Langley, 1900 Hours, Wednesday, August 21, 1991
By Wednesday, we’d concluded that the coup was in serious trouble and chances were it would fail. That analysis was carried by Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gates to President Bush’s vacation headquarters in Kennebunkport, Maine.
The CIA assessment was based on the continued lack of signs that the coup plotters were actually in control. None of the usual indicators were being picked up—there were no widespread arrests, no communications blackouts, and telephone and fax traffic between university students in the United States and the Soviet Union were operating and were full of defiance.
By the end of the day, the President would observe on national television that sometimes coups failed, making the United States the first among the Western allies to suggest that perhaps the clock couldn’t be turned back in the USSR by a handful of old guard plotters. The President’s observation was then flashed across the world by CNN to Moscow, where the men who ran the USSR sat transfixed by the television coverage.
First Chief Directorate Headquarters, Yasenevo, 0630 Hours, Thursday, August 22, 1991
To Leonid Shebarshin, it seemed the slide down the slippery slope had accelerated. The emergency committee was in free fall. Gorbachev’s return from the Crimea in the early hours of the morning had been a dreamlike affair. The President was greeted at Vnukovo-2 airport, but not by the usual crowd. There were no Politburo members, no Vice President or members of the presidential council. Members of the KGB’s Ninth Directorate bodyguards were lost in the colorful sea of men in uniforms and in civilian clothes, all armed with automatics and pistols. The crowd was animated, maybe even a little drunk.
Descending the steps from his plane, Gorbachev waved to those greeting him, his manner friendly but lethargic. His smile was uncertain—maybe he was tired, or maybe guilty, Shebarshin didn’t know which. The huge armored presidential Zil limo wheeled up to the aircraft stairs, and its heavy door swung open.
“Whose car is this?” the President demanded unexpectedly. “The Ninth’s?”
Upon hearing the response—“Yes, Mikhail Sergeyevich, the Ninth’s”—Gorbachev gestured, as if to brush away the Zil and his Ninth Directorate KGB bodyguards. He declared, “I will not go with the Ninth!”
Most of the onlookers could not have known that the head of the Ninth Directorate, Yuri Plekhanov, had been one of the members of the emergency committee delegation that had placed Gorbachev under house arrest in Foros or that Plekanov himself was now under arrest.
The crowd of greeters reacted approvingly. The guards, their composure still intact, immediately brought in a Volga, and the President slid into the rear seat of the ordinary sedan as the disorganized, confused cortege, with a wail of sirens and flashing red and blue lights, sped off in the direction of the Kremlin.
At that same moment, but on a different road, KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Oleg Baklanov, the head of the Soviet Union’s Military Industrial Commission, and Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov—Gorbachev’s closest colleagues until their arrest on the tarmac by Moscow prosecutors—were being driven away for interrogation.
Shebarshin reflected on the irony of Gorbachev’s statement on arrival that, having returned to Moscow, he seemed to have come home to a different country. It may have been sincere, he decided. These were strange and unusual times.
Langley, 2330 Hours, Wednesday, August 21, 1991
There was no longer any doubt that the old guard in Moscow had failed. The old guard in Langley had retreated into a corresponding silence. Closing up late that evening, I began to plan a strategy to deal with the even more rapid change brought about by the cataclysmic failure of the Moscow hard-liners.
I had relayed to Rolph an order from the seventh floor to tell Krassilnikov that all cooperation with the KGB was suspended until the situation had clarified and a new leadership surfaced. There was nothing to lose by playing it cool with the KGB over the next week or so. On the contrary, now was the time to see if there were any new openings at Lubyanka we might be able to exploit.
I also began planning a return visit to Moscow as soon as the dust cleared.
I continued to work in a split-screen world, keeping one eye on the satellite feed from Moscow and the other on the official reporting. It was all pointing to the same conclusion. Even the race to reach Gorbachev in Foros by the old guard led by Vladimir Kryuchkov in one plane and the Russian group in a second plane led by Boris Yeltsin’s Vice President, Aleksandr Rutskoi, had been slapstick comedy.
