|
|
The First "Quiet" Revolution |
"Gorbachev Factor"
The
1989 elections proved to be the first “quiet” popular revolution
against the party-state apparatus. They gave a powerful signal about
the declining popularity of the regime. Although the Communists
gained a parliamentary majority, great damage was done to the
party’s prestige as many of its high-ranking representatives, the
crème de la crème of the Soviet establishment, were rejected at the
ballot box. The elections revealed an important pattern: every time
the authorities tried to prevent an independent candidate from
taking part in the elections, either by means of administrative
pressure or by seeking to discredit him, the voters were even more
determined to support the “antiestablishment” candidate. In other
words, the less popular the candidate’s standing with the
authorities, the higher his popularity rating with the electorate.
|
 |
Boris Yeltsin’s case was a prime example of this tendency. The
party’s top hierarchy orchestrated an unprecedented dirty tricks
campaign to discredit the former first secretary of the Moscow City
Committee, who had been removed from his post in November 1987 for
his calls to accelerate reform. However, far from defeating him, the
intrigues of the party
nomenklatura
against Yeltsin—which were no doubt approved by Gorbachev
personally—actually reinforced his popularity in the Moscow
electoral district, where he was running, bringing him a resounding
victory with a record 90 percent of votes and a standing of a
popular hero.
|
The electoral campaigning in the spring of 1989 also gave rise to
novel forms of spontaneous collective action and political behavior
unthinkable under Gorbachev’s predecessors. These included
unsanctioned mass rallies, which were a clear indication of the
growing radicalization of the popular mood. The rallies featured
speakers and protesters whose calls and demands went beyond
Gorbachev’s controlled liberalization and threatened to destabilize
the Soviet regime. For the first time Gorbachev’s efforts to elicit
popular support for his reform backfired, undermining not just his
conservative opponents but also him personally.
A
threat even more dangerous than mass rallies was the resurgence of
the working-class movement. In the summer of 1989 miners’ strikes
were held. They challenged the very legitimacy of a system
established on the claim that it represented the working class.
Rapidly, the miners’ strikes became overtly political, even
revolutionary, demanding an end to the Communist Party’s power
monopoly.
|
|
|
Soviet Russia |
|
Images &
Video |


 |
|