In 1989-91, the anti-Communist opposition rose as steeply as the CPSU declined. Many reform-minded CPSU leaders benignly entertained the idea of a multiparty system. The anti-Communists, however, still masked their pro-capitalist ambitions.520 As they contemplated new political arrangements, Communist leaders attached astonishingly little importance to the question of state power, whether or not a new movement or party accepted the class character of the state and the Communist Party’s leading role.
The “democrat” opposition that arose after 1985 had forerunners in the Khrushchev “Thaw” years, 1953 to 1964. Khrushchev had tolerated liberal intellectuals. After 1964, when Brezhnev became less tolerant, part of the intelligentsia created a dissident movement. The dissidents were the heirs of the Bukharin-Khrushchev tradition. The dissidents influenced Gorbachev. They also supplied key elements of the “democrat” program. As early as May 1970, foreshadowing the slogans and program of perestroika, an extraordinary open letter to Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders was signed by three prominent dissidents, physicists Andrei Sakharov and Valery Turchin, and writer Roy Medvedev. The letter put forward theses about the current state of the Soviet Union and advanced fifteen demands. The authors claimed to speak for the intelligentsia and “advanced section of the working class.” The USSR’s problems, it said, stemmed not from socialism, but from “the anti-democratic traditions and norms of public life established in the Stalin era.” The main demand of the authors was “democratization,” a word repeated many times. The letter also introduced the word “stagnation,” a chief concept of the perestroika era. The authors also demanded the restoration of the rights of nationalities deported by Stalin, progress toward a more independent judiciary, public opinion research, wider dissemination of social science research, multi-candidate elections, industrial autonomy, more funds for primary and secondary education, amnesty for political prisoners, improvements in cadre and management training, and abolition of information on nationality in an individual’s documents. The program wished to perfect socialism, but there was no criticism of the capitalist West.521
The self-styled “democrat” opposition went through many stages before it emerged in 1988-89 as legal, anti-socialist parties bidding for elective office and even state power.522 First, in 1987 the so-called “informals” (informal organizations) emerged, some as humble as discussion clubs, neighborhood groups, and study circles. Gorbachev blessed the informals and invoked the ideas of Italian Communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci about the importance of “civil society,” a favorite ideological construct of social democrats. Gorbachev and Yakovlev wished to foster non-Party social movements to support their policies and to bypass the “conservative bureaucracy” of the CPSU. The informals grew quickly, and they quickly changed in character. In non-Russian republics they became “national fronts” promoting separatism and in Russia “popular fronts” advocating the “democrat” line. Until mid-1988, a “democrat” meant a Gorbachev supporter against Ligachev. After mid-1988, a section of the intelligentsia criticized Gorbachev as not fully a “democrat.” In May 1988 in Moscow, a dissident from the 1960s and 1970s formed the Democratic Union, the first anti-CPSU political party.
In May-June 1989, the Congress of People’s Deputies gave a huge boost to the “democrats.”523 Soviet TV displayed Moscow intellectuals arguing for “democracy” in opposition to Gorbachev. In July 1989, some deputies formed the Interregional Group, (led by Andrei Sakharov and by Boris Yeltsin, still a CPSU member). This “democrat” parliamentary faction held 380 of the 2250 members of the Congress of People’s Deputies. It called for a “transition from totalitarianism to democracy,” and for “radical decentralization of state property,” and “economic independence of republics and regions.” This meant that an anti-Communist parliamentary opposition led by major popular figures was openly at work in Gorbachev’s new state institutions.
In January 1990, Democratic Platform formed in the CPSU with delegates representing 55,000 Communists. It favored transforming the CPSU into a social democratic party at the upcoming Twenty-eighth Party Congress. Also in January 1990, Democratic Russia, a more ambitious project, formed. It favored “the ideas of Andrei Sakharov,” who had died in December 1989. The “democrat” camp promptly canonized Sakharov as the patron saint of the “democrat” cause. Democratic Russia evolved out of the Interregional Group and had a Russian nationalist complexion. It called upon the Congress to enact a new RSFSR constitution, revoke Article Six of the Soviet Constitution, return churches to believers, place the KGB under parliamentary control, proclaim the Russian republic’s sovereignty, and create a regulated market economy. Democratic Russia’s demands went much further than any existing group toward open advocacy of capitalist restoration and USSR breakup. Democratic Russia would become the main base of Boris Yeltsin.
In March 1990 in the Russian Federation elections, the “democrats” won political control of Moscow and Leningrad by a large majority, a stunning result. By May 1990 the “democrats” claimed 25 percent of Russian Federation Congress. As in 1917, dual power existed in Russia, this time the “democrats” and the CPSU.
The “democrat” opposition found its Russian leader in Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin’s Party career had taken off in 1985 when he was brought to Moscow, ironically, on Ligachev’s recommendation. An engineer by training, Yeltsin had been a construction manager in the Urals. He was ambitious, pragmatic, and alcoholic. At the Twenty-seventh CPSU Congress in 1986, Gorbachev brought him onto the Politburo as a candidate member.524 Though a CPSU official, Yeltsin developed into a popular and erratic critic of the CPSU. At the Twenty-seventh Congress, Yeltsin battled with Ligachev over Party privileges. In 1987, Yeltsin’s criticism of Gorbachev led to his ouster from the Politburo and dismissal as Moscow Party first secretary. Returning to his native Sverdlovsk, Yeltsin wandered in the political wilderness from late 1987 to early 1989. Gorbachev’s creation of new state institutions made a comeback possible. In March 1989, Sverdlovsk elected Yeltsin to the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies. In March 1990, Russians elected Yeltsin to the RSFSR Congress of People’s Deputies, and in May 1990 the Russian Supreme Soviet elected Yeltsin chair. In July 1990, Yeltsin left the CPSU at the Twenty-eighth Congress. In June 1991, he was elected president of the RSFSR, a new position created in April 1991 by a deal with Gorbachev in which Yeltsin pledged to support Gorbachev’s Union Treaty.525 With 57 percent of the vote, Yeltsin defeated five rivals and thereafter held a proven electoral mandate that Gorbachev lacked, an important advantage in the battle for supremacy. Sometime in 1989, Yeltsin’s new trajectory had become clear. He planned to “play the Russia card” to achieve supreme power and capitalist restoration.
Why did Yeltsin succeed at becoming the leader of the counterrevolution? In the July 1989 miners’ strike, Yeltsin forged an alliance with the most powerful and angry contingent of the working class. In 1989-90, he won support among intellectuals angry at Gorbachev’s caution. He seized the banner of “radical” (overtly pro-capitalist) perestroika. He grew popular among non-Russian republican separatists whom he accommodated. He cultivated religious believers. He championed Russian sovereignty and the symbols of Russian nationalism. Above all, he favored a market economy far more decisively than Gorbachev and thereby won over the pro-capitalist elements in the proliferating second economy. Also important was the blossoming support Yeltsin won from Western business, Radio Liberty and other Western radio voices.