Stupid Wars : A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous R

In the end, the biggest mistake the coupsters made was that they had attacked the wrong man. It was Yeltsin who put the final spike into the heart of the system. His rise to power wasn’t based on better ideas. He cared only about Russia, was honest enough to say it, and brave enough to stand up for it. He was a practical, impetuous man, very often drunk, who in his last years as the Russian president could be found dancing goofily onstage at political rallies, with the self-aggrandizing gusto and hearty irrelevance of a Boston-Irish city councilman. The coupsters lived for their system and wanted nothing more than to preserve it exactly as it had always existed. It was the only world they had ever known. But Yeltsin concerned himself only about Russia, not the whole diseased corpse of the USSR, and the coupsters could not grasp that concept. They, like Gorby, wanted to control the whole stinking system.

The coupsters never saw Yeltsin coming.

WHAT HAPPENED AFTER

The whole incident revealed that Gorby’s small steps toward an impossible goal did create something good for the Soviet people. But Gorby himself resisted the inevitable changes he had brought about. After the coup he struggled to remain at center stage but found that Yeltsin had irretrievably replaced him. On the last day of 1991, Gorby signed off on the disso­lution of the empire and became another faceless Eurocrat ranging the plains of Europe, his Nobel in tow.

In 1996 Yeltsin was reelected president of Russia and led the country through the chaotic devolution from superpower to a much poorer version of France but with lousy food. After almost ten years of increasingly corrupt governance, the Russian people came to hate Yeltsin for his many faults. He left office in 1999 and died in 2007, virtually forgotten. He had proved finally, alas, to be simply one of them. But for a few glorious days, he had been a democrat.

The coupsters, overall, fared pretty well. Most were rounded up after the coup collapsed. They were convicted for their roles; two years later they were given amnesty by the government. Perhaps it was the reformist nature of Soviet prisons, or maybe they saw the light, but most bought into the new system they opposed and became productive mem­bers of the new economic ruling class. Pugo, however, could not handle the strain of the defeat. Distraught over the coup’s collapse, the next day, he and his wife committed suicide.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to acknowledge everyone who sup­ported and encouraged us during the writing of this book.

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