#23 Soviet Union - How the 1991 August Coup launched modern Russia

August 1991. Soviet tanks rolled into the centre of Moscow while most people were away on their summer holidays. This included the two most prominent politicians of the world's largest country and nuclear power, arch-rivals Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.

What followed was a chaotic, alcohol-fueled gamble by communist hardliners, including KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchkov. While Gorbachev was held under house arrest in Crimea, Yeltsin boldly seized the political vacuum.

In this episode of Putschcast, former BBC Moscow Correspondent Tim Whewell shares his firsthand experience of the smoke, barricades, and desperation of the 1991 August Coup. He explains how Yeltsin’s defiance atop a tank rewrote the power dynamic, effectively sidelining Gorbachev long before the USSR fell.

Stationed directly at the Russian White House in Moscow, the BBC journalist witnessed how a plot engineered by the country's most feared men was stunningly amateurish, ultimately achieving the exact opposite of what its initiators intended.

During an infamous press conference, trembling coup leaders looked like incompetent bureaucrats. Meanwhile, when state television ran out of things to say, they famously broadcast a looped video of the Swan Lake ballet instead.

Tim shares incredible personal stories but also explains how easily things could have gone wrong. Ultimately, although three people tragically died, history looks back at this event as a failed, largely bloodless coup.

However, the aftermath reshaped global geography and continues to define the region to this very day. Within months of the failed plot, the USSR superpower collapsed, and new independent nations like Ukraine and Belarus emerged.

Interested in more #russia putschcasts?

https://putschcast.com/podcast/19-russia-prigozhins-march-on-moscow/

https://putschcast.com/podcast/14-chechnya-humiliation-leads-to-assassination/

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

David, this is the most live putchcast we've ever had. Look, our guest team is walking through the BBC studios as we talk to to reenact what happened in nineteen ninety-one when he was at the White House in Russia.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

There we are. Sorry about that. Gorbachev is officially incapacitated.

SPEAKER_04 0:19

I'm not sure that anyone believed that even then, but but anyway, that was what they said. You know, that's the kind of difference between kind of studying history and actually reporting history, you know, as it happens, Soviet TV um w was stopped, and they simply went over to showing ballet, to showing um Swan Lake, which is what, you know, traditionally Soviet TV has always done, you know, in in in moments of of not really knowing what they were meant to be saying.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Yeltsin could have gone the other way. Yeltsin could have just sat back and let those old Soviets fight it out among themselves.

SPEAKER_04 0:50

I don't agree with that at all. I don't think for a minute that Yeltsin could have could have sat back. This was a mortal danger to Yeltsin and everything that Yeltsin stood for. If this had succeeded, sure they didn't manage to nab him. He would have been absolutely in the firing line, as it were. Metaphorically speaking, you know, had the coup succeeded, had the coup succeeded, Yeltsin would have been over.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

What's the connection to Russia, Tim?

SPEAKER_04 1:15

Well, I mean, I suppose my connection to Russia goes back to when I started learning Russian at at secondary school in Manchester, UK, in when I was uh only 13, because you know I just happened to be lucky enough that my school uh offered Russian as a possible course. Um but the you know then subsequently, big because of knowing Russian, uh just to fast forward, uh I joined the BBC Russian service in uh 1987, which was an extremely interesting, exciting time to join, because you know, just to explain, and it's worth this, because this is the background in a way to the coup itself. You know, 1987 is when uh Gorbachev at that point, Mikhail Gorbachev had been in power for two years, was already beginning his drive to reform or attempt to reform the the Soviet Union, reform communism, and uh that involved this whole policy of openness, glassness, which we'll go on to talk about basically the freedom to talk about things that you could never talk about before. So again, to fast forward, I joined the Russian service, and three years later I was already um one of the BBC correspondents in Moscow. So I I I basically moved to Moscow in 1990, and and that's the background to how I was um able to cover the coup a year later or the coup attempt.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

There's a there's a Cold War story for you. That is amazing. So sorry, prior to 1990, did the BBC have correspondence in Russia?

SPEAKER_04 2:34

Yes. I mean the BBC's had correspondence in a permanent correspondent in in Moscow, actually going back to the 1950s. Um so a long tradition, but obviously reporting from Russia uh from the Soviet Union gradually became more and more exciting. You know, the possibility of things you could do went uh uh uh uh up and up and up. So that, you know, you know, while in the in the 50s and 60s and 70s and the and even early 80s, you know, correspondents in Moscow were very, very tightly controlled, they couldn't travel around, uh or certainly not with prior permission. You know, and uh and it what what's particularly interesting actually, if we come on to 1991 now, um 1991 was an incredibly exciting year, even before all that. It was like you know, the peak of this kind of thing. Basically, that you know, i if we go to the beginning of 1991 to January 1991, uh I I had a very exciting time because gradually the you know the the Soviet Union had this system of things called closed towns. In most of them, foreigners were not allowed to go to without very special permission, and in some cases, even Russians were not allowed to go to without special permission. One of the final tranches of closed towns, which were opened, were opened at the very beginning of 1991. So, for example, in January 1991, I uh went on a reporting trip to this place called Kaliningrad, which is the very, very furthest west part of the entire Soviet Union. It's actually so far west that it's separated from the rest of um the uh the Soviet Union and now Russia, um, but because it used to be until the Second World War uh a part of Germany. So that was a very much a closed town. And I was called back from that trip uh because of the attack by hardliners um i in Lithuania, which we now see in the in subsequently, it was the first harbinger of the coup that would come in August.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Now, just back me being the fun police on the podcast, and David here being a Westerner, I've I've grown up and uh um in the Eastern bloc myself. So I just want to distinguish here that we're still talking about Soviet Union. So I know Westerners use the word Russia and Soviet Union interchangeably, but I think especially since the war in Ukraine, it's become all the more important to really distinguish uh what was Soviet Union and when Russia started, which is sort of what we're talking about today, right? That's the real event, the birth of modern Russia is the coup. That's something we can debate. We've seen the headlines and the stories, and you can watch documentaries. What was it like as a Westerner in the Soviet Union in 1990? So the Berlin Wall has fallen. Soviet Union still exists, it's still a sovereign, massive, biggest country in the world, gigantic army. But as a as a Western citizen arriving in Moscow, for someone who's spoken the language for so long, what was it like?

