Lenin's Tomb

by David Remnick

  Gorbachev reminded the delegation that there was to be a signing ceremony of the Union Treaty in Moscow on August 20.

  “There will be no signing,” Baklanov said, according to Gorbachev. Then Baklanov said, “Yeltsin’s been arrested. He’ll be arrested.… Mikhail Sergeyevich, we demand nothing from you. You’ll be here. We’ll do all the dirty work for you.”

  Gorbachev said he would play no part in their “adventure.” The delegation continued to press. They gave Gorbachev a list of the members of the State Committee for the State of Emergency (the GKChP). Gorbachev was especially stunned to see the names of Yazov and Kryuchkov. He had plucked Yazov out of obscurity to make him defense minister precisely for the sake of having his own man. And besides, he was not bright enough to be disloyal. Yazov, Aleksandr Yakovlev would say, “is no Spinoza.” Kryuchkov, who was perhaps the most forceful and determined of all the plotters, surprised Gorbachev because he had come through the recommendation of their mutual mentor, Yuri Andropov. Gorbachev thought of Kryuchkov as a cultured man, someone who had been abroad, seen something more than the inside of Lubyanka. But as the prosecutor’s report on the putsch said, “For Kryuchkov, Gorbachev was a madman. Gorbachev destroyed the system that had given him everything—servile aides, the respect of his foes, and a comfortable, even splendid life-style. Could a person in his right mind get rid of all that?” Time and again, Kryuchkov urged Gorbachev to break up demonstrations, to “show, at last, our strength.” And when Gorbachev would refuse, Kryuchkov would tell his friends, “The president is not responding to events.”

  Boldin was a terrible betrayal, too. He had started working for Gorbachev in 1978 and had his absolute trust. Boldin was the chief of staff. He vetted every appointment, controlled absolutely the flow of paper to the president’s desk. Along with Kryuchkov and Boldin, the other chief plotter was Oleg Baklanov, a figure little known to the public, but one with tremendous power. Baklanov’s chief interest in a coup was clear: he wanted to prevent any deterioration of military spending or might. In one speech prepared for the April 1991 plenum of the Central Committee, he wrote that current policy had caused the Soviet Union to “fall practically under the dictate of the United States.” According to one of the country’s leading weapons scientists, Pyotr Korotkevich, Baklanov “froze” a major plan worked out by specialists in the hierarchy to create a smaller, but professional, army, demilitarize the economy, and reduce military spending by half.

  The rest of the list was less surprising. Pavlov and Yanayev were obvious enemies of radical reform, though they were too bumptious, too drunk, to have acted alone. The rest were symbols of the conservative interests. Aleksandr Tizyakov, the president of the Association of State Enterprises, had given Gorbachev an ultimatum the previous December to end strikes and impose economic discipline. “You want to frighten me,” Gorbachev had said then. “Well, it won’t work.” And there was Vasily Starodubtsev, the head of the Union of Collective Farm Chairmen, an ardent opponent of private farming and private property.

  Gorbachev tried now to persuade the delegation to take up the question of a state of emergency in the parliament. There could be a full debate. Let the Supreme Soviet decide. “If you go to a state of emergency, what are you going to do the next day?” Gorbachev told them. Varennikov said they were carrying out this mission because the “committee” would not allow “separatists” and “extremists” to dictate the future of the country.

  “I’ve heard all this,” Gorbachev said. “Do you think the people are so fatigued that they will just follow any dictator?”

  But it was no use. “It was a conversation with deaf mutes,” Gorbachev said later. “Their cycle was in motion.”

  As the delegation was preparing to leave at about 7:30 P.M., Baklanov stuck out his hand to shake hands with Raisa Maksimovna. She looked at him, said nothing, and walked away. The delegation rode back to the Belbek airport. In the front seat, Plekhanov spoke on the radiophone to Foros, giving further instructions on the isolation of the president. In the back, the others spoke in short, disgruntled phrases. They had thought Gorbachev would give in to their demands, and he hadn’t On the trip back to Moscow, they began to drink.

  Raisa, the Gorbachevs’ daughter, Irina, and Gorbachev’s aide, Anatoly Chernyayev, had waited outside the study until the meeting was over. After the plotters left, Gorbachev looked at Chernyayev and said, “Well, have you guessed?”

