The Last Empire

by Serhii Plokhy

  Throughout the day, Yeltsin worked hard to win over the troops brought to Moscow by the plotters. The Russian president appealed to individual commanders, trying to bring them over to his side. One of his first calls from Arkhangelskoe had been to General Pavel Grachev, a forty-three-year-old Afghan veteran and commander in chief of Yazov’s paratroop units. Yeltsin had met him during his presidential campaign a few months earlier. Back then, the young general had assured Yeltsin that he was prepared to defend the Russian government against any challenge to the constitution. Now the time had come to test the general’s resolve to defend the constitution. Even if Grachev did not actually mean what he had said in the heat of the political campaign, Yeltsin had nothing to lose by trying. No coup was possible without the paratroopers, one of the few battle-ready units in the Soviet army, and at worst Yeltsin would learn what was going on among them. His contacts with real or potential adversaries went on throughout the coup.11

  The main battle for the loyalty of the army was waged on the streets of Moscow. Muscovites, initially shocked by the appearance of tanks in their city, soon adopted a strategy that proved devastating for the coup: they simply charmed “the boys.” Casual discussions with army veterans, pretty girls, and kindly grandmothers who shared whatever they had with the soldiers made them psychologically unfit for the task of crushing civilian unrest. The new class of Russian businessmen who supported Yeltsin and feared the loss of their enterprises at the hands of a new hard-line communist regime brought enough food and alcohol to the White House to keep up the spirits not only of its defenders but also of the troops stationed around Yeltsin’s stronghold. Yazov was appalled. To eliminate the danger of fraternization, the army commanders began rotating their units around Moscow. Nevertheless, Yeltsin made it as difficult as possible for Yazov and the people around him to command the loyalty of the troops. His first victory was achieved largely through the efforts of the Muscovites, whom Yeltsin was counting on to turn things around when he summoned them to a rally in front of the White House at midday on August 20.

  Moscow Echo, an independent radio station whose journalists refused to be intimidated by the plotters, called incessantly on Muscovites to show up at the White House. The television reports of the previous evening had shown citizens where to gather. Still, it was a gamble. If people ignored the call for a meeting as they had ignored the call for a general strike, no barricade or reluctance on the part of the troops would save Yeltsin and the nascent Russian democracy from an imminent crackdown. As things turned out, people heard the call and showed up in staggering numbers. Yeltsin spoke from the balcony to close to one hundred thousand Muscovites who came to manifest their support for him and his struggle. They brought a huge Russian tricolor flag. Smaller flags decorated the balcony from which Yeltsin addressed the city and the nation. He spoke from behind the cover of bulletproof shields, and his aides soon whisked him inside, as they were afraid of possible snipers on the roofs of nearby buildings.

  There was no shortage of speakers that day. For three hours one followed another, addressing the crowd that chanted, “Yeltsin, we support you,” “Russia is alive!” and “Put the junta on trial!” The speakers included Gorbachev’s former foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, and Russia’s best-known living poet, Yevgenii Yevtushenko, who read a poem featuring references to Pushkin and Tolstoy and describing the White House as “a wounded marble swan of freedom defended by the people” and swimming into immortality. Also in attendance was the world-renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who had heard the news of the coup in Paris and taken the first flight to Moscow. At the White House he first performed for its defenders and then grabbed a Kalashnikov assault rifle himself. Elena Bonner, the widow of Andrei Sakharov, father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb and longtime political dissident, made a splash with a personal anecdote from her life with Sakharov in exile. She had asked a KGB officer why the regime was writing lies about her husband. “It is written not for us but for the rabble,” came the reply. “The junta is the same,” argued Bonner. “Everything they have said and written is for the ‘rabble.’ They think we are ‘rabble.’” Bonner’s listeners believed they were rabble no more. The organizers of the meeting appealed to its participants to stay and help defend the White House. Thousands responded to the call.12