SPEAKER_04 5:26

Well, I mean, in a word, it was incredibly exciting. All these restrictions were coming off. Uh so we we suddenly had the ability to travel all across this, you know, this gigantic, you know, uh country with its 11, 12 time zones. I went to Siberia, I went all over the place in the first year that I was there. So there was that, and also just you know, there were huge cues at newspaper kiosks because suddenly, with this policy of, you know, Gorbachev's policy of glassiness, suddenly all these things, all these chapters of history that could never be mentioned before, uh stories about these could now appear in print for the first time. So in this period, in the very late 80s, the very beginning of the 90s, people were literally, you know, magazines, newspapers were were flying off the kiosk, you know, flying out of the kiosks, you know, like hot cakes, because all this stuff that people hadn't been able to read, they could read. So that's on the one side. But on the other side, of course, economically, glassness openness was one of the two twin legs of Gorbachev's policy. The other one was this thing called Pyristroika Restructuring, which was basically all about, you know, if you like, greater um economic freedom, a kind of loosening of the economic restrictions of communism. That was the you know the basic idea of that. And, you know, that that had things, some things that were incredibly good for ordinary Russians and were also very exciting. I mean, cafes. I mean, just imagine, you know, to have until the late 80s, you know, the number of restaurants in any town was minuscule. All the restaurants would have been state restaurants, you know, a very limited menu, very limited amounts of things in in the shops. And then suddenly you could have private cafes, a few private shops. So this was exciting for everybody. But at the same time, an economic disintegration, of course, was starting, much higher prices. You know, you could get these kinds of things if you could afford them, and people on state salaries. So suddenly you've got this kind of bifurcation, if you like, of the population between people who could take advantage of these economic reforms and people who couldn't. And obviously the people who couldn't were mainly people, you know, on state salaries, which, you know, were extremely small, you know, as soon as prices had been freed. So, you know, one of the most famous things and characteristic things of these years, you know, is, you know, let's say incredibly distinguished professors at universities being forced to eke out their income in the evenings as taxi drivers. So, you know, in those days you didn't bother to actually call a taxi, you simply stood by the side of the road, put up your arm, and instantly any car would stop. As you ask us foreigners, we could begin to live, we could integrate, we could begin to integrate into Russian life in a way that hadn't been possible before. So, you know, when I first arrived, and for my predecessors, you know, the fairly small foreign community in Moscow, entirely kind of shopped at separate shops, you know, that Russians weren't allowed into. You know, we were certainly required to live in certain flats. We couldn't just go and rent a flat. That wouldn't have been allowed for a foreigner. I had to get a flat, for example, you know, through a special state organization which serviced only foreigners.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Was that one of those that already had the microphones in it?

SPEAKER_04 8:51

Well, we did spend a certain amount of time looking for, yeah, we did kind of like uh uh look behind all the pictures and so on, but it was quite hard to work out. But but of course that's true. And of and and of course I take it you know for for for granted. You know, I I had a uh a driver supplied to me again by the state agency, which was the state agency looking after uh the the diplomatic uh uh core. Uh I had a cleaner, which also I I couldn't again hire myself, had to come from there. And w were they reporting on me sometimes? Well, I'd be very surprised if they weren't.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Yeah. Um you just mentioned cafes before. I want to mention hot dog stands. I thought you were going to mention hot dog stands.

SPEAKER_04 9:28

Well, McDonald's, of course, I mean, that was one of the, you know, the arrival of McDonald's in Moscow, of course, was one of the gigantic uh uh uh things of those years.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

We recently did an episode on on uh Evgeny Brigoshi and his rise, who comes exactly from that era and who started off with a hot dog stand. We spoke to Mark Aliotti about that fantastic Putschcast episode. Check that out for more context of the wild years of the end of the perestroika in the early 90s.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

It sounds fascinating and really um hard to comprehend for a kid who grew up in Australia where all of these things are just uh a very commonplace. I think the question I have though is if you're in Russia and you're kind of at the wrong end of the economic spectrum at this time, is there still a like an era of optimism? Is there a lot to look forward to? Are you excited by what's going on?

SPEAKER_04 10:19

Or are you considering I mean I I think that's a really interesting question. And um I think for a lot of people i a tipping point was exactly maybe beginning to be reached at this point, between all the original hopes uh i you know engendered by uh Gorbachev's reforms and uh people really beginning to despair about whether it would actually lead them to a better life or not. I think in retrospect, people exaggerate this now. My memory of the time and m not only my memory as a foreigner, but even indeed my you know memory from all the Russians, you know, that I knew then, is that a lot of people were still very optimistic, actually. We can see in people's reactions to the coup how clear that is. And then we cut you know, if we come on to the kind of leading characters uh of this, the juxtaposition is very clear. So it in a way you you have uh uh Gorbachev, the you know, the president, the the leader of the Communist Party, um treading this ever, ever narrower line in the middle. Uh so on one side you you've got the people who would go on to lead the uh the coup attempt, and obviously a certain amount of public opinion behind them, who thought the reforms had gone much too far and wanted to go back. And on the other side, the the people that thought Gorbachev wasn't going fast enough and everything should be much faster towards reform. And obviously, their leader was Boris Yeltsin. And this is where we start to get to you know the distinction. This admittedly quite hard to understand uh distinction between the Soviet Union and Russia, which in the end is although, although you know, by miles the largest, was technically at that point only one of 15 what we call constituent republics parts of the Soviet Union. And so increasingly, although he came from a Communist Party background completely himself, Boris Yeltsin put himself and had already, you know, very clearly by 1991, put himself at the head of the uh of the reformers and and his power base was Russia. So increasingly we're talking about Yeltsin wanting to go further and faster as leader of Russia against Gorbachev wanting to stay in the middle or not go as fast as the leader of the Soviet Union.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Uh what's behind Gorbachev's motivation for keeping the Soviet Union to a degree unified?

