Word: gorbachev
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...Other key issues gripping the West and Japan included Soviet compliance with arms reductions, the security of Eastern Europe's newborn democracies, and the plight of the Baltic republics. Overarching those quandaries was the question of who in the U.S.S.R. was now the worthier negotiating partner: a diminished Gorbachev or leaders of the newly muscular, more reform-driven republics -- especially the Russian president and hero of the hour, Boris Yeltsin...
...morale booster, the White House was inclined to give reformers at least some economic reward. But if Gorbachev is to preserve his role as the leader of perestroika, a Bush Administration official warned, "he's going to have to move and move pretty quickly." Would greater trade, aid and investment -- pegged to concrete Soviet reforms -- make a difference? Most analysts remained profoundly skeptical. Meyer stressed that "there are no financial institutions in the Soviet Union capable of absorbing in a useful way large amounts of aid, at either the Union level or the republic level." Outside of German loans, Western...
...intelligence, elements of the Soviet army and KGB actually rehearsed a coup (under the guise of a countercoup) in February of this year. June brought what was soon called the "constitutional-coup attempt." Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov asked the Supreme Soviet for the authority to issue decrees without Mikhail Gorbachev's knowledge, but was rebuffed. In late July hard- liners published an announcement appealing for "those who recognize the terrible plight into which our country has fallen" to support dramatic action to end disorder. They might as well have put up billboards shouting COUP...
...hindsight, even the timing seems screamingly obvious. Gorbachev had designated Tuesday, Aug. 20, for the ceremonial signing of a new union treaty with the presidents of the Russian and Kazakh republics; other republics were expected to sign later. The treaty would transfer so many powers -- over taxes, natural resources, even the state security apparatus -- to the republics as to make restoring ironfisted Kremlin control of the whole country impossible. Moreover, a new national Cabinet would have been named by representatives of the republics. Some of the eventual coup leaders, including KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov and Interior...
...Gorbachev by his own testimony was totally unprepared. To some scholars and Soviet officials that appears so odd as to suggest that the President himself had staged a Potemkin coup to win domestic and foreign sympathy. But that seems farfetched. More probably, the very volume and intensity of coup talk had dulled his political antennae; the cry of wolf was sounding old and tired. Alexander Yakovlev, a close adviser, claimed after it was all over that he had even given Gorbachev the names of some likely -- and, as it turned out actual -- plotters. The President, according to Yakovlev, had scoffed...