  AS THE RALLY AT THE WALLS of the Russian White House neared its end, Yeltsin suddenly got the boost he had been waiting for. On the city phone line, which had not been cut off by the KGB, he heard the voice of George H. W. Bush. It was a call that had been long in the making. On the afternoon of August 19, a few minutes before Bush made his first very cautious public assessment of the coup at his Kennebunkport compound, Andrei Kozyrev, Yeltsin’s forty-year-old minister of foreign affairs, had summoned Jim Collins, the American chargé d’affaires in Moscow, to the Russian White House. He wanted to give Collins Yeltsin’s letter to President Bush. “I appeal to you, Mr. President,” wrote Yeltsin, “to call the attention of the entire world community, and primarily the United Nations, to the events which are occurring in the USSR and demand the restoration of the legally elected organs of power and the reaffirmation of the post of USSR President M. S. Gorbachev.”13

  By midmorning the text of Yeltsin’s letter had already been received in Washington, and Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gates dictated it over the phone to Brent Scowcroft, who was flying with the president from Maine to Washington. After a brief discussion, Bush and Scowcroft decided that the letter was sufficient reason to harden the administration’s public stand on the coup. It fell to the ever cautious Scowcroft to provide this new emphasis. The general went to the back of the aircraft to talk to the press. In front of the cameras, he declared that all of the plotters were conservatives, the coup was intended to derail reforms, and the US administration had a negative attitude toward what he still called an “extra-constitutional” act. Although this fell short of Yeltsin’s expectations, the administration was inching toward a tougher position on the coup and its perpetrators. Yeltsin’s letter was the first official message to reach Washington from Moscow, but the Russian president was not the only Soviet leader knocking on Bush’s door that morning.14

  The Soviet ambassador, Viktor Komplektov, one of the few Soviet officials who had accompanied Bush on his visit to Kyiv a few weeks earlier, visited the State Department and then the White House to pass on letters from his new masters in the Kremlin. “I am sending this message to you at a point which is critical for the destiny of the Soviet Union and for the international situation in the whole world,” began the letter to President Bush from Gennadii Yanaev. It expressed the plotters’ resolve to carry out their anti-perestroika agenda, even as they promised to continue reform. At the very end of the text prepared by Kriuchkov’s KGB experts, Yanaev added a short personal note that undermined the letter’s assertions about Gorbachev’s illness. “For your information,” wrote Yanaev, “Mikhail Sergeevich [[Gorbachev]] is in complete safety, and nothing is threatening him.” Komplektov handed Yanaev’s letter to Gates, who happened to be the senior official on duty that morning in the White House. “I offered no pleasantries or polite conversation and tried to make the atmosphere as cold as possible,” wrote Gates later, recalling his meeting with Komplektov.15

  Gates was fresh from a conference of deputy heads of key government departments that he had convened in the White House Situation Room at 9:30 a.m. The participants in the meeting decided to change the tone of American pronouncements on the coup, moving toward condemnation of it. Their attitude was influenced by a report delivered by the deputy head of the CIA, Richard Kerr. The agency’s analysts believed that they were dealing with an “incomplete” coup whose outcome was not yet clear. “As the morning progressed,” Gates remembered later, “our sense in Washington was that something didn’t smell right, something was amiss in Moscow. Why were all telephone and fax lines in and out of Moscow still working? Why was daily life so little disrupted? Why had the democratic ‘opposition’ around
the country—and even in Moscow—not been arrested? How could the regime let the opposition barricade themselves in the Russian parliament building and then let people come and go? We began to think the coup leaders did not have their act together and that maybe, just maybe, this action could be reversed.” They decided to strengthen the statement they had worked on by including the word “condemn.” Gates checked with Scowcroft, who was still on his way to Washington, and added the all-important word to the text of the document. It made headlines in the evening news and saved the face of the administration, which had begun the day with declarations that smacked of appeasement.16

