Shortly after his appointment as General Secretary of the CPSU in i985, Mikhail Gorbachev declared that Soviet socialism had definitively resolved the nationalities problem and that the population of the Soviet Union constituted 'a single family - the Soviet people'.[285] This confidence was shattered by mass conflicts between Russians and Yakuts in Yakutia in June 1986, and when in December of that year Gorbachev dismissed the corrupt first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, Dinmukhamed Kunaev, and replaced him by a Russian, Gennadii Kolbin, subsequent riots made the capital of Kazakhstan, Alma Ata, ungovernable for days and, according to unofficial estimates, cost the lives of up to 250 protestors and members of the security forces.[286] Subsequently Gorbachev adopted a far more cautious approach to the national question, accusing officials of lack of sensitivity, decentralising economic decision-making, reforming the Council of Nationalities at the apex of the Soviet system and repealing unpopular language laws. In November 1990 he published the draft of a new Union Treaty, which was to remodel Soviet federalism to the advantage ofthe republics. Having secured apopular mandate from most of the republics in a referendum held on 17 March 1991 to pursue a new Union Treaty, he was in the final stages of negotiation when a failed coup attempt in Moscow in August 1991 brought the Communist system crashing down around him.
By that time, however, events had proceeded at such a pace that it is unlikely that a new treaty or the continuation of Gorbachev's rule could have preserved the Soviet Union in anything like its old form. For many non-Russians, the introduction of market-style economic reforms led to particular hardship as it meant that relatively underdeveloped regions such as Central Asia and the Caucasus could no longer rely on unconditional central investment. Meanwhile, for more prosperous regions such as the three Baltic republics, economic decline only made clearer the potential benefits of independence from Moscow. Economic decline upset the delicate balance which had underpinned passive acceptance of Soviet central rule in the Brezhnev era. Gorbachev's ham- fisted handling of relations with republican elites, typified by the Kunaev case, further undermined the old system and subsequent insecurity led national leaders to begin to mobilise around national demands as a means of securing their own long-term positions.[287]
Gorbachev's policy of glasnost' encouraged the articulation of a broad set of demands. Environmentalist movements which sprang up in the republics increasingly couched their complaints in national terms. By the spring of 1988, single-issue campaigns were developing into mass national movements, nowhere more so than in the Baltic republics. Here intellectuals were initially given encouragement by Gorbachev and other reformers who saw the Baltics as an ideal testing ground for building up a market-based economy and devel- opingforeign trade, but found the road to reform blockedby conservative political leaders. For the population, glasnost' provided the opportunity to revive memories of independence and the brutality of Sovietisation, to celebrate their resilient national culture and identity and to call for an increased share in the output of their own economies. The first Popular Front was established in Estonia in April 1988, followed in May and October by Latvia and Lithuania respectively. Membership of the popular fronts was open to anyone with a grievance, but was mostly restricted to members of the relevant nationality. The appointment of new reform-minded leaders in all three republics in the autumn led to a period of co-operation between government and popular fronts during which declarations of sovereignty, new language laws and the readoption of separate flags and national anthems emphasised the determination to establish and maintain a separate identity for each nationality. But if the republican leaders, and even Gorbachev, had hoped to co-opt the growing national movements in this way, their actions only served to encourage mass action and an escalation of demands to the point where nothing short of outright independence would satisfy a large section of the population. Huge protest demonstrations became a regular occurrence, culminating on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in August 1989 when over a million Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians joined hands in a human chain stretching across all three republics. By the end of the year the pressure was so great that the Supreme Soviet in each republic had declared their 1940 incorporation into the Soviet Union illegal, providing a strong formal basis for any declaration of independence. This demand was now adopted by all three popular fronts, no doubt encouraged by the ease with which Communism and obedience to Moscow had collapsed across Eastern Europe in 1989. Free elections in 1989 and 1990 resulted in victories for the Popular Fronts, and independence was declared in Lithuania on 11 March 1990, Estonia on 30 March and Latvia on 4 May.[288]
Not far behind the Baltic republics in raising the demand for secession was Georgia, where nineteen demonstrators were killed by the Red Army at an independence rally in April 1989. Elsewhere, economic collapse and the perception that the centre was losing its grip led sections of the population not to demand independence, but to attack other ethnic minorities. Longstanding disputes over territory, living space, access to jobs and resources and the constitutional status of minority territories came to the fore. The most serious and protracted case of ethnic conflict broke out between Armenians and Azeris over the status of the largely Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh in late 1987 and spread to large cities like Sumgait and Baku by March 1988. While genuine grievances and irreconcilable claims lay at the root of the conflicts, the population was goaded on by political leaders in both the Armenian and Azerbaijani republics seeking a populist base for their own positions, culminating in all-out war between the two following independence.[289] Serious conflicts also emerged between Georgia and her Abkhaz and Ossetian minorities in 1989, between Ossetians and Ingush in the
North Caucasus in 1992 (a result of the fall-out from the earlier deportations of Ingush) and between Kirgiz and Uzbeks in the Osh region of Kirgizia in 1990.58
The final nail in the coffin ofthe Soviet Union came from the largest republic - the RSFSR (later renamed the Russian Federation). On his election as chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet in March 1990, Boris Yeltsin sought to use the republic as a power base in his personal struggle with Gorbachev. He quickly assured the Baltic republics that he would not stand in the way oftheir secession, and followed their lead in declaring sovereignty in the summer of 1990. Sensing the power of the national movements in his struggle with Gorbachev, Yeltsin encouraged this process by calling on the autonomous republics to 'take whatever helping of power that you can gobble up by yourselves'.59 The RSFSR therefore became a major driving force in the break-up of the USSR.
286
Martha Brill Olcott, 'Kazakhstan: Pushing for Eurasia', in Bremmer and Taras,
287
Valery Tishkov,
288
Graham Smith, 'The Resurgence of Nationalism', in Smith,
289
Audrey L. Altsadt,