Civil-Military Relations in the Soviet and Yugoslav Successor States by Constantine P. Danopoulos

Author:Constantine P. Danopoulos [Danopoulos, Constantine P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429723469
Google: 4XekDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-03-07T07:22:45+00:00

The August 1991 Putsch and the Defense of Attainable Sovereignty

By spring 1991, the Soviet state had reached the point where it could no longer make and enforce authoritative decisions in the republics. Gorbachev was negotiating a new Union Treaty, an end to what he called the unitary state. It was to be a reversal of the old Union State’s power relationships. Instead of the center dictating to the republics, the republics would set the agenda and their representatives would define Union policy collegially. Boris Yeltsin took the lead in this matter and Nursultan Nazarbayev joined him. Ukraine’s Leonid Kravchuk cooperated with Yeltsin and Nazarbayev against the Union state; but in response to growing sentiment for national independence in Ukraine, Kravchuk began to zig-zag toward secession. Gorbachev, Nazarbayev, and Yeltsin insisted that the post-Soviet republics should preserve a common market and a common defense system. For this reason, Yeltsin and Nazarbayev qualified their definitions of independence. Nazarbayev posed the rhetorical question: “Is absolute state independence possible when we are speaking about indivisible economic space and the necessity of preserving a unified army as the foundation for our common defense?”20

To prevent Gorbachev from implementing the plan to redistribute power from the Union to the republics, Gorbachev’s cabinet placed him under house arrest and declared a state of emergency that lasted from August 18 to 21, 1991. The Union’s Ministers of Defense, Security, Internal Affairs, Vice-President and Prime Minister formed the State of Emergency junta’s core along with the Union-level coordinator of defense industrial affairs. However, the entire putsch failed when the Soviet military high command withdrew its support on the morning of August 21, 1991. The military was able to withdraw gracefully because Boris Yeltsin pledged to preserve the unity of the Soviet armed forces to the extent possible and granted limited immunity to the vast majority of officers who supported the putsch. Instead of being prosecuted, some 80% of the Soviet high command was retired on generous pensions. There would be no Soviet-style witch-hunts, the new Union Minister of Defense, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov promised.21

On September 2, 1991, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan — ten of the fifteen republics of the USSR — signed a statement endorsing the preservation of unified armed forces and collective security.22 However, this did not mean that the failed putsch had not taught the respective presidents a major lesson. Without control over some armed forces, they were easy targets for coups. Their commitment to preserve the Soviet main forces, particularly the strategic forces, did not mean that they would not create presidential guards and republican national guards. For example, on September 4, 1991, Ukraine’s President Kravchuk appointed Soviet Major General of Aviation Konstantin Morozov to serve as Ukraine’s Minister of Defense and stated that Ukraine would immediately create a Ukrainian national guard to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty. During the coup, one of the putsch leaders, General Varennikov, flew to Kiev, just after completing Gorbachev’s arrest, to tell Kravchuk to line up behind the State of Emergency.

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