The ambiguities of the putschists reflected the fluctuating frontiers between "market Stalinism" and state capitalism in the current period; the state apparatus is one of the essential stakes for the capitalist restoration underway. The fact that Yeltsin and the liberals in power in Moscow and Leningrad were not arrested could express the uncertain orientation of the putschists and their desire to leave a door open to negotiations with supporters of the liberal market, rather than a reflection of amateurishness.
The coup leaders were favorable to market reforms, but at the level of the Union and controlled by a strong state, without counting too much on foreign capital, which would not throw itself into a situation of chaos. Between Rykov and Silaev, both engineers originating from the military-industrial complex, or between Pavlov and Shatalin, there is probably no difference on goals but simply on strategy.!
The tide of capitalist restoration, in all the countries where it is underway, has not for the moment the political, social or economic strength to go through to the end, except in Germany. Everywhere else, it is stagnating. Currents differentiate themselves, some advocating a national capitalism protected from foreign investments, others the most open inser-
T HE break up of the system has accelerated since the beginning of the 1990s with the discrediting of perestroika as a project for the "modernization" and humanization of the bureaucratic system. The deterioration of the economic situation implied "radical" remedies and rumours of a coup d'etat had already circulated, in the context of a polarization in which Gorbachev had lost his popular base.
Significant divisions appeared in the state apparatuses, in the first place the army and the party. They reflected the movements from below which have shaken the system to its roots; the weakening of the powers of the centre in relation to the republics to be confirmed by the new treaty of union; the loss of power by the party/state, whose break up was announced before the coup by the political regroupment between liberals and Communist reformers led by Shevardnaze and Yakovlev; and the loss of control of the economy. This explains the extreme fragility of the putschists. But what was the socio-political logic of the coup?
The press has generally characterized the coup as "conservative" or "right wing", led against a left supposedly incarnated by Yeltsin. But there are several varieties of "conservative" and several rights.
The putschists made no appeal to mobilization; evidently they were counting on the passivity of a population profoundly discontented by the degradation of everyday life, a sentiment to which they appealed by announcing lower prices and referring to the dangers of famine 10 linked to the reforms. Their main stated objective was the maintenance of a
Union, equipped with a powerful centre, and a strong law and order line in internal policy. But they did not explicitly disassociate themselves from the liberal market projects.
In international policy the most that can be discerned in the statements of the putschists is a contempt for western "aid" to the Soviet Union and a "patriotic" point of view; the participation of General Kryuchkov (head of the KGB), who had denounced the plot by foreign secret services "seeking to destabilize the Soviet Union" last winter, supports this interpretation. The coup did not represent an "anti-imperialist" turn, nor was it conservative in the sense of a return to the old system.
### Mutant bureaucrats
The putschists seem to be "mutants" between the old system of non-capitalist dictatorship, of which the administrative machinery has collapsed, and the new pro-capitalist dictatorship that is emerging. Speculative as this may be, it does allow us to underline the real ambiguities of the coup, linked to the different cleavages now cutting across the bureaucracy with the reinforcement of those who have opted for reconversion in the "market economy"
All the bureaucrats are pragmatically guided by the defence of their material interests. The putschists represented firstly those who are attached to the maintenance of a strong central state apparatus on the internal and international plane, and to whom the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact, and, even before the coup, the affirmation of sovereignty by the republics, the drastic reduction of the
International Viewpoint #212 • September 16, 1991
tion in the world capital market; some call for a rapid privatization at no matter what price and whoever benefits, others a slow privatization, controlled by the state. But who will control the state?
One of the difficulties of capitalist restoration is the lack of new personnel; although state capitalism appears as the logical "solution" from the point of view of the restorationist projects faced with the insufficiency of private capital, any reinforcement of the state based on the same apparatuses is, and will be, perceived as "conservative". . The governmental teams who are most able to advance a restorationist project are those who originate from a rupture or a struggle against the old system, from the coming to power of explicit opponents of the Communist Party (even if they are a product of it) and of new layers of the technocratic intelligentsia as is the case, in varying degrees, in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
Continued reticence of foreign capital
Thanks to his previous break with the CPSU and to his role against the coup, Yeltsin has gained the preconditions for a liberal market offensive, but not the conditions of its success. This offensive will without doubt benefit, as in Poland, from a provisional state of grace and increased foreign aid. But crisis and political uncertainty mean that foreign capital (and US economic support) is still reticent; the state of grace will without doubt be less long than in Poland and rendered more problematic by the breadth of the national questions.
These exist both between the Union republics and within the Russian federation itself. The USSR as a "prison house of peoples" is no more and cannot be revived. The defeat of the coup and the offensives led against the CPSU and its instruments of repression, favorize the explosion of declarations of independence, but also of new forms of union. The consolidation of a powerful Russia and its leader, thanks to his victory over the putschists, the declarations by Yeltsin threatening to reopen the dossier on the frontiers of the separatist republics and the great number of Russians nominated to governmental posts have produced alarm in the other republics.
At the same time, the affirmation of Yeltsin's power in Russia facilitates the policies of bypassing or weakening of the centre. Several factors mitigate against the simple disappearance of the centre, in spite of a growth of direct relations between republics, including fear of a dispersion of nuclear weapons, the search, by certain nationalities, for federal protection against the oppression of their own republic, and the need for common management of a currency and of infrastructures.