As the second vital plank of his reform efforts Gorbachev launched glasnost. He believed that the opening up of the political system - essentially, democratizing it - was the only way to overcome inertia in the political and bureaucratic apparatus, which had a big interest in maintaining the status quo. In addition, he believed that the path to economic and social recovery required the inclusion of people in the political process. Glasnost also allowed the media more freedom of expression, and editorials complaining of depressed conditions and of the government's inability to correct them began to appear.
As the economic and political situation began to deteriorate, Gorbachev concentrated his energies on increasing his authority (that is to say, his ability to make decisions). He did not, however, develop the power to implement these decisions. He became a constitutional dictator - but only on paper. His policies were simply not put into practice. When he took office, Yegor Ligachev was made head of the party's Central Committee Secretariat, one of the two main centres of power (with the Politburo) in the Soviet Union. Ligachev subsequently became one of Gorbachev's opponents, making it difficult for Gorbachev to use the party apparatus to implement his views on perestroika.
By the summer of 1988, however, Gorbachev had become strong enough to emasculate the Central Committee Secretariat and take the party out of the day-to-day running of the economy. This responsibility was to pass to the local soviets. A new parliament, the Congress of People's Deputies, was convened in the spring of 1989, with Gorbachev presiding. The new body superseded the Supreme Soviet as the highest organ of state power. The Congress elected a new Supreme Soviet, and Gorbachev, who had opted for an executive presidency modelled on the US and French systems, became the Soviet president, with broad powers. This meant that all the republics, including first and foremost Russia, could have a similar type of presidency. Moreover, Gorbachev radically changed Soviet political life when he removed the constitutional article according to which the only legal political organization was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev understood that the defence burden, equivalent to perhaps 25 per cent of GNP, was crippling the country. This had led to cuts in expenditure in education, social services, and medical care, which hurt the regime's domestic legitimacy. Moreover, the huge defence expenditure that characterized the Cold War years was one of the causes of Soviet economic decline. Gorbachev therefore transformed Soviet foreign policy. He travelled abroad extensively and was brilliantly successful in convincing foreigners that the USSR was no longer an international threat. His changes in foreign policy led to the democratization of Eastern Europe. With the collapse of communist regimes in the Soviet-bloc countries of Eastern Europe in 198990 - and the subsequent rise to power of democratic governments in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, quickly followed by the unification of West and East Germany under NATO auspices - the Cold War came to a definitive end. On the other hand, Gorbachev's policies deprived the Soviet Union of ideological enemies, which in turn weakened the hold of Soviet ideology over the people.
By 1991 the Russian economy was facing total collapse. The government found it increasingly difficult to intervene decisively. The Law on State Enterprises reduced the power of the ministries, and simultaneously the number of officials was cut back sharply. Those who remained were overwhelmed by the workload. Since there was no effective control from Moscow, rising nationalism, ethnic strife, and regionalism fragmented the economy into dozens of mini-economies. Many republics sought independence, others sovereignty, and they all pursued policies of economic autarchy. Barter was widespread. Ukraine introduced coupons, and Moscow issued ration cards. As calls for faster political reforms and decentralization began to increase, the nationality problem became acute for Gorbachev. Limited force was used in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the Baltic states to quell nationality problems, though Gorbachev was never prepared to use systematic force in order to reestablish the centre's control. The re-emergence of Russian nationalism seriously weakened Gorbachev as the leader of the Soviet empire.
In 1985 Gorbachev had brought Boris Yeltsin to Moscow to run the city's party machine. Yeltsin came into conflict with the more conservative members of the Politburo and was eventually removed from the Moscow post in late 1987, He returned to public life as an elected deputy from Moscow to the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989. When the Congress elected the Supreme Soviet as a standing parliament, Yeltsin was not chosen, since the Congress had an overwhelmingly communist majority. However, a Siberian deputy stepped down in his favour. Yeltsin for the first time had a national platform. In parliament he pilloried Gorbachev, the Communist Party, corruption, and the slow pace of economic reform. Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian parliament despite the bitter opposition of Gorbachev.
In March 1991, when Gorbachev launched an all-union referendum about the future Soviet federation, Russia and several other republics added some supplementary questions. One of the Russian questions was whether the voters were in favour of a directly elected president. They were, and they chose Yeltsin. He used his new-found legitimacy to promote Russian sovereignty, to advocate and adopt radical economic reform, to demand Gorbachev's resignation, and to negotiate treaties with the Baltic republics, in which he acknowledged their right to independence. Soviet attempts to discourage Baltic independence had led to a bloody confrontation in Vilnius in January 1991, after which Yeltsin called upon Russian troops to disobey orders that would have had them shoot unarmed civilians.
Yeltsin's politics reflected the rise of Russian nationalism. In the later Gorbachev years, the opinion that the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and establishment of the USSR were mistakes that had prevented Russia from continuing along the historical path travelled by the countries of western Europe, and had made Russia more economically backward vis-а-vis the West, had gained greater acceptance. Russians began to view the Soviet system as one that worked for its own political and economic interests at Russia's expense. There were increasing complaints that the "Soviets" had destroyed the Russian environment and had impoverished Russia in order to maintain their empire and subsidize the poorer republics. Consequently, Yeltsin and his supporters demanded Russian control over Russia and its resources. In June 1990 the Russian republic had declared sovereignty, establishing the primacy of Russian law within the republic. This effectively undermined all attempts by Gorbachev to establish a Union of Sovereign Socialist Republics. Yeltsin appeared to be willing to go along with this vision but, in reality, wanted Russia to dominate the new union and replace the formal leading role of the Soviet Union. The Russian parliament passed radical reforms that would introduce a market economy, and Yeltsin also cut funding to a large number of Soviet agencies based on Russian soil. Clearly, Yeltsin wished to rid Russia of the encumbrance of the Soviet Union and to seek the disbandment of that body.
Collapse of the Soviet Union
An ill-conceived, ill-planned, and poorly executed coup attempt occurred on August 19-21, 1991. Its failure brought an end to the Communist Party and accelerated the movement to disband the Soviet Union. The coup was carried out by hardline Communist Party, KGB, and military officials attempting to avert a new liberalized union treaty and return to the old- line party values. The most significant anti-coup role was played by Yeltsin, who brilliantly grasped the opportunity to promote himself and Russia, He demanded the reinstatement of Gorbachev as USSR president, but, when Gorbachev returned from house arrest in the Crimea, Yeltsin set out to demonstrate that he was the stronger leader. In a decisive move, Yeltsin banned the Communist Party in Russia and seized all its property. From a strictly legal point of view, this should have been done by court order, not by presidential decree, but the result was that at a stroke Russia systematically laid claim to most Soviet property on its territory.