  “Yes.”

  Gorbachev described the demands and his replies “in terms I cannot repeat with ladies present.” He showed Raisa a list of the conspirators he had copied down, and added at the bottom “Lukyanov …?” He still could not see that his great and loyal friend from college days had turned on him, too.

  Gorbachev said he would not go along with a state of emergency or a return to dictatorial rule. “I was always an opponent of such measures,” he said later, “not only for moral and political reasons, but because in the history of our country they have always led to the deaths of hundreds, thousands, and millions.… And we need to get away from that forever.”

  Raisa said that it would be best now, if there was anything to discuss, to talk out on the balconies and on the beach, the better to avoid the listening devices that were obviously in place and working.

  When they arrived at the Kremlin that evening, Vice President Yanayev and Prime Minister Pavlov (the twin fools of this low comedy) saw Kryuchkov, Boldin, Shenin, Pugo, Yazov, and the rest sitting at a long conference table. Lukyanov called from his car and said he was on the way. No one sat at the head of the table, the president’s chair.

  “A catastrophe is taking place,” Kryuchkov said. There would soon be an armed uprising against the leadership. They were going to take over key points, the television tower at Ostankino, the rail stations, two hotels. They had heavy arms, missile launchers, everything. They must be stopped and there were only a few hours in which to do it. Then Plekhanov chimed in. He and Boldin had just come back from Foros. Gorbachev was ill. “It’s either a heart attack or a stroke or something,” Boldin said.

  Yanayev hesitated. He said he could not sign the document creating the Emergency Committee and making him the new president. Kryuchkov pressed him. “Can’t you see?” he said. “If we don’t save the harvest, there will be hunger and in a few months the people will be on the streets. There will be a civil war.”

  Yanayev was smoking one cigarette after another. He said he wanted to wait to meet with Gorbachev before taking action, and besides, he did not feel morally prepared or otherwise qualified to be the president. But the men around the table kept after him, stressing that Gorbachev was sick, that the situation would be temporary.

  INVESTIGATOR: Why did it fall apart?

  VALENTIN PAVLOV: Most of those present [at the Kremlin on the 18th] did not understand what the whole thing was about. Emergency measures had been discussed before. They’d been discussed in the spring. So there was nothing unusual about it. But when it came to Gorbachev being sick and no one knowing what was wrong, when it was unclear whether or not he could fulfill his duties, then we hesitated and decided to transfer it to the Supreme Soviet. Yanayev did not want to sign it. He kept saying, “Guys, I do not know what to write. Is he sick or not? It’s all hearsay.” The rest said, “Take the decision.” Whose word did he take? Hard to tell.

  Lukyanov arrived late to the meeting carrying a copy of the draft Union Treaty and the Soviet Constitution under his arm. Eventually, after listening to Lukyanov describe how the Supreme Soviet would eventually “legitimize” the state of emergency, Yanayev began to waver.

  “Sign, Gennadi Ivanovich,” Kryuchkov said.

  And finally he did. In his trembling hand, Yanayev signed the documents grabbing power from his president. Then he passed the document around the table. One after the other, Yazov, Pugo, Kryuchkov, Pavlov, and Baklanov put their names to the decree declaring the state of emergency.

  Now Aleksandr Bessmertnykh, Shevardnadze’s successor as foreign mini
ster, arrived. He had been on vacation and had flown to the meeting having no idea what was going on. Kryuchkov took him into an anteroom.

  “Listen, the situation in the country is terrible,” Kryuchkov said. “A chaotic situation has emerged. It’s a crisis. It’s dangerous. People are disappointed. Something should be done, and we decided to do something through emergency measures. We have established a committee, an Emergency Committee, and I would like you to be part of it.”

  “Is the committee arranged by the instructions of the president?” Bessmertnykh asked.

  “No,” Kryuchkov said. “He’s incapable of functioning now. He’s flat on his back at his dacha.”

  Bessmertnykh asked for a medical report, but Kryuchkov refused. Something was obviously very strange about this, though Bessmertnykh’s instincts either were not sharp enough or he saw danger and tried to negotiate a safe course for himself. In the days to come he called in sick and refused to come out publicly against the coup. But at least he turned down Kryuchkov.

