O comeco do fim: decretado o fim do PCUS

On This Day: August 29

The New York Times, August 28, 2012, 2:28 PM

On Aug. 29, 1991, the Supreme Soviet, the parliament of the U.S.S.R., suspended all activities of the Communist Party, bringing an end to the institution.

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Read the full text of The Times article or other headlines from the day.   Soviets Bar Communist Party Activities; Republics Press Search for a New Order Coup Role Inquiry Ukrainian-Russian Pact Seeks Ways to Insure Economic Survival By SERGE SCHMEMANN Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES RELATED HEADLINESAfter the Breakup: E Pluribus... What?: Former Soviet Republics Will Need Each Other, at Least for a Time Apparatchik to Nationalist: Ukrainian's Fancy Footwork Direct Aid to RepublicsOTHER HEADLINESCrash Prompts M.T.A. to Impose Random Drug and Alcohol Testing Health Units Defy U.S. on Aids Rules: Patients' Risk From Workers With Virus Is Called Nil Zone of Brain Linked to Men's Sexual Orientation Moscow, Aug. 29 -- After three hours of anguished debate, the Soviet Parliament voted today to suspend all activities of the Communist Party pending an investigation of its role in the coup. It was an action that confirmed the demise of the old regime even as the search quickened for new forms of association and order. The fate of the party was already sealed before Parliament's vote. Individual republics had closed its offices and seized its vast properties and funds and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had quit as its General Secretary and had called on the leadership to step down. But Parliament was the only national institution with the formal powers to act against the entire organization, and its decision served to confirm the indictment already passed by the people. Republics Take Action While Parliament settled scores with the past, newly unfettered leaders of the republics searched for interim arrangements to prevent chaotic disintegration. A Russian-Ukrainian agreement reached in Kiev in the early morning after hurriedly arranged negotiations declared it imperative to prevent the 'uncontrolled disintegration' of the Soviet Union and to insure its economic survival and security. The communique seemed to establish a model for interim agreements among the republics to safeguard the fundamental ties forged over decades as the tight central controls and Communist-dominated institutions of rule crumbled in the aftermath of the failed coup. [The text of the Russian-Ukrainian statement and excerpts from the Soviet Parliament's debate are on pages A11 and A12.] Talks With Kazakh Chief From the negotiations in Kiev, the Russian delegation, led by Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi, flew to Kazakhstan for similar talks with President Nursultan Nazarbayev, a republic leader who has demonstrated considerable authority in Central Asian and national councils. The day's developments reflected multiple efforts to fill the political void, to assert local authority and to prevent chaos. If the actions often conflicted and even sometimes put the republics at odds, the underlying search 10 days after the coup attempt still seemed to be for an orderly transition to a new and yet undefined association of self-governed states. In Parliament, Mayor Anatoly A. Sobchak of Leningrad, who has emerged as a leading advocate of maintaining some form of union and who led a parliamentary delegation that monitored the talks in Kiev, declared that 'the former union has ceased to exist, and there is no return to it.' And over the Russian radio, Boris N. Yeltsin, the President of the Russian federated republic, whose heroism during the coup attempt and assertion of Russian power in its aftermath have kept him in the eye of the storm, declared that the center must hold. 'We are maintaining constant contact with President Gorbachev and republican leaders and we are coordinating our actions,' he declared in a statement evidently intended to soothe secessionist passions. 'I want to state firmly that the collapse of the center is not tantamount to a collapse of the country, let alone Russia. 'I stress, the union center must exist, but there must be a sharp cut in the number of its staff and in the cost of maintaining it.' The center itself worked to regroup. Parliament approved Mr. Gorbachev's proposal to include leaders of nine republics in an expanded Security Council and was expected to approve his nomination of several prominent reformers. Mr. Gorbachev said the new council would serve as a transitional authority during the reorganization of the union. 'Now, however, life demands action,' he said. Interim Government Meets The interim government under Ivan S. Silayev also met today and discussed urgent measures to stabilize the economy and maintain foreign trade and food supplies. The suspension of the Communist Party by Parliament followed a wrenching debate over what constituted responsibility for the coup. That debate has weaved through the televised proceedings of the legislature since it convened Monday. Parliament itself has been accused by Mr. Yeltsin and others of complicity through silence, and its debates have been filled with attempts to justify and explain the behavior of various deputies and officials. The 535-member Parliament is expected to conclude by dissolving itself and clearing the way for the full 2,500-member Congress of Peoples' Deputies to name a new legislature when it convenes Sept. 2. The Congress is constitutionally the highest authority in the Soviet Union. Debate on Party's Fate The sharpest debates over the fate of the party focused on an article in the draft resolution that called on the Supreme Court to decide whether to close down the party altogether. Behind it was the question of whether the entire party as an institution was an integral part of the old system that tried to thwart change through the coup attempt and so must be swept away, or, as Mr. Gorbachev and other deputies argued, that at its base it was a reformable organization of well-meaning 'workers and peasants.' Born of the utopian Marxism of the last century, the Bolshevik party formed by Lenin was never meant for a democratic role in a multi-party system. Rather, it was meant to be the vanguard of the working class in the struggle against 'class oppressors' and to be the chosen elite in the shaping of a new order. It evolved under Stalin and his successors into a vast and privileged network of institutions that controlled all facets of Soviet life and numbered 19 million members. Even with its powers trimmed by Mr. Gorbachev's perestroika, the party continued to exert a powerful brake on any efforts to change the system, and Mr. Gorbachev himself continued to merge the powers of the presidency and party leadership until after the coup, when he finally resigned as General Secretary. 