support among the. gang violence is now one of the top priorities for britain's leaders say the root causes of the first since i'm going to use a part of the story teams into. next week take a look at the august coup event that shaped russian history twenty years ago people of l. and his guests. the soviet union had any chance of survival after such a blow. and you can. start. following 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 coos aftermath the communist party was banned to be followed by the end of the u.s.s.r. could history of played out different. place and. started. to cross talk the events of august one thousand nine hundred 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 good old we go to nikolai petro he is 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.

last week the president this is the same. on august nineteenth one thousand nine hundred one instead of tuning into 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 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 gorbachev had already been removed and detained in his villa in the crimea with 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 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 who by that time had begun to save or change as often happens in russia's history when the when these reforms start accumulating from the top. there's a sense of disenchantment in society there's obviously the sense there's no way things are going to go back to the way they used to be it was to do in order to some control of the russian parliament building the committee order tanks to roll into moscow boris yeltsin then considered a political maverick and reformist led russian parliamentarians in opposition to the coup and that's what it clearly illegal 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 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. was freed in return to moscow but the soviet union would never be to see all of the. state committed to 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 they didn't have 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 bad 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 who quickly moved to ban the party and a few months later the soviet union ceased to exist much attorney for cross are to . go to you first.

go international later twenty years ago there was this coup what does it mean now twenty years after the fact which is a brand new russia recognizable 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 teach it was a singular moment because it revealed in the. precise moment. in a beautifully tied up way. how in impotent the communist party had the calm and of course just the significantly it launched the political fortunes of boris

yeltsin. ok jeffrey i mean would you agree with that i mean one of the interesting things is is that you know i think all of us when we study in the soviet union is that the communist party being all power for very very powerful security forces a very powerful army the plotters had all 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 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 the order to do so was legal definitely legal whereas now we had two powers confronting each other the soviet union in the person of the emergency committee and russia in the person of yeltsin with gorbachev 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 had 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 a very important part of the beginning was the garbage for a few is to be intimidated by the people who visited him they wanted him to give. 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 what was also crucially important was that yeltsin had the legitimacy of having been elected president of russia just a couple of months earlier if they'd wanted to cool a year earlier. had more chance of success what do 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 there was going down there was shortages 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 a six months later do you think it would've 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 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. perhaps under the leadership of the communist party i think. it's unlikely that that would have succeeded and even before the coup itself all these events the disintegration of the union accelerated 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 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 heals and tried to seize but didn't actually parlay into political and economic success that make all you have to go to jeff around this because i think

you bring up a point today i think is still very much argued and i'm 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 which take the communist party let's talk about the territorial integrity later could it was upon communist party reform bill to be able to lead. popular be legitimate in the eyes of the population a lecture it you know you do i don't know and actually create create a future a better future because they were at a dead end go ahead. no i don't think it was reformable and that's seems to be proved by the fact that god would charge who was a very constructive and intelligent reformer did his utmost to reform it and failed the club that 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 caused shortages even worse

shortages everywhere and the other of course was the nationality problem. intended 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 cuckoo 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 what you think about that are actually 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 were they a spent force. 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 its monopoly of power of the politburo by nine hundred ninety ninety one of us meeting only once a month not once a week and power had moved elsewhere. garbage often he went there because you know he was exercising power through the presidency and through his own entourage and were less ignoring the politburo what god would want you to do was to split the communist party and lead the social democratic component here tended to do that in the vendor ninety ninety one later nec shortly party congress but that never took place because there was no longer a party to split. but that i think was a possible reform the other thing i think could have happened was the creation of a different kind of union certainly without the baltic republics they 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 coup attempt stay with r.t. . and.

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with max keiser for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on r g. and you can. talk about your cross talk on peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing the events of august ninety nine you want. to. go to you i mean archie brown brought up a very interesting point before we went to the break about we got about 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 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 ok i mean got a bunch of by then was already out of step with the changes in society. i tend to tend to agree with that point of view that you just articulated. i think. if good bye to of 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 promulgated as 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 tricolor 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 can 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 the 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 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 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 is 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 guilt sin used 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 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 as the soviet union was. quickly going into dissolution it was about the ambitions of two men i'd like 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 was 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 the fact are 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 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 coup did hasten the transfer of power from gorbachev to yeltsin which was not what they who thought or said intended of course it greatly hastened the dissolution of the soviet union which was also the opposite of what they intended in a nickel i was writing i go ahead there were but it's really interesting is the only way you know what jeff had to say is that you know we have this communist party was the administrative apparatus of the state is well how can 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 parties the inheritor of a of another organization but for all practical purposes the leadership at the time desired in defacto to reconstitute the communist party of the soviet union and i

think that inheritance weighed heavily continues to sadly to way. too heavily on the political leadership of the communist party which prevents them from becoming from 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 that when you have a communist party of russia they still hear bring out lenin and they talk about marx and all that and it is it you know twenty years after the fact you do it's appeal to most russians young russians is. may i say yes but i don't think this exactly as analogy will if you're gonna you know in charge exactly and 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 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 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 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 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 dical r. that he didn't make the most of his opportunities in the nineteen nineties the

transfer of property and knock down prices to pre-selected buyers that helped to discredit the very idea of democracy when 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 of history 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 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 benefit of the non russian republic why 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 the union could have stayed together under any circumstances. well i think what drove the union apart was the very determination and radical nature of gorbachev reforms if he had not undertaken those reforms of soviet union would've 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 backbone which it had in the communist party of the soviet union it would have been a very unstable place so i think probably not in the long run archie what do you think about the nine communist soviet union could it 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 today than to the old soviet union to govern show went through several stages first of all turning a sugar 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 to what has happened because it was clearly in 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 in many cases was hardly in the interests of russia nicholai what do you think about that i mean and that's this is something that the russians implemented live and russians have lamented this for twenty years as they did so many russians were found and found themselves on an on the wrong side of a border and not only russians these sentiments are

sufficiently widespread in ukraine in kazakhstan they're loaded with. 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 sort of ambivalence continues. although now things have become so entrenched that it's hard to think of a clear 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 be a little less perhaps someday ukraine 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 and in thanks to our viewers for watching us here as you see you next time and remember across time. i.

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