GKChP is what?

The coup began on a hot Sunday day. At about five o'clock on August 18, 1991, five black Volga arrived at the gates of the government dacha in the village of Foros, on the Black Sea coast of the Crimea, where the president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Mikhail Gorbachev rested. Nobody expected them, and the guards at first did not open the gates and did not remove chains with spikes lying across the road.

The object "Dawn"

Then from the first car came General Yuri Plekhanov, head of the ninth department of the KGB. He was in charge of the KGB security service and was the direct commander of Gorbachev's guards. At the same moment, the green metal gates, adorned with large red stars, flung open. Over the next few minutes, the cars climbed the serpentine through the cypress groves to the concrete residence code-named "Zarya".

Gorbachev, as he later told investigators, did not expect visitors - five senior KGB officers, the army and high-ranking figures of the Communist Party, as well as their bodyguards. He picked up the phone to call KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov. But the line was cut. Then he summoned the chief of his guard, General Vladimir Medvedev, who said that he immediately recognized the "Khrushchev variant." Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 was removed from power during a coup during his holiday on the Black Sea coast.

Beginning of the End

During the next 73 hours, two senior Soviet officials fought for the right to make history. The delegation that arrived in Foros was sent by Kryuchkov to persuade Gorbachev to side with eight party bosses and generals who established the State Emergency Committee (State Committee for Emergency Situations), whose members were to assume temporary control over the Soviet Union. The coup was carried out, because two days later, on August 20, the president was to sign a new union treaty, which turned the USSR into a confederation. Many were afraid that this would entail the collapse of the country into dozens of independent states. The aim of the Emergency Committee was to persuade Gorbachev to declare a state of emergency and postpone the signing of the treaty.

Putch achieved the opposite effect. The creation of the State Emergency Committee not only did not strengthen the USSR, it provided Boris Yeltsin, the newly elected president of the RSFSR, with unlimited power. Communist hawks were removed from the government of the country. Trying to save the Soviet Union, the leaders of the coup finally scored a stake in his heart. Four months later the USSR ceased to exist.

But what exactly happened during these three tense August days, even today, remains unclear. Despite decades of analysis: 140 volumes of documents, three investigations, nine courts and dozens of published personal testimonies - the complete history of the putsch is silently hushed up.

Causes of the State Emergency Committee

Conspiracies are by definition almost incomprehensible. But many, like Watergate, eventually become apparent. The desire of older conspirators to confess their sins, the discovery of secret archives and the advent of new political regimes taught that truth eventually comes out.

For some, the failure of the State Emergency Committee is a triumph of democracy over reactionary forces, the people over the Politburo. This is the key episode of the extraordinary 1991, which is compared with 1789 and 1917, the moments of transition from totalitarian rule to liberal democracy. GKCHP is a clash of two systems, one of which won. As Yeltsin later said, the century of fear has ended, and the other has begun. A symbol of the upheavals that followed was a photograph of him - the elected leader of the country standing under the gunshot on the tank.

The only problem with this understanding of the putsch is that it does not agree with the facts. The more you go deeper into these three days, the less clear they become. Vital, decisive moments had very little to do with democracy. What really played the main role is the ability to mystify, mislead and manipulate. It was a competition of conspiracies, and the best one won.

In the version with semitones there is no greater puzzle than the role of two characters, Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The latter, for example, was mysteriously informed about the negotiations of the Emergency Committee. As confirmed by the numerous evidence of a dramatic confrontation in Moscow, the courage of Yeltsin, who climbed the tank to resist the army, was reinforced by the belief that no one would shoot.

The President of the USSR knew about everything

Was Gorbachev really, as he constantly insisted, under house arrest in Foros? Or, according to a number of participants in the events, his isolation was played out to him to wait and see the result before he condemns the August 21 coup? According to Vasily Starodubtsev, Gorbachev would simply return and take his place.

