A systemic transformation occurred in the Soviet Union between 1988 and I990. By March I990 at the latest it was no longer meaningful to describe the Soviet state as Communist. The two most fundamental political characteristics of a Communist system were the monopoly of power of the Communist Party and 'democratic centralism' (meaning hierarchical subordination, strict discipline and absence of open debate, with the centralism a reality and 'democratic' a misnomer). Both of these features had disappeared. The process had begun with Gorbachev's abolition of most of the economic departments of the Central Committee and of lower party economic organs in the autumn of 1988. Hitherto, ministerial and other state economic institutions had been under close party supervision. Now they acquired a new autonomy. Competitive elections, even when they were not multi-party elections, meant the end of democratic centralism. There was much intra-party debate, some of it conducted in the mass media, from 1986 onwards, and the elections for the new Soviet legislature in 1989 pitted one CPSU member against another, frequently displaying radically different political outlooks and advocating widely divergent policies. Their fate was decided by the electorate, among whom only 10 per cent of adults were members of the CPSU. Thus the Communist Party's monopoly of power was fast disappearing de facto in 1989 before it was removed de jure from the Soviet Constitution at a session of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR in March 1990.[23]
The creation of the Soviet presidency, while it did little to help Gorbachev at a time when his popularity was slipping and Yeltsin was emerging as a serious challenger to his authority, signalled the end of party hegemony. The Politburo had from early in the Soviet period been the ruling body of the country as well as of the party. From March 1990 onwards a state institution, the presidency, was more powerful than the highest party organs, although Gorbachev held on to his office of General Secretary to ensure that it did not fall into the hands of a conservative Communist who might attempt to reverse the process under way. A Presidential Council was created which was more authoritative than the Politburo, although it suffered from the absence of institutional underpinnings, a chain of command analogous to that which had prevailed in the CPSU.
At the same time as the new Soviet presidency and the Presidential Council were created in March 1990, so was a body known as the Federation Council. It was composed of the presidents or the chairmen of the supreme soviets of the union republics. As such, it was created from below - from the republics. Neither Gorbachev, as president of the Soviet Union, nor the Communist Party apparatus was able to determine who sat on the Federation Council. As the Presidential Council was chosen by Gorbachev, listening to advice but with full responsibility for the ultimate choice, it is evident that the loser of the power of appointment in both cases was the central CPSU apparatus. Moreover, the introduction of competitive elections in the republics as well as at the Centre meant that politicians had to take more account of public opinion than ever before. Whereas previously nothing was more important for a political leader in Estonia or Ukraine than the opinion held of him in the Central Committee building in Moscow, now the views of Estonians and Ukrainians assumed greater significance.
The president himself, Gorbachev, was the chief arbiter of executive decision-making - even more so than in the days when his power rested entirely on the General Secretaryship, for when party organs reigned supreme, he still had to take some account of opinion within the Politburo. However, the constraints from outside the federal executive were far greater in 1990-1 than at any time since the consolidation of the Soviet regime in the 1920s. These came partly from republican institutions and, for Gorbachev, the challenges to his authority from Yeltsin in 1990-1 were of especial significance. There was also, however, a new politics at street level. The second half of the 1980s saw the development of new and independent organised groups. After the Nineteenth Party Conference and the decision to move to contested elections, it was clear that the dangers of engaging in such activity - which hitherto had been very real - were becoming a thing of the past. Two authors who have studied Russian independent groups in contrasting ways agree at least that '1989 stands out as the crucial takeoff phase for autonomous political activity in Russia'.[24]Put another way: 'Elections of the People's Deputies of the USSR in 1989 and to the Russian Federation federal and local soviets in 1990 completely changed the character of Russian independent political groups. Before this, despite various impressive names, the "democratic" movement actually consisted of many small clubs.'[25] Some of the new groups turned into mass movements, most notably Democratic Russia, a loosely organised body which held its founding congress in October 1990 and played a significant part in mobilising support for Boris Yeltsin in the Russian presidential election the following summer.
By the time the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held its Twenty- Eighth (and last) Congress in the summer of 1990 it was no longer playing a decisive role in the political process, at least at the central level. A document adopted by the congress, 'Towards a Humane, Democratic Socialism', which would have been a sensation at the previous party congress in 1986, no longer made a significant impact. Work began on a new party programme and a draft of it was presented to a Central Committee plenum in the summer of 1991. It fully reflected Gorbachev's own intellectual journey in a little over six years from Communist reformer to democratic socialist of a type familiar in Western Europe (although not in Russia or the United States). However, among those who duly voted for what was essentially a Social Democratic platform, it appears that a majority had no intention of implementing it. Some of those present had already turned their minds to the issue of how to remove Gorbachev from office.
The failure of economic reform
The most immediate stimulus to change in the Soviet Union at the beginning ofthe Gorbachev era was the long-term decline in the rate of economic growth and the fact that the Soviet economy was not only lagging behind the most advanced Western countries but also was being overtaken by some of the newly industrialising countries in Asia. There was, however, no agreement on what should be done to remedy matters. The most radical reformers in the mid-1980s thought not in terms of a fully-fledged market economy but simply of making significant concessions to market forces along the lines of the Hungarian economic reform, launched in 1968. Others believed that what was needed was more discipline of the kind which Andropov had begun to impose. An influential group, which included the chairman of the Council of Ministers, Ryzhkov, was from early in the Gorbachev era in favour of raising prices but very cautious about leaving prices entirely to market forces. By the end of the 1980s large numbers of specialists had lost all faith in state planning of the economy and, instead of looking for a combination of plan and market, were ready for a more radical shift to the market. The economist Nikolai Petrakov, soon after he became Gorbachev's aide on economic matters at the beginning of 1990, told Ryzhkov that the State Committee on Prices should be abolished, since it made no sense for the state to be fixing prices. Ryzhkov agreed in principle but said the phasing-out of that State Committee should occur in a few years' time. Petrakov responded: 'Nikolai Ivanovich, you talk about the market as we used to talk about communism - it's always sometime later.'[26]
23
On the emergence of new legislative and executive institutions and the switch from party to state power, see Brown,
24
M. Steven Fish,
25
Alexander Lukin,