundred ninety it's true that the party had had legalized its had legalized opposition activity. of course it's still

a centrally monopolized power in moscow although in various republics other movements had essentially or were about to come to power. but it in fact i think that at that point in time the party was right on the edge of splitting into into pieces so there was this debate between the democratic platforms which represented the reformist wing of the party and then there was the right wing of the party the conservatives and gorbachev was left having to make a choice between the two now he could have chosen the democratic platform but if he chose the democratic platform i think you would have found that the right wing would have brought broken off of the party. and in fact the russian communist party in the creation of a russian communist party as an entity was not necessarily favored by gorbachev but it was something that the political right really wanted to have happen so it was it was kind of a break off so i think the party was factional izing by one thousand nine hundred

i'm going to jump in here we're going to a short break here and after that break we'll continue our discussion on the dissolution of the soviet communist party state party. discovery species. communicate with the want to. test yourself and become free. see what nature can give you. from los angeles to chicago to birmingham twenty trauma centers have closed since two thousand supermom is not enough inpatient beds not enough urgency department beds

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i can see. and you can think it's going to be. welcoming to cross talk of peter a little bit to mind you were talking about the end of the communist party of the so deep you. kate. and now we're joined by donald jensen in washington he's a resident fellow at the center for transatlantic relations let's let's break it out a little bit here for a lot of people in this country in russia the russian federation is that the end of the soviet communist part of the soviet union and the soviet union itself all in very close proximity is really about personal ambition about you know between yeltsin and between got a much off and it didn't matter now be provocative here it didn't matter the damage they both left behind it was a power grab and it was for prestige and and legacy essentially and they didn't

care if the promised party fell apart or the soviet union it's there it was their place in history and how they would rule in the future obviously mr yeltsin won. yes very much i thought couple points i agree peter that i was it was a power grab between those two leaders but i think it's more deep as well and two elements i don't think we may have touched upon sufficient that for one would be the role of nationalism not only russian nationalism which a lot of yeltsin managed to put himself and head of but also in the various ethnic republics i think it's no coincidence that the leaders of several sent to several central asian republics today were or have been former communist party bosses and i think the second point i would add would be the struggle over resources as a legitimacy i wrote in one of your guest mentions the erosion which i think happened steadily yes but accelerated early so when the eighties i think even

a lot of the elite lost lost confidence in the system and thus became a scramble for resources i think if you look at most of the early oligarchs and see some of those still around a lot of them got got their start in the komsomol and he's going to court of course here for example and i think that reflects the massive loss of faith in the system by even the elites it's interesting mark if i go back to you in princeton to me it was a system that lost belief in itself because i remember living in poland in the one nine hundred eighty s. and i could remember even commies people who were members officially members of the communist party used to joke with me and say there are more communists in berkeley than in poland took a system that lost belief in its own ideology. it was probably true to a vote for italy go ahead. and i think that's right. yeah there was a gradual erosion you know i think it's easy to dismiss communism now and say well no one believed by the time you know glasnost emerged or about the time that's

developed for its demise but i think there were some people who did believe in it and believe in the ideology of the state the ideology of the state as we were talking about before was not the ideology of work or revolution it was the idea. ology of actually soviet nationalism in some ways. but i think that in the beginning in the in the late seventy's and early eighty's there was this decline in our or i should say state nation in in living standards that occurred. and just a sense that society was not moving forward social problems were multiplying. the system was not dealing with them that was the issue so the system was it was being ruled by people who were in their late seventy's and eighty's i did a ministry and minister of the. minister and the minister of medium machine building which i think ran the. the atomic industry was something

like eighty six at one point in time which you know you can understand why turn noble happened so so there was this huge gap this huge gap between they who was this old generation of people who didn't seem to care much for society and the rest of society us and. you know the us was imagined differently once crassness emerged but. that gap was definitely real and really was i think the major reason why costless to merge ok ronald i mean i get a maybe i could just rephrase what we just heard here the social contract that the soviet communist party. claim to provide to society was. collapsed because i mean you'd be you'll still see people in the they're not i wouldn't say they were mainstream here but they the state should be responsible for certain things here and i've always found very interesting is that even the middle class of russia today they still like those free those free to use it the communist regime would give you like electricity water things that in the west people pay enormous