SPEAKER_04 13:03

Gorbachev obviously d is is a gigantic historical figure. You know, we don't know probably eventually, but certainly at that point the Soviet Union communism, you know, would never have if he hadn't set all that path going. Of course, uh everything that that happened wouldn't have happened. But in many ways, actually, w with retrospect, I think he was quite, in some ways, quite a limited character. There was a lim there was a limit to you know the the the the breadth uh of his of his vision. He set the ball rolling, the you know, the snowball, if you like, and it was unstoppable. And and he just didn't see the logic, you know, that it was unstoppable. And you know, he, you know, if we go back a couple of years, you know, to to the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the end of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, he allowed that to happen and you know, somehow believed that that communism could end, freedom could come to nations in Eastern Europe, and somehow that that wouldn't affect the Soviet Union. You know, in in retrospect, how can we see that that is anything but naive? And and and as we come on in this story, you know, we we'll see that even after the the the failure of the coup, but when Gorbachev c came back, again, you know, he he he didn't understand the whole gravity of the situation. He didn't really himself, even he's at the absolute center of events, and and Gorbachev himself didn't really understand uh how serious what the whole thing meant.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

There's always this discussion when when when studying the Soviet Union, who was the last true communist, right? That's that's like any book um fascinated with is always like who was the last one? And it's always said Khrushchev was sort of the last communist after him. It was just about you know, holding the place together, saving the silverware, and just repeating old slogans all over again until people got tired of them. But but reading a bit about Gorbachev, maybe he wasn't communist, but I think he was certainly a socialist, and I think he was probably one of the last authentic socialists because also for context, he was the second most powerful man in the world. But unlike others, he had nothing in his own pocket. This is really important for the coup. It's not like other dictators, especially in the third world, who've got Swiss bank accounts and and and you know suitcases full of US dollar bills and stored away and and expensive artwork. He was at the heart of it a real simple man who was just trusting people, and he was probably naive, like you said. Do you agree with that?

SPEAKER_04 15:46

I totally do agree with that, but I I I would just question, and I think, you know, we've become in the last few decades, you know, we've become used to the idea of you know dictators who are obviously filthy rich as well. We've got used to the idea, you know, that unbridled power m must also mean unlimited uh wealth, and that's certainly what we think of, you know, in all the investigations into Putin's personal wealth and so on. But in an earlier period, I don't actually think, and particularly in a communist context, I I don't think that Gorbachev was particularly unusual in that sense. You know, you say Gorbachev a a simple man, you know, not in it for lining his pockets. You know, his predecessors, you know, what was Leni Brezhnev, you know, who ruled, you know, from the 60s, you know, to the to the early 80s. Was he filthy rich? I don't think so. That wasn't the tradition of communist of communist leaders, um, neither in the Soviet Union nor in Eastern Europe. But but but on your on your wider point, uh yes, I mean, uh uh the he he called himself more a socialist than a communist. I I don't really totally know what the difference was. You know, the th that was certainly the term that people like him preferred um by that period. But he was, of course, still the head of the Communist Party, which is still called the Communist Party. But yes, he believed, and believed, I think, you know, you know, all the way through his life, you know, in you know, e even afterwards, that some version of of reformed socialism could have been found. And and and you know, many, many people would say that was just a delusion.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

A little bit about the the mechanics of what's going on now in uh in August of 1991. As uh Oliver mentioned, it's summertime, not many people are hanging around Moscow. Uh Gorbachev himself is at his summer house on the Crimean Peninsula, um, which I have read he was a little bit shy about because I think it was a pretty serious holiday house. But um what is going down at this point in time? Where where are the uh the main players in the coup? And uh I guess what is it that triggers this event? What what are the lead-up uh activities?

SPEAKER_04 18:00

What we've discovered s since, but that very few people um knew at the time, is that this coup attempt, you know, had been being to some degree planned and thought of by hardliners in the leadership, you know, for a for at least a year beforehand. You know, we we know now it appears, you know, that the the main person, you know, the the the coup attempt was fronted by eight people of you know communist uh leaders of and functionaries, including the defence minister, including the interior minister, uh uh including the vice president, uh, you know, and crucially including the head of the KGB, the secret police, Vladimir Khrushchev. And then now it really much appears that he was, you know, the the the ringleader of the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

There's a treaty looming, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 18:48

Yes, exactly, exactly. So d Gorbachev i is on holiday in in his holiday home, his state holiday home. Well, I should say not a private holiday home, in in um uh i i in in for this place called foros in in the Crimea, but he is due to come back um i i i in late August to Moscow to sign the treaty. So it was it was meant to be a new way of configuring the Soviet Union. So th th this followed a kind of referendum uh earlier in the year that Gorbachev had conducted, where basically, well, to be honest, a lot of republics didn't take part, but the republics that did take part, um, and this was, you know, if you like, a kind of you know, quite a kind of apparent PR triumph for Gorbachev, said they wanted a union uh you know, Soviet Union to remain, but you know, in a slightly looser form, in which it would be kind of reconfirmed that all the um various constituent republics of it would would be so on a voluntary basis. As seen by hardliners, it it was very, very much a loosening of the existing Soviet Union.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

That referendum, Gorbachev's last straw, maybe early in the year, where over 70%, the ones who took part, agreed that the Soviet Union should continue. However, you've mentioned uh you've mentioned the other critical character here, Boris Yeltsin, who for years now has been torpedoing any sort of union work that Gorbachev was doing. Um maybe let's talk about that because I think it even has to do I think it even has to do with the title you mentioned before president of the Soviet Union. That was a very new title. Like he was always the general secretary of the party, and even communist systems had his very long names. And they landed on this pragmatic term, which had to do already with the Soviet Union breaking apart, didn't it?

SPEAKER_04 20:44

Yeah, you're absolutely right. So so using the actual term, I mean, there was previously um uh in in the communist system, there was a head of state uh uh before who was separate from the Secretary General of the Communist Party, but this new uh kind of directly, you know, this kind of uh use of an actual Western term, in, you know, in in in Russian also uh they said for the first time president, president, which they'd never said before. So absolutely, you know, th that role was a creation of Gorbachev and and he was and he was the first one. And what happened then in the summer, right just two months before the coup uh attempt in June 1991, is that there were separate elections just in Russia, in the Russian Republic, and Yeltsin became the first president of Russia. So we've got first president of Russia versus first president of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Now, this is the really fascinating part about this tool, David, because for anyone listening and who followed our episodes in the past, usually you have someone in power and someone through challenges, either covertly or overtly. This one is so fascinating because what now looks like the challenge. Wasn't actually the challenger. So yes, he was boycotting like Yeltsin was boycotting anything Gorbachev did and was a rival from day one, as I understand it. But he wasn't actually part of the so-called group of eight of the people trying to oust Gorbachev or force him to do things he didn't want to do. Is that correct? Well, absolutely, because he was on exactly the diametrically opposite side. Yeah. Can you can you give us more context? And also we'd love to learn if you've met any of those leaders in person. What's what was your experience back then?

