There was an awkward haste about the unthinking obituaries of Mikhail Gorbachev from many Pakistanis following news to a coup on August 19. Some even appeared to derive perverse pleasure from predicting the demise of the “new world order” and a resumption of the cold war, even as the tanks in Moscow were being halted in their tracks by the people and president of Russia shortly after the coup. What is more remarkable, not one of our local ‘experts’ considered the possibility of the coup’s failure.
On August 20, one analyst asked: “With Gorbachev gone, can Yeltsin be far behind”? On August 23, a columnist argued that “the coup had been well planned and that Yeltsin would meet the same fate as Gorbachev even if several thousands died resisting the state”. A third concurred: “It may be just wishful thinking to expect that the hardliners …would get could feet in the wake of adverse reaction at home and abroad”. Yet another pundit thundered how “it would be unwise, if not foolish, to suppose that the 70-year old system could be washed away just like that… And now, with one giant somersault, the New World Order of the United States has been thrown away …The cold war is already once again on.”
These myopic gentlemen were not the only ones dancing in the quadrangles. One respected politician said that “the military coup was in the interest of third world countries…millions of Pakistanis were happy over the change in the USSR…Most of Gen Beg’s predictions had come true”. We were also duly informed by one hack how an army general had warned during the Gulf war that a coup was imminent which would undermine American hopes of an “hegemonic new world order”. Others who were positively thrilled at the ghost of the cold war climbing out of its grave included the remnants of history like Libya’s Gadafi, Iraq’s Saddam and Sudan’s Omar el Bashir.
Why did these leaders and opinion-makers display such misplaced concreteness? Part of the reason may be attributed to ignorance of recent history. The USSR has changed much sine Khruchev’s overthrow by Brezhnev. The 1964 coup was a “coup within a party” which “was an island of power in a largely alienated and suppressed Soviet society”. The August attempt, on the other hand, was one within an “educated country (a “normal country”, as Gorbachev claims) whose whole population, including the army, has been irredeemably politicised in the last six years”. Today’s USSR is pluralistic, not hermetic. The virtues of ‘democracy’ — freedom of speech, social mobility, employment, communication — are no longer invisible. This new political culture has taken root in an age of mass demonstrations, elections, national movements, even political self-determination. Such ideas are most intensely felt because they are so newly established. The seeds of a new democracy, including changes in attitudes and self-consciousness, which Gorbachev began to sow six years ago cannot easily be wrenched out. It has been a classic case of winning precious time to develop a will of resistance to the old order, time to cherish liberty, time for elections to take place and give Boris Yeltsin the mandate he employed so effectively last week. Some years ago a roll back was possible; today even a temporary one was more likely doomed. Neither the necessary conditions (an passive population) nor the sufficient requirements (a unified army) for a successful coup were available.
A more pernicious reason for which analytical blunders is related to the emotional, psychological and political mindsets of many authoritarians elites in the third world. Having manipulated issues for so long, many third world political leaders, army generals and intellectuals are now feeling increasingly insecure and irritable at the prospect of braving the chilling winds of popular democracy, accountability and freedom. No wonder, then, they are cloaking their ambitions, angers and frustrations behind the facade of outraged ‘nationalism’. Because the problem is accentuated by the racism, arrogance, hypocrisy and double standards of the West, the underdeveloped-elite mindset is ready to clutch at straws in opposing a US-dominated “new world order”, regardless of the intrinsic merits of democracy and popular government.
The momentous events in Eastern Europe demonstrated the irresistible urge for freedom; the abortive putsch in the USSR has done the same to perestroika, turning it into a revolution. Although history rarely moves without twists and turns (fresh coup attempts cannot be ruled out as the revolution begins to devour hundreds of army generals, hundreds of thousands of KGB officers and millions of CP members), a new, more powerful dialectic has already seized the Soviet state.
Born-again Pakistani ‘nationalists’ would do well to think rationally rather than wishfully. As in the Soviet Union, they should shout their last hurrahs and make way for the people. What is good for ‘Pakistan’ (read ‘Pakistani state’) might not, in fact be good for ‘Pakistan’ (read ‘Pakistani nation and people’). The third-world state can only frustrate the compelling demands of society at irreparable cost to itself and the nation.