'We are talking about the liquidation, not of a party, because the Communist Party has long ceased to be a party, but about a super-state structure, parallel to the structures of power which it illegally usurped,' one deputy argued. Jobs of Thousands Affected But others pleaded against the dismantling of a structure that still provided employment for thousands and held the loyalty of millions. 'Think of the 150,000 people from the party apparatus who are going to lose their jobs,' another deputy said. 'They are our voters, they will come to us tomorrow and will ask, what are you doing there?' In the argument that finally tilted the debate, Roy A. Medvedev, the historian and former dissident who returned under Mr. Gorbachev to a prominent position in the Communist Party, declared that liquidating the party would only repeat its own errors. 'We cannot liquidate the Communist Party because in people's minds the word liquidation is associated with such facts as liquidation of the Cossacks, kulaks,' he said. 'It meant either arrest or murder or deportation.' In the end, Parliament voted against the article, leaving open the possibility that the party could return in some social-democratic form. But it adopted the balance of the resolution suspending the activities of the party throughout the territory of the Soviet Union, instructing the Interior Ministry to take custody of the party's property and archives and ordering the state prosecutor to open an investigation into its role in the coup. Vote on Party Is 283 to 29 Even if not threatened with liquidation, the party of Lenin had been relegated to the dustbin of history. The vote was 283 to 29, with 52 abstentions -- the highest number of 'nays' and abstentions so far in the session. On the economic front, it was a measure of the general recognition in all 15 republics that they faced uniformly serious economic trials in the months to come that representatives of all 15 attended the first organizational meeting of the Committee for the Management of the National Economy, the acting government formed under Mr. Silayev, the Russian Premier. According to the Interfax news agency, the meeting was told that the climatic conditions in the country were the worst in a decade and that only 25 million tons of grain of the 85 million ordered had been delivered to the state, evidently because collective farms were hoarding in anticipation of higher prices. The committee also heard that supplies of coal and oil were at 80 percent of the norm as the cold months approached. Plans for the Military Attention also focused on the military. Both Mr. Yeltsin and the new Defense Minister, Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov, declared that the military must remain centrally controlled regardless of the form the country takes. 'Whatever the destiny of the union -- and most likely, in my view, it will be preserved, maybe not in the same form as now, but perhaps along some kind of socio-economic lines -- I just cannot imagine our army being composed of several armies located on the territories of sovereign republics,' Marshal Shaposhnikov said. He also said there was and is no cause for concern about the Soviet Union's vast nuclear arsenal. 'Those who now have their finger on the nuclear button are those who are supposed to,' he said. Among the day's other major developments, the Supreme Soviet voted to lift parliamentary immunity from its former Speaker, Anatoly I. Lukyanov, a longtime friend of Mr. Gorbachev and who had repeatedly denied accusations that he supported the coup at least by failing to condemn it in time and to summon Parliament. The move cleared the way for Mr. Lukyanov to be interrogated and possibly charged, and Tass reported that soon after, his offices were searched. Prosecutor General Resigns The official who made the motion against Mr. Lukyanov, Prosecutor General Nikolai Turbin, then announced his own resignation. Mr. Turbin was in China during the coup, but he accepted responsibility for the inaction of his office. For many, the most promising development of the day was the joint Russian-Ukrainian communique, which lifted some of the tensions raised by the Ukraine's declaration of independence on Saturday and Mr. Yeltsin's subsequent warning that borders between the republics would have to be 'reviewed.' The accord may serve as a prototype for cooperation among the republics on key economic and military issues during the search for a new relationship. The program called for the setting up of temporary structures involving all 15 republics to prepare an economic agreement, to form a collective security system and to take no unilateral actions on military-strategic issues, to avoid measures which would create frictions among republics, to recognize existing borders among republics, to conduct a coordinated policy of radical economic reform and to confirm their adherence to the Soviet Union's international obligations. The new search for cooperation was also evident in Moscow as Mr. Yeltsin, who had issued decrees encroaching on central powers, drew back. He withdrew decrees that had imposed Russian controls over Soviet foreign transactions, including those in foreign exchange and precious metals, after foreign bankers expressed concerns. Among the crucial questions for the immediate future is whether Western governments will be prepared to come to Moscow's aid this winter. That question is likely to be at the heart of his meetings with Soviet and republic leaders when Prime Minister John Major of Britain arrives Sunday. He will be the first major Western leader to visit Moscow since the failed coup. Possibly the most tangible sign of Mr. Yeltsin's new moderation was the announcement that Pravda, the mouthpiece of the party, would reappear as an 'independent social-political newspaper of civic consensus.'