SPEAKER_04 22:33

I interviewed Gorbachev only uh only afterwards, actually. I mean, I'd uh I'd seen these people in action, obviously, a great deal. I'd I actually followed you know Yeltsin's you know election campaign in June 1991, so I was kind of right next to him as he kind of uh you know pressed the flesh on the campaign trail. And of course that was very interesting as well, because uh Gorbachev, in a way, was the very first Soviet leader who to some degree you know went out and did walkabouts and you know communicated directly more with the public. But you know, he was still comparatively uh uh uh uh stiff. So in terms of all the kind of glad-handing and all that kind of thing, you know, Yeltsin was, you know, way, way surpassing him in in that kind of thing. They they were poles apart, you know, the coup leaders uh as they became on the one side, you know, really, really representing, you know, the past.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

And and so you met Yeltsin while he was actively demolishing the Soviet Union by running elections. Like get this in your head. So he had himself elected president of Russia while there was still a president of the Soviet Union.

unknown 23:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Like not even bothering with a different title, like not even calling himself Premier or state chancellor or something like this. It's a pretty open challenge, isn't it? Yeah. Is that is it the the man he is?

SPEAKER_04 23:55

Uh I mean, of course he was, you know, he was you know, he was an extraordinary character, very, very kind of bluff, very, very headstrong, you know, very very unpredictable. And and and that's why, you know, he was, you know, he was obviously immensely popular. Uh and and and that's why he could become, you know, the the the the head of resistance when after the coup began, you know, that's how he could become head of the resistance um to the coup. But but again, very important to stress, you know, he he had been, Yeltsin himself had been, you know, the the com a Communist Party first secretary of a of a of a province. You know, he'd come up the absolute standard Communist Party line himself, and then he broke away. But you know, but I should also say that the logic of the time then was that republics, you know, Gorbachev was not uh against all the the republics electing their own leaders. In in in theory, that was part of the logic of Gorbachev's own reforms. But obviously Yeltsin then took advantage of that and and pushed further and further. And we've got to say, you know, that here we are saying, isn't this amazing, you know, the challenges that that Yeltsin was was putting up to Gorbachev. But but already on the logic of Gorbachev's reforms, if we look at, you know, some of these other republics, particularly the Western republics, you know, most notably the Baltic ones, you know, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, they'd already pushed this process even further. They'd also elected the their own leaders. They'd elected, you know, even more radical leaders.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

I've got to cross-promote again, sorry. So we talked about the the Yevgeny Brigozhin episode. We also did a um an episode with Tom Deval, uh, an old colleague of yours, more or less, I think.

SPEAKER_04 25:43

I know Tommy.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Also British, also learned Russian in school and fascinated with the country, and an expert on the Caucasus. And uh he talked to us about the breakaway region called Chechnya, which uh was one step too far for Russia, and and he explained the context that Yeltsin was obviously pushing for cessation, really, and you know, breaking away from the Soviet Union and and telling all other leaders take as much liberty, independence as you can get until it came back to bite him, when then the next level of republics down, the Chechians broke away. But he also spoke about an episode where Dudaev, the Chechen leader, was hiding him in a car and driving him out of Estonia or something like this. And an incredible anecdote, how Yeltsin actually had to flee from there. So, and I don't know, do you have memories like that, stories? Because it was such a turbulent time. Like it was so we can't imagine at these things.

SPEAKER_04 26:43

Yeah, it was totally turbulent, of course, you're right. And and I I also met Dudayev, the um uh you know, the Chechen leader, and and I and I, you know, obviously the whole place was completely a wash, uh wash with arms. Um uh, you know, and what I you know, what I remember is uh Dudayev saying to me, Um uh Allah created men in many different positions and and and statuses uh in life. Uh but this, he said, as he uh brandished a revolver, makes us all equal in the end. Obviously, all these wars, little wars, if you like, you know, not little people in the middle of them, but but uh i i in strategic terms, were already beginning to break out all around the peripheries. All these different nationalities and uh and ethnicities and and national feuds and national conflicts, which, you know, because of the repressive nature of the Soviet Union had been held in check for 70 years, but uh all all these all these feuds hadn't been forgotten, and and then they all just kind of burst out again.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

It's a particularly charged situation, I guess. Um you describe it as being very delicately poised. We've got uh 15 different states um of the Soviet Republic. And now we've got eight people um who uh plotting a coup. Those eight individuals, what are their objectives? What is it that they are setting out to achieve? What do they see as the problem?

SPEAKER_04 28:11

Well, they see the problem as th the the the Soviet Union they fear is about to break up and and and and communism is about to come to an end, to put it simply. But on a you know, and and this of course has been go it had been going on for years already, or or ever since Gorbachev uh you know came to power in 1985. That there had been you know the the this whole wing of the Communist Party that we called rather bizarrely in our reports in those days, we used to call conservatives, um you know, meaning you know, if you like, more hard line, more rigid, you know, more more old-fashioned communists. So so this, of course, in the end, you put it very simply, that the the coup attempt of of of 1991 was their final throw of the dice. But y you know, if you ask on a on another level what was their actual intention, what what you know it m more than saying very simply, you know, put it crudely, that they either simply wanted to stop the cock or turn the cock back, i i i i it's extremely hard to say. And then I I think, you know, the the in the end the fuzziness or uncertainty of of uh of their intentions or their plans was laid bare w within those three days.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

I I think that's one of the things that comes out in this story that's really, really interesting is that they uh they set off as a group of eight. Um but it appears that their ultimate objective or their um kind of personal reasons for being there and and doing this aren't particularly well aligned. Uh and and they're not that well unified, and that kind of becomes pretty obvious as as the events uh unfold. Um and of course the the great irony is that um this coup basically accelerated the thing that they were trying to prevent in the first place.

