Word: gorbachev
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...ORIGINS: The prelude to the putsch against Gorbachev...
...Mikhail Gorbachev did not return from his Crimean captivity a hero. Worse, he did not realize it. If he had, he might have better used the drama of his 72 hours in the hands of the secret police to advance his standing among a people disgusted with his halfhearted economic reforms and political vacillation. He could have gone out to thank the Muscovites who had struggled for him as they defied the spectral Stalinists who were trying to bring back the past. He could have publicly embraced his former foe, Boris Yeltsin, and accepted with a flourish the sudden, almost...
...failed to seize the moment. Only on Saturday night, after a series of intense conversations with several close advisers, did Gorbachev come to the inescapable conclusion. He announced he could not carry on as General Secretary of the party and was resigning immediately. What's more, he recommended that the Central Committee dissolve itself, and authorized local elected councils to take control of the party's extensive property holdings around the country...
...almost 400 members of the Central Committee, once one of the country's most powerful institutions, suddenly faced the prospect of losing their jobs as well as the privileges -- from dachas to chauffeur-driven sedans -- that so infuriated the average Soviet worker. Gorbachev's decision, however, did more than rip the heart out of the once monolithic party. His move signaled that the Communist Party's influence over the country's affairs was finished once and for all, its structure shattered and its 15 million members across the country forced to reshape their political allegiances...
Analysts in the Soviet Union and the West thought they saw Yeltsin's hand in Gorbachev's move, but in a way he goes Yeltsin one better. In July the Russian president had ordered party committees out of the offices, factories, army and KGB units in Russia. Gorbachev now confirms that order -- which he had opposed until last week -- and effectively extends it to the entire country. For decades the party structures behind the scenes in government, industry and the security forces had controlled all official decisions. They had also put up some of the toughest rearguard opposition to Gorbachev...