Dix ans de la fin de l'Union Sovietique, 1991: colloque a Paris

COLLOQUE

Le moment 1991 : la fin de l'URSS au regard des transformations politiques, culturelles et sociales 1970-1991

Paris, 12-14 décembre 2011

Colloque international co-organisé par Sciences Po (Centre d'histoire, CERI), Université Paris-Ouest la Défense (CRPM), FMSH, CERCEC, Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine, FSP/ULB. 

Vingt ans après l’effondrement de l’Union des Républiques Socialistes Soviétiques (1918-1991), il semble pertinent de s’interroger sur l’année 1991. La question de l’effondrement de l’Union soviétique a certes été étudiée dans une grande partie de ses composantes dès le début des années 1990.

Mais au cours des vingt dernières années, des travaux novateurs, en particulier en histoire sociale et en histoire culturelle, ont pu établir de nouveaux liens entre les processus politiques et sociaux des décennies qui ont précédé la Perestroïka et l’effondrement du système soviétique.

Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union (1918-1991), it seems relevant to ask whether 1991 can be singled out as a crucial date in the

history of the Soviet Union and if we have new things to say about this major event of the end of the XXth Century.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has been widely studied since the beginning of the 1990s. Over these years, increasingly innovative work has been done,

particularly in the field of social and cultural history, which has allowed researchers to link the social and political processes happening before Perestroïka and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Lieu/Location :

Sciences Po, les 12 et 13/12/2011, 56 rue Jacob 75006 Paris et à l'Hôtel

National des Invalides, Auditorium Austerlitz, le 14/12/2011

Colloque organisé en lien avec l'exposition "URSS : fin de parti(e). Les années

Perestroïka" à la BDIC, du 2 décembre 2011 au 26 février 2012.

http://urssfindepartie.wordpress.com/

Programme : http://chsp.sciences-po.fr

Lundi 12 décembre, 9h :

Accueil des participants

Jean-François Sirinelli, Directeur du Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po, Gabrielle Costa de Beauregard, Directrice exécutive du CHSP,

Michel Wieviorka, Administrateur de la Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme

9h15 - 12h45

Introduction, par Marc Ferro, historien

Les transformations politiques

Présidence  : Gilles Favarel-Garrigues, CNRS/Sciences Po - CERI

Discutant : Alain Blum, directeur du CERCEC (CNRS/EHESS)

·    Alexei Yurchak, Associate Professor, Université de Berkeley

Everything Was Forever Until it was no more. Late Socialism as an object of social analysis.

