The Penguin History of Modern Russia

by Robert Service

  A rapprochement with Yeltsin ensued. Gorbachëv and Yeltsin announced that they would work together with common purpose. On 23 April a meeting of nine republican leaders was arranged at Gorbachëv’s dacha at Novo-Ogarëvo to draft a new Union Treaty that would augment political and economic powers of the governments of the Soviet republics. The final version was to be signed on 20 August. This tried the patience of Polozkov and his supporters beyond their limits, and they vehemently criticized him at the Central Committee of the USSR Communist Party on 24–5 April. Their comments enraged Gorbachëv in turn. At one point he handed in his resignation as General Secretary; only a petition in his favour organized by Bakatin and sixty-nine other Central Committee members persuaded him to stay in office. Polozkov lacked the nerve to push him out.11 The result was victory for Gorbachëv: the terms of the proposed Union Treaty were accepted in principle by the Central Committee. The date of signature was set for 20 August.

  A delighted Yeltsin travelled around the RSFSR urging the autonomous republics to ‘take whatever helping of power that you can gobble up by yourselves’.12 When submitting himself to a presidential election in Russia on 12 June, he won a massive majority. His running-mate Alexander Rutskoi, an army colonel, became Russian vice-president. Other prominent associates were Ivan Silaev and Ruslan Khasbulatov: Silaev was appointed the RSFSR Prime Minister and Khasbulatov the Speaker of the Russian Supreme Soviet. On 20 July Yeltsin pressed home his advantage by issuing a decree banning communist party organizations from keeping offices in administrative institutions and economic enterprises in Russia. This so-called ‘de-partization’ was not approved by Gorbachëv; but even he was exasperated by his party’s resistance to self-reform, and he arranged for another Party Congress to be held to determine a permanent strategy.

  But Gorbachëv had scarcely any credit left with Soviet society. The economy was collapsing in every sector. Industrial output fell by eighteen per cent in 1991, agriculture by seventeen per cent. Even energy production, whose exports had supplied the backbone of state revenues in previous years, went down by ten per cent. The USSR budget deficit was between twelve and fourteen per cent of gross domestic product whereas it had been only four per cent in 1990. The result was a decline in the government’s ability to sustain the level of imports of consumer goods. The USSR’s towns and villages also experienced a shortage in fuel supplies. Consumers were further troubled by Pavlov’s decision at last to start raising the prices for food products in state shops. The result was highly unpleasant for a population unaccustomed to overt inflation. Across the year, it is reckoned, prices in such shops almost doubled.13

  The hero of the late 1980s was regularly pilloried by his fellow Soviet citizens. He was much more popular abroad than at home. But even in international affairs he was buffeted: when in July 1991 he appealed to the ‘Group of Seven’ leading economic powers in London for assistance, he received much sympathy but no promise of a quick loan large enough to give relief to the traumatized Soviet economy. Gorbachëv’s demeanour appeared to many Soviet citizens as that of a cap-in-hand beggar. Yeltsin, who urged that Russia should get up off her knees, gained in popularity.

  Several leading colleagues of Gorbachëv had long ago concluded that the USSR’s domestic chaos and international parlousness resulted from an excess of reform. Oleg Shenin, who had taken over the Central Committee Secretariat in the absence of both Gorbachëv and the physically-ailing Ivashko, called in January 1991 for an ‘end to the careless, anarchic approach’ to party affairs. USSR Vice-President Gennadi Yanaev talked often about the need for at least ‘elementary order’ in the country. Oleg Baklanov, Deputy Chairman of the Defence Council, regretted the arms agreements made with the USA. Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov at the April 1991 Central Committee plenum demanded the declaration of a state of emergency on the railways, in the oil and metallurgical industries and in several whole regions of the USSR. At the Supreme Soviet, in June, he undermined the Novo-Ogarëvo negotiations by stating that the sovereignty demanded by the various Soviet republics could not be unconditional.

