Nonviolent Public Protest in the USSR, December 1, 1986
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NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARC H TITLE : NONVIOLENT PUBLIC PROTEST IN THE USSR December 1, 1986 - December 31, 198 9 AUTHOR : Mark R. Beissinger CONTRACTOR : University of Wisconsin . PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR : Mark R Beissinge r COUNCIL CONTRACT NUMBER : 804-14 DATE : October 199 0 The work leading to this report was supported by funds provided b y the National Council for Soviet and East European Research . The analysis and interpretations contained in the report are those o f the author . ACKNOWLEDGEMENT S This project could not have been carried out without th e assistance of a number of people . Above all, research assistants Da n Geller and Shelly Sandel provided able support in tracking dow n materials in the library . Dan participated in practically every ste p of the creation of the database, including interpretation of material s and data entry, and deserve special thanks . Jon Cebra also provide d help with computer programming and with the statistical analysis o f the material . Special thanks go to Mario Corti and the staff a t Arkhiv samizdata at Radio Liberty in Munich, who graciously provide d me with the opportunity to peruse their rich holdings of unofficia l newspapers and publications . Needless to say, all errors an d shortcomings in the project are solely the fault of the Principa l Investigator . a r CONTENTS Executive Summary 1 Introduction 6 Description of the Data 1 0 General Patterns of Protest Activity 1 7 Temporal Variations in Demonstration Activity 2 9 Demonstration Activity by Type of Demand 3 6 The Impact of Regime Regulation and Coercio n An Initial Investigation 5 2 The Agenda of Future Research 62 Appendix A : Sources Directly Use d in the Data Base 6 6 Appendix B : Definition of Demand Types 68 Appendix C : Statement on the Distributio n of the Data Base 7 3 Database Structure 7 5 Definitions 79 Coding 83 Endnotes 94 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report analyzes the general contours of non-violen t protest activity in the Soviet Union during the glasnost ' period .' It is based on information collected from a larg e variety of official, unofficial, emigre, and Western source s covering 2,161 non-violent mass protest demonstrations tha t occurred in the Soviet Union from December 1st, 1986 throug h December 31st, 1989 . According to official MVD statistics , therefore, this report analyzes information on somewher e between a fourth and a third of all demonstrations that too k place in the USSR during this period . Although data on violen t mass protests, strikes, and non-violent protest demonstration s before December 1986 were collected, they are still in th e process of coding and systematization and are not included i n this study . The report documents the radical transformations that hav e taken place in the Soviet Union in recent years in the spher e of public protest and political participation . It is shown that high levels of of protest mobilization have occurre d especially in Transcaucasia, the Baltic, Moldavia, and wester n portions of the Ukraine, although almost a quarter of al l events actually took place within the RSFSR . The discrepanc y has much to do with the varying sizes of demonstrations amon g different groups . Thus, while Russians have protested often, the mobilizing power of Russian groups has not been very high , with over 60 percent of demonstrations in the RSFSR being les s than a thousand in size . By contrast, more than 45 percen t (113) of the demonstrations recorded for Armenia involved mor e than 100 thousand people . Of the approximately 60 millio n person-days of protest accounted for in this study, more tha n half (53 percent) took place in Armenia, and slightly less than a fifth (19 percent) occurred in Azerbaidzhan . Three distinct periods in the development of Sovie t protest during the time under study are identified : an earl y period of low mobilization and testing of the political water s (from December 1986 to February 1988) ; an intermediate perio d involving great volatility in mobilizations among relativel y few groups (from February 1988 to February 1989) ; and a thir d period characterized by more constant and less volatile level s of demonstrations and the mobilization of new groups int o protest politics . The timing and development of protest i n twelve republics are compared, as well as the extent to whic h different republics displayed a constant versus a punctuate d pattern of mobilization . It is shown that towards the end o f the period under study in this report (i .e ., the end of 1989 ) high levels of mobilization were becoming increasingly constan t in a number of republics, including the RSFSR, Ukraine , Azerbaidzhan, Armenia, and Moldavia . In other words, th e political system was facing a growing explosion of protes t -2- participation among an increasing