·    Rudolf G. Pikhoïa, Ancien directeur des archives d'Etat de la Fédération de Russie

Du pouvoir à la propriété 

·    Nikolaï Mitrokhine, Centre d'études et de recherches est-européennes, Université de Brême

Former Staff Members of Central Committee Apparatus and the Demise of the Soviet Union

·    Sergueï V. Zakharov, Institut de démographie, Haut collège d'économie, Moscou

Mounting crisis of the demographic system and public policy in the Era of 'Developed socialism': a narrative story with sad end."

14h - 16h30 :

Les sources et l’information. Revues, journaux, radio, télévision

Présidence : Yves Hamant, CRPM/Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre-La Défense

Table ronde animée par Jean-Robert Raviot, CRPM/Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre-La Défense

Avec la participation de Carole Ajam (BDIC), Hélène Kaplan (RIDECO), Elena Stroukova (Bibliothèque publique historique de Russie), Sergueï Bountman, rédacteur en chef adjoint de la radio Les échos de Moscou, Annette Melot (BDIC-MHC), Boris Belenkine (Memorial)

17h - 19h30 : Projection de film

La table ronde sera suivie de la projection du film « Le Repentir » de Tenguiz Abuladze (1984), présenté par Gabrielle Chomentowski, chargée d'enseignement à Sciences Po

Mardi 13 décembre

9h15 - 12h45 :

Les nouveaux acteurs et enjeux de la Glasnost

Présidence : Anne Le Huérou, CERCEC, (CNRS/EHESS)

Discutant : Alexis Berelowitch, CERCEC, (CNRS/EHESS)

·    Carole Sigman, chargée de recherche au CNRS, Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique

De nouvelles formes de mobilisation : les clubs politiques informels

·    Olessia Kirtchik, Institut de démographie, Haut Collège d'Economie, Moscou

Les économistes comme auteurs et acteurs de la Perestroïka

·    Luc Duhamel, Université de Montréal

La bureaucratie du commerce de détail et le KGB

·    Alexandra Goujon, Université de Bourgogne et CERCEC, (CNRS/EHESS)

Les Fronts populaires d'Ukraine et de Biélorussie

14h – 17h30

Les transferts culturels

Présidence : Brigitte Krulic, Directrice du CRPM, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre

Discutant : Pierre Grosser, Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po

·    Myriam Désert, Université de Paris IV - Sorbonne et CERCEC, (CNRS/EHESS)

La quête d'un modèle étatique : réinvention de l'empire et de la démocratie

·    Sophie Lambroschini, doctorante, CRPM, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense

Les mutations intervenues dans la télévision soviétique et l'audiovisuel en URSS

·    Anna Zaytseva, doctorante, Université de Paris IV - Sorbonne et CERCEC, (CNRS/EHESS)

Le rock et la contestation

·    Kathy Rousselet, Sciences Po - CERI

Le religieux au cœur des bouleversements politiques

17h30 - 20h : Projection de film 

L'après-midi sera prolongée par la projection du film « Assa » de Serguei Soloviev (1988), présenté par Gabrielle Chomentowski, chargée d'enseignement à Sciences Po

Mercredi 14 décembre 

9h15 – 12h45

Présidence : Jean-Michel de Waele, Directeur du CEVIPOL, ULB

Discutante : Anne de Tinguy, Professeur des universités, INALCO et CERI

Ruptures et fragmentation 

·    Marc Elie et Marie-Hélène Mandrillon, CERCEC (CNRS/EHESS)

La "glasnost" écologique

·    Tatiana Hlukhava - Kasperki, doctorante, Sciences Po

Les "retombées" politiques de l'accident nucléaire de Tchernobyl. Le cas de la Biélorussie.