  Gorbachëv was a tired man, too tired to take full cognizance of the dangers. He had often heard Shevardnadze and Yakovlev warning of an imminent coup d’état; yet nothing had ever happened. In late June 1991, when American Secretary of State James Baker sent him a message naming Pavlov, Kryuchkov and Yazov as possible conspirators, Gorbachëv refused to take proper notice, and went off in early August for an extended vacation in the dacha he had had built for himself in the Black Sea village of Foros.14

  He underrated the extraordinary political discontent he left behind. On 23 July 1991 the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya, which had carried Nina Andreeva’s letter in March 1988, published ‘A Word to the People’ signed by twelve public figures.15 Army generals Boris Gromov and Valentin Varennikov were among them: Gromov was First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Varennikov was Commander of Soviet Ground Forces. Another signatory was Soyuz leader Yuri Blokhin. Russian nationalists such as the film director Yuri Bondarëv and writers Alexander Prokhanov and Valentin Rasputin were also present. Others included Gennadi Zyuganov (member of the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party), Vasili Starodubtsev (chairman of the USSR Peasants’ Union) and Alexander Tizyakov (President of the Association of State Enterprises and Associations). None was at the peak of public eminence, but all were prominent Soviet personages.

  Their ‘Word to the People’ railed against current conditions in the Soviet Union: ‘An enormous, unprecedented misfortune has occurred. The Motherland, our country, the great state entrusted to us by history, by nature and by our glorious forebears is perishing, is being broken up, is being plunged into darkness and oblivion.’16 All citizens were entreated to help to preserve the USSR. A wide variety of social groups was addressed: workers, managers, engineers, soldiers, officers, women, pensioners and young people.

  No reference was made to Lenin and the October Revolution. The signatories appealed instead to patriotism and statehood: the Army, whose feat in vanquishing Nazi Germany was recorded, was the only institution selected for praise. Nor was any disrespect shown towards religion. The appeal was explicitly directed equally at Christians, Muslims and Buddhists.17 Ostensibly, too, the contents indicated no preference for any particular nation. But out of all countries and regions of the USSR, only Russia was mentioned as ‘beloved’. And indeed the appeal opened with the following phrase: ‘Dear Russians! Citizens of the USSR! Fellow countrymen!’ Here was a fusion of Russian and Soviet identities reminiscent of Stalin in the Second World War. Without saying so, the signatories firmly trusted that Russians would prove the national group that would act to save the USSR from the disaster of the projected Union Treaty.

  They had practically written the manifesto for a coup d’état. It is inconceivable that they were publishing their feelings in the press without the knowledge of other governmental personages. Gorbachëv’s refusal to recognize how things stood was surprising: the only precaution he took in summer 1991 was to ask Yeltsin informally to stay in Moscow while the Gorbachëv family took a holiday in Crimea. Yeltsin was meant to mind the shop, as it were, in the owner’s absence. Such casualness later gave rise to rumours that Gorbachëv had secretly been planning to have a pretext to tear up the deal with Yeltsin. Perhaps he even wanted a coup to be attempted so that he might return as the mediator between all the contending forces. All this is far-fetched. The likeliest explanation lies in Gorbachëv’s over-confidence. He trusted his fellow ministers because they were his own appointees. He had out-manoeuvred them year after year: he simply could not believe that they eventually might dance rings around him.

  And so Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachëv went off to enjoy themselves in Foros with their daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren. Every day they walked six kilometres. (Much as he Americanized his image, Gorbachëv refrained from the practice of TV-accompanied jogging.) Even on holiday, of course, he was a working President. In particular, he prepared a speech and an articl
e on the Union Treaty to be signed on 20 August 1991.

  On 18 August his quietude was interrupted, when he was visited unexpectedly by Shenin, Baklanov, Varennikov and his own personal assistant Valeri Boldin. On their arrival he noted that the telephones at his dacha were not functioning. This was the first sign that a conspiracy was afoot. His visitors told him that an emergency situation would shortly be declared, and that it would be appreciated if he would transfer his powers temporarily to Vice-President Yanaev. Baklanov assured him that they would restore order in the country and that he could subsequently return as President without having had to carry out the ‘dirty business’ himself. But Gorbachëv was intransigent. If he had misjudged his collaborators, they had got him wrong to an equal extent; and he swore at them lustily before sending them packing.18 Varennikov flew on to Kiev to inform Ukrainian political leaders that a state of emergency was being declared and that Gorbachëv was too ill to stay in charge. Baklanov, Shenin and Boldin returned to Moscow to confer with the other principal plotters.

