Egor Gaidar

The chances of the GKChP to stay in power were zero

The New Times No. 28 of August 20, 2007

The chances of the GKChP to stay in power were zero. Even if they won in August, in March 1992, the regime would have fallen. Because in February, grain reserves would have dried up.

Today it is difficult to even imagine on the verge of what disaster the country was by 1991. The oil industry - the main source of the budget revenues - began to crumble a year earlier. And the point here is not only in the collapse of world energy prices. Oil production since November 1988 was steadily falling: the famous Samotlor, which once gave 130 million tons a year, by 1991 “pumped” 15 million with the strength of 15 million. Thus, the winner of the GKChP would face the problem of importing oil products-in fact, this issue was already quite seriously discussed at the government meetings.

The problem is that oil, like everything else - components for the military -industrial complex, mechanical engineering, car factories, finally, grain - it was necessary to purchase for currency. And there was no currency in the country. The state was bankrupt. By the beginning of 1990, the total debt of the USSR only by the beginning of 1990 amounted to 6.1 billion rubles, and at the beginning of 1991 there are already twice as much-14.5 billion rubles. Exhausted payments to foreign imported purchases, according to the economic department of the CPSU Central Committee, - $ 4.4 billion. "Starting from mid -1990, the country was really on the verge of announcing its insolvent," the Particularly secret note in the name of one of the members of the Politburo reported. The gold supply has decreased to indecent sizes. In the event of the victory of the GKChP, it is unlikely that Western countries would give us additional loans. They would not have been given out. The same US legislation does not allow you to give new loans if the old ones are not paid.

Hence the inevitable stop of a number of large factories, such as, for example, VAZ in Tolyatti, and mass unemployment. And no GKChP could do anything with this.

Bayonets? Yes, this is a serious argument. But any “bayonets”, the army, the KGB, the internal troops must be fed at least. Meanwhile, by that time the USSR has been the largest importer of grain in the world for ten years. There was nothing to buy grain in 1991. The flour reserves were in a number of regions by the summer of 1991 4 to 8 days. I will give only an example: in the fall of 1991, the government was faced with the fact that it could not provide food for the convoys that accompanied the prisoners to the camps.

Hunger was inevitable. Hungry riots were inevitable. Providing cards was even lower than wartime: they gave more, of course, than in the blockade Leningrad, but less than in factories from the Great Patriotic War.

The GKChP was doomed to encounter the same thing with which the tsarist power, and then the Provisional Government collided in the seventeenth year: they could not find two regiments in order to protect themselves from hungry people.

Could the GKChP preserve the empire, the USSR? No, I could not. Exactly because for loyalty - both near and distant provinces - had to be paid. Oil, bread, components. There was nowhere to take them, to buy - there is nothing to pay internal troops - there is nothing to pay.

However, the comrades in the GKChP were well aware of all this - it is enough to read their notes in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Their goal was one - to maintain power in the center, in Moscow. What to do next - they intended to think about then. The country would pay expensive for these thoughts. Events could begin to develop according to the most cruel scenario - as they developed in Russia in 1917-1921. But the end would be the same. The empire was doomed.