·    Taline Ter Minassian, INALCO

La revendication du Karabagh et le nationalisme arménien : formes et évolution  du mouvement de protestation (1987-1991)

·    Silvia Serrano, Université d'Auvergne et CERCEC  (CNRS/EHESS)

Mutations de l’espace public en Géorgie

·    Ioulia Shukan, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre - La Défense et CERCEC (CNRS/EHESS)

Les cadres communistes dans la tourmente de la perestroïka en Ukraine et en Biélorussie

Après-midi : 14h15 - 17h30

Le moment 1991

Présidence : Pascal Cauchy, Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po

Discutant : Jean Radvanyi, Directeur du Centre franco-russe, Moscou

·    Nikolaï Petrov, Académie des sciences, Institut de géographie et Fondation Carnegie, Moscou

Russian regions as subjects of politics in 1991

·    Aude Merlin, ULB/CEVIPOL

Les ressorts de la "révolution tchétchène"

·    Françoise Daucé, Université Blaise-Pascal, CHEC et CERCEC (CNRS/EHESS)

Les militaires en 1991 : les ressorts de l’inaction

Témoignages :

Andreï Kovalev, Ancien conseiller auprès de M Gorbatchev,

Sergueï Mironenko, Directeur du GARF (Archives d'Etat de la Fédération de Russie)

16h30 : Conclusions du colloque : Anatoli Vichnievski, Directeur de l'Institut de démographie, Haut Collège d'Economie, Moscou, et Mikhaïl Afanassiev, Directeur de la bibliothèque historique de Russie, Moscou

Da URSS a Russia: o fim da Uniao Sovietica - livros publicados na Franca

De uma lista de história contemporânea: 

20, Liste de diffusion en Histoire Politique du XXème siècle

URSS/Russie

Nous vous signalons diverses parutions concernant la chute de l'URSS (1982-1991): 

1 . Andrei Kozovoi, La Chute de l'Union Soviétique (1982-1991), Paris, Tallandier, 2011, 336p. 

2. Jean-Robert Raviot (sous la dir.), URSS : fin de parti(e)  - Les années Perestroïka, Paris,  Fage Editions, 2011, 126p.

3. Andrei Gratchev,Gorbatchev, Le pari perdu ? : De la perestroïka à l'implosion de l'URSS, Paris, Armand  Colin, 2011, 296p. 

Vous trouverez des informations complémentaires sur ces titres ci-dessous: 

1 . Andrei Kozovoi, La Chute de l'Union Soviétique (1982-1991), Paris, Tallandier, 2011, 336p. 

Présentation :

25 décembre 1991 : lorsque Gorbatchev annonce sa démission, l’URSS n’existe déjà plus. Après neuf années de perestroïkas, le dernier grand empire du vingtième siècle implose en quinze nouveaux États. Rares étaient ceux qui avaient osé prédire une chute aussi rapide. La mort de Brejnev, le 10 novembre 1982, avait pourtant mis à nu les nombreuses failles du système. Économie moribonde, vieillissement et maladies de ses leaders, turbulences dans les marges : l’URSS est alors plus que jamais en quête d’un second souffle. Mais d’Andropov à Gorbatchev, aucun des successeurs de Brejnev ne parviendra à redresser la situation.

S’appuyant sur de nombreux documents et témoignages, Andreï Kozovoï nous livre une histoire inédite de la fin de l’URSS, telle qu’elle fut vécue par les dirigeants, mais aussi par des apparatchiks de la base, voire par de simples Soviétiques. Il raconte comment un empire que d’aucuns pensaient inébranlable a fini par s’effondrer après une parodie de putsch, laissant derrière lui le spectre d’un totalitarisme qui n’en finit pas de hanter la Russie.

2. Jean-Robert Raviot (sous la dir.), URSS : fin de parti(e)  - Les années Perestroïka, Paris,  Fage Editions, 2011, 126p. 

3. Andrei Gratchev,Gorbatchev, Le pari perdu ? : De la perestroïka à l'implosion de l'URSS, Paris, Armand  Colin, 2011, 296p. 

Présentation de l'éditeur

La fin de la guerre froide marque une grande rupture dans l’histoire contemporaine. Victoire des États- Unis, piège de la coexistence pacifique… les grandes lignes sont tracées. Mais pour Andreï Gratchev, conseiller et dernier porte-parole de Mikhaïl Gorbatchev, les origines de ce bouleversement historique restent mal comprises. Les visions occidentalo-centrées ont tendance à minimiser ce qui s’est passé au sein du système soviétique : les fissures qui sont apparues dans le monolithe, la vision démocratique, moderne et sincère de Mikhaïl Gorbatchev qui a conçu cette rupture avec le soviétisme. 