SPEAKER_04 29:54

I mean, absolutely, one you know, one 100% that's exactly what happened. The two reasons I would say um, you know, why it failed. One, of course, was the resistance that that that coalesced around Boris Yeltsin, you know, and around the the the Russian Parliament and his supporters, and if you like, their failure to t to have taken him out in um i b before the whole thing started. Uh and number two, which is very closely linked to that and is almost part of it, is simply their failure of nerve. A massive failure of nerve. Any fool could have told you that if you're going to uh mount a coup attempt, you know, then the a a kind of hardline coup attempt, you know, then the main focus of resistance would be Boris Yeltsin. So, you know, again, if we if we go into all the historical research that was done afterwards, you know, it appears that they that they did consider having attempt, you know, attempting to take him prisoner in some way um beforehand, but but didn't. So already failure of nerve number one. But then the first day of the coup, Monday, Monday the 19th of August, the whole thing began, you know, very, very first thing in the morning, the first announcement at, you know, at six o'clock in the morning, um, you know, in the afternoon, uh uh extraordinarily in itself, um the coup leaders held this press conference. Well, I mean, even press conferences, you know, were comparatively new things, hadn't been around for more than two or three years, you know, in in in the Soviet Union. And and uh and the press conference, it's obviously televised live, was the most unbelievable event. You know, because for one thing, um the the supposed head of the coup, Gennady Yanaev, you know, the the vice president who then called himself, you know, the the the acting president while he said that Gorbachev uh was incapacitated, Yanayev's hands were visibly shaking. And, you know, the thing that Russians talked about more than anything else is that one of the TV news presenters asked, you know, directly at the coup leader sitting on sitting uh uh on the panel above, you do realize, don't you, that this is a coup? And uh, you know, even to be asking to be asking that question and uh uh and for that then to go out on live TV in itself almost indicated that the coup was doomed to failure.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

I think it just uh shows the disconnect of those old men to the state the country was in. First of all, having they learned a lesson because the reason why the Berlin Wall fell is a press conference gone wrong, right? So that was literally a press conference, wrong statement was read out, and then the wall came down. So you might want to prepare and have your communications uh aligned and in order. But then to to to not be aware that this now liberated journalists who were you know working under tight state control for so many years, plus I assume there was foreign journalists in the the audience as well. Certainly that they won't be asked questions like this to not anticipate that is is beyond me. That's just yeah. Were you there in the room? Were you there in the room, or do you know someone who was?

SPEAKER_04 33:16

No, I mean I spent uh the the entire period of the coup, the the the three days, well not quite quite three days, but but certainly more than more than you know 48 hours from the you know immediately after the coup was um uh uh from the first morning, uh uh the the morning of the nineteenth, you know, through until the the the middle uh afternoon of uh uh of Wednesday the 21st when the whole thing you know was collapsing. I I I basically never left the you know this the centre of events or the physical centre of events, the you know, the White House, the the the Russian parliament. I you know, I went straight there on the morning of of um uh of the 19th and stayed and and and stayed there, you know, you know, barely sleeping uh you know, for 48 hours until until the thing crumbled. So, you know, th there's huge numbers of things that subsequently became very famous or were even famous at the time, you know, that that I never saw. Uh because uh I I I never I I went out a bit at uh in in in the evening, you know, because all kinds of fires were were built, bonfires, people stayed up all night, you know, um uh uh uh around the building, you know, demonstrators started to to gather. But I never went very far uh from the building. And that's partly for reasons of communication, you know, in talking about way, way before the age of of mobile phones, you know, or anything at all like that. They were only, you know, or or ordinary old-fashioned phones, you know, and I had established myself in in one office within this building, which was the office of um uh a Russian MP, although he wasn't obviously uh there at that point, but I just kind of, you know, if you like, you know, along with other people, uh, you know, took over this office. I had a phone, and obviously there were all kinds of different statuses of phones then, but this was a kind of phone from which um I could call the BBC office, you know, where my uh colleagues were. That line to London we kept open for 48 hours, because there was talk all the time about the possibility of of cutting all communications with the outside, you know, with the outside world, you know, by the coup leaders, and we were afraid of that. I could never leave that phone for very long because you know I thought once the phone's put down, it the the line may never ever be re-established.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

Yeah. Well, and the building you're talking about isn't none other than the White House. That's how we started the podcast. So not the White House in Washington, the White House in Moscow, which is the the counterpart to the Kremlin almost. So that's that's the parliamentary element of the Russian Republic, not the Soviet Union, correct?

SPEAKER_04 35:46

Yeah, no, that's though that's exactly right. And that's why it was increasingly becoming a kind of power center. You know, it was obviously you know, very, very different kind of building. I mean, the you know, obviously the the the Kremlin's a kind of huge great medieval fortress full of full of churches and cathedrals.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

David, this is the most live putchcast we've ever had. Look, our guest Tim is walking through the BBC studios as we talk to to reenact what happened in 1991 when he was at the White House in Russia. There we are. Sorry about that.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Incredibly lucky to have Tim win us. Gorbachev is officially incapacitated. That that is the word, that's what the public are told, right?

SPEAKER_04 36:23

But what happened? I don't think anyone believes that. I'm not sure if anyone believed that even then. But but anyway, that was what they said.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

He was still a fairly young man compared to what previous leaders, so you know, uh, he wasn't in his mid-80s. Um but then what happens next is classic coup. Like this is usually what happens, which is similar to what we heard with um, you know, Ulbricht and Honega. So phones get disconnected, the black limos rock up, um, Gorbachev sits in his office, doesn't know what's going on, but doesn't let people in. How much did people know at the time, and what do we know now, Tim of what happened at the very outset?

SPEAKER_04 37:01

We knew nothing. And and uh, you know, uh uh they woke me up. You know, the first thing they said is, you know, how is Gorbachev? Is it true he's been taken ill? We hear he's been taken ill. I mean, it you know, that that's really the kind of cart cart before the horse. I mean uh because they just received, you know, a you know, news agency wire, you know, r with the very, very first proclamation of the coup that, you know, that that came at six o'clock in the morning. I hadn't even heard it, of course, I was asleep. Um who wouldn't be at six o'clock on a Monday morning? Um in in the normal way of in the normal way of things. And of course, I had no idea what these people in London were talking about. I said, you know, uh I'm sure, you know, w w what why would why would there be a problem over Gorbachev's health? I've got no idea what you're talking about. So, you know, in the kind of way of correspondence, you know, who who'd been asleep, of course, uh uh in the middle of the night, I I basically had to say, you know, can I call you back in five minutes or ten minutes? You know, when I found out myself what the hell's going on. You know, I then switched on the you know the TV, you know, the and the radio, just the ordinary Soviet radio. And and hey presto, I heard the the um you know the announcement, you know, of the coup, which said, um, you know, the president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, you know, has been taken um uh uh uh uh as being incapacitated, uh uh therefore an emergency, uh an emergency committee has been formed temporarily uh to run the country. So obviously, as soon as I heard that, I I of course I realised it was a coup, or a coup attempt at least. Um and uh you know, and then of course, you know, the extraordinary thing that happened immediately after that, that again, if you had any doubt that something was a coup or that something really, really weird was happening, is that apart from that announcement, all of the normal programs on Soviet TV um w were stopped, and they simply went over to showing ballet, to showing um Swan Lake, which is what you know traditionally Soviet TV has always done, you know, in in in moments of of not really knowing what they went were meant to be saying.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

So that wasn't the first time that Swan Lake was just put back to back on uh on full broadcast.

