20 years ago this county witnessed a development that ended one dramatic period in Soviet history and ushered in an altogether different one. Article 6 of the Constitution on the guiding role of the Soviet Communist Party was abolished on March 14
th 1990. An office of national president was simultaneously instituted in the USSR.
When Mikhail Gorbachev was elected as Secretary-General of the Soviet communist Party Central Committee in 1985, he ushered in a period that came to be known as perestroika (or restructuring). The new situation provided for the development of the freedom of speech and the press under the motto of glasnost (or openness), for democratizing all aspects of social life and, consequently, for boosting political activity of the entire nation. But perestroika also laid bare some extremely negative economic and political phenomena that the Communist Party was held responsible for. More than a half of the Soviet Union's population had been pressing for abolishing the Communist Party's monopoly on power by 1990. In Moscow and Leningrad the figure for those opting for reforms made up 70%. The crisis of confidence in the Communist Party was exacerbated by interethnic conflicts in the Soviet Union's constituent republics, empty shops and long lines of people queuing up for whatever was possible to buy. The country was swept by protests that culminated in a 300,000 strong demonstration in Moscow on February 4th. The protesters' basic demand was to rescind article 6 of the Soviet constitution on the guiding role of the Communist Party. On February 7th the Communist Party Central Committee met in a full-scale meeting and took the decision to give up the Party's guiding role, introduce a multi-party system and usher in a post of the President of the USSR.
The annulment of article 6 of the Soviet Constitution was legally formalized (in a package with the institution of the office of national president) by the Third Congress of People's Deputies in March 1990. Today political analysts differ on the importance of the development, and this is what the president the Politika think tank Vyacheslav Nikonov says about it in a comment.
"Now that 20 years have passed since the development, Vyacheslav Nikonov says, it is safe to claim that it failed to play an important role in the history of the USSR, because the Communist Party had stopped playing its leading and guiding role in Soviet society by the time the article in question was rescinded. But then, the Soviet Communist Party's role never changed in the country irrespective of the constitution article. The provision on the guiding role of the Soviet Communist Party first surfaced in the Constitution of 1977. But the Party had been leading the country all along since 1917. So I think the development was less important than those living in the USSR at the time thought it was".
Now we have political analyst Georgy Satarov with his comment on the issue.
"To institute the post of Soviet President was typical of Gorbachev, of his political style, Satarov says. On the one hand, it was unquestionably a revolutionary decision, but on the other hand, the decision was a compromise one. It was revolutionary because it had seriously changed the entire configuration of government, making it rely less on the party and lending it more secularity. But it was a compromise decision because the new President was not elected by the entire nation, but by the Congress of People's Deputies. The legitimacy of Gorbachev's presidency was questionable, especially after the constituent republics had started electing their own presidents, above all Russia, where the president was elected by popular vote. It was that difference in legitimacy that proved crucial to what happened in August 1991".
In August 1991 the Soviet Union actually collapsed because the Soviet political system was deprived of its core in the form of the leading and guiding role of the CPSU under its Secretary-General.
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