En s’appuyant sur des témoignages exclusifs des principaux dirigeants de l’URSS, Andreï Gratchev reconstitue ce chaînon manquant. Il révèle ces débats internes, ces luttes ou ces décisions restées secrètes qui ont conduit au retrait des Soviétiques d’Afghanistan, à la chute du mur de Berlin, la fin du pacte du Varsovie et de l’URSS elle-même. 

De cette confession à plusieurs voix, sincère et documentée, se dégage une autre vision de l’implosion de l’URSS, qui nous permet aussi de mieux  comprendre la Russie post-soviétique, et de réfléchir à sa place dans la mondialisation. 

Gorbatchev, le pari perdu ?: De la perestroïka à l'implosion de l'URSS

O comeco do fim do comunismo sovietico: PCUS proibido pelo Parlamento

Das páginas da História: The New York Times, 29 de agosto de 1991

Soviets Bar Communist Party Activities; Republics Press Search for a New Order
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
August 29, 1991

Coup Role Inquiry
Ukrainian-Russian Pact Seeks Ways to Insure Economic Survival

Moscow, Aug. 29 -- After three hours of anguished debate, the Soviet Parliament voted today to suspend all activities of the Communist Party pending an investigation of its role in the coup. It was an action that confirmed the demise of the old regime even as the search quickened for new forms of association and order.

The fate of the party was already sealed before Parliament's vote. Individual republics had closed its offices and seized its vast properties and funds and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had quit as its General Secretary and had called on the leadership to step down.

But Parliament was the only national institution with the formal powers to act against the entire organization, and its decision served to confirm the indictment already passed by the people.

Republics Take Action

While Parliament settled scores with the past, newly unfettered leaders of the republics searched for interim arrangements to prevent chaotic disintegration.

A Russian-Ukrainian agreement reached in Kiev in the early morning after hurriedly arranged negotiations declared it imperative to prevent the 'uncontrolled disintegration' of the Soviet Union and to insure its economic survival and security.

The communique seemed to establish a model for interim agreements among the republics to safeguard the fundamental ties forged over decades as the tight central controls and Communist-dominated institutions of rule crumbled in the aftermath of the failed coup. [The text of the Russian-Ukrainian statement and excerpts from the Soviet Parliament's debate are on pages A11 and A12.]

Talks With Kazakh Chief

From the negotiations in Kiev, the Russian delegation, led by Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi, flew to Kazakhstan for similar talks with President Nursultan Nazarbayev, a republic leader who has demonstrated considerable authority in Central Asian and national councils.

The day's developments reflected multiple efforts to fill the political void, to assert local authority and to prevent chaos. If the actions often conflicted and even sometimes put the republics at odds, the underlying search 10 days after the coup attempt still seemed to be for an orderly transition to a new and yet undefined association of self-governed states.

In Parliament, Mayor Anatoly A. Sobchak of Leningrad, who has emerged as a leading advocate of maintaining some form of union and who led a parliamentary delegation that monitored the talks in Kiev, declared that 'the former union has ceased to exist, and there is no return to it.'

And over the Russian radio, Boris N. Yeltsin, the President of the Russian federated republic, whose heroism during the coup attempt and assertion of Russian power in its aftermath have kept him in the eye of the storm, declared that the center must hold.

'We are maintaining constant contact with President Gorbachev and republican leaders and we are coordinating our actions,' he declared in a statement evidently intended to soothe secessionist passions. 'I want to state firmly that the collapse of the center is not tantamount to a collapse of the country, let alone Russia.

'I stress, the union center must exist, but there must be a sharp cut in the number of its staff and in the cost of maintaining it.'

The center itself worked to regroup. Parliament approved Mr. Gorbachev's proposal to include leaders of nine republics in an expanded Security Council and was expected to approve his nomination of several prominent reformers.

Mr. Gorbachev said the new council would serve as a transitional authority during the reorganization of the union. 'Now, however, life demands action,' he said.