  “I am not going to be part of this committee and I categorically reject any participation in that,” he said.

  As they went back to the meeting, Kryuchkov told the others that the foreign minister had refused. Bessmertnykh told the group that their idea would isolate the country, it would bring on sanctions from the West, maybe a grain embargo. The committee seemed glum. They so wanted the appearance of consensus, of legality, before the world and the people.

  “We still need a liberal,” Kryuchkov said.

  “Then the so-called committee began to fall apart and to split,” Pavlov told the prosecutors months later. “The whole situation was odd. Bessmertnykh fell sick. I was sort of carried out of the room. I did not think it would end this way. If someone had not decided out of foolishness to bring in the military hardware, nothing at all would have happened.”

  At one point at the Kremlin meeting, Lukyanov asked what sort of plan had been worked out, what the details of the state of emergency were. In fact, was there a plan?

  “Why do you say that?” Yazov said. “We have a plan.” But as he told the prosecutors later, Yazov knew there was nothing. “I knew we had nothing except the sketch that we had been absorbed in that Saturday at ABC. This was no plan and I knew very clearly that, in any case, we had no real aim at all.”

  AUGUST 19, 1991

  Ol’var Kakuchaya, the director of Vremya, was dead asleep when the phone rang at 1:30 A.M. It was his boss on the line, the head of state television and radio, Leonid Kravchenko.

  “Ol’var, what’s your address?” Kravchenko said urgently.

  “Are you sending someone to me?”

  “I want to send a car.”

  “What for?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  Can’t this wait? Kakuchaya asked.

  No, it can’t, Kravchenko said. We have an emergency.

  The morning show had to be changed—changed drastically. He’d explain when they got to the studios at Ostankino. Kravchenko told Kakuchaya that they needed two newscasters to get ready, one man and one women—or whoever could get to the studios fastest.

  The car came for Kakuchaya in no time and brought him to work. Kravchenko called again, this time from his car on the special “Kremlin line.”

  “We’re on the way,” Kravchenko said. “Go outside and I’ll give you the scripts you need.”

  “How long will you be?”

  “I’ll be there in seven minutes.”

  Kravchenko’s car pulled up in the parking lot. He was usually a dapper man, an apparatchik for the television age, but now he seemed absolutely pale. He said that he had just gotten into bed when he was called and told to come immediately to the Central Committee. He was given a stack of documents—the appeals and pronouncements of the Emergency Committee that would begin going out over the air at six that morning. He was told to create an atmosphere on television similar to that on the day of a state funeral: somber, classical music, deadpan announcements.

  Kakuchaya took a quick look at the documents. They seemed to have been typed in haste on an ordinary typewriter. And there was Yanayev’s signature, a hasty scrawl. Kravchenko told him that soon there would be tanks around the TV tower. No one should go outside. Use the underground tunnels connecting the various buildings to get around. And obey orders.

  Gennadi Yanayev, still buzzed from drink, took power at 4:00 A.M. Thirty minutes later, Marshal Yazov dispatched Coded Telegram 8825 ordering heightened alert status for all military units. Soldiers were ordered back from furlough. The Taman Guards, the Dzerzhinsky and Kantemirovskaya mechanized divisions, and several units of the Ryazan Airborne Division would occupy the city of Moscow.

  At the Ministry of Defense, Yazov repeated Kryuchkov’s elaborate conspiracy theory about an imminent anti-Soviet coup and the need to take the upper hand. “There will be people in the crowd who will throw themselves in front of tanks or throw Molotov cocktails,” Yazov warned his commanders. “I want no bloodshed or carnage.”

  It was a hellish morning for Prime Minister Pavlov. He had stayed up most of the night drinking with Yanayev, and now Kryuchkov was trying to reach him to organize planning sessions at the Kremlin.

  At about 7:00 A.M., one of the Kremlin doctors, Dmitri Sakharov, was summoned to Pavlov’s dacha and told only that the prime minister was “very unwell.”

  “Pavlov was drunk,” Sakharov testified later. “But this was no ordinary, simple intoxication. He was at the point of hysteria. I proceeded to give him attention.”