  Meanwhile KGB Chairman Kryuchkov and Interior Minister Pugo had been busy persuading functionaries to join them in the State Committee for the Emergency Situation. Vice-President Yanaev, Prime Minister Pavlov and Defence Minister Yazov were courted strongly. All eventually agreed even though Pavlov and Yanaev needed preliminary infusions of vodka. Along with them were Baklanov, Starodubtsev and Tizyakov. Kryuchkov had tried in vain to get Anatoli Lukyanov, the Supreme Soviet speaker and Gorbachëv’s friend since their university days, to join them. But at least Lukyanov handed the plotters an article criticizing the Union Treaty which could be broadcast by television early next morning;19 he also signalled to the plotters that he would prevent opposition arising in the Supreme Soviet.

  From the night of 18–19 August nothing went right for the conspiracy. The plan for the creation of a State Committee for the Emergency Situation was to be announced in the morning. Explanations were to be sent out to the army, the KGB and the Soviet communist party. Then the members of the State Committee were set to appear at a televised press conference. In fact the press conference was a shambles. Yanaev, while declaring himself Acting President, could not stop his fingers from twitching. Pavlov was too drunk to attend. Outlandish incompetence was shown after the conference. Meetings of public protest were not broken up in the capital. The Moscow telephone network was allowed to function. Fax messages could be sent unimpeded. Satellite TV continued to be beamed into the USSR; foreign television crews moved around the city unhindered. The tanks sent into the streets contained naïve young soldiers who were disconcerted by the many bystanders who asked them why they were agreeing to use force upon fellow citizens.

  The State Committee’s project for a coup d’état had not been unrealistic. Disillusionment with Gorbachëv in Russia was pervasive by summer 1991; order and tranquillity were universally demanded. Kryuchkov, Yanaev and their associates also had the cunning to gain popularity by releasing basic consumer products to be sold in the shops at rock-bottom prices. Moreover, every Soviet citizen knew that traditional institutions of coercion were at the disposal of the State Committee: resistance to the attempted coup would require considerable bravery.

  Yet radical politicians showed exactly that quality. The State Committee had blundered in failing to arrest Yeltsin, Rutskoi, Silaev and Khasbulatov. Yeltsin, on hearing of the coup, phoned his colleagues and prepared a proclamation denouncing the State Committee as an illegal body and calling for Gorbachëv’s liberation. He also contacted Pavel Grachëv, Commander of Soviet Airborne-Ground Forces to request physical protection.20 The State Committee had erred yet again; for they had put Grachëv in charge of military operations in Moscow without testing his political loyalty. Grachëv’s refusal to abandon Gorbachëv and Yeltsin was to prove crucial. Yeltsin got into a car and raced along country roads to the RSFSR Supreme Soviet building – which was becoming known as the White House – in central Moscow. There he rallied his associates, and a crowd of tens of thousands began to gather outside. Barricades of rubble, old trucks and wire were constructed around the building.

  Yeltsin’s instincts told him what to do next. Tall and bulky, he strode out from the White House at one o’clock in the afternoon and clambered on to one of the tanks of the Taman Division stationed at the side of the road. From this exposed position the Russian President announced his defiance of the State Committee. The State Committee leaders had expected that the merest show of force, with perhaps only seventy arrests in the capital, would give them victory. Most of them, including Kryuchkov and Pugo, did not want to be responsible for a great number of deaths.

  Their coup d’état had therefore depended on immediate total implementation. This scheme had not succeeded. The State Committee’s sole alternative was to intensify military operations. Above all, the White House had to be stormed. The suppression of resistance in Moscow would have the effect of intimidating all the Soviet republics into compliance. Unfortunately for the State Committee, ‘Acting President’ Yanaev was already losing his nerve and trying to avoid trouble. Baklanov, Kryuchkov and Pugo therefore decided to ignore him and direct their troops against the White House. Yeltsin, who had for years been well acquainted with the State Committee leaders, phoned them on a direct line to warn of the unpleasant international consequences. He also predicted that they would not be forgiven at home either. But the core of the State Committee’s membership held firm. Late on 19 August army commanders were asked to draw up a plan for the storming of the Russian White House.

