These developments were profoundly threatening to the Soviet Defense Ministry. First, the loosening of central controls resulted in major incidents of civil unrest on the Soviet periphery, which the Defense Ministry was called upon to quell. Military forces were used to supplement internal troops to quell domestic strife. This new domestic mission was highly distasteful to military leaders, who saw it as a no-win proposition for the Defense Ministry, pointing to the public outrage after troops forcibly broke up an April 1989 rally in Tbilisi, leaving twenty dead. (Note 2)

Despite the Defense Ministry's distaste for these missions, however, there is no evidence that it refused to employ forces in a crisis. One explanation for this is that, in all of these events, political leaders argued that there was an immediate threat to civil order. However, the strong public condemnation of the military's actions in some instances (like the Tbilisi case) probably strengthened the arguments of those within the Defense Ministry who opposed the military's internal control role.

In any event, it was not the immediate threat of civil unrest but the longer-term threat of republic challenges to the center that was to constitute the greatest danger to the centrally controlled Armed Forces. The challenges to central Soviet rule began in 1987, with the Baltic states leading the way. Latvia declared sovereignty in October 1988, with Estonia following suit a month later. Lithuania issued a sovereignty declaration in May 1989, Azerbaydzhan in September 1989. Popular front organizations, like RUKh in Ukraine, became active in several republics in 1989, demanding a larger republic role in policymaking. Most other republics followed the Baltic example with their own sovereignty declarations in 1990. (Note 3)

The first center-periphery skirmishes over military issues were over control of conscripts. The Soviet Defense Ministry had for several decades pursued a distant stationing policy disbursing draftees from each republic (and the provinces within the Russian republic) to units in other parts of the Soviet Union. This strategy was designed partly to achieve an ethnic mix within units and partly to preclude development of close ties between locally-deployed units and the local populace. The policy was, however, very unpopular with the draftees and their families and almost immediately became a target for politicians pressing for more republic autonomy. During Defense Minister Yazov's confirmation hearings in July 1989, legislators from Georgia, Moldavia, and the Baltic republics protested the Defense Ministry's distant stationing policy, demanding that their draftees be allowed to serve in their home territory. (Note 4)

Several republics began adopting legislation formalizing these claims. Estonia led the way in December 1989 with a resolution asserting the right of Estonian citizens to serve only within the republic. Other republics followed suit in 1990. The Ukrainian legislature, for instance, adopted a resolution on 30 July 1990 asserting that Ukrainian soldiers could not be sent outside the republic to areas of interethnic conflict. Russia adopted a similar measure on 24 September 1990.

Republic and local authorities also stopped cooperating with the Defense Ministry's conscription system. The Defense Ministry relied on a network of military commissariats to register, screen, and process conscripts; these organizations were part of the local government system and were staffed primarily by local residents. As the centralized Communist Party hierarchy crumbled, so too did central control over the manpower acquisition system. With local authorities encouraging draft resistance, draft evasion skyrocketed, particularly in the Caucasus, Baltic republics, and western Ukraine. In Georgia, for instance, draft compliance plummeted from 94% in the spring 1989 draft, to 11% in the fall of 1990.

The "republicanization" of the Soviet Armed Forces escalated in 1990, when several republics suspended conscription on their territories. Estonia ended its participation in the all-union draft on April 1990; Lithuania freed its citizens from the obligation to serve in the USSR Armed Forces in August 1990. Armenia suspended the draft on 3 May 1990; and Moldova took a similar step on 4 September 1990.

Several of the most independence-minded republics also began taking steps to set up their own militaries. The Georgian legislature, for instance, adopted a law on 20 December 1990 setting up a national guard; in January 1991, the legislature also adopted a resolution establishing obligatory military service. In the Baltic, popular front activists stepped up pressure on Soviet military installations, declaring that the units on Baltic soil were an occupying army.

The practical impact of these developments was at first limited, because those republics in the forefront (the Caucasus and Baltic republics) were small and the manpower resources to which they were laying claim did not represent a large chunk of the overall draft pool. The Georgian republic, for instance, represented only 2% of the Soviet draft-age pool in 1991.

The military leadership, however, saw these trends (correctly, as it turned out) as the thin edge of the wedge the early signals of a development that could lead if unchecked to the end of the multinational Soviet Armed Forces. By early 1989, Defence Minister Yazov had become concerned that delegating military authority to the republics would lead to the eventual breakup of the country. (Note 5) By early 1990, he voiced this concern publicly. In February, he used an Army Day interview in Pravda to denounce popular front activists in the Baltic republics, Moldavia, and the Caucasus who were agitating against Soviet military forces and encouraging young men to avoid service in the all-union army. (Note 6) Yazov warned that these developments would "wreck" the draft. (Note 7) He condemned nationalist efforts to create national armies as a "retrograde step liable to destroy the Army's combat readiness and the country's defense capability." (Note 8) The rest of the military leadership reportedly shared Yazov's apprehensions and, in fact, were even more conservative on this issue than the Defense Minister. (Note 9)

By the fall of 1990, the high command's concern had deepened to alarm. Military leaders were not just concerned over the impact of republic sovereignty on armed forces manpower. In their view, what was at stake in the struggle between the republics and the center was no less than the union itself and the unified army. (Note 10)

At the base of the military leadership's alarm was its discontent with the way the political leadership was reacting to the escalating challenges to central authority. Gorbachev's initial response to nationalist demands and disorder on the Soviet periphery was an ineffective combination of concession and repression. In his dealings with the secession-minded Baltic republics, for instance, he lurched from economic sanctions and threats to negotiations and concessions.

Many in the military establishment, by contrast, were urging harsher measures. During this period, Yazov and other members of the high command repeatedly warned the political leadership of possible implications of these centrifigual trends for the Armed Forces; Gorbachev, it seems, largely ignored their reports and refused to act on their recommendations. (Note 11)

Some members of the high command took their case to the public. In December 1990, for instance, Chief of the General Staff Mikhail Moiseyev, Deputy Defense Minister Valentin Varennikov, and Commander in Chief of the Navy Chernavin added their names to a public letter urging Gorbachev to use his presidential powers to restore stability and halt republic separatism. (Note 12) Servicemen serving in the Baltic met in Riga on 21 December 1990 to demand that the Soviet legislature introduce presidential rule in the Baltic region. (Note 13)