SPEAKER_04 39:04

It wasn't the first time, no, although it was the first time. It was the first time in my experience.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

It's just a fair signal that something's up.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Yes, exactly. So that already confirms what you said before. If if we have to revert to you know Tchaikovsky to to communicate, then it just means there wasn't really a plan, was there? Like so you've mentioned they didn't consider removing Yeltsin or making sure he's incapacitated. Well where is Boris Yeltsin at this point in time as this happens?

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Probably.

SPEAKER_04 39:36

Boris Yeltsin, when this happens, is at, you know, is also with his data. I mean, at his at his summer house just outside Moscow. So basically he then himself uh hot foots it in, uh uh, you know, drives in extremely fast, you know, to his power base, the Russian Parliament. And and and I realize, I mean, I briefly, so on that Monday morning, I briefly myself, you know, went to the ordinary BBC at BBC office, but you know, I realised, you know, I I that you know there were three of us, three radio correspondents, you know, the other two were working from the office, and of course, you know, they needed to do that because you know, so much material and stuff is coming in, and you know, they're closest to be able to kind of um broadcast from there. But th there was no point in three of us all being in there. So I I immediately headed out um, you know, to to to the White House because I just had this automatic I didn't know for a fact that you know that something, you know, that's where things would be happening. You know, we we had no means of knowing, but it you know, it just absolutely stood to reason that if there were going to be any any opposition to the coup, that's where it would start.

SPEAKER_02 40:39

I did read somewhere that people had been dispatched to basically get Boris Yelten before he m made it into the White House, um, and their orders were sort of unclear, they didn't know quite what they were meant to do, and he drove straight past them. Is there any truth to that one?

SPEAKER_04 40:55

Well, that's you know, th that you know, that certainly is one of the versions that that came out came out afterwards. But I mean, y yes, I mean, but I just come back again, you know, fa fa failure of nerve. You know, are you really saying, you know, that the the the the people that ran all the security services of the country, who were the who were the coup leaders? Are you really saying that they couldn't have nabbed Yeltsin beforehand if they'd wanted to? You know, surely they could.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

Yeah. There's a few examples of kind of subordinates uh either not knowing what they're meant to do, or um I guess rising to the occasion and and doing what they feel is the right thing to do rather than what they were told to do, which is uh in a lot of cases the opposite.

SPEAKER_04 41:33

You know, after the after the coup attempt started, w when you know forces were then brought by the um you know coup leaders into Moscow, tanks and so on, to, you know, to to supposedly surround you know the White House, and that's the point at which you know the Russian White House, and that's the point, of course, at which we thought an attack was coming. I mean two things happened. Some units and one particularly famous unit um uh defected, if you like, and w went over uh you know to the side, you know, to the side of Yeltsin. So so that's one thing that happened. Um so that if you like is kind of you know is mutiny.

SPEAKER_02 42:09

Um is that one of the tank crews? Is that the same thing?

SPEAKER_04 42:12

Yes, that's called the Taman Division, yes, that became very very famous. You know, the attack that we were expecting, particularly on the second day on the building, which was we were all told would come from this this group called Alpha, this kind of special ops, you know, elite special ops division, you know, that we were told would basically storm the the building from from the roof. Uh, you know, and we were told at one point, you know, would would start by actually putting gas down through um, you know, the ventilation shafts um i in the building. You know, the order it subsequently that you know that never happened, and the order it subsequently emerged, you know, to t to alpha was never given.

SPEAKER_02 42:56

Yeah. Right. So they didn't re reject or um ignore an order. They were never told to do that in the first place.

SPEAKER_04 43:03

Aaron Ross Powell Well, I say a bit of both, you know, so some some mutiny, but but but the main orders were never given to the loyal troops anyway.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

Yeah. So for for context again, for people who are not too much into the topic, unlike us, we're obviously obsessed with it. A little bit. Um and I just want to recommend, I'm not sure if you know it, but um a book by Robert Service, I think fellow Englishman, uh, the August The August Coup. Yes, yes. Um so I uh that was my main research um source for for today. And he he goes through it minute by minute almost what happens in Gorbachev's Dacher, who said what, how Gorbachev reacted, and um our listeners can probably revert back to that book to find out minute by minute what happened, according to um to Robert Service. But for me, the communication is um important. And again, we're on YouTube now, so please switch to YouTube now if you want to, because you might see some images that we show now of the actual famous scenes from the coup. We just It's the White House. I also just pictured that map of Moscow before. So here's Tim Hue at the BBC office on Monday morning. Here's Yeltsin at his dacha. Both wake up, find out. Is history happening? Tim hails one of those black taxis to the Russian parliament. And Yeltsin does the same thing. You probably cross paths along the way. You get there at the same time. Simultaneously, armored vehicles come in, tanks come in, and I I assume you know the radio announcements were happening. They were surrounding the building, they were taking control. But what was Yeltsin's message? Because officially, and you said every Soviet citizen with a few brains knew this was a curve, that clearly it wasn't just an unhealthy man who needed to go on personal leave. What was his message? Did he come out as Gorbachev's protector in the side, I'm here to support the existing system? Or did Yeltsin come out and say, this is the final proof and a pudding that the Soviet Union has done because it's an autocratic system? Because again, the putschists were the head of the KGB, you said, the defense minister, so people really holding immense power still at that time. So what was his communication to the people and to the media?

SPEAKER_04 45:20

Well the whole thing was incredibly short. I mean, you know, we we we we've now had, you know, you know, more than three decades, you know, uh since then to to to discuss it, to think about it. The thing lasted, you know, less than three days. The thing lasted for it came completely out of the blue as far as you know most people were concerned. Everything was unexpected, everything was done on on the hoof. There's no other way it could be done. So I I don't think you can be expecting Yeltsin on the morning of the coup, you know, completely out of the uh out of the blue, you know, to be pondering the entire future of the country. Yeltsin famously stood on uh a tank, you know, one of the tanks, you know, that had that had mutinied, that had defected, that had gone over to his side, you know, and what he said was, you know, do not obey the orders of the coup leader, of the coup leaders. You know, the coup is illegal, it is a coup, you know, do not obey, do not obey their orders. I think you know that that's as much, you know, that's the clearest, most direct thing you could be expecting i i in those circumstances. He he wasn't carving out a vision for the future of the country.

