The high command was also to lose faith in Gorbachev's main strategy for defusing republic separatism: the union treaty. At first, the military leadership supported the strategy because it promised to create a new framework for center-periphery relations, satisfying republic demands for more input into policymaking without sacrificing the center's control over key decisions affecting military and foreign policy. Indeed, the initial version of the treaty (published in November 1990, at a time when Gorbachev was trying to placate traditionalists) envisioned a centralized state with limited powersharing between the center and republics on issues such as economic and social policy. However, the center would retain taxation authority and control over natural resources; and (more importantly for the high command) the initial draft also denied republics any role in such areas as defense and foreign policy. (Note 14)
These provisions did not satisfy even the more moderate republics and did nothing to placate the man who was emerging as Gorbachev's most serous threat: Russian leader Boris Yeltsin. Gorbachev reluctantly acceded to several more republic demands; and a new version of the treaty was published in March 1991. However, the March draft continued to deny the republics a role in determining the military budget. Nor did it resolve the conflict between the center's insistence on a single, centralized military and the demands by some republics for military organizations of their own. However, it did give some ground on the contentious issue of republic participation in national security, authorizing the republics a role in resolving questions associated with stationing and draft procedures.
Although conservative elements within the officer corps may have opposed these latter provisions, Defense Ministry leaders still supported the union treaty process and the referendum Gorbachev scheduled for 17 March to consolidate support for the treaty. The referendum asked voters whether they advocated preserving the Soviet Union "as a renewed federation of sovereign republics." (Note 15) The day before the poll, the Defense Ministry daily Krasnaya zvezda published an appeal from Defense Minister Yazov, urging servicemen to vote "yes" to a renewed union. He pointedly reminded his subordinates that "our motherland's freedom and independence are inseparably linked with the unity of its peoples. . . . While Rus was fragmented into appanage principalities, aggressors mercilessly tore it to pieces." Saying "yes" in the referendum, he concluded, meant that the unified Armed Forces would be preserved. (Note 16)
In terms of voter response, the referendum on preserving the USSR was a stunning success. 80% of eligible voters in the nine participating republics came to the polls; and 76% of participating voters endorsed the "renewed federation." Support for preserving the USSR was highest in the Central Asian republics (98% of Turkmen voters, for instance, voted "yes") and lowest in the Slavic republics (71% of voters in the RSFSR voted "yes"). Yazov's appeal for a "yes" vote in the military also seems to have borne fruit. The "yes" vote in military precincts was 90%. (Note 17)
In terms of mobilizing support for the union treaty, however, the referendum was an absolute failure. Consequently, Gorbachev-faced with a slumping economy-abruptly decided to renew the political alliance with reformers that he had abandoned the previous fall. This meant real concessions to republic leaders, particularly to Yeltsin. That decision placed GorbachevCand the union treaty on a collision course with hardliners.
The most outspoken of those opposing Gorbachev's concessions to the republics was the Soyuz group of deputies in the USSR legislature. Soyuz rejected Gorbachev's concessions on the grounds that they ceded too much power to the republics and would amount to an actual abolition of the single union state. Instead, Soyuz proposed a nationwide state of emergency and reimposition of the centralized command economy to counter republic separatism. (Note 18)
Soyuz attracted a strong military following. Indeed, some of the most prominent spokesmen within Soyuz were military officers. An example is Colonel Viktor Alksnis, an ethnic Latvian and intransigent hardliner who favored measures to reinstate order and crush republic separatism. (Note 19) Alksnis joined with another military member of Soyuz-Lt Col Nikolay Petrushenko-in an April letter blasting republic separatists and Gorbachev, whom they accused of embarking on a course that would leave to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. (Note 20)
Top military leaders, for their part, while distancing themselves from the extremist officers in Soyuz, were clearly just as uncomfortable with Gorbachev's renewed alliance with reformers and his growing acquiescence to republic autonomy demands. (Note 21) Ground forces commander Valentin Varennikov, for instance, made it clear in an interview in late March that only the direct participation of the Defense Minister and General Staff in the union treaty process would ensure that defense issues were resolved properly-that is, that the unified military would be preserved. (Note 22) In July, Varennikov joined with Boris Gromov (a ground forces commander then serving as first deputy chief of the Internal Ministry) and other conservative, pro-union forces to issue a "Word to the People," calling on all patriotic forces "to halt the chain reaction of the ruinous disintegration of the state." (Note 23)
Some elements within the officer corps, however, were coming to precisely the opposite conclusion: that the future was with the republics, not the center. These officers became active in republic politics. The prominence of military candidates in the June 1991 Russian presidential elections is a case in point. (Note 24) Other officers became active in republic legislatures; some of these allied themselves with reformist political groups.
By the late summer of 1991, then, the military was deeply divided. Military elements on both ends of the political spectrum became more active participants in politics, with the Defense Ministry leaders aggressively lobbying to preserve the centralized union and single, multi-national Armed Forces. However, military intervention during this period was limited to the employment of military forces in response to orders by the political leadership to restore civil order in secession-minded republics or those regions where the erosion of central control had prompted interethnic violence.
