The straw that broke the Soviet Union's back

© RIA Novosti / Go to the mediabankU.S.S.R. President Mikhail Gorbachev congratulating Boris Yeltsin on the latter's inauguration as Russian President.
U.S.S.R. President Mikhail Gorbachev congratulating Boris Yeltsin on the latter's inauguration as Russian President. - Sputnik International
Subscribe
The June 1991 Russian presidential election was, arguably, the straw that broke the Soviet Union's back, even if its organizers had no such intention.

The June 1991 Russian presidential election was, arguably, the straw that broke the Soviet Union's back, even if its organizers had no such intention.

Yet perhaps it was also simply the logical conclusion of a clash that can be best described by the Russian saying "you can't have two bears in one den." In this case, it was two presidents in one country and, ultimately, even one city. In theory, it wouldn't have mattered who won: any president of the former RSFSR would have been hurled into an inevitable conflict with the president of the Soviet Union.

The only candidate with any real chance of winning in those days was Boris Yeltsin, who was already on a collision course with Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and last president of the Soviet Union. All the other candidates trailed far behind, with very little chance of making it to the runoff, and, in point of fact, they competed for votes much less with Yeltsin than amongst themselves.

But let us recall some of the other candidates who took part in that race, whether as a result of their own decision or someone else's encouragement, and see if there's something to be learned.

Competing amongst themselves

Nikolai Ryzhkov, a former Soviet prime minister who had retired from the post by the time of the elections, was expected to become Yeltsin's biggest challenger. As one of Gorbachev's men, he enjoyed the support of all those who wished to preserve the Soviet Union - although Yeltsin was hardly trying to break up the country.

Ex-Interior Minister Vadim Bakatin was another Gorbachev associate who ran in the election. Other contenders included Aman Tuleyev, then the chief government official of the Siberian region of Kemerovo, and General Albert Makashov, a member of the Soviet Union's parliament.

These four candidates were all similarly conventional, with only a few cosmetic differences.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, by contrast, was a new kid on the block. An emerging ultranationalist leader, he entered the race thanks largely to his idiosyncratic and inflammatory rhetoric. His participation was the only unexpected twist of that election campaign, and his finish in third place proved to be its only real sensation.

"We were well aware for whom that post was being created..."

The rest of the campaign went ahead as planned by Yeltsin's team. Their candidate won in the polls hands-down and with a wide margin. Such an outcome was surprising to few.

"Introducing the office of the President of the Russian Federation was an imperative impossible to ignore," Ilya Konstantinov, a former Russian MP, recalls. "This was something called for by the current political situation as well as by public sentiment. In a preceding March referendum, voters came out in favor of the preservation of the Soviet Union along with the establishment of the Russian presidency. We were well aware for whom that post was being created, and we knew that Russia's [first] president would be Yeltsin. He was a powerful, domineering man. A very strong leader. That's precisely what he was valued for. That was part of his charisma. "

Konstantinov became a vehement opponent of Yeltsin soon after the elections. But in his political analyses, he tries to avoid any bias.

At the time, the Russian Federation's new leadership already had its own television channel, which they would use proactively in Yeltsin's presidential campaign. But the man hardly needed any spin doctors to help him win the presidency. In contrast, his savvy choice of a running mate proved a welcome aid. The nominee, Colonel Alexander Rutskoi, Hero of the Soviet Union, an Afghan War veteran, had just declared the creation of a new parliamentary faction. Paradoxically called Communists for Democracy, it led to the split of the Communists of Russia, a group opposed to Yelstin.

Victim of the elections

Bringing Rutskoi onto the team helped broaden Yeltsin's support. Ryzhkov responded by taking on General Boris Gromov, the famous Afghan War veteran.

Rutskoi won the 1991 election as Yelstin's running mate, but his subsequent political career was not as successful as his competitors'.

Gromov and Tuleyev serve as governors to this day, and Ryzhkov is a member of parliament's upper house, the Federation Council, while Zhirinovsky is a deputy speaker at the State Duma, the federal legislature's lower chamber.

At one time, Rutskoi also served as a governor. He was made the leader of the Kursk Region after spending several months in a Moscow detention center on charges of instigating public unrest on October 3-4, 1993. Makashov was another politician charged in the case. Both men were subsequently pardoned by the State Duma.

In some sense, Rutskoi was a victim of the 1991 presidential vote. He found himself discarded shortly after he had performed his role as a campaign booster. The colonel-turned-general rebelled in response, and his rebellion led to the abolition of the Russian vice-presidency.

Yeltsin's political career, meanwhile, was quickly moving toward its culmination. The wide public support he enjoyed in the summer of 1991 declined over time, and his reelection five years later was a hard-won victory. But that is another story altogether...

The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

Newsfeed
0
To participate in the discussion
log in or register
loader
Chats
Заголовок открываемого материала