The coup began on a hot Sunday. About five o'clock in the afternoon on August 18, 1991, five black Volga arrived at the gates of a government dacha in the Foros village on the Black Sea coast of Crimea, where Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was resting. No one expected them, and the guards at first did not open the gate and did not remove the chains with spikes lying across the road.
Object "Dawn"
Then General Yuri Plekhanov, the head of the ninth KGB department, got out of the first car. He was responsible for the KGB security service and was the direct chief of Gorbachevâs guards. At that moment, the green metal gate, adorned with large red stars, swung open. Over the next few minutes, cars climbed a serpentine road through a grove of cypress trees to a concrete residence code-named "Zarya Object."
Gorbachev, as he later told investigators, did not expect visitors â five senior KGB officers, the army and senior Communist Party officials, as well as their bodyguards. He picked up the phone to call the head of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov. But the line was cut. Then he called on the head of his guard, General Vladimir Medvedev, who said that he immediately recognized the âKhrushchev variantâ. Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 was removed from power during the coup during his vacation on the Black Sea.
Beginning of the End
Over the next 73 hours, two senior Soviet officials fought for the right to make history. The delegation, who arrived in Foros, was sent by Kryuchkov to convince Gorbachev to go over to the side of the eight party bosses and generals who established the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP), whose members were to take over temporary control of the Soviet Union. The coup was completed because two days later, on August 20, the president had to sign a new union treaty that turned the USSR into a confederation. Many were afraid that this would lead to the collapse of the country into dozens of independent states. The goal of the GKChP was to convince Gorbachev to declare a state of emergency and postpone the signing of the contract.
The putsch achieved the opposite effect. The creation of the GKChP not only did not strengthen the USSR, it provided Boris Yeltsin, the newly elected president of the RSFSR, unlimited power. Communist hawks were removed from ruling the country. Trying to save the Soviet Union, the coup leaders finally scored a stake in his heart. Four months later, the USSR ceased to exist.
But what exactly happened during these three tense August days, even today remains unclear. Despite decades of analysis: 140 volumes of documents, three investigations, nine courts, and dozens of published personal testimonies - the full history of the coup is stubbornly hushed up.
Causes of GKChP
Conspiracies are almost by definition incomprehensible. But many, like Watergate, eventually become apparent. The desire of older conspirators to confess their sins, the opening of secret archives and the advent of new political regimes taught that the truth eventually comes out.
For some, the failure of the GKChP is a triumph of democracy over the forces of reaction, the people over the political bureau. This is a key episode of the extraordinary 1991, which is compared with 1789 and 1917, the moments of the transition from totalitarian rule to liberal democracy. GKChP is a collision of two systems, one of which won. As Yeltsin later said, the age of fear is over, and the other has begun. The symbol of the turmoil of that time was a photograph of him - a chosen leader of the country standing at gunpoint on a tank.
The only problem with this understanding of the putsch is that it is not consistent with the facts. The more you delve into these three days, the less clear they become. Vital, decisive moments had very little to do with democracy. What really played a major role was the ability to hoax, mislead, and manipulate. It was a competition of conspiracies, and the best won.
In the midtone version there is no greater mystery than the role of two characters, Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The latter, for example, was mysteriously informed of the GKChP negotiations. As numerous evidences of the dramatic confrontation in Moscow confirm, the courage of Yeltsin, who climbed the tank to confront the army, was reinforced by the belief that no one would shoot.
The President of the USSR knew about everything
Was Gorbachev really, as he constantly insisted, under house arrest in Foros? Or, according to a number of participants in the events, his isolation was played by him in order to wait and see the result before he condemns the August 21 coup? According to Vasily Starodubtsev, Gorbachev would simply return and take his place.
