military coup russia

Military Coup Russia - Pro-democracy protesters drag a Soviet soldier from a tank in an attempted coup to establish a hardline right-wing dictatorship in front of the White House in Moscow, on August 19, 1991. Credit: DIMA TANIN / AFP via Getty Images

Pro-democracy protesters drag a Soviet soldier from a tank in an attempted coup to establish a hardline right-wing dictatorship in front of the White House in Moscow, on August 19, 1991. Credit: DIMA TANIN / AFP via Getty Images

Military Coup Russia

No headline I've ever written, no headline I've read, has brought me more joy than the one my father was holding at the Victoria train station on an August afternoon in 1991. The coup failed.

Coup In Russia

. Suddenly it didn't matter that I was experiencing this with my family. It was the first day I could walk alone in London. I was late because I was mingling with the crowd outside Downing Street waiting for news. "It's a shame." said the voice. In the early days when we pulled out our cell phones, that voice sounded like confirmation of our collective fears.

The fears of August 1991 were the same as our fears of January 2021. That a democratic revolution in one of the world's great powers would strengthen its position and then send us all back down the road to global annihilation.

However, the 1991 revolution failed. The weight has gone down. The bloody dictatorship seen in Tiananmen Square two years ago is not yet to be restored. The democratization movement that brought down the Berlin Wall two years ago will continue today. One of the most promising decades in human history, the 90s, began in earnest on that summer day.

Back then, I didn't even know I would see the Soviet Union. For the first time, in the last weeks of its existence.

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If you remember the week-long coup in the Soviet Union these days. It is remembered for its brief coup and the decline of communism. When the Soviet Union itself collapsed in late 1991, everything started to feel inevitable.

A dangerous myth began in the heart of America, where many people do not know or do not trust the democratic reforms of the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev. They say it was not the thwarting of a Russian right-wing coup that ended the Cold War threat forever, but rather the determined rhetoric of the Reagan-Bush right. Besides, how can we dare to call those who reviewed the past democratic system a right-wing conspirator? Communists are all radical leftists, right?

We are now witnessing an attempted coup in the United States, where more people actually died (5)(Opens in a new window) than the Soviets (3). So it's a good time to look back on a half-forgotten week that shook the world and put an end to the 'Evil Realm'. For now, there is a battle going on between dictators and (small) Democrats. Even then, democracy was fragile. Meanwhile, Democrats have become outraged and emboldened by attempts to silence their voices. As now, the key was to confront the regime's lies.

Then, as now, the threat of authoritarianism did not seem defeated. Arguably, a direct line can be drawn between the 1991 KGB-sponsored coup and the 2000 elections under the dubious circumstances of former KGB officer Vladimir Putin (opens in a new window).

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There is another connection between coups. Whatever one may say later, we did not see the coup coming. Even my teenage self saw it coming. On the first day of the coup, I wrote in my diary that "coups by hardliners were always mentioned." "I guess everyone wanted the old soldiers gone."

Mikhail Gorbachev is a witness at Russia's Supreme Court hearing the trial of those accused of treason and attempted coup in 1991. Credit: Tanya Makeeva/AP/Shutterstock

Remember what the soldiers of old fought for. Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader not to retreat from the Bolshevik Revolution. He became a cautious reformer. he announced

, enabling people to own businesses. In the spring of 1989, he said he would not interfere in the politics of Eastern European countries under the Soviet regime. This led directly to the wave of uprisings that toppled the Berlin Wall in November. And he introduced democracy to the Soviet Union, allowing each republic (eg Russia) to elect its own leader (eg Yeltsin, who was a protégé of Gorbachev).

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In August 1991, Gorbachev and Yeltsin were about to sign a treaty of association that would allow the republic to control its own resources, including oil. USSR It is a collection of federalism, almost like the United States. Joining the non-communist party was the next step on the road to full democracy. The KGB kept Gorbachev under surveillance.

On August 18, the president finalized the deal at his villa on the Black Sea. If right-wing reactionaries ever wanted to maintain their grip on Soviet society, it would be now or never. June 6, 2021 was their last chance to stay in power.

In America, we just saw mobs wanting to kill the Vice President(Maro opens a new window) while he was doing his legal duty to declare an election. In contrast, the Soviet coup was led by a vice president who wanted to end the election. Gennady Yanaev was a hardliner expelled from the Gorbachev parliament in the 1990s. On the morning of 19 August, state radio announced that Yanaev had taken over because Gorbachev had been unwell while under house arrest. Fake 25th Amendment situation.

An "emergency committee" of other Soviet leaders, including the head of the KGB, was formed to address the issue. They moved to control state radio and television and shut down non-state newspapers. They arrested an ally of Gorbachev that they thought could cause trouble. But the commission's first and biggest mistake was failing to arrest Boris Yeltsin. The President of the Russian Republic besieged the parliament building, known as the White House, and dared the command's tanks to approach.

Ap Was There: 1991 Soviet Coup

They swept across Moscow, sweeping Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968 and Beijing in 1989. In all these cities, communist reforms seemed to briefly prevail spectacularly. Worship was the norm, which is why the world expected a successful coup in 1991. As Western democracies, we are accustomed to having our hopes shattered.

Boris Yeltsin addresses crowds in Moscow during an August 1991 coup attempt. Source: Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

Yeltsin was an amateur politician, but not the drunkard he was later on (opens in a new window). he had charm He was fearless on the first day of the coup, jumping on a Soviet tank surrounded by supporters claiming the coup was illegal and calling for a general strike. Russians never saw it on TV, but Yeltsin got to running the state press by broadcasting ham radio from the White House and dropping incessant news bulletins from windows onto the crowd below.

Yanayev did not appear in front of the camera until later that day. He saw all sides of a life activist, not just a leader. (His sister thought he looked like Windom Earle (Opens in a new window)), a recently fired FBI agent.

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.) He cannot appear unless he is with the other 5 coup plotters. It is then revealed that he is the president. His friends pulled the strings.

However, losing the charm competition was no guarantee that the coup would fail. In the end, the famous reformer Nikita Khrushchev was ousted by the communist bureaucracy in 1963. The committee still had tanks and history. The pro-democracy demonstrators tried to sleep on the road in front of the tank, but got up at the last minute after losing a game of chicken.

Take a look at this report from August 19 (opens in a new window) and feel the dark and bitter day. Look at how people described the military leaders who opposed them in the report: "Fascists." It was very clear which political faction they thought the coup belonged to.

People walk towards the White House on August 19, 1991. "No fascism! Yes Yeltsin! General strike!" Source: ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images

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The next day, August 20, a decisive victory and return to the Cold War still seemed the most likely outcome. Leningrad still opposes the coup, but to what extent? In Moscow, Yeltsin talked to world leaders like George W. Bush and John Major, but there was nothing they could do. Yeltsin joked to a visiting American journalist, "Don't write my sad history yet." Then they filled his office