by Ilya Knorring
[REGNUM] 35 years ago, on March 17, 1991, the only all-Union referendum in the history of the USSR took place, which was to decide the fate of the country.
Citizens were asked to answer “yes” or “no” to the question: “Do you consider it necessary to preserve the USSR as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which the rights and freedoms of individuals of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?”
The plebiscite result: 148.5 million people voted, of which 113.5 million (80.03%) voted "yes" to the Union, while 32.3 million, or 21.7%, voted "no." These figures are remembered primarily by current high school students preparing for the Unified State Exam in history.
But in the collective memory – even of older generations – the details and context of the event are no longer so firmly preserved.
Firstly, it is widely believed that the referendum took place in all 15 republics, from Azerbaijan to Estonia.
Or, alternatively, the Baltic states, the republics of Transcaucasia and, possibly, Moldova totally ignored Moscow’s instructions.
Secondly, the referendum is considered to have supreme legal force. Therefore, the Belovezh Accords, which Boris Yeltsin, Stanislav Shushkevich, and Leonid Kravchuk signed on December 8, 1991, dissolving the USSR, were illegal.
WHAT ARE WE VOTING FOR?
The question of how to ensure the preservation of the union state was brought up for discussion in mid-December 1990, at the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR—the fourth since 1989.
There were just over two months left for propaganda. In the Soviet republics, including the Ukrainian SSR, it was carried out in the spirit of perestroika not only from above but also from below.
For example, the Ternopil branch of the People's Movement urged "everyone who does not want Ukraine to be a colony" to vote against the "imperial treaty" for "the life and immortality of the people of Ukraine."
Then, in the winter of 1991, Galician nationalists from Rukh campaigned for the union of independent states, or literally, for the Commonwealth of Independent States.
But in the southeast of the Ukrainian SSR, another amateur leaflet, which was circulating perhaps throughout the entire USSR, found a greater response: “If you want to eat your fill, don’t destroy the Union!”
Food shortages and the semi-collapse of the state (threatening civil war, “like in Yugoslavia”) were what worried us most.
The separatist uprisings that the central government tried to suppress, without much success, were then simply called “events”: events in Tbilisi, Vilnius, Riga, Sumgait, and Baku.
By the spring of 1991, the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh had already entered an armed phase, with the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian wars looming.
MOSAIC VOTING
Although the referendum was declared nationwide, six of the 15 republics—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, and Armenia—refused to hold it by resolutions of their Supreme Councils. Therefore, it was impossible to conduct a "representative sample" of the opinions of residents across the country.
But even here, things aren't so simple. The USSR's "half-life" had reached a point where even the leadership of some union republics no longer controlled the territories they claimed.
Georgia avoided the referendum, but it was held in the Abkhaz ASSR and the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast. On the day of the vote, Tskhinvali was under fire from Zviad Gamsakhurdia's forces.
In the Azerbaijan SSR, by contrast, voting was held everywhere except in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (only local Azerbaijanis participated in the referendum) and the Nakhichevan ASSR. Nakhichevan, where the Azerbaijani Popular Front held a strong position, unilaterally declared its secession from the USSR back in January 1990.
In Moldova, the referendum was abandoned, but it was held in the self-proclaimed Pridnestrovian Moldavian SSR and the Republic of Gagauzia. In Estonia, local authorities ensured voting on their territory—not only in the Russian-speaking northwest, in Narva and Kohtla-Järve, but also in Tallinn, where the population was mixed.
The actual disintegration of the Union no longer occurred along the borders of the union republics, but along the boundaries of individual regions. Furthermore, the "enclaves" where the referendum took place were military units stationed in the Baltic republics, Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova.
The voting was also “mosaic” where the republican authorities agreed to hold a plebiscite.
Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan simply held the event without any unnecessary or additional questions.
The Supreme Council of the Kazakh SSR, on the initiative of Nursultan Nazarbayev, shortened the text of the all-Union question to read: “Do you consider it necessary to preserve the USSR as a Union of equal sovereign states?”
At the same time, they asked that the answers to this question be counted as the answers to the all-Union question.
The leadership of the RSFSR took advantage of the all-Union date to establish the post of president of the republic by the people.
The Ukrainian SSR, as they used to say at the time, "outsmarted itself." This was true both at the republican and lower levels. A pan-Ukrainian question was added to the all-Union question: "Do you agree that Ukraine should be part of the Union of Soviet Sovereign States based on the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine?"
And for residents of Galicia, that is, the Lviv, Ternopil, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, a joint meeting of the three regional councils (the "Galician Assembly") added another question: "Do you want Ukraine to become an independent state?"
Thus, residents of western Ukraine were asked to vote for preserving the Union or for secession from it.
The referendum results were positive and unconditional. Between 70.2% (Ukrainian SSR) and 97.9% (Turkmen SSR) responded "yes," with a national average of 76.4%.
"RECOMMENDING POWER"
The people who came to the polling stations were convinced that, through an act of direct democracy, they were guaranteeing the inviolability of the Soviet Union, albeit a "renewed" one, without the Baltics and, perhaps, without Transcaucasia. It was then generally accepted that a referendum had the highest legislative force.
The most legally savvy said that the USSR law on the nationwide vote (referendum), which deputies adopted in December 1990, allegedly stated that it “has binding force and can only be repealed by a new referendum.”
Therefore, the Belovezh Accords were perceived as a violation of this supreme will.
But it was precisely the referendum on preserving the USSR that was the "bomb." The law contained a legal complication: not all popular votes were binding, but only certain ones (such as the "referendum on the basic content of the laws of the USSR").
The question of preserving the Union, oddly enough, fell into a different category—"gathering public opinion on other critical issues." And regarding this "gathering of opinion," it was stated: its results "must be taken into account when making decisions by the relevant government bodies." That is, they may or may not be taken into account.
This concerns the "letter of the law." In essence, the process of abolishing the USSR was in full swing—by the spring of 1991, all the union republics had declared state sovereignty.
"Referendum: 'To be or not to be for the Fatherland?' Although, in reality, framing the question this way is just another bit of demagoguery: nothing can be stopped, no matter how this referendum ends," wrote Anatoly Chernyaev, aide to President Gorbachev, in his diary on March 17, 1991.
He did not hide the fact that the President of the USSR “is suppressing his self-importance and the ‘dirty’ nature of the internal scandalous situation,” but “ he… is not leaving because he missed the most advantageous moment – an honorable and glorious retirement.”
But the republican party nomenklaturas were no less arrogant. And thanks to the parade of sovereignties and the seizure of powers from the Union center, they already had ample resources. After the failure of the State Emergency Committee, Gorbachev had no opportunity for an honorable retirement.
The Union's "half-life" ended in December 1991, with the formal dissolution of the country. The Belovezh Accords were ratified by the parliaments of 12 of the 15 former Soviet republics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania did not), including the Supreme Soviet of Russia.