But as I read the reports of Gorbachev’s departure from Foros with Rutskoi, as Kryuchkov and the other plotters stood under guard in the rear of the plane, I focused for the first time on the photographs and biographical sketch of Yeltsin’s Vice President that came with the report. Aleksandr Rutskoi, a much decorated fighter pilot and Afghan War veteran, had been shot down in eastern Afghanistan in August 1988, the report said. He’d been a colonel at the time and later made his way to safety with the help of the “competent organs”—the euphemism for the KGB. After the Afghan War, Rutskoi had swapped his Air Force wings for the rough-and-tumble of Russian politics, aligning himself with Boris Yeltsin.
History was wonderful! I thought as it all came together. Rutskoi was the Soviet colonel who’d been captured in Paktia Province in Afghanistan in the last year of the war. He was the colonel who’d been released after I’d paid the prescribed ransom of Toyotas and rocket launchers.
I began to enjoy the final days of the August coup even more and hoped one day to sit down with Rutskoi to talk over old times.
Moscow, 0700 Hours, Thursday, August 22, 1991
For a fleeting moment, Leonid Shebarshin thought himself lucky for having avoided either joining in the conspiracy against Gorbachev or playing a role in its suppression. But then he thought of Pascal’s dictum: Don’t call a man lucky while he’s still alive; in the best of cases things are just going his way.
Luck aside, Shebarshin had dodged both bullets. Now all he had to do was deal with the aftermath—the hypocrisy and denial he knew was coming. Arriving at Yasenevo early, he found the few officers already at work excited and alert the morning Gorbachev returned to Moscow. They studied him closely, and he felt himself unconsciously assuming a brave, businesslike attitude, cheerfully greeting the guards and the others he met as he entered the First Chief Directorate compound. Shebarshin was relieved that there were few seniors around at the early hour.
The newspapers were delayed, but there was no shortage of sensational coverage by the broadcast media. Shebarshin reviewed the world reaction to events in Moscow. Foreign capitals uniformly welcomed the great victory of democracy, he thought wryly. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl declared that the defeat of the putsch would open a new chapter in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union. British Prime Minister John Major announced the renewal of British aid to the USSR, which had been frozen in conjunction with the coup attempt. France’s foreign minister, Roland Dumas, proposed that the European Community invite Gorbachev for a joint discussion of the future of the Soviet Union in Europe. NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner declared that the leadership of the Soviet Union had now attained greater stability and democracy.
Moscow simmers and democracy celebrates, Shebarshin said to himself. Those who didn’t have time to do so yesterday were rushing today to separate themselves from the plotters and align themselves with the ranks of the victors. The time had come to betray yesterday’s friends and find witnesses to one’s loyalty to the new regime. Gorbachev now appeared before the world and the people of the USSR as an innocent victim of the coup, a person betrayed by those he’d trusted.
But Gorbachev hadn’t even had time to recover from his long flight from the Crimea when the first whispers were heard that the President might not have been simply a helpless, captive witness to what was happening. Perhaps he had found himself in a complex situation, one that begged a complex solution. Perhaps he was a little lucky after all to have dodged
the bullets, Shebarshin concluded with deep irony. There was more play left in the game.
Later, rifling through his safe, Shebarshin put all registered documents on one side—they should be given to his assistants. Records of Kryuchkov’s orders, drafts, and rough notes came next. They should all go immediately into the incinerator. But some documents—for instance, an anonymous paper sourced to one of the new “democrats,” which reported in detail on Russian President Boris Yeltsin—could not, he decided, be entrusted to anyone. Shebarshin tore the document himself into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet.
When he finished, Shebarshin checked his safe again and decided that should any new authority become interested in the contents of the safe of the chief of the First Chief Directorate, the man propelled into the KGB’s top ranks by Vladimir Kryuchkov, they would find a box with personal documents and a pistol with sixteen rounds. Nothing more.
