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Reform Debate Between the High Command and Various Civilian Authorities and Its Contribution to the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991

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Reform Debate Between the High Command and Various Civilian Authorities and Its Contribution to the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991 REFORM DEBATE BETWEEN THE HIGH COMMAND AND VARIOUS CIVILIAN AUTHORITIES AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION, 1985-1991 THIS THESIS IS SUBMITTED FOR A PhD IN FEBRUARY 1993 BY CHOONSIG SEO INSTITUTE OF THE SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW ProQuest Number: 13815546 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 13815546 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 - O k * < 3 V—\ ABSTRACT This thesis has chosen as its topic the public debates on the restructuring of Soviet armed forces in terms of 'reasonable sufficiency' for 'defensive defense' and the military reform movement in relation to the domestic reforms taking place. In this way it was possible to grasp the nature of the issues and stakes of Soviet civil- military relations under the Gorbachev leadership. The relations underwent a process of change from a traditional Soviet type Party-military relations, through a germinal Western style civil-military relations, and finally to a Third World style, in which the military became a sword and shield of the political leadership through a short-time contract designed to secure the Soviet Union. Once the contract was broken by Gorbachev, a reactionary coalition carried out the coup and its failure in the end led to the break-up of the Soviet Union. Consequently, the new round of debates on military reform among the former Union republics was concerned with the ironic question of how to divide the Soviet armed forces. During the period, there was a dramatic increase in the number of civilian participants in the military reform movement. Indeed, grass roots' support for it became the foundation of the genuine civilian control over the military. Concomitantly, the scope of the debates progressively widened and deepened and the interaction between the advocacy of military reform and the stubborn high command was radicalized with no area of compromise between the two polemics. In fact, the debates were replaced with activities that seemed highly organized, secret, or illegal. These unprecedented developments clearly denied the fundamentals of traditional perspectives on the Soviet civil-military relations. CONTENTS ABSTRACT................................................................................................................2 CONTENTS................................................................................................................3 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION.............................................................................5 CHAPTER 2. THE LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE SOVIET CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS................................................. 16 2.1. Introductory Remarks.......................................................................... 16 2.2. Two-Player Relations: Kolkowicz and Odom....................................17 2.3. A Civil-Military Contract: Colton....................................................... 21 2.4. Buffering Mechanism: Gustafson........................................................ 25 2.5. Failure of Buffering Mechanism under Perestroika............................27 CHAPTER 3. NEW PARTY LEADERSHIP'S MOBILIZING OF MILITARY REFORM MOVEMENT................................................................39 3.1. Gorbachev's Agenda: Defense Budget and Personnel Change.......... 39 3.2. Gorbachev's Intervention in Military Doctrine....................................48 3.3. The MPA and Rank-and-File Communists Start to Move................. 55 3.4. Civilians Began to Meddle in Doctrinal Debates................................ 65 3.5. Gorbachev's 1988 UN Speech, Debates on 'Reasonable Sufficiency', and Party-Military Relations....................................... 76 CHAPTER 4. VARIOUS CIVILIAN FORCES' ADVOCACY OF MILITARY REFORM.................................................................... 92 4.1. Setting the New Stage by Savinkin and Vicys and 1989 Elections...92 4.2. Impressive Opening of the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet and Military Reform Debates.........................98 4.3. The Committee of Defense and State Security and Its Control over The Military.........................................................109 4.4. Young Officer Deputies and Military Reform Movement................ 115 4.5. Soldiers' Mothers and Shchit and Military Reform Movement 124 4.6. Nationality Ferment and Republican Control over the Soviet Army................................................................................................135 4 CHAPTER 5. PRESIDENT GORBACHEV AND MILITARY REFORM.. 148 5.1. Gorbachev's Inaugural Speech and Military Reform.......................148 5.2. Gorbachev's Odessa Speech and Military Reform........................... 155 5.5. Gorbachev's Turn to Right.............................................................. 162 CHAPTER 6. MILITARY RESPONSE I: AIRING OF THE MOD DRAFT REFORM CONCEPT......................... 174 6.1. Timing of Airing of the MOD Draft Reform Concept .....................174 6.2. The Level of External Threat and the Necessity for Military Reform.......................................................................180 6.3. Domestic Change and Military Policy...............................................184 6.4. Contents of Military Reform .............................................................. 189 6.5. Treatment of the MOD Draft: Voting and Debates ......................... 197 CHAPTER 7. MILITARY RESPONSE II: A CONTRACT BETWEEN GORBACHEV AND HIGH COMMAND............202 7.1. Until the Military Leadership Arose against Gorbachev................. 202 7.2. Politicized Armed Forces .................................................................. 212 7.3. A Contract President and High Command .......................................222 CHAPTER 8. MILITARY RESPONSE III: THE COUP & EXPROPRIATION OF THE SOVIET ARMY.........................255 8.1. The Revised Draft of A New Union Treaty and Military Reform............................................................................255 8.2. The Military's Involvement in Political and Ethnic Conflicts 261 8.3. Prime Minister Pavlov's 1991 June Challenge and Military Reform............................................................................269 8.4. Activities of the Armed Forces during the Coup............................272 8.5. New Defense Minister's Approach to Military Reform.................. 287 8.6. How to Divide the Soviet Armed Forces........................................ 295 CHAPTER 9. CONCLUSIONS..........................................................................307 BIBLIOGRAPHY 316 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study is to suggest a variation on traditional approaches to the Soviet civil-military relations. The prevailing tendency among Western analysts was based on the assumption that Soviet society was a quasi-totalitarian system and, therefore, that the military, one of main components of the system, used to act in accordance with either the interests of the armed forces, or the Communist Party. Basically, they assumed that the quasi-totalitarian regimes of Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko were politically stable. The subject of their study was the relationships between the party leadership and the high command. In essence, this thesis tries to maintain its focus on the very dynamics of civil- military interactions, in particular, the military reform debates appearing in the mass media and specialized literature under Gorbachev. During such public debates the various institutional, organizational, and individual forces demanded that the military establishment fundamentally restructure and reform the Soviet armed forces in conjunction with the radical changes in the world military-political situation and with the revolutionary restructuring in the Soviet society. Consequently this study provides, when combined with the traditional approach focusing on the interactions between the party leadership and the high command, an in-depth analysis of the middle level of powers that linked the political leadership to the public and played an unprecedented role in framing and implementing military reform. Their activities had hardly existed in such depth and scope in the past history of the Soviet civil-military relations. Naturally, this means in terms of methodology that there was a radical change in the analytical environment, or the setting of the civil-military relations, caused by an amazing 6 mixture of intended results and unintended consequences of Gorbachev's perestroika. Under the rubric of new political thinking, Gorbachev spoke about the mutuality of international security. Indeed, "common human values" replaced "class conflict" in defining Soviet foreign and security policy objectives. More specifically, a doctrinal assumption that world war would be prevented by political means not only placed national security policy in a state of flux but also demanded a radical restructuring of the Soviet armed forces, which had
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