Interim Government Meets

The interim government under Ivan S. Silayev also met today and discussed urgent measures to stabilize the economy and maintain foreign trade and food supplies.

The suspension of the Communist Party by Parliament followed a wrenching debate over what constituted responsibility for the coup. That debate has weaved through the televised proceedings of the legislature since it convened Monday.

Parliament itself has been accused by Mr. Yeltsin and others of complicity through silence, and its debates have been filled with attempts to justify and explain the behavior of various deputies and officials.

The 535-member Parliament is expected to conclude by dissolving itself and clearing the way for the full 2,500-member Congress of Peoples' Deputies to name a new legislature when it convenes Sept. 2. The Congress is constitutionally the highest authority in the Soviet Union.

Debate on Party's Fate

The sharpest debates over the fate of the party focused on an article in the draft resolution that called on the Supreme Court to decide whether to close down the party altogether.

Behind it was the question of whether the entire party as an institution was an integral part of the old system that tried to thwart change through the coup attempt and so must be swept away, or, as Mr. Gorbachev and other deputies argued, that at its base it was a reformable organization of well-meaning 'workers and peasants.'

Born of the utopian Marxism of the last century, the Bolshevik party formed by Lenin was never meant for a democratic role in a multi-party system. Rather, it was meant to be the vanguard of the working class in the struggle against 'class oppressors' and to be the chosen elite in the shaping of a new order.

It evolved under Stalin and his successors into a vast and privileged network of institutions that controlled all facets of Soviet life and numbered 19 million members. Even with its powers trimmed by Mr. Gorbachev's perestroika, the party continued to exert a powerful brake on any efforts to change the system, and Mr. Gorbachev himself continued to merge the powers of the presidency and party leadership until after the coup, when he finally resigned as General Secretary.

'We are talking about the liquidation, not of a party, because the Communist Party has long ceased to be a party, but about a super-state structure, parallel to the structures of power which it illegally usurped,' one deputy argued.

Jobs of Thousands Affected

But others pleaded against the dismantling of a structure that still provided employment for thousands and held the loyalty of millions.

'Think of the 150,000 people from the party apparatus who are going to lose their jobs,' another deputy said. 'They are our voters, they will come to us tomorrow and will ask, what are you doing there?'

In the argument that finally tilted the debate, Roy A. Medvedev, the historian and former dissident who returned under Mr. Gorbachev to a prominent position in the Communist Party, declared that liquidating the party would only repeat its own errors. 'We cannot liquidate the Communist Party because in people's minds the word liquidation is associated with such facts as liquidation of the Cossacks, kulaks,' he said. 'It meant either arrest or murder or deportation.'

In the end, Parliament voted against the article, leaving open the possibility that the party could return in some social-democratic form. But it adopted the balance of the resolution suspending the activities of the party throughout the territory of the Soviet Union, instructing the Interior Ministry to take custody of the party's property and archives and ordering the state prosecutor to open an investigation into its role in the coup.

Vote on Party Is 283 to 29

Even if not threatened with liquidation, the party of Lenin had been relegated to the dustbin of history. The vote was 283 to 29, with 52 abstentions -- the highest number of 'nays' and abstentions so far in the session.

On the economic front, it was a measure of the general recognition in all 15 republics that they faced uniformly serious economic trials in the months to come that representatives of all 15 attended the first organizational meeting of the Committee for the Management of the National Economy, the acting government formed under Mr. Silayev, the Russian Premier.

According to the Interfax news agency, the meeting was told that the climatic conditions in the country were the worst in a decade and that only 25 million tons of grain of the 85 million ordered had been delivered to the state, evidently because collective farms were hoarding in anticipation of higher prices. The committee also heard that supplies of coal and oil were at 80 percent of the norm as the cold months approached.

Plans for the Military

Attention also focused on the military. Both Mr. Yeltsin and the new Defense Minister, Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov, declared that the military must remain centrally controlled regardless of the form the country takes.

'Whatever the destiny of the union -- and most likely, in my view, it will be preserved, maybe not in the same form as now, but perhaps along some kind of socio-economic lines -- I just cannot imagine our army being composed of several armies located on the territories of sovereign republics,' Marshal Shaposhnikov said.

