From time to time, Yeltsin interrupted the proceedings, declaring with a broad grin that “in order to relieve accumulated tension” he would now sign a decree with far-reaching implications for the future of the country. In this way he made public decrees ordering the Communist Party to cease activities in the armed forces serving on the territory of the RSFSR; suspending publication of newspapers that had cooperated with the junta; confiscating Communist Party publishing houses and printing plants and placing them under the Russian government’s control; and sealing the headquarters of the Central Committee and suspending the activities of the Communist Party in the Russian Republic, pending an investigation into its role in the coup. This last move had momentous consequences, for it signaled the end of the Party’s legal existence in Russia.
On Saturday morning, a massive funeral was held for the three men who had died at the barricades early Wednesday morning. A crowd of tens of thousands of people gathered in Manezh Square to hear speeches made by major political figures, including Gorbachev. Somber and emotional, Gorbachev paid tribute to the three men and announced that he had signed a decree posthumously awarding them the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The crowd then proceeded to Kalinin Prospect and on to the White House, pausing to hear Yeltsin’s funeral oration, perhaps the most powerful speech of his public career. Marching in the funeral procession were Afghan War veterans, Russian Orthodox priests, rabbis, colorfully bedecked Cossacks, and, of course, defenders of the White House carrying a large tricolor flag. Later that day, Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and suspended the Party’s activities, extending to the entire country Yeltsin’s decree banning the Party on the territory of the Russian Republic.
* * *
How can we account for the rapid and ignominious defeat of the “gang of eight”? Among the important factors were the ineptitude of the plotters, the general decrepitude of the centralized system of control, and, perhaps most critical at that moment, the Emergency Committee’s inability to command authority among the top brass in the military and the KGB. Their orders to arrest Yeltsin and other key political figures were disobeyed (in fact, only four people were arrested during the coup, all of them People’s Deputies). The conspirators then failed to cut off communications with the White House even after it became the headquarters of the resistance.[21]
The spokesmen of the Emergency Committee did not make a convincing case for themselves at their one and only press conference, where they were openly ridiculed by members of the Soviet press—all of this broadcast live for the benefit of the entire country. More surprising is the fact that they could not even control the content of the one and only television news program, “Vremia,” or the government newspaper Izvestiia.[22]
When rumors of a coup had circulated some months earlier, Gorbachev reportedly dismissed the possibility on the grounds that people like Yanaev were incapable of masterminding a takeover. He was wrong about that, but the plot did in fact unfold like a comedy of errors. By the time it was over, two of the conspirators had landed in the hospital (Pavlov and Yazov); one had committed suicide (Pugo);[23] and another lay unconscious in an alcoholic stupor (Yanaev).
But ineptness does not preclude brutality and may even facilitate it. A few days before the coup began, the plotters had placed an order for 250,000 handcuffs, and the Moscow police commandant had 300,000 arrest forms printed in advance. The plotters prepared a list of sixty-nine people, most of them public figures, who were to be arrested. Some of the men involved in the coup gave orders to arrest Yeltsin and shoot civilians at the White House. These orders were not obeyed, as we know now, because commanders such as Colonel General Grachev (subsequently appointed Russia’s Minister of Defense), Major General Lebed (subsequently the Commander of the Fourteenth Army), and Major General Viktor Karpukhin (at the time, Commander of the KGB’s anti-terrorist “Alpha” brigade, and under pressure from his subordinates) refused to shed the blood of their compatriots.
The internal security forces provide a particularly telling example of the plotters’ failure to mobilize key segments of the military behind their effort. Moscow policemen provided the nucleus of Yeltsin’s security forces during the coup. The staff and cadets at the Riazan Higher Police Academy and a Moscow platoon of the elite Specialized Designation Police Detachment—known by the Russian acronym OMON—threw their support behind Yeltsin.
Even more critical for the defeat of the putsch was the equivocation and noncooperation within the KGB. An interview with Major General Karpukhin later disclosed the extent of insubordination. According to Karpukhin, he first disobeyed orders on the morning of August 19 when he was instructed to arrest Yeltsin at his country house. Although he was in a position to make the arrest (“My vehicles were staked out around the entire settlement. All roads were blocked…”), Karpukhin nonetheless allowed Yeltsin to depart.
On the evening of August 19, Karpukhin participated in a secret meeting of commanding officers at the USSR Ministry of Defense. At that point, Karpukhin had operational command over elite forces numbering about 15,000 men. He described the plan of attack as follows:
At 3:00 A.M. the OMON divisions would clear the square [around the White House] and disperse the crowd with gas and water cannons. Our divisions were to follow them. On the ground and from the air, using helicopters with grenade launchers and other special equipment, we would take the building.
My boys were practically invulnerable. All this would have lasted fifteen minutes. Everything depended on me in this situation. Thank God, I did not lift a hand. Had there been a battle, there would have been a bloody mess. I refused.[24]
Karpukhin was not alone among top KGB officers who resisted the plan for attack. Other Alpha commanders shared Karpukhin’s view that the White House could easily be seized, but only at the cost of many casualties among the defenders. To be sure, some KGB officers were initially attracted by the putschists’ appeal. But by Monday evening, following the press conference of the Emergency Committee, they concluded (in the words of a KGB major general) that “this was a simple adventure, and the perplexing questions [about Gorbachev’s health] multiplied.”[25] A number of them viewed the coup as “unlawful and unconstitutional.”[26]
Insubordination in the police, the army, and the KGB, and especially in the elite units, prevented the putschists from carrying out their plans.[27]
The number of Muscovites who participated publicly in some aspect of the popular resistance during the three days of the coup has been estimated at as many as 500,000 (many more joined the victory rally on Thursday and the funeral on Saturday). Even this high figure represents only a small proportion of the city’s total population of eight or nine million.
Yet, within hours of the coup d’état, the junta’s claim to govern had been reduced to one issue: who would control the White House? In this context, a relatively small number of people—but enough to fill to overflowing the vast space around the structure—made a tremendous difference. They stopped the movement of tanks with barricades and with their own bodies. They fraternized with soldiers and officers. They protested in the Tuesday mass rally. They organized self-defense units around the White House on Monday and Tuesday nights.
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