  An even stronger statement condemning the coup was approved at a second Deputies Committee meeting convened by Gates in the Situation Room at 5:00 p.m. The meeting was attended by President Bush, National Security Adviser Scowcroft, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell. By that time there was further evidence of the plotters’ disorganization. The CIA’s Richard Kerr summarized the agency’s estimate as follows: “In short, Mr. President, this does not look like a traditional coup. It’s not very professional. They’re trying to take control of the major power centers one at a time, and you can’t pull off a coup in phases.” The new information indicated that the president could now go much further in condemning the coup. “We are deeply disturbed by the events of the last hours in the Soviet Union and condemn the unconstitutional resort to force,” began the new document. It included a quotation from Yeltsin’s letter to President Bush, demanding the “restoration of the legally elected organs of power and the reaffirmation of the post of USSR President M. S. Gorbachev.”17

  The quotation was a signal to Yeltsin that Bush had received his letter and was on his side, offering no support or recognition to the plotters. But the US president was still reluctant to call the Russian president. Given his unpleasant dealings with Yeltsin during his recent visit to Moscow, Bush did not hasten to contact him. He asked his aides to connect him with Gorbachev, but Gorbachev’s telephone was silent. The US president had seen for himself how bitter the rivalry between Gorbachev and Yeltsin had become, and he did not want to do anything to provoke a new round of hostilities. Yet the progress of the coup left him little choice. On the evening of August 19, the presidential aides concluded that their boss would have to call Yeltsin.18

  On the morning of August 20, with Gorbachev’s telephones still silent, Brent Scowcroft drafted a memo providing a rationale for Bush’s call to Yeltsin. The Americans had very little reliable information about the rapidly evolving situation in Moscow. Scowcroft told Bush that Yeltsin was “holed up in the RSFSR Building (his ‘White House’) with approximately 100 Russian deputies.” There were also rumors that Yeltsin had already been arrested. Another rumor claimed that Gorbachev was in Moscow, wrote Scowcroft. American intelligence could not confirm any of those rumors, and the national security adviser wanted the president to get “first hand information on the current situation.” There were also other reasons for the call. “Calling President Yeltsin this morning allows you to show support for him, and through him, for the constitutional process violated by the coup. The mere fact of your call will buoy him up,” claimed Scowcroft. That was as far as the administration was prepared to go at the time in supporting Yeltsin’s resistance to the coup. “It is important not even inadvertently to leave President Yeltsin with the impression that we can give more than general support,” wrote Scowcroft. Yeltsin had to be reassured that the United States supported his call for the restoration of Gorbachev to power. The Americans would also try to communicate with the coup leaders to prevent the use of force.19

  The call to Yeltsin miraculously went through soon after 8:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on August 20. “Just checking up to see how things are going from your end,” began the president, apparently forgetting to greet his Russian interlocutor. “Good morning,” responded Yeltsin, for whom it was late afternoon in Moscow. “Good morning,” reiterated Bush, paying no attention to the time difference between Washington and Moscow, and then repeated his question: “I just wanted a first-hand report on the situation from your end.” He stuck to his talking points, showing no excitement about managing to reach Yeltsin, who only a few minutes earlier had been presumed to be under arrest. Yeltsin did not mind. As Scowcroft had predicted, the call was a major boost to him. “The building of the Supreme Soviet and office of the President is surrounded,” Yeltsin told Bush, “and I expect a storming of the building at any moment. We have been here 24 hours. We won’t leave. I have appealed to 100,000 people standing outside to defend the legally elected government.” The 100,000-person rally to which Yeltsin referred was drawing to a close at the walls of the Russian White House.

