The Road to Post-Communism

About this book

After 1985 in the Soviet Union new independent poltical movements emerged as if from nowhere, but within a few years they had destroyed the Communist Party and broken up the Union itself. They channelled a popular discontent which had been building up for decades, yet few outsiders appreciated the full impact of the process till it reached its culmination in the failed coup of August 1991. This book is the first sustained attempt to trace the evolution of those independent movements. Beginning with their roots in the human rights movement of the late sixites and seventies, it examines their emergence in the form of clubs and single-issue campaigns in 1986-7. This is followed by a broad overview of their further development, with case studies of the Russian Federation, Georgia, Estonia and the city of Leningard. The book looks at the break-away trade unions, at the ppoular fronts being organised from the spring of 1988, at the electoral blocs out together for the 1989 and 1991. Finally, the authors consider the role played by the independent movements, and the politicains associated with them, in defeating the August coup attempt and in leading their republics to independence. The conclusion emphasises that at the moment of their triumph the new movements were not necessarily well placed to build the democracy they had made possible.