No shortage of hard line elites?! Their attention was highly dysfunctional then. Nostalgia for Stalin and order? Without Gorbachev bringing that up, who would have bothered highly?

Gorbachev was very active in replacing top functionaries, also in the republics. Funny, but his policies exactly provoked national tensions that were dormant for decades. No one else but himself installed those few "problematic" city majors, region leaders - and then gave all initiative to them in the last year, while showing no adequate concern for the fate of the USSR. In the East Europe, stubbornness of DDR and Romania leaders bothered him more than Poland.

The August putsch was in 1991. The Soviets needed quick foreign currency only for Chernobyl.