Today, the ex-president is revered as a reformer who broke the backbone of communism and left the game when the inevitable consequence of the failure of the State Emergency Committee occurred - the collapse of the USSR on December 26, 1991. But even in the summer of that year, his main political opponents were no longer the old party conservatives he held to try to stay in power. Since June, his problem has become Yeltsin, elected this month as the new president of the RSFSR. He came to power with 57% of the vote and had the charisma of a true, popularly elected reformer. As the date of signing the new union treaty approached, Gorbachev's attitude was straightforward: if the Soviet Union disintegrates, as the conservatives predicted, then he will remain out of work as his supreme head. If he was looking for a reason to stop the course of events, then the formation of the Emergency Committee happened at the right time.

According to the conspirator Starodubtsev, the putschists were the hands of Gorbachev, who knew about everything. In 1991, Starodubtsev was the leader of the 40 million Peasant Union. After some time spent in prison after the coup, he was elected governor of the rich agricultural Tula region, was a member of parliament from the Communist Party and died of a heart attack in 2011.

A patch or a farce?

Starodubtsev regretted that the State Emergency Committee made many mistakes, did not use the media to call on people to support the coup. The old conspirator in the failure of the putsch blamed the traitors and the CIA, but for many, the lack of professionalism in the putschists remains one of the most mysterious parties of the Emergency Committee. The picture of those days depicts not a team of hard-burned, experienced fanatics, but ill-prepared idealists who jumped above their heads.

Not that they did not have experience in coups and bloody riots. In fact, unfortunately, they were probably ahead of the whole planet in this regard, Gorbachev's bodyguard, General Medvedev, wrote later in his autobiography. Lev Trotsky, Stalin's political opponent, was killed in 1940, while in another hemisphere. What prevented the arrest of Yeltsin, who was at hand?

The questions begin with the first meeting of Gorbachev with an unexpected delegation that arrived on that debilitating August day. According to the official version, the president at first was frightened, but, being convinced that he would not be arrested, became belligerent and refused to meet the requirements. According to Gorbachev, he called the conspirators adventurers and traitors who will pay for what they have done.

Mikhail Sergeevich's family and helpers always insisted that his unwavering rejection of the putschists meant his placement under house arrest, during which he feared for his life. After the members of the State Emergency Committee flew to Moscow to seize power, Gorbachev and his wife Raisa, who died in 1999, were left under guard in Foros. When she later gave testimony to Leonid Proshkin, a senior investigator of the Prosecutor General's Office investigating the coup, she said that she had a microstroke then. He confirmed that the couple was then in a difficult situation and refused much because of the fear of being poisoned.

The illness was the occasion for a decisive press conference the next day, when under the eyes of the world the deputy Gorbachev Yanayev, who was the nominal leader of the conspirators, announced that he was assuming the duties of president. He said, unable to overcome the tremendous tremor in his hands and in his voice that Mikhail Sergeyevich is now on vacation, is being treated in the south of the country and they are hoping that once Gorbachev feels better, he will again take office.

Other evidence of the meeting in Foros presents a more complete picture. According to Valery Boldin, the former chief of the Gorbachev administration, and another conspirator who died in 2006, the Soviet leader was furious, but he was also ready to get rid of Yeltsin at any cost. In the end, the president said: "Well, to hell with you, do what you want!" And then gave some advice on how to introduce a state of emergency.

So was the house arrest of the president?

Gorbachev's isolation in Foros raises a number of questions: was he trying to leave, had he tried to contact the people in order to explain his sudden absence? His government phone was cut off, but the phone in his car was still working, like the other phone in the guard house. In fact, there is evidence that Gorbachev called during his home arrest, including Nursultan Nazarbayev, the current president of Kazakhstan, who was the leader of the Communist Party of the country in 1991, and, according to Alexander Khinshtein, a member of parliament and historian, Arkady Volsky, one of his advisers. In the conversation, Gorbachev claimed that he was not really ill.

