reconfiguring the relationship between the central party-state and the fifteen constituent republics of the USSR. Glasnost, for example, had resulted in the publication of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact’s secret protocols, revealing that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been illegally annexed by Moscow. While these three republics sought outright independence from the Soviet Union, other republics issued decrees announcing their intent to take more control over their local political and economic affairs. This parade-of-sovereignties gained momentum when Boris Yeltsin declared the sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) in June 1990.
Gorbachev and the Communist Party initially tried to control the restructuring process. On April 26, 1990, the Supreme Soviet adopted the law, “On the Delineation of Powers Between the USSR and the Subjects of the Federation,” to redefined center-periphery relations. The newly established Federation Council, consisting of Gorbachev and leaders of the fifteen republics, announced on June 12, 1990, that a completely new union treaty was needed to clarify the changing authority structure of the country. Four separate Union treaties were drafted in 1990 and 1991. Critically, Gorbachev primarily negotiated with the elected presidents of the republics, not the republic Party leaders, a move that would alarm die-hard communists in the months to come. Gorbachev’s two closest allies in the reform process, Eduard Shevardnadze and Alexander Yakovlev, began to warn that a reactionary coup was imminent.
After many rounds of negotiation and a popular referendum, a final draft was issued on June 17, 1991, and a signing ceremony was announced for August 20. The treaty created a Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics and tacitly acknowledged that the six republics absent from the negotiations
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(Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova) were free to enter or decline this new political union. Gorbachev departed for vacation in the Crimea on August 4.
However, key Soviet leaders feared the new treaty would mean the end of the great Soviet state-and their own power. Plans had already been drawn up and were implemented once Gorbachev had left Moscow. The plotters’ “Appeal to the Soviet People” was full of warnings about the imminent demise of the USSR, and court documents and testimony have since revealed that the desire to preserve the Union was a direct precipitant of the coup. The eight-man Emergency Committee represented the traditional bastions of power in the Soviet system. They included: Gennady Yanayev (USSR vice president), Valentin Pavlov (prime minister), Vladimir Kryuchkov (head of the KGB), Dimitri Ya-zov (minister of defense), Boris Pugo (minister of interior), Alexander Tizyakov (head of the Association of State Enterprises), Oleg Baklanov (head of the military-industrial complex and deputy chair of the Defense Council), and Vasil Starodubsev (chair of the Soviet farmers’ union). Although Yanayev was the reluctant public face of the Committee, Kryuchkov was the real architect. Key leaders such as parliamentary speaker Anatoly Lukyanov and Gorbachev’s long-time chief of staff Valery Boldin supported the Committee, although they were not formal members. In the end, the coup was thwarted by its planners’ incompetence, popular resistance, and Russian Republic (RSFSR) president Boris Yeltsin.
On Monday, August 19, the Emergency Committee dispatched troops to key positions around Moscow, shut down all independent media outposts, banned all non-Communist political organizations, and proclaimed a state of emergency. They failed to shut off telephones, e-mail, and fax machines, however, and the independent media merely went underground.
Inexplicably, the Emergency Committee did not arrest Boris Yeltsin, who had become the popularly elected president of the Russian Republic only two months earlier. Yeltsin, at his dacha outside Moscow, was soon joined by key leaders of Russia, including Prime Minister Ivan Silayev, parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov, Leningrad mayor Anatoly Sobchak, Moscow deputy mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and General Konstantin Kobets, chair of the Russian parliament’s military affairs committee.
A soldier stands guard on a tank in Red Square as the coup begins to collapse. © PETER TURNLEY/CORBIS
The Russian leaders drafted their own appeal, “To the Citizens of Russia,” and then dispersed. Although the KGB’s elite Alpha unit had surrounded the dacha, they did not move to arrest Yeltsin and company. In hindsight, participants have attributed this critical error to internal bickering among Alpha commanders or the lack of a direct order from the Emergency Committee. Whatever the explanation, Yeltsin slipped away and immediately went to the Russian parliament building, known as the White House. Climbing atop one of the tanks surrounding the White House, Yeltsin denounced the coup as illegal, read his appeal, and called for a general strike. He also declared that military and police forces on Russian territory now reported to him. Yeltsin’s team began circulating alternative news reports, faxing them out to Western media for broadcast back into the USSR. Soon Muscovites began to heed Yeltsin’s call to defend democracy.
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Boris Yeltsin rallies Muscovites to resist the hard-line coup attempt in August 1991. © PETER TURNLEY/CORBIS
Tens of thousands of Russian citizens assembled outside the White House, constructing barricades out of trees, trolley cars, building materials, even old bathtubs, to hold off an expected attack by Soviet troops. But instead of attacking on Monday, troops from the Tamanskaya Division switched sides to defend the White House, turning their turrets away from the building.
Outside Moscow, the reaction was mixed. Many local leaders hastened to support the Emergency Committee. Republics with noncommunist leaders, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Kyrgyzstan, immediately denounced the coup. Iraq and Libya backed the plotters, while Western leaders cautiously observed events unfold. United States diplomats had issued three separate coup warnings to Gorbachev that summer, but President George H. W. Bush was initially reluctant to back the maverick Yeltsin.
That evening, Acting President Yanayev held a press conference that was a public-relations disaster. His quivering hands, constant sniffling, and stilted delivery suggested his lack of conviction- or his inebriation. Reporters laughed at his lame answers about the day’s events. From the outset, the Emergency Committee inspired little fear.
On Tuesday, August 20, citizens continued to gather at the White House. Students, private security firms, priests, and grandmothers defended the building, organized by veterans of the Afghanistan war. Yeltsin emerged to rally the crowd. Waving Russia’s pre-communist flag, he exhorted citizens to ignore decrees from the Emergency Committee. Members of the Russian and Western media entered the White House and provided eyewitness reports. Some 250 RSFSR Supreme Soviet deputies alternately holed up with Yeltsin or went into the crowds to convert Soviet soldiers to their cause. Pro-democracy figures such as Eduard Shevardnadze, Yelena Bonner, and Mstislav Rostropovich addressed the crowd.
Defying a curfew and drenching rain, people stayed at the barricades Tuesday night. When troops began to stir just after midnight, the crowds tried to halt them, shouting “Shame! Shame!” Three civilians, Volodya Usov, Dima Komar, and Ilya
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Krichevsky, were killed in the confusion, becoming the coup’s martyrs. No further advance was made on the White House, as military and KGB troops refused to fire on their countrymen.
The Emergency Committee effectively surrendered at 10:00 A.M. on Wednesday, August 21. As the troops withdrew, two competing delegations raced to reach Gorbachev first. One group, consisting of Baklanov, Kryuchkov, Tizyakov, and Ya-zov, primarily wanted to plead their case to Gorbachev and avoid arrest. Yeltsin’s group, led by Russian vice president Alexander Rutskoi and Prime Minister Silayev, wanted to assure Gorbachev’s safety. They took Western media and Russian security forces with them. Yeltsin’s team arrived first, and Gorbachev had the other group arrested immediately upon arrival. Gorbachev and his family flew back to Moscow, arriving in the early hours of Thursday. However, the people had sided with Yeltsin, not Gorbachev, and power began to shift accordingly.
Gorbachev was slow to read the new mood among his populace. He believed a new union treaty was still possible, praised Lenin and socialism upon his return, and hesitated to resign from the Communist Party. Meanwhile, people took to the streets, tearing down statues of Lenin, hammers and sickles, and even the statue of Felix Dzerzhin-sky outside KGB headquarters, the organization he had founded. Lenin’s Mausoleum closed
