The emergence of the first legal political opposition in 1989 – the Interregional Deputies Group – was a major turning point in the political history of contemporary Russia as the reformist camp split into two rival groups: “radicals” headed by Yeltsin and “centrists” headed by Gorbachev. According to the established narrative, prominent figures of the Soviet liberal intelligentsia were drawn at the time by a tidal wave of radicalization that led them to reject not only the remnants of Stalinism and the rule of the Communist Party, but also Gorbachev and the Soviet state. Celebrated by some as an emancipatory process and condemned by others as revolutionary utopianism, this radicalization is generally equated with growing opposition. In his talk, Sauvé would like to challenge this interpretation by arguing that throughout 1989 most Soviet liberals actually resisted the emergence of a political opposition which nonetheless took place because of the stubborn refusal of Party reformers to collaborate in any serious way and the strong popular unrest against the failures of perestroika. The radicalization of most Soviet liberals in 1989 and beyond, he argues, had a highly paradoxical character owing to their growing moral opposition to communist rule that went along with a constant support for the concentration of powers in the hands of an “enlightened” reformer, thus resisting the emergence of a political opposition. This argument is based on the empirical analysis of the discussions of the time as they appeared in the press and in Congress but also at the Moscow Tribune, a discussion club that was the cradle, and then the antechamber, of the Interregional Deputies Group.
Guillaume Sauvé
Postdoctoral Fellow – EURUS – Carleton University (Canada)
*The paper will be presented in English.