한국   대만   중국   일본 
/Users/acoyne/Desktop/Essays/Essays/Newspapers/Globe 91-96/Soviet coup analysis (1991).rtfd/TXT.rtf
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20051125113124/http://www.andrewcoyne.com:80/Essays/Newspapers/Globe%2091-96/Soviet%20coup%20analysis%20(1991).rtfd/TXT.html
912340022 THU AUG.22,1991 PAGE: A1 WORDS: 1068

** Getting to the roots of a deserved failure **
** ANALYSIS/In Moscow, coup instigators committed **
** elementary blunders in timing, planning and execution **

BY ANDREW COYNE
The Globe and Mail
THE men behind the collapsed Soviet putsch did not lack for models of
successful coups: Poland 1981, Czechoslovakia, 1968, all the way back to
the original Bolshevik takeover in 1917.
The formula - a mix of speed, terror, secrecy and blind nerve - is
well-known. The coup leaders commanded all the necessary apparatus: the
Red Army, the KGB secret police and the interior ministry's MVD
paramilitary. The public was largely contemptuous of the leader they
sought to replace. Yet they failed, and failed miserably. Why?
The temptation is to say that the Soviet Union of today is
"uncoupable." The dispersal of power from the centre to the republics, and
the breakdown of the state monopoly on communications, left several
independent power bases outside the Kremlin chain of command to be
annulled.
But military analysts insist that the coup, properly run, could have
succeeded.
Contrary to the impression left by some news reports, it did not meet
massive resistance. In Moscow, the centre of the action, the crowds were
patchy: 150,000 at the peak, but barely 20,000 at most times - nothing
like the million or more that failed to stop the tanks in Tiananmen.
Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin's general strike call was
largely a bust, drawing only the coal miners off the job. While some
elements of the military defected or refused to follow orders, they
remained a fraction of the might at the junta's disposal.
Yet the resistance was clearly enough to make the junta's members lose
their nerve. A coup's victory must be total, or it is nothing.
Ideally, it should all be over in four to six hours. Through the first
36 hours, the conspirators dithered. They were simply not ruthless enough
to wipe out resistance in the beginning. That lack of bloodlust in turn
derived from the uncertainty of the project: when victory is in sight, it
is easier to steel oneself to one last act of barbarism. Both appeared to
stem from a lack of planning.
The well-made coup needs time to prepare: conspirators must be sounded
out, obliquely at first, then in more concrete terms. There must be
agreement on goals, on tactics, on assignments.
It is clear that the conspirators were denied their choice of timing.
The coup probably was intended for last December, when the hard-liners
were in the ascendant. The alarm bells set off by the resignation of
Eduard Shevardnadze as foreign minister probably put that on hold. What
might have been a leisurely schedule of summer plotting was then
frustrated by the need to move before the signing of the new union treaty,
which was scheduled for Tuesday.
Without the time to prepare, the coup gave every sign of being a rush
job. In particular, it lacked three necessary ingredients:
¥ Assured support from the military. The leadership's movements in the
first stages of the coup, its three-hour delay in calling up the army,
suggest a sort of squeeze play was at work. The MVD would take up
position, at which point a perhaps reluctant defence minister Dmitri Yazov
would be presented with a fait accompli. This does not suggest cohesion.
Moreover, the conspirators appear to have colossally misread the mood,
not only of the country, but of the military. The Red Army was clearly
divided in its loyalties: not only on ethnic lines, but between old-guard
generals and reformist junior officers. At least 40 per cent of Russian
troops are thought to have voted for Mr. Yeltsin in the federation's
presidential elections. And after the Tbilisi massacre in Georgia in
April, 1989, the army made it clear it did not have the stomach for making
war on its own people.
It should not have been surprising, therefore, to see tanks from the
Tamanskaya Guards Division and troops from the elite 106th Airborne
Division, both stationed near Moscow, crossing over to Mr. Yeltsin's side.
What was surprising was to see the defection of some units of the Black
Berets - the OMON elite service used to crush dissent earlier in the
Baltic states - and even members of the Russian KGB. If the coup plotters
could not hold these, they could not hold anything.
¥ Control of transportation, telecommunications and electric power grids.
All continued to function more or less normally. Flights continued in and
out of Moscow airport. Telephone service was so good that Mr. Yeltsin
could speak freely not only to sympathizers around the country, but to
foreign leaders. The resistance forces holed up in the Russian parliament
building wound up having to shut off their own power (to black out windows
against sniper fire), rather than wait for the KGB. And foreign press,
television and radio correspondents were allowed to report throughout,
providing a vital lifeline to world opinion.
¥ Elimination of resistance leaders. There was only one man who could rally
the reformers: Mr. Yeltsin. The coup instigators should have arrested him,
at the very least. It would probably have been worth the risk in killing
both him and Mikhail Gorbachev, not only to frighten the public, but to
remove any living symbols of resistance. Why they did not capture Mr.
Yeltsin is the biggest mystery. They may have thought it unimportant,
believing the public would rally to their cause. They may not have dared,
given his popularity. Or they may have tried, and missed him.
There were other errors. The leadership announced a six-month state of
emergency on seizing power. Wrong: the more temporary military rule seems,
three weeks at the outside, the more resigned popular opinion will be in
the early going. In this case, the junta immediately alerted the public to
its intent. Worse still were its fumbling attempts to pretend that the
coup was not really a coup, symbolized by the image of Soviet journalists
aggressively questioning the leadership at a post-coup press conference.
Mr. Gorbachev tried to institute reform while preserving the
architecture of communism; the coup leaders tried to institute reaction
while preserving the architecture of reform. So we were faced with the
almost quaint claim that Mr. Gorbachev was ill, allowing Gennady Yanayev
to be propped up as his replacement, "under article 127.7 of the USSR
constitution."
Successful coups get around to such legal fiction when writing up the
official story for schoolchildren. This time the schoolchildren will get
the real story.