SPEAKER_02 46:30

Yeah, so he's not standing there kind of professing a strategy. Um it's really who's had time to do that.

SPEAKER_04 46:36

I think you're just not I think you're not seeing the the you know, there's a suddenness of all this. Who's had time for a strategy? You know, we're talking now, you know, di uh you know, 12, 1.30 in the morning, you know, the the the the whole the whole world, you know, is astonished. Nobody can believe this is happening. The people at the center of it have got no idea what's happening next. It's not it's not a time for strategy, it's a time for you know just resisting however and as best you can.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

And that's why it's important to speak to eyewitnesses like Tim, because he brings that back to us because we we have the benefit of time, right? And we've seen all the documentaries and read the books, but you were there and it was just all done uh like yeah, just winged it, really? Let's win it. That's exactly it.

SPEAKER_04 47:18

That's exactly it.

SPEAKER_01 47:19

On the tank, if I remember correctly, and again we're bringing that on the screen, he didn't wave the Soviet flag, he waved the Russian flag, and that was iconic then.

SPEAKER_04 47:27

Absolutely, absolutely, yes, of course. Uh and and this was the Russian parliament, and he was the president of Russia. Yeltsin had by this point, and and and for you know quite a long time before, had absolutely no love of Gorbachev whatsoever. You know, in you know, when people mount a coup, you know, the the the very first, which is plainly i i is in normal terms an illegal thing to do, the the the first thing that anybody on the other side resisting it does in i i i in in any almost any situation in any country is to appeal to legality. That's the first thing that happens. So so of course, in in the context of the the statements that he made in those two days while the coup w was still progressing, the the the Yeltsin was calling for a return to the legal order. The legal order in a country in which he was uh the the the president of of Russia and uh uh at a level above that, Gorbachev was the leader of the Soviet Union. The return to legality meant the return of Gorbachev and and and the defeat of the coup. So in a way, Yeltsin's gigantic r rivalry, if you like, for the two days of the coup or three days of the coup, was was put on hold. But obviously, as soon as, you know, if we then go ahead again to after the coup attempt was defeated and Gorbachev came back to Moscow, obviously, you know, in one sense, we have to say Yeltsin, by his resistance, had saved Gorbachev. But but the minute Gorbachev came back, of course, the whole rivalry broke out again. And with with the tables hugely turned, this is what you just said before about, of course, the coup accelerating the very things that it aimed to stop, in the course of those three days, the the relative standings of Gorbachev and Yeltsin were totally changed, 180 degrees. So you know, whereas before, to some degree, of course, Yeltsin had been the the the junior of of of the two, uh by the time the thing was over, uh uh Gorbachev came back a very, very much diminished figure, and Yeltsin, by by contrast, uh a a hugely elevated one, if you like.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

Yeah, at his mercy almost, right? So Gorbachev was at his mercy afterwards. Um but I find that that's a fascinating moment where where this absolutely shifts because um Yeltsin could have gone the other way. Yeltsin could have just sat back and let those old Soviets fight it out among themselves and then let them tear themselves apart and then step in when it's all in ruins. But he did take leadership at the right time and said the right things.

SPEAKER_04 50:03

I mean, I don't agree with that at all. I d I don't think for a minute that Yeltsin could have could have sat back. I mean, you th this this was this was a mortal danger to Yeltsin and everything that Yeltsin stood for. If this had succeeded, sure they didn't manage to nab him, you know, before he or or or take him take him before he came in, you know, the the the on the Sunday night before, he would have been absolutely in the firing line, as it were, uh um, you know, metaphorically speaking, you know, had the coup succeeded, had the coup succeeded, Yeltsin would have been over. Everything that Yeltsin stood for would have been over. There's no way he could sit back.

SPEAKER_01 50:33

There's some motivation there that explains it.

SPEAKER_02 50:35

It's almost poetic, the the whole thing. Um, the the way that it plays out. It's um uh what you you couldn't script it? One of the aspects that we haven't talked about yet, Tim. Um and I I guess your insights from kind of ground level um and being there are just extraordinary. But taking a broader view, um what were foreign interests and foreign powers doing while this unfolded over three days? Um were they trying to get in there and influence an outcome, or was everybody just kind of shocked?

SPEAKER_04 51:04

I think everybody's just totally shocked. I think everybody is, you know, I can only just keep using this word again and again, scrambling. Everybody was scrambling. This is a very, very short period of time.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

Because nowadays nowadays we're used to it, right? When the when the when the coup occurs, within hours, especially Western governments take a stand, right? Yeah. So they're not. Of course they condemned it.

SPEAKER_04 51:22

They all condemned it, but one more could say.

SPEAKER_01 51:24

They did. Okay. So that so that at the time they're uh they sided with Gorbachev? No one probably knew really how who Yeltsin was. Everyone knew who Yeltsin was. He was a gigantic figure already. Did he have an international portfolio? Massive international presence. At that time already.

SPEAKER_04 51:41

Of course. Wow.

unknown 51:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 51:43

That's a good idea. But I come back to legality. You know, Gorbachev was the elected leader of the country. Yeah.

unknown 51:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:52

Of course, of course, you know, no one's going to in in that circumstance, uh as world leaders always do, you know, you condemn a coup. You you you demand a return to legal norms. Legal norms was Gorbachev.

unknown 52:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:05

Okay. Fair enough.

SPEAKER_02 52:06

That does make sense.

SPEAKER_01 52:08

Um we had a chat before, and this is cliche, and it's probably not politically correct, but it's so fascinating for many people. It's written in a lot of places. Yeah. Um throughout not just those three days, but in general at the time in in Russian Soviet politics, what role did alcohol play? What you observed?

SPEAKER_02 52:26

You don't want to drag the conversation down to the gutter, but tell us what it is.

SPEAKER_04 52:31

I mean, Yanayev, we come back to Yanaev Ganadi Yanayev, you know, the the the leader of the coup attempt, uh, you know, th the the vice president. Um you know, we come back to his trembling hands at the the press conference on the on the Monday afternoon. Um yes, he'd been drinking. He said himself afterwards he'd been drinking. But I mean that was nothing compared to how much the the Prime Minister, who who was also one of the eight, you know, Pavlov, you know, he he just you know he just drank all the way through. For three days. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, more or less. I mean, you know, so we so so we gather afterwards. I mean, that's why he was barely barely seen, even though he's meant to be one of, you know, one of the Kuigi as well. He was barely, he, you know. You know, certainly incapacitated almost all the way through by by by drink, it appeared afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 53:19

Yeah. And and Yeltsin is obviously notorious for it too. Apparently, after 12 o'clock it was hard to have a sober conversation with him. But was he still in his prime at that time?