32 of the president's guard is another subject for discussion. None of them was arrested after the coup, and investigator Proshkin found that they were neither for nor against the Emergency Committee, despite threats from their chief, General Plekhanov. Witnesses claim that Gorbachev could leave if he wanted to, but he denies it. He issued a written order demanding to go to Moscow, but, according to him, did not receive any reply. Three years later, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation came to the conclusion that Gorbachev was not under house arrest, because he did not try to leave.

In his autobiography, the chief of the security, General Medvedev, even said that during the entire period of the alleged detention, the President had a Tu-134 plane.

John Dunlop, an American historian and expert on the coup of the 1991 State Emergency Committee, claims that Gorbachev's inaction puzzled Alexander Yakovlev, who for many years had been one of the closest associates of the Soviet leader. According to him, he does not understand why the president did not run away, since protection would not even try to stop him.

It is unlikely that we will ever find out whether Gorbachev really feared or simply waited to join the victorious side. While he remained unconnected with the outside world in Foros, he was in an ideal situation: if the putsch failed, he would be his victim; Otherwise he could take on the role of leader. It seems that the president allowed to make a coup, but so that he was not openly involved in it, concluded Dunlop.

Gorbachev refuted these allegations for many years. Palazhchenko, his spokesman, warns against blind faith in the words of the putschists, who are interested in discrediting the former leader. In 2006, however, Gorbachev was openly accused by Yeltsin of involvement in the coup. After 15 years of public support for the version of the ex-president of the USSR, the patient Boris Nikolaevich said in an interview with Russian television that during the coup Gorbachev was informed about everything and waited to see who would win. At any outcome, he would join the winners.

In response, the Gorbachev Foundation, the think tank created by the former Soviet leader to promote democracy in Russia, immediately blamed Yeltsin for slandering the name of the ex-president in an attempt to divert attention from his own role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the quarrel ended in nothing. Yeltsin soon died.

Tanks in Moscow

The rest of the population of the USSR learned of the 1991 State Emergency Committee only the day after its quiet arrival from Foros. On Monday morning, the sun rose above the column of tanks, roaring along Kutuzovsky Prospekt - a wide road leading to the center of Moscow. After broadcasting the Committee's goals at 7 am, the state radio and television started a continuous broadcast of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake".

Without the explicit support of Gorbachev, the putschists had only a military force that was disastrous. Marshal of the Soviet Union Dmitry Yazov, defense minister and conspirator, who sent the tanks, later admitted that he made a number of mistakes. According to him, the coup of the State Emergency Committee was a complete improvisation. There were no plans. Nobody thought to arrest Yeltsin or storm the "White House" (the building of the Supreme Council). The putschists hoped that the people would understand and support them. But they were accused of sending tanks to the center of Moscow.

First of all, the conspirators could not rely on the security forces. The political loyalty of the Soviet military was greatly undermined by a series of bloody clashes with peaceful demonstrators in the previous two years. In 1989, the paratroopers attacked a demonstration in Tbilisi (Georgia), killing 20 people. In addition, the year of the creation of the State Emergency Committee is the year of the death of 14 civilians during the assault by the KGB's special subdivision for combating terrorism of the Lithuanian parliament and the television center captured by the demonstrators. After the commission of these crimes, the politicians responsible for them blamed the military commanders.

This deprived the army of desire and even the KGB to take part in politics, especially in the center of Moscow. They also left open the door to Yeltsin, the former head of the city committee of the Communist Party, who by the summer of 1991 replaced Gorbachev as the leading reformer of the USSR and tried to win over to his side parts of the Soviet establishment. Frank and open to the West, Yeltsin embodied the hopes of liberal young Russians, who very much wanted to end the global isolation of the country. With each passing day, his strength grew.

Yeltsin understood what he was risking. A few weeks before the coup he approached Pavel Grachev, the commander of the landing forces, and asked if he could rely on his people in the event of a coup. Yeltsin also was in constant contact with General Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, who was in charge of the air force. The presence of such allies was decisive.