Today, the ex-president is revered as a reformer who broke the back of communism and left the game when the inevitable consequence of the failure of the GKChP happened - the collapse of the USSR on December 26, 1991. But even in the summer of that year, his main political opponents were no longer the old party conservatives, whom he held in order to try to stay in power. Since June, Yeltsin, who was elected the new president of the RSFSR this month, has become his problem. He came to power with 57% of the vote and possessed the charisma of a true, popularly elected reformer. As the date of signing the new union treaty approached, Gorbachevâs attitude was not difficult to understand: if the Soviet Union collapsed, as the conservatives predicted, then he, as its supreme head, would remain out of work. If he was looking for a reason to stop the course of events, then the formation of the State Emergency Committee occurred very opportunely.
According to the conspirator Starodubtsev, the coup were the hands of Gorbachev, who knew everything. In 1991, Starodubtsev was the leader of the 40 millionth Peasant Union. After some time spent in prison after the coup, he was elected governor of the rich agricultural Tula region, was a member of parliament from the Communist Party and died of a heart attack in 2011.
Putsch or farce?
Starodubtsev regretted that the GKChP made many mistakes, did not use the media to urge people to support the coup. The old conspirator in the failure of the putsch blamed the traitors and the CIA, but for many, the lack of professionalism among the putschists remains one of the most mysterious aspects of the GKChP. The picture of those days depicts not a team of seasoned, experienced fanatics, but poorly trained idealists who have jumped above their heads.
Not that they did not have experience in coups and bloody rebellions. In fact, unfortunately, they were probably ahead of the rest of the planet on this score, wrote General Gorbachev's bodyguard, General Medvedev, later in his autobiography. Leo Trotsky, a political opponent of Stalin, was killed in 1940 while in the other hemisphere. What prevented the arrest of Yeltsin, who was at hand?
Questions begin with Gorbachevâs first meeting with an unexpected delegation that arrived on that exhausting August day. According to the official version, the president was initially frightened, but, making sure that he was not arrested, he became belligerent and refused to meet the demands. According to Gorbachev, he called the conspirators adventurers and traitors who would pay for their deeds.
The family and assistants of Mikhail Sergeyevich always insisted that his unwavering rejection of the putschists meant his placement under house arrest, during which he feared for his life. After the GKChP members flew to Moscow to seize power, Gorbachev and his wife Raisa, who died in 1999, were left under guard in Foros. When she later testified to Leonid Proshkin, the senior investigator of the Prosecutor Generalâs Office investigating the coup, she said that she had a microstroke then. He confirmed that the couple was then in a difficult position and refused a lot because of the fear of being poisoned.
The illness was the occasion for a decisive press conference the next day, when under the eyes of the whole world, Deputy Gorbacheva Yanaev, who was the nominal leader of the conspirators, announced that he would assume the duties of the president. He said that he was unable to overcome the tremendous trembling in his hands and voice that Mikhail Sergeyevich was on vacation now, undergoing treatment in the south of the country, and they hoped that as soon as Gorbachev felt better, he would take office again.
Other evidence of the meeting in Foros provides a more complete picture. According to Valery Boldin, the former head of the Gorbachev administration, and another conspirator who died in 2006, the Soviet leader was furious, but he was also ready to get rid of Yeltsin at all costs. In the end, the president said: âWell, to hell with you, do what you want!â And then he gave some advice on how to introduce a state of emergency.
So was the president house arrested?
Gorbachevâs isolation in Foros raises a number of questions: did he try to leave, did he try to make contact with the people in order to explain his sudden absence? His government phone was cut off, but the phone in his car still worked, like the other phone in the guard house. In fact, there is evidence that Gorbachev called during his house arrest, including Nursultan Nazarbayev, the current president of Kazakhstan, who was the leader of the country's Communist Party in 1991, and also, according to Alexander Khinshtein, MP and historian, Arkady Volsky, one of his advisers. In the conversation, Gorbachev claimed that he was not really sick.