amounts of money for but that's another topic here but the social contract collapsed. well there's probably all or lives like ronald that i want to run on her head after after after gorbachev comes to power then then before the system was relatively stable and there's a very good book about how everything seemed to be permanent until after they change and then people read back that it had to happen you know in the west the major interpretation of the fall of the soviet union both the system and the state is that it was inevitable it was in the genetic code of the revolution the system was failing there were serious problems there was no mass uprising there was no determined from the bottom the man for change until gorbachev actually started this whole thing so my own view is that it was certainly not inevitable that it was largely a contingent event that it was something that happened because the reform was very

radical was badly carried out and gorbachev ultimately was unwilling to use the power of the state including the army and the police to preserve a state i would put it this way gorbachev was no abraham lincoln leaving was ready to use power to save the united states when that there i mean gorbachev kept hesitating and allowing something to go forward if you go back to the very beginning you know with these nationalist revolts you go back to the nagorno-karabakh in one nine hundred eighty eight he didn't use force and he was very hesitant about employing the power he had eventually as mark shows in his own book a cascade of ethnic mobilizations took place but a certain point then it was likely there's a so we fall apart things had to be done early and it couldn't be done later donald if i go back to you i think this point about the never inevitability because i plays into the cold war dynamic because again all of us were brought up as if this is to me is the logical it's unnatural it will ultimately collapse which is part of

the the narrative of western democratic capitalism or whatever the term we want to use today so that plays into that dynamic here but what about the inevitability and earlier mark mentioned in the program which is very provocative point a noncommunist soviet union could have that survived. minus the politics i think i miss the baltic republics i think that i think that's very very possible i've got a problem the extent to which there is a legitimate in factor and that allows the system to continue and i don't think they're necessarily was i think it's that absence that plays in russian politics today so i you know i think it could have survived it probably could have survived for maybe a generation but i do think it would ultimately break up in one form or another i would take issue with two things are going to discussion however one is that i don't like to use and i will be provocative peter the term collapse of the soviet union because i think there are many cock knew it is far less material and some can't many continuity and second i think we have to go back to that critical year

of one nine hundred ninety one we're going to talk in fact was not circling around always in a democratic direction but in fact either allowed or could not start some of the forces of reaction from moving and i think what he lost was his his place in the middle of the political spectrum not that he became i think as one of your guests kind of a radical social democrat i don't think he was he maybe now but i don't think he was that ok mark you know if you can we get down to personalities here and i brought up the old city and got a bunch of i mean how much is it you know i know i know which of his very popular still in the west but i mean here in russia he explained for the collapse of the soviet union i mean was it lack of political foresight. the lack of political will because again you could look at it you could be ideological but i suppose if he really didn't know what he wanted to change and you know how to do it and you know and that's what the result was because he really never really had a road map because everyone here on this program is a very kind of vacillated back and forth and once you do that you know you will

eventually run out of options you know you look if you look at the public opinion polling at the time inside the soviet union you find that gorbachev actually was the most popular politician in the soviet union until about april or may one nine hundred ninety which is when he. his popularity switches and actually yeltsin becomes more popular then at least within russia. moscow particular yeltsin becomes more popular than gorbachev so what was happening then at the time well events were spending out of control at that time this was after the collapse of eastern europe of course this was when elections were beginning to happen in in the republics and non non communist movements were coming to power nationalist movements secession was on the agenda in multiple republics and violence had already occurred where so the problem that gorbachev you know faced and why he was kind of swept away was

that he acted too late and he was always too late had he i think has run suggested earlier had he acted earlier to sort of contain some of the excesses of of nationalists and to to put some limits on glasnost somehow to to prevent. you know the ways in which things ultimately escape control then perhaps he might have been able to ride this thing but as it as it you know it it developed it ultimately just became a tsunami that he couldn't control what you think about that ronald i mean i exaggerate yeah. yeah well you see i agree with mark there is we can find in retrospect even at the time dozens of causes why the system and why the soviet union state would collapse and other words this was all over determined we say in the literature but over determination is not pre-determination it was not inevitable if gorbachev had acted more consistently if he had used the power he had

if he had maybe sequence the reforms not to five different revolutions at once and the cold war marketwise the economy democratic the democrats rise the state loosen up the federation all at once this was almost impossible for for a single state to survive in that way. and gorbachev of course is an incredibly admirable figure i mean he probably introduced more freedom in the world than any figure certainly in the twentieth century he reversed many of the trends that lead toward more authoritarian states towards entry to the market democratic states towards imperialism he was an anti imperialist to particularly eastern europe and yet ultimately he's a failure ultimately the one thing a state leader has to do is preserve his own state and this he failed to do amazing irony of history thank you very much and i move on out of time but he takes my guess it in an arbor princeton and in washington thanks to our viewers for watching

us here to see you next time and remember cross-country.