The Week

IT IS a cliché of history that revolutions are followed by reactions. In the August Revolution, the reaction came first. Communist hard-liners, dismayed by the course of events, had already attempted to derail reform with a crackdown in Lithuania last winter. But they had not reckoned with the force of popular resistance. Then, in the spring, a push to unseat Boris Yeltsin brought vast demonstrations and Gorbachev scurrying back toward the reformers. The fruit of their collaboration was a Union treaty redefining the relationships of the Republics and the center. In all the years of perestroika, this would have been the first serious institutional reform, spelling the end of any chance of a return to Communist orthodoxy. The empire struck back for one last time. The effect was to accelerate the tempo of reform immensely—and to put the reformers at the forefront of the process, instead of acting as uneasy junior partners to Gorbachev.

It seems inevitable in retrospect that the putsch would fail. The grey suits and grey faces of the putschmeisters gave off an aura of defeat even as they held their press conference. The technological resources of dissidents and democrats proved too numerous for the hard-liners to squelch. Telephones, faxes, and satellite uplinks kept the whole world watching and the freedom-fighters in touch with one another. (One cell of putsch resisters was working the phones from within the Kremlin itself, down the hall from Gennady Yanayev’s office.) Too many people had seen too much, said too much, and done too much to be willing to go back to an Ice Age of totalitarianism.

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IT IS a cliché of history that revolutions are followed by reactions. In the August Revolution, the reaction came first. Communist hard-liners, dismayed by the course of events, had already attempted to derail reform with a crackdown in Lithuania last winter. But they had not reckoned with the force of popular resistance. Then, in the spring, a push to unseat Boris Yeltsin brought vast demonstrations and Gorbachev scurrying back toward the reformers. The fruit of their collaboration was a Union treaty redefining the relationships of the Republics and the center. In all the years of perestroika, this would have been the first serious institutional reform, spelling the end of any chance of a return to Communist orthodoxy. The empire struck back for one last time. The effect was to accelerate the tempo of reform immensely—and to put the reformers at the forefront of the process, instead of acting as uneasy junior partners to Gorbachev.

It seems inevitable in retrospect that the putsch would fail. The grey suits and grey faces of the putschmeisters gave off an aura of defeat even as they held their press conference. The technological resources of dissidents and democrats proved too numerous for the hard-liners to squelch. Telephones, faxes, and satellite uplinks kept the whole world watching and the freedom-fighters in touch with one another. (One cell of putsch resisters was working the phones from within the Kremlin itself, down the hall from Gennady Yanayev’s office.) Too many people had seen too much, said too much, and done too much to be willing to go back to an Ice Age of totalitarianism.