32 presidential security guards are another topic of discussion. None of them were arrested after the coup, and investigator Proshkin discovered that they were neither for nor against the GKChP, despite threats from their boss General Plekhanov. Witnesses claim that Gorbachev could leave if he wanted to, but he denies this. He issued a written order demanding to go to Moscow, but, according to him, did not receive any answer. Three years later, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation came to the conclusion that Gorbachev was not under house arrest because he did not try to leave.
In his autobiography, the chief of security, General Medvedev, even stated that the Tu-134 aircraft was at the presidentâs disposal during the entire period of the alleged detention.
John Dunlop, an American historian and connoisseur of the 1991 GKChP coup, claims that Gorbachevâs inaction puzzled Alexander Yakovlev, who for many years was one of the closest associates of the Soviet leader. According to him, he does not understand why the president did not run away, since the guards would not even try to stop him.
It is unlikely that we will ever find out if Gorbachev was really afraid or just waited to join the winning side. As long as he remained unconnected with the outside world in Foros, he was in an ideal position: if the coup had failed, he would have been his victim; otherwise, he could take on the role of leader. It seems that the president allowed the coup to take place, but so that he was not openly involved in it, Dunlop concluded.
Gorbachev refuted these allegations for many years. Palazhchenko, his spokesman, warns against blind faith in the words of the putschists interested in discrediting the former leader. In 2006, however, Gorbachev was openly accused by Yeltsin of involvement in the coup. After 15 years of publicly supporting the ex-presidentâs version of the USSR, the patient Boris Nikolayevich said in an interview with Russian television that during the coup Gorbachev was informed about everything and was waiting to see who wins. Whatever the outcome, he would join the winners.
In response, the Gorbachev Foundation, a think tank created by a former Soviet leader in promoting democracy in Russia, immediately accused Yeltsin of denigrating the name of the ex-president in an attempt to divert attention from his own role in the collapse of the USSR. But the quarrel ended in nothing. Yeltsin soon died.
Tanks in Moscow
The rest of the population of the USSR found out about the State Emergency Committee in 1991 only the day after his quiet arrival from Foros. On Monday morning, the sun rose over a column of tanks, roaring along Kutuzovsky Prospekt - a wide road leading to the center of Moscow. After the Committeeâs goals were broadcast at 7 oâclock in the morning, state-owned radio and television began broadcasting Tchaikovskyâs Swan Lake continuously.
Without the explicit support of Gorbachev, the putschists had only military power, which was destructive. Marshal of the Soviet Union Dmitry Yazov, Minister of Defense and conspirator who sent tanks, later admitted that he made a number of mistakes. According to him, the coup of the GKChP was a complete improvisation. There were no plans. No one thought of arresting Yeltsin or storming the White House (the building of the Supreme Council). The putschists hoped that the people would understand and support them. But they began to accuse them of sending tanks to the center of Moscow.
First of all, conspirators could not rely on security forces. The political loyalty of the Soviet military was severely undermined by a series of bloody clashes with peaceful demonstrators in the previous two years. In 1989, paratroopers attacked a demonstration in Tbilisi (Georgia), killing 20 people. In addition, the year the GKChP was created is the year that 14 civilians died during the assault by the KGBâs counterterrorism unit of the Lithuanian parliament and the television center captured by the demonstrators. After these crimes were committed, the politicians responsible for them blamed the military commanders.
This deprived the desire of the army and even the KGB to participate in politics, especially in the center of Moscow. They also left the door open for Yeltsin, the former head of the city committee of the Communist Party, who, by the summer of 1991, had replaced Gorbachev as the leading reformer of the USSR and tried to win over parts of the Soviet establishment. Frank and open to the West, Yeltsin embodied the hopes of liberal young Russians who really wanted to put an end to the global isolation of the country. Every day his strength grew.
Yeltsin understood what he was risking. A few weeks before the coup, he went up to Pavel Grachev, the commander of the landing forces, and asked if he could rely on his people in the event of a coup. Yeltsin was also in constant contact with General Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, who was in charge of the air force. The presence of such allies was decisive.