  At the same time the Taman Tank Division besieging the building was talking to Yeltsin’s Vice-President Alexander Rutskoi.21 Yanaev’s will cracked. At a State Committee meeting at 8 p.m. he ordered that no action should be started against the White House.22 But the State Committee again ignored him, recognizing that any failure to arrest Yeltsin would bring ruin on themselves. Commands were given for further troop movements. In the night of 20–21 August tanks moved around the Garden Ring Road of Moscow. Crowds of citizens tried to block their path; and in an incident near the White House, three young civilian men – Dmitri Komar, Ilya Krichevski and Vladimir Usov – were killed.

  A violent outcome seemed inevitable as Yeltsin and his associates got ready to resist an attack on the White House. Weapons were smuggled inside. The cellist Mtsislav Rostropovich joined Yeltsin in the building, playing his instrument to stiffen morale. Eduard Shevardnadze and Alexander Yakovlev arrived to show solidarity. They all did this in the knowledge that they might not come out alive. Crowds of Muscovites, mainly youngsters, formed a human chain around the perimeter of the White House. They had no means of apprehending that in the early hours of 21 August the State Committee’s confidence was on the point of collapse. One after another, the military commanders withheld assistance from the State Committee: even the Alpha Division, which had been ordered to storm the White House, had become uncooperative. Yazov as Minister of Defence called off the military action; and Kryuchkov – to Baklanov’s disdain – refused to seize back control from Yazov.23

  By midday on 21 August the sole effective aspect of the State Committee’s activity was its maintenance of a news black-out on its decisions. In fact its leaders had decided to terminate the coup, and at 2.15 p.m. Kryuchkov and three other State Committee members along with Anatoli Lukyanov boarded a plane for the south. Their purpose was to plead their case directly with Gorbachëv in Foros. Gorbachëv refused to see most of them, but agreed to a brief meeting with Lukyanov. Having asked why Lukyanov had not convened the USSR Supreme Soviet in protest against the State Committee, Gorbachëv called him a traitor and showed him the door.24 Yeltsin’s Vice-President Rutskoi, too, had meanwhile arrived at Foros to take custody of the various plotters. Gorbachëv and his family – including Raisa, who had had a severe collapse of some kind – immediately returned to Moscow. Kryuchkov and others were put on the same plane by Rutskoi to ensure that military sympathizers of the State Committee did not take it into their heads to fire upon them
.25

  At four minutes after midnight on 22 August, Gorbachëv stepped down from the plane at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. He came back to a changed USSR. Yet Gorbachëv refused to lay blame on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union despite the evidence that many of its officials had collaborated with the ‘putsch’. He filled some of the posts of the putschists with figures who were as odious to the White House’s defenders as the putschists had been. At the funeral of Komar, Krichevski and Usov, it was Yeltsin rather than Gorbachëv who captured the public mood by asking forgiveness of their bereaved mothers for not having been able to protect their sons.

  On 5 September the Congress of People’s Deputies set up yet another temporary central authority, the State Council, which comprised Gorbachëv and the leaders of those Soviet republics willing to remain part of the Union.26 Gorbachëv’s resilience was truly remarkable: both his sense of duty and his will to retain power were unabated. But the putsch had altered the constellation of politics. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldova had conducted a campaign of passive resistance to the State Committee of the Emergency Situation. Kazakhstan and Ukraine had been less forthright in opposing the Committee, but nevertheless had not co-operated with it. Only a minority of the USSR’s Soviet republics, notably Turkmenistan, had welcomed the putsch. In the RSFSR, Tatarstan under its leader Mintimer Shaimiev took a similar position; but most of the other internal autonomous republics refused to collaborate. When the putsch failed, even Turkmenistan’s President Niyazov started again to demand independence for his country.