The pistol was carefully cleaned and oiled, the clip inserted, but no round chambered. The Makarov, Shebarshin thought as he looked at his service automatic, is a simple, dependable item whose mass fits nicely into the palm of one’s hand. The lead content of a single round of ammunition was the equivalent of a person’s life, any life, whether worthy or pitiful.
After he had finished reordering his safe, he heard the old Vietnamese clock outside his door strike nine, and as if on cue, the duty officer appeared. Everything was in order, the officer reported, there were no incidents, either in Moscow or abroad. The foreign intelligence service had hunkered down again.
First Chief Directorate Headquarters, Yasenevo, 0900 Hours, Thursday, August 22, 1991
The leadership telephone on the table by his desk rang insistently. Shebarshin lifted the receiver cautiously, knowing the system was limited to some thirty top officials in the USSR, including the head of the First Directorate. He wondered who might be at the other end.
A woman’s voice came across the line. “Leonid Vladimirovich? This is the office of Gorbachev. Mikhail Sergeyevich asks that you be at this office at twelve o’clock.”
Hesitant, Shebarshin asked a question that might not have been necessary a week earlier: “Where is that?”
The woman, without any hint of surprise, said politely, “Third floor, the Council of Ministers Building in the Kremlin. The Walnut Room.”
“Fine, I’ll be there,” Shebarshin said, and then hung up, thinking there must have been some new turn of events.
Shebarshin decided to move from Yasenevo to Lubyanka in order to be closer to the Kremlin, so as not to be late for his appointment with Gorbachev. As he was driven into central Moscow, he found the city completely calm, no crowds, no flags, no excited faces in the streets. As his car pulled into Dzerzhinsky Square, the landmark toy store, Children’s World, opposite the KGB’s Lubyanka headquarters was thronged with people as usual. Children’s World and Lubyanka, both looking out on the same square, had always fueled Moscow humor, but today there was little room for it. There was a crowd around the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, standing tall in front of the Lubyanka. The pedestal of the memorial was defaced with crudely written slogans, including “Down with the KGB.” The same letters also appeared on the facade of the KGB buildings—even, oddly, English slogans such as “Fuck this KGB!” It is all for the benefit of the international press, Shebarshin thought with irritation, whose cameras are capturing every twist in our fate.
Shebarshin was angered by what he saw, thinking that these new slogans were probably written by the same small people who scribbled their dirty little jokes on the walls of public toilets. They have now turned to politics, he mused, shrugging. The thought was not a calming one.
The Kremlin, 1145 Hours, Thursday, August 22, 1991
Identity documents were being carefully checked at the Kremlin’s Borovitsky gate; the number of guards was greater than usual, and they were serious and alert. Shebarshin saw two huge Zils parked at the entrance and spotted the chairman of the general staff, General Moiseyev, heading toward the Walnut Room, which had already begun to fill with somber, serious-looking men. The two men greeted each other briefly but were unable to speak before Gorbachev entered the room. After shaking a few hands, the President drew Shebarshin into an adjoining room.
The conversation was brief and animated. “What was Kryuchkov after?” Gorbachev asked. “What orders were given to the KGB? Did Grushko know about the coup?”
Shebarshin felt uncomfortable with his answers; it was as if they were some sort of confession. He had bumped into Viktor Grushko, who was now the senior KGB official after Kryuchkov’s arrest. He’d seen the fear in his eyes when he’d told him he had been called in to meet Gorbachev.
Shebarshin would also feel disappointed with himself, but only later, because his intense dislike of Gorbachev had somehow disappeared when he was face-to-face with him. When he described his meeting with Kryuchkov on August 19, Gorbachev exclaimed, “That bastard! I believed him more than anyone else, him and Yazov. You know that.”
Shebarshin nodded in assent. When he was asked again by Gorbachev whether Viktor Grushko had been part of the plot, he said, “I don’t know. Perhaps he knew about it.” Shebarshin wondered momentarily why the President seemed so certain that he himself hadn’t been involved in the plot. But the grilling continued.
“Who is your border guard chief?”