number of groups that, i f left unaccomodated, was likely to undermine politica l stability . Differentiating protest by the types of demands put forth , it is shown that the mobilizing power of liberal groups wa s consistently greater than that of conservative groups . Only Russians displayed a significant degree of ideologica l divisioning in their patterns of protest mobilization . Both protest in favor of liberal demands and protest in favor of a multi-party system grew considerably in the second half o f 1989, particularly among Russians, explaining in part th e decision of the CPSU to abandon its monopoly over the part y system in February 1990 . Liberal protest, ecological protest , protest in favor of secession, protest over non-secessionis t territorial demands, protest over linguistic and cultura l demands, protest against regime coercion, and (more recently ) religious protest have all displayed more or less constan t patterns of mobilization, while protest over social an d economic issues, anti-military protest, and protest ove r foreign policy issues have been intermittent . Anti-militar y protest, while displaying a punctuated pattern of mobilization , grew in significance towards the end of the period studie d here, as did protest over foreign-policy issues . Thus , internal protest increasingly impinged on national securit y decision-making in the Soviet Union . -3- The enormous variety of causes for protest in the USSR made the search for a general explanation for protes t mobilizations impossible ; neither education, nor part y membership, nor ethnic assimilation, nor urbanization turne d out to be connected with overall levels of protes t mobilization . For non-Russians, a relationship betwee n linguistic Russification and protest in favor of conservativ e demands was found, as well as a strong association between th e availability of native language newspapers and secessionis t protest . Thus, measures of ethnic assimilation appear to b e important as explanations for selected protest issues, but no t for protest overall . Protest over social and economic issue s was found to be related with the level of urbanization of a province, but subsequent analysis found it to be negativel y associated with city size . Consequently, protest over socia l and economic issues was most likely in small towns in highl y urbanized areas of the country . In the RSFSR the larger th e city, the more likely it was that a demonstration expresse d liberal demands, expressed approval for a multi-party system o r for religious freedom, expressed racist or violentl y nationalistic demands, or expressed sympathy with the demand s of other national groups . Thus, like ethnic assimilation , urbanization would seem to have an important impact on selecte d issues of protest in particular places, but not on protes t overall . The penultimate section of the report analyzes efforts b y national and local authorities to contain non-violent protes t through regulation and coercion . It is found that in mos t parts of the USSR laws governing the conduct of demonstration s have remained a dead letter, largely ignored by protest groups , and often unenforceable by the police . A large proportion o f protest demonstrations taking place in the country have no t been authorized by the authorities . Nor have efforts t o contain demonstrations by violence proved successful in mos t cases . Indeed, the evidence presented in this study indicate s that the use of violence against demonstrators actually stimulated greater protest . Coercion has been highest in thos e parts of the country that have exhibited low levels of protes t mobilization in general, but the causal flow of th e relationship is unclear . A final section of the report outlines plans for futur e research using the database and related materials . INTRODUCTIO N Comparative research on protest behavior has been an d continues to be a major area of political inquiry . 2 Such research has focused on the causes and mechanics of socia l protest, the impact of regime violence on protest activity, th e influence protest exercises on public policy, the relationship between violent and non-violent forms of protest, tempora l patterns of change in the volume of protest, and the role o f competition and cooperation among groups within the so-calle d social protest sector of the population . In general, researc h on protest behavior has taken place at three separate levels o f analysis . The lowest level has concentrated on specific , issue-oriented protest movements (such as labor movements , ecology movements, anti-nuclear protests, etc .) and on th e mechanics of protest mobilization . While such research ha s been useful in uncovering factors associated with the succes s or failure of protest movements, like all case-study researc h it is often limited by a lack of generalizability . At th e highest level of analysis have been broad-ranging, quantitativ e cross-national studies of protest and collective violence .