Mysterious awareness

Yeltsin arrived in Moscow on the morning of August 19 from his dacha, passing by a KGB unit located in the nearest forest, which was supposed to arrest him, but did not do so. Toward the end of the day, 24 hours after the putschists' visit to Gorbachev, he left the building of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and climbed up to the tank, which went over to his side. Turning to the crowd, who came to erect barricades against the State Emergency Committee, he called on all Russians to give a fitting answer to the putschists and demand the return of a normal constitutional order.

The appearance of Yeltsin on state television put the revolution on its head. Foreign TV men, who were given full freedom, filmed tens of thousands of Russians who came out to make sure that the country does not return to the past. People all over the world saw tanks with tricolors of democratic Russia fluttering on their towers.

Thanks to his connections in the army for the next 48 hours, Yeltsin knew exactly about all the further actions of the Emergency Committee. It turned out three years later when American journalist Seymour Hersh stated that President George W. Bush had abolished the advice of the National Security Agency to make sure that Yeltsin knew the plans of the conspirators.

The Russian president was informed about the talks in real time. Yeltsin himself admitted that during the two-day siege of the White House, US diplomats visited him. In his autobiography, he wrote that at one point he even intended to flee to the US embassy, but then decided not to do it, because "people do not like it when foreigners interfere in our affairs."

After the drama on Monday, August 19, on Tuesday in Moscow there was a difficult dead-end situation. Protesters erected barricades, and leaders of the coup weighing the risks of a full-scale military operation. But when night fell, Yeltsin showed unusual composure. All sources reported that the State Committee for the State of Emergency decided to storm the White House. According to his spokesman Pavel Voshchanov, however, the Russian president spent the night in the basement, feasting and drinking. According to General Medvedev, he knew that the assault would not take place.

the end

By the morning of August 21, there was only one unit that the Emergency Committee could count on. It was a group of "Alpha", which was ordered to attack the White House. But, remembering how they were set up in Lithuania earlier this year, the special forces decided not to obey orders, and with the dawn it became clear that the conspirators had lost. Defense Minister Yazov ordered the withdrawal of tanks from Moscow, preparing the ground for decoupling the next day, when Gorbachev appeared to publicly reproach the composition of the State Emergency Committee. At the final moment, the conspirators went to Foros, already together to fly to the capital and take appropriate places in the history books.

In its complexity and unknowability - in a mixture of random and planned - the August putsch was in many ways a harbinger of the policy of post-communist Russia. Yeltsin's populist democracy was soon replaced by a rigid paternalistic state: two years later, he would send tanks against the same parliament he tried to protect in 1991.

Since then, the plot has taken the place of politics: from the coming to power of Vladimir Putin in 1999, "successfully" coincided with the military campaign, before the game in the leapfrog Putin and his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. The Kremlin with its brooding spiers remains a mystery in the center of Russian life.

How events developed

• August 18: Gorbachev tries to appeal to KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov for help. But Kryuchkov led a coup.
• August 19, 7 am: the Soviet state radio and television broadcasts the State Emergency Committee and the entry of tanks to Moscow.
• August 19: Raisa Gorbacheva claims that during her detention in Foros she suffered a microstroke.
• August 19, 5 pm: Vice President Yanayev announces the President's illness.
• August 20: the population began construction of barricades in front of the White House, inside of which was Yeltsin.
• August 20: Gorbachev is waiting. According to the conspirator Vasily Starodubtsev, he knew about everything.
• August 21, 3 am: the special division of the KGB - the group "Alpha" - ordered to storm the White House. His disobedience leads to a breakdown of the conspiracy.
• August 22: Gorbachev arrives from Foros to condemn the Emergency Committee. The conspirators are arrested.
• December 25: the consequences of the Emergency Committee - Gorbachev resigns from the post of president of the Soviet Union, and the next day the USSR officially ceased to exist.