He also said there was and is no cause for concern about the Soviet Union's vast nuclear arsenal. 'Those who now have their finger on the nuclear button are those who are supposed to,' he said.

Among the day's other major developments, the Supreme Soviet voted to lift parliamentary immunity from its former Speaker, Anatoly I. Lukyanov, a longtime friend of Mr. Gorbachev and who had repeatedly denied accusations that he supported the coup at least by failing to condemn it in time and to summon Parliament. The move cleared the way for Mr. Lukyanov to be interrogated and possibly charged, and Tass reported that soon after, his offices were searched.

Prosecutor General Resigns

The official who made the motion against Mr. Lukyanov, Prosecutor General Nikolai Turbin, then announced his own resignation. Mr. Turbin was in China during the coup, but he accepted responsibility for the inaction of his office.

For many, the most promising development of the day was the joint Russian-Ukrainian communique, which lifted some of the tensions raised by the Ukraine's declaration of independence on Saturday and Mr. Yeltsin's subsequent warning that borders between the republics would have to be 'reviewed.'

The accord may serve as a prototype for cooperation among the republics on key economic and military issues during the search for a new relationship.

The program called for the setting up of temporary structures involving all 15 republics to prepare an economic agreement, to form a collective security system and to take no unilateral actions on military-strategic issues, to avoid measures which would create frictions among republics, to recognize existing borders among republics, to conduct a coordinated policy of radical economic reform and to confirm their adherence to the Soviet Union's international obligations.

The new search for cooperation was also evident in Moscow as Mr. Yeltsin, who had issued decrees encroaching on central powers, drew back. He withdrew decrees that had imposed Russian controls over Soviet foreign transactions, including those in foreign exchange and precious metals, after foreign bankers expressed concerns.

Among the crucial questions for the immediate future is whether Western governments will be prepared to come to Moscow's aid this winter. That question is likely to be at the heart of his meetings with Soviet and republic leaders when Prime Minister John Major of Britain arrives Sunday. He will be the first major Western leader to visit Moscow since the failed coup.

Possibly the most tangible sign of Mr. Yeltsin's new moderation was the announcement that Pravda, the mouthpiece of the party, would reappear as an 'independent social-political newspaper of civic consensus.'

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Na morte do socialismo, faltou tinta para confirmar por escrito

Terminei de ler, no trem de Tóquio a Osaka, o livro de John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2005), que eu já conhecia de folhear em livrarias, mas que nunca tinha lido por completo (o que agora fiz, inclusive notas e referências bibliográficas).
Pois bem, o que me chamou a atenção, mais para perto do final, foi um detalhe prosaico, que eu não conhecia (e aposto que nenhum dos meus leitores tampouco), mas que é imensamente revelador do imenso castelo de areia que constituía, finalmente, o socialismo de tipo soviético.
Transcrevo:

And so on December 25, 1991 -- two years to the day after the Ceausescus execution, twelve years to the day after the invasion of Afghanistan, and just over seventy-four years after the Bolshevik Revolution -- the leader of the Soviet Union [Mikhail Gorbachev] called the president of the United States to wish him a Merry Christmas, transferred to [Boris] Yelstsin the codes needed to lauch a nuclear attack, and reached for the pen with which he would sign the decree that officially terminated the existence of the U.S.S.R. It contained no ink, and so he had to borrow one from the Cable News Network television crew that was covering the event.
[Reference: Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983-1991 (updated edition; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 471-472]; citado por Gaddis, p. 257 e 297.

Vejam vocês o patético da coisa: o socialismo, que sempre se caracterizou pela penúria generalizada de bens, não conseguiu sequer assegurar uma caneta que funcionasse para que o presidente formal do grande império que constituia a URSS pudesse assinar a dissolução formal desse Estado que durou 70 anos. Se não fosse o pessoal da CNN, o socialismo teria durado mais um pouco...
Claro, para ser totalmente preciso com a história, o que estava acabando em dezembro de 1991 era a União Soviética, não exatamente o socialismo, mas aquela pode ser tomada como a representante legítima deste último, inclusive porque os chineses comunistas estavam brincando de capitalismo há mais de dez anos, então.