Emerging crisis
Just over ten years ago the unthinkable happened. The Soviet Union - the world's first communist state - was consigned to the pages of history. Just a few months before, in August 1991, there had been an attempted coup and the world held its breath as tanks rolled onto the streets of Moscow. President Gorbachev was held a virtual prisoner by his own government. It seemed that the bad old days were back, with communist hard-liners in charge. So what drove Gorbachev's government to rebel against him, provoking a chain reaction of events which brought about the disintegration of one of the great forces of the 20th century?
On the morning of 3 August 1991, President Gorbachev held his last Cabinet meeting before he went on holiday to his luxury villa in the Crimea. US President George Bush had just departed after another superpower summit and a new treaty with all the Soviet Union republics was in its last stages of negotiation. In the West, Gorbachev was a legendary figure, an icon of our times, who had reshaped the world order and who had ended the Cold War. Under Gorbachev the threat of nuclear war had diminished, totalitarian control had been abandoned, a free press had been established together with elections and major economic reforms. He had won the Nobel Peace Prize and was viewed as one of the great leaders of modern times.
'In the West, Gorbachev was a legendary figure, an icon of our times...'
But inside the Soviet Union, the picture was very different. It was in crisis. Soviet troops had withdrawn from Afghanistan, from the Warsaw Pact, the Berlin Wall had fallen and perestroika had not led to communism's reform but to its rejection across Eastern Europe. The economy was in a nosedive, there were food shortages, rising crime and a wave of populist nationalism swept the entire country. Boris Yeltsin had been elected as President of the Russian Republic and the challenge he provided to the old order was clear. He wanted Russia to be independent from the Soviet Union. Separatism now posed the most immediate threat. In fact the fate of the Soviet Union was in the balance.
Published: 2001-10-12
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