Mysterious awareness
Yeltsin arrived in Moscow on the morning of August 19 from his dacha, driving past a KGB unit located in a nearby forest that was supposed to arrest him, but did not. Toward the end of the day, 24 hours after the coupâs visit to Gorbachev, he left the building of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and climbed onto the tank, which went over to his side. Addressing the crowd who had come to erect barricades against the GKChP, he called on all Russians to give a worthy answer to the putschists and demand the return of normal constitutional order.
Yeltsinâs appearance on state television put the coup on its head. Foreign television people who were given complete freedom shot tens of thousands of Russians who came out to make sure that the country was not returning to the past. People all over the world saw tanks with tricolors of democratic Russia fluttering on their towers.
Thanks to his connections in the army for the next 48 hours, Yeltsin knew exactly about all further actions of the State Emergency Committee. This became clear three years later, when the American journalist Seymour Hersh stated that President George W. Bush canceled the board of the National Security Agency to make sure that Yeltsin knows the plans of the conspirators.
The President of Russia was informed in real time of the negotiations. Yeltsin himself admitted that during the two-day siege of the White House, American diplomats visited him. In his autobiography, he wrote that at some point he even intended to flee to the US Embassy, ââbut then decided not to do this, because "people donât like when foreigners interfere in our affairs."
After the drama on Monday, August 19, on Tuesday in Moscow there was a difficult deadlock. Protesters erected barricades, and coup leaders weighed the risks of a full-scale military operation. But when night fell, Yeltsin showed extraordinary composure. All sources reported that the GKChP decided to storm the White House. According to his spokesman, Pavel Voshchanov, however, the Russian president spent the night in the basement, feasting and drinking. According to General Medvedev, he knew that the assault would not take place.
the end
By the morning of August 21, there remained the only unit that the GKChP could count on. This was the Alpha group, which was ordered to attack the White House. But, remembering how they were framed in Lithuania at the beginning of this year, the special forces decided not to obey orders, and at dawn it became clear that the conspirators had lost. Defense Minister Yazov ordered the withdrawal of tanks from Moscow, paving the way for the denouement the next day, when Gorbachev appeared to publicly rebuke the composition of the Emergency Committee. At the final moment, the conspirators went to Foros to fly to the capital together and take appropriate places in history books.
In its complexity and unknowability - a mixture of random and planned - the August putsch was in many ways a harbinger of post-communist Russiaâs policies. Yeltsin's populist democracy soon gave way to a tough paternalistic state: two years later he would send tanks against the very parliament that he was trying to defend in 1991.
Since then, the conspiracy has taken the place of politics: from the coming to power of Vladimir Putin in 1999, which "successfully" coincided with the military campaign, to the game of Putin's leapfrog and his successor Dmitry Medvedev. The Kremlin, with its brooding spiers, remains a mystery in the center of Russian life.
How events developed
- August 18: Gorbachev tries to turn to the head of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, for help. But Kryuchkov led the coup.
- August 19, 7 a.m.: Soviet state radio and television broadcasts the GKChP speech and the entry of tanks into Moscow.
- August 19: Raisa Gorbacheva claims that she suffered a microstroke during her imprisonment in Foros.
- August 19, 5 pm: Vice President Yanayev announces the presidentâs illness.
- August 20: the population began the construction of barricades in front of the White House, inside of which was Yeltsin.
- August 20: Gorbachev is waiting. According to the conspirator Vasily Starodubtsev, he knew about everything.
- August 21, 3 a.m.: KGB special forces - the Alpha group - are ordered to storm the White House. His disobedience leads to the collapse of the conspiracy.
- August 22: Gorbachev arrives from Foros to denounce the GKChP. The conspirators are arrested.
- December 25: Consequences of the State Emergency Committee - Gorbachev resigns as president of the Soviet Union, and the next day the USSR officially ceased to exist.