  The barracks of the Kantemirovskaya Mechanized Division in the town of Naro-Fominsk outside Moscow were quiet, and Private Vitaly Chugunov, a young man with wheat-blond hair from the city of Ulyanovsk, was in the middle of a deep, untroubled sleep. These were the last sweet moments before Monday reveille and another week of training. Chugunov had thought he would be among the first generation of Soviet soldiers blessed by the rise of a peaceable kingdom, a country in which a policy of “new thinking” ensured against another Afghanistan, another occupation of Eastern Europe.

  Suddenly, an officer burst into Chugunov’s barracks, shouting his charges out of bed. There were no complicated explanations, nothing about Gorbachev or a state of emergency. “We all thought it was one of those training alerts, and we quickly got everything ready to go,” Chugunov said. Soon he was inside his armored personnel carrier, part of a huge convoy headed for Moscow. Chugunov and his buddies were confused, not quite sure why they were taking the highway north into the city at such a fast clip and churning up the asphalt.

  Along the way, Chugunov could see a few people waving at the tanks and the armored personnel carriers; people shouting at them to turn around and go home. Slowly, the young soldiers began to understand, Chugunov fastest of all. His father had been in a tank when the Soviet army invaded Prague in 1968. He’d always told his son how scared he was that day. The commanders had told them that the Czechs would give them boxes of chocolate and the chocolate would have poison inside them. Watch out for poisoned wine, they told them. And then, as his tank rumbled into the city, he heard the insults: “Occupiers!” “Pigs, go home!” Looking out at the road now, Chugunov thought that he was headed for something far worse than his father had ever known.

  The coup went on the air at six. The announcers, so obviously nervous and confused, began to read the documents that had been delivered to Kravchenko at the Central Committee:

  “We are addressing you at a grave, critical hour for the future of the Motherland and our peoples. A mortal danger has come to loom large over our great Motherland.

  “The policy of reforms, launched at Mikhail Gorbachev’s initiative and designed as means to ensure the country’s dynamic development and the democratization of social life, have entered for several reasons into a blind alley.

  “… All democratic institutions created by the popular will are losing weight and effectiveness right in front of our eyes. This is a result of purposeful actions by those
who, grossly violating the fundamental law of the USSR, are in fact staging an unconstitutional coup [!] and striving for unbridled personal dictatorial powers.…

  “The country is sinking into the quagmire of violence and lawlessness.

  “Never before in national history has the propaganda of sex and violence assumed such a scale, threatening the health and lives of future generations. Millions of people are demanding measures against the octopus of crime and glaring immorality.”

  Yeltsin was eating breakfast at his dacha in the village of Usovo when the calls started coming in. Gennadi Burbulis, Ruslan Khasbulatov, and all the other Russian officials in the smaller dachas in the woods near Yeltsin’s quickly gathered round. Yeltsin had gotten some hints from agents in the Russian republican secret service that a coup was coming. With Gorbachev flirting to the end with his own worst enemies, Yeltsin knew that a coup was possible. But until now he hadn’t thought it would actually happen. And now he had to act without hesitation.

  The Leningrad mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, heard about the coup by phone at his hotel room in Moscow. Tanks were on their way, he was told. Sobchak called his driver, and together they headed out of town at top speed for Yeltsin’s dacha. Along the way, they saw armored personnel carriers and tanks. One tank had fallen into a ditch and was burning. Sobchak, like Yeltsin and around seventy other reform politicians, including Aleksandr Yakovlev and Eduard Shevardnadze, were on KGB arrest lists, but so far the secret police had made only a few arrests of some minor officials. Sobchak made it to Usovo untouched.

  Sobchak saw that Yeltsin was already determined to do what he could to shore up resistance to the coup. Yeltsin had called the leaders of the biggest republics and was taken aback by their calm, their lack of resolve. They told him they did not have enough information to act. Yeltsin was on his own. As he strapped on a bulletproof vest and then his shirt and suit, Yeltsin said that he and his aides would head for “the White House,” the massive Russian parliament building on the Moscow River. Without saying so, they would follow almost precisely the tactics of the Lithuanians in January: use the parliament building as a barricade, an oasis and symbol of democratic resistance, communicate with the outside world by whatever means possible. Yeltsin told his aides to convene immediately a nonstop session of the Russian parliament.