  “You have our full support for the return of Gorbachev and the legitimate government,” said Bush after Yeltsin’s lengthy report on the coup and the opposition’s demands. Urging Bush to rally world leaders in support of Russian democracy, Yeltsin also advised him against calling Yanaev, and the American president concurred. They agreed to get in touch the next day. Surprisingly, it was turning out to be an uplifting conversation not only for Yeltsin but also for Bush. “Good luck and congratulations on your courage and commitment. We sympathize and pray with you. All the American people support you. What you’re doing is absolutely right,” said Bush in conclusion. The difference in tone from the cold initial exchange could not have been more striking.20

  THE RESOLVE DEMONSTRATED by thousands of ordinary Muscovites gathered in front of the White House at the time of Bush’s call gave Yeltsin grounds for cautious optimism. But there also were signs that the plotters were preparing an armed assault on the Russian parliament building. Before 2:00 p.m. Yeltsin had a visit from General Aleksandr Lebed, whose paratroopers were stationed around the White House, ostensibly to protect Yeltsin. Lebed had just received orders to withdraw, making the White House vulnerable to attack. He refused to follow Yeltsin’s order to leave the battalion where it was. Lebed told the president about his military oath and explained that the only way to get around it was for Yeltsin to issue a decree appointing himself commander in chief. Yeltsin vacillated. Lebed also explained to the defenders of the White House the futility of their efforts. “All it would take would be the release of a few antitank guided missiles, and the plastic in the building would ignite,” Yeltsin later remembered the general saying. “The fire would burn so fiercely that people would jump out of the windows.”21

  News that the assault was imminent began to reach the Russian White House in the late afternoon. A KGB man was brought to the defenders, claiming that his unit had received orders to attack the Russian parliament. This was confirmed by Yeltsin’s aides, who were in touch with fellow Afghan veterans in the army and KGB. At 5:00 p.m. Vice President Rutskoi ordered that people gathered around the White House be organized into defense units. They declared the formation of the Russian (as distinct from Soviet) armed forces and called on young men to join them. Yeltsin finally decided to appoint himself commander in chief of the armed forces. Defectors were welcomed from units of the Soviet army, police, and KGB stationed in Moscow. The units were growing in number and strength. At 6:00 p.m. came the announcement that women were obliged to leave the White House. The radio station Moscow Echo was still on the air, calling on Muscovites to come to the parliament building and help save their democracy. People were responding.

  As darkness fell on the city, there were some fifteen thousand people around the building. Among them was Theresa Sabonis-Chafee, a young graduate student from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, who had arrived in Moscow in January 1991 and whose Russian was shaky at best. “I wandered among the crowds,” she remembered later, “debating the merits of shouting, ‘Comrades, I need an interpreter,’ but decided I would rather be treated as a Russian among Russians.” She was soon recruited into a unit guarding access to the White House. Expecting the army to use gas to disperse the crowd, the or
ganizers started to hand out gas masks. “They created cordons of people with their arms linked,” wrote Sabonis-Chafee later. “The first cordon was men only, until they realized that there were not enough large gas masks. Then women who could fit into the smallest-size gas masks also joined the first cordon. I ended up in the second cordon, controlling access to the drive-in entrance.”

  In the White House, the exhausted Yeltsin was ready to take a nap. Before he retired, his chief bodyguard, Aleksandr Korzhakov, presented him with a choice: if the expected attack came, either retreat to the basement or move to the nearby American embassy. In the basement, he told the president, “we will perish without outside assistance.” In the embassy “we can take shelter for a long time and tell the whole world what is going on in Russia.” Yeltsin said, “Fine.” Korzhakov posted a guard with a rifle next to his office and sent the president to sleep in a doctor’s office on the other side of the building. At the approaches to the White House, Theresa Sabonis-Chafee, having spent hours in the cordon checking other people’s documents without ever showing her own American passport, fell asleep in a bus parked nearby.22

  6

  FREEDOM’S VICTORY

  HE KNEW THAT HE WAS BEING FOLLOWED. On August 20, the second day of the coup, when Andrei Kozyrev, the foreign minister of the Russian Federation, headed for Sheremetevo International Airport on the outskirts of Moscow, his “escort” of undercover KGB officers accompanied him, as they had done the day before. Kozyrev was trying to catch a flight to Paris but did not have a ticket and was not sure whether he would be allowed to leave Moscow. He was on a special mission on behalf of the government that had barricaded itself in the Russian White House.