On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, ChrisD(RJ) wrote:
> It certainly wasn't some love on the part of the Soviet masses for
> market economics, since 90% of them hadn't a clue what it was, and in
> any case voted for the preservation of the Union (70% of Soviet
> citizens, as opposed to 15% of CPSU delegates
You've mentioned this before and it's kind of an amazing figure. How did the discrepency between the delegate and popular vote come about? Was the popular vote just advisory, with no binding force? And the CPSU delegates just ignored it as it as if it hadn't taken place?
Michael -------
The discrepancy is mainly because the elite perceived it to be in their interests to dismantle the USSR.
The popular vote was made before the August putsch, and the CPSU vote afterward. The Baltics abstained in the popular vote. The argument was made after August 1991 that the putsch showed there was a danger hardliners would come back -- when in fact it showed the opposite -- blah blah blah, so we have to break up the Union, and Yeltsin among others did things to manipulate the situation to promote collapse, like when Yeltsin gave tax breaks to producers if they relocated to Russia.
I don't think it should surprise anyone that the CPSU ignored the popular vote. There has actually been some speculation, by Fred Hough among others, that the main reason for the collapse was that, since free elections were established in 1991, that the apparatchiki were afraid of getting voted out of office and so decided to take matters into their own hands.
Having voted to break up the USSR is not something you admit to in polite company.
Gennady Zyuganov actually voted in favor of the breakup.
Chris Doss The russia Journal