The defeat of the August 1991 coup attempt in Moscow marked one of the most euphoric moments in Russian history. For centuries dictators had ruled Russia using force to suppress and at times annihilate society. Emboldened by liberalization under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian society organized to resist this use of force by Kremlin dictators. To be sure, all of Russia did not rise up against the coup plotters; only citizens in major cities mobilized. Yet, the ripple effects of this brave stance against tyranny in Moscow and St. Petersburg proved pivotal in destroying communism, dismantling the Soviet empire, and ending the Cold War. By December 1991, the Soviet Union was no more.

The end of the Soviet dictatorship, however, did not lead immediately or smoothly to the creation of democracy in either Russia or in most of the other newly independent states that emerged after the USSR’s collapse. In the wake of the exciting aftermath of a new wave of democratic transitions in East Central Europe after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, scholars of democratization anticipated a similar process in these new post-Soviet states that gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Fifteen years later, democracy is still struggling to take hold in the region. In the initial wave of regime change, the three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—made the jump from communist rule to democratic consolidation relatively easily but they were the exception in the region, not the rule. Post-communist dictatorship quickly replaced communist dictatorship in most of Central Asia while border disputes, the challenges of economic transformation, and the lingering legacies of communist institutions produced unconsolidated, semi-democratic, semi-authoritarian regimes in the Caucasus, the Slavic states, and Moldova. In these countries, the momentum for democratization stopped long before the framework of liberal democracy emerged. By the end of the 1990s these regimes seemed permanently stuck in a twilight zone, trapped somewhere between dictatorship and democracy.

Explaining the First Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship

Of the many countries undergoing democratization in Latin America and southern Europe in the two decades before the Soviet collapse, the most successful cases were “pacted” transitions. Pacts were constructed between soft-liners in the ancien regime and moderates in civil society. They were designed, as Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter explain in Transitions from Authoritarianism: Tentative Conclusions, to “limit the agenda of policy choice, share proportionately in the distribution of benefits, and restrict the participation of outsiders in decision-making.” These pacts most often occurred when the distribution of power between the forces for change and against change was relatively equal.

This pattern did not occur in the new states of the former Soviet Union. Instead of negotiations and compromise between leaders in the old Soviet regime and new democratic challengers, there was a breakdown of the state and conflict between opposing forces in the Soviet republics. Rather than pacts, one side—the powerful side—dictated the new political rules. If the powerful were democrats, then the rules were democratic. If the powerful were autocrats, then the rules were autocratic. When the distribution of power between “democrats” and “autocrats” was relatively equal, an unstable regime emerged as successful negotiations between these two sides failed to occur.

Democratic Transition: The Baltics

The first transition path occurred in the three Baltic states. The dominant dynamic was confrontation between old elites and new societal challengers, not compromise. Additionally, the masses were involved, not sidelined as they usually were in the old regime. When the balance of power became clear, in large measure through elections in the spring of 1990, these societal actors then imposed their will on the weaker elites from the ancien regime, be they soft-liners or hard-liners. Their will was democracy—that is, their ideological commitment to liberal principles pushed regime change towards democratic consolidation. Democrats, not the process of transition, produced new democratic regimes. The process of regime transformation was revolutionary, not evolutionary.

In the Baltic republics, anti-Soviet groups sprouted during political liberalization, but elections in 1989 and 1990 were crucial in mobilizing anti-communist movements and clarifying the distribution of power between the ancien regime and challengers. Gorbachev’s individual initiative allowed elections to occur; he was not pressured by mass actors or by splits within the ruling elite. In all three Baltic republics these elections, particularly the 1990 elections for Supreme Soviets clarified the distribution of power as firmly in favor of the challengers, be it the anti-communist Sajudis in Lithuania, the Latvian Popular Front and Latvian National Independence Movement in Latvia, or the Estonian Popular Front in Estonia. These elections did not facilitate negotiations with the ancien regime about power sharing or democratization. Instead, all three republics unilaterally declared their independence and then entered into a prolonged stalemate with Moscow, which ended after the failed coup attempt by hard-liners in Moscow in August 1991.

After this attempt, the three republics became truly independent. In all of these cases, societal actors committed to democratic ideas took advantage of their overwhelming power to impose new democratic regimes. Some leaders in these new regimes, especially those of Latvia and Estonia, also dictated new anti-liberal rules that restricted franchise along ethnic lines. But in the case of the three Baltic states, the prospect of membership in Western institutions—first NATO and then the European Union—played a very positive role in helping to check anti-democratic policies and tendencies, consolidating democracy. However, the pull of the West did not play the same role in the rest of the former Soviet Union.

Autocracy: Central Asia and Belarus

The second transition path was most common in Central Asia. If, at the time of transition, autocrats ensconced in the state enjoyed hegemonic power over challenging societal actors, then authoritarian rule resulted, as it did in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. Before the failed coup attempt in Moscow in August 1991 and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 neither state nor societal leaders in these Soviet republics had openly sought independence. Nor were elections in 1989 and 1990 important liberalizing events in these republics. By 1991, grass-roots organizations—including some pro-democracy groups—had sprouted in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and to a lesser extent in Turkmenistan. In the fall of 1991, however, the distribution of power in these three regimes still clearly favored those already in the state. They are still in power today. Civil society in all of these places was weak in 1991 and remains weak today.