“Ilya Yakovlevich Kalinichenko,” Shebarshin answered.
“The way they surrounded me, stood guard over me,” the President mused, “the order was given to fire should anyone attempt to get through.”
Shebarshin tried to say something in defense of Kalinichenko, a man he considered incapable of evil. But the President ignored him.
Then Gorbachev said he was appointing Shebarshin temporary Chairman of the KGB. “Go now and assemble the deputy chiefs and advise them of this decision,” he ordered. “And issue the order for your colleagues to prepare reports on their actions during August 19 to 21. Send them personally to me in a sealed envelope.”
As he returned to the Walnut Room, the brand-new KGB chairman, instead of suspicion, found symbolic handshakes and friendly, warm smiles. Just in case, he thought dryly.
The Lubyanka, 1300 Hours, Thursday, August 22, 1991
Shebarshin returned to KGB headquarters and announced the President’s decision to the few colleagues gathered there. There were no immediate questions, and he found instant agreement to his order that the senior leadership cadre be gathered the following day to decide on the next steps. Shebarshin called for the creation of a commission to investigate the activity of the KGB during the coup and appointed Gennady Titov to head it. He thought Titov would be a good investigator but wondered whether they would let him remain head of the commission. Titov was a controversial old-line KGB officer who had as many enemies as friends. He could handle the job, but perhaps not the politics, Shebarshin thought.
After the brief meeting, Shebarshin walked the long corridor to his new office. Along the way, he was stopped by a friend from the Ninth who reported that Boris Pugo, former member of the Ministry of the Interior and one of the coup plotters, had killed himself with his own gun. Shebarshin knew Pugo and wondered why the honest and dedicated man had to take his own life. Were he and his co-conspirators so sure of the success of their enterprise that failure was tantamount to death?
Eternal memory to Boris Karlovich Pugo, Shebarshin thought dryly. He would have the same feeling later when he learned that Marshal Akhromeyev, another of the coup plotters and, yes, another honorable man, had hanged himself.
11
Moscow, 1530 Hours, Thursday, August 22, 1991
Dave Rolph had kept his team fanned out across Moscow since Monday, and as the mood in Moscow shifted from fear to jubilation, his officers were out there in the crowd capturing the images of a failed counterrevolution that had by now caught the imagination of the world.
One of Rolph’s officers was mingling with the growing crowd around Dzerzhinsky Square, noting that some had
begun to paint slogans on the wall of the Lubyanka, while others were gathering around the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, Moscow’s cast-bronze symbol of repression. He began snapping pictures like everybody else, thinking that before it was over, he might get lucky and get that one photograph that summed up the history of what was happening in the square.
The Lubyanka, 1530 Hours, Thursday, August 22, 1991
The chief of physical security for the KGB’s Dzerzhinsky complex reported to the new Chairman of the KGB that the crowd in the square outside had grown and that it might be getting ready to storm the building. What were his orders?
“Close and block all doors and gates, check the gratings,” said Shebarshin. “Under no circumstances, no matter what the situation, are firearms to be used. I’ll order the Moscow authorities to contact the militia.”
With great difficulty, the security department at the KGB headquarters was able to find someone from the militia leadership who promised to send help. But they never showed up. Shebarshin dismissed it as another sign of confusion and uncertainty in all of Moscow’s institutions. Not long after that, he received a call from the Soviet prosecutor’s office advising him that criminal charges had been filed against Kryuchkov. He was further advised that a team was ready to head over to search Kryuchkov’s office.
“All right, let them come,” he said without hesitation. The call was followed immediately by another from the Russian Federation’s prosecutor’s office, advising the new KGB Chairman that the Russian Federation had also initiated criminal charges against Kryuchkov. They were sending a team of investigators to search Kryuchkov’s office and would be accompanied by a team from Central Television.
Television! Shebarshin reacted in a flash. But he immediately resigned himself to the new way of things. What’s the difference? he thought. He told the Russian Federation prosecutor to send over his investigators and to let them know that there would also be a team from the Soviet Union prosecutor’s office.
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