The Penguin History of Modern Russia

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. Gorbachev’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 Gorbachev 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 Gorbachev 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-Ogarevo negotiations by stating that the sovereignty demanded by the various Soviet republics could not be unconditional.

Gorbachev 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’etat; 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, Gorbachev refused to become alarmed, 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 Bondarev 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 major 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’etat. It is inconceivable that they were publishing their feelings in the press without the knowledge of other governmental personages. Gorbachev’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 Gorbachev 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 Gorbachev 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 Gorbachev’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 Gorbachev 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, Gorbachev laudably 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 article 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 Gorbachev 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 Gorbachev 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 Gorbachev’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 naive 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’etat had not been unrealistic. Disillusionment with Gorbachev 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 Gorbachev’s liberation. He also contacted Pavel Grachev, Commander of Soviet Airborne-Ground Forces to request physical