SPEAKER_04 53:28

Yes, I mean I think you know, I mean, I mean, obviously, y you know, there are different periods of Yeltsin, and uh, you know, we we now again, all this is retrospect. You know, we now get used to thinking of of Yeltsin, you know, after obviously he did become, you know, the the the the the undisputed leader of the country um after the fall war of of of already independent Russia, after the after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and you know, then leader throughout you know almost all of the nineties. In 1991, Yeltsin was in his you know in his prime. He was a big, uh forceful, um d energetic guy.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

So didn't really respect the old authorities and challenged Gorbachev many, many times before. Um so it was very quick. People were scrambling. How did it all wrap up? You were there? Did um the troops just pack up and leave? Because there's some dramatic footage uh on the internet on YouTube that you can still revisit nowadays with tanks trying to break out overnight and smashing through barricades. But that so how did it come to a peaceful end? Did did someone actually get injured or or killed during this coup or was it a bloodless coup?

SPEAKER_04 54:36

No, three three I mean y you know, you can say given the gravity of the whole thing, you know, it's extraordinary um, you know, how how how few casualties there were, but three young men um were killed. They were killed i in the early hours of of of the Wednesday, the 21st. And then within hours of that, effectively, the whole thing ended. So it didn't it it kind of fizzled out, it it it crumbled in this very, very strange kind of way. And I came back yet again to this, you know, thing extraordinary thing about you know the lack of nerve. The attack, you know, which we'd expected us who were inside the building had expected, you know, for both of the previous two nights, and and above all, we'd expected it on the second night. The second night, if you like, was when you know people inside the building were were most scared. Um, we discovered this afterwards, just uh or uh only later in the day, what happened was extraordinarily that uh some of the um coup leaders uh got on a plane, went to um Crimea, w where they themselves had basically uh imprisoned Gorbachev in his holiday home, and uh started to bargain with him, to uh to to argue with him, you know, on on what kind of basis, what on earth they thought they were doing, what on earth they thought, you know, that that that they would say to him, you know, why on earth he would agree to talk to them, is, you know, to this day to me completely uh uh unclear. But of course what actually happened was that he refused to see them. You know, they basically uh uh b w waited, if you like, in the in in the porch of the building where he was, and and and Gorbachev wouldn't see them. Even more surreally, at almost exactly the same time, uh another plane set off from Moscow to Crimea with Yeltsin's lieutenants, people who opposed the coup, who also came uh to talk to Gorbachev, and basically to invite you know Gorbachev to come back. And and of course they were the ones that Gorbachev was prepared to talk to, and and the coup leaders he absolutely uh wasn't. So that's why, you know, extremely, extremely late, you know, that day, Gorbachev got on a plane um and came back to to Moscow. And, you know, then you have these kind of extraordinary, you know, scenes, you know, of Gorbachev, you know, landing uh uh uh again at Moscow Airport, uh freed as it were, you know, deeply suntanned, as anybody would be who just spent uh, you know, uh time in the Crimea in August, open neck shirt, you know, which of course he kn never never normally had, uh looking, you know, after all this extraordinary drama of the previous three days, extraordinarily uh relaxed. And that's when you know we then got this extraordinary uh mismatch for the whole of the following few days, because uh i it was only after the coup uh failed that uh the streets of Moscow really started to fill with people. It was only in the scenes that unfolded in the following few days, the end of the week, the Thursday, the Friday, the Saturday of that week, when you're not talking about the tens of thousands of people, you know, who who who gathered round the protesters who gathered round while the coup was still going on. You're now talking about hundreds of thousands of people who certainly didn't turn out to actually protect the White House when it was actually happening. The population didn't come out. The population came out afterwards, after it after it had been defeated. And then we started to see, you know, the these extraordinary scenes of which the most uh, if you like, symbolic, extraordinary of all was the um the toppling of the statue of of the um of the founder of the Soviet um secret police, Felixum uh Zerzinski, you know, who had this enormous uh statue um you know outside the the Lubyanka prison in the centre, you know, the KGB prison in the centre of in the centre of Moscow. And that statue was toppled. And again, you know, we're used now to the whole idea of statues being toppled, of statues being toppled in the Soviet Union, you know, of Saddim Hussein's, you know, uh statue being toppled, all this kind of stuff. But statues were never toppled in the Soviet Union. That was unknown if for this kind of thing to happen. And and no one had ever said that they were, you know, it was the most clearest statement of of how far psychology, people's psychology had moved on, and massively accelerated incredibly fast, exactly like what you said before, in the in the course of those three days. That was the moment, that was the moment that we saw it was all over. Not not before.

SPEAKER_02 59:35

Uh just a point on the practicality of journalism. How did such a big population in this country receive all this news? How how how does that sort of work over that period of time?

SPEAKER_04 59:47

In general, there's only, of course, official official broadcasts. Um but uh again, uh extraordinarily, they allowed all kinds of chinks to appear. Why did they have a press conference? Why did they allow anybody to ask any question they wanted at the press conference? You know, w w wh why did why did the evening news on on the first evening on the Monday night itself carry the the state official news, why did it carry uh a a tiny, a small amount of footage of Yeltsin standing on the tank? Extraordinary.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:21

Yeah. And and these little snippets were enough basically for people to to to fill in the gaps and understand what was happening.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:27

And and for for 70 years, Soviet citizens have learned to communicate away from the official channels as well, I guess. That's right. Um and um Gorbachev had to swallow his pride, right? Are there scenes when Yeltsin obviously set himself up as the liberator and as the the winner of all this, where Gorbachev, in public in front of cameras, had to basically thank him and shake hands, even though he was his fiercest opponent. That did that happen?

SPEAKER_04 1:00:52

There was one extremely um famous scene which happened two or three days a few days later, um, which was where Gorbachev came to address the the Russian parliament. I mean, obviously we we're talking about the White House again now, obviously it wasn't-it wasn't acting as a parliament, you know, in in the in the days in the in the actual coup when I was there, but obviously then it subsequently the following uh the following week, obviously it re-established its itself as an actual debating chamber, as an actual parliament. Yeltsin presided over that parliament as president of Russia. He uh he invited Gorbachev, and um a report had been made uh about the the Communist Party's involvement in the coup, which Gorbachev said he'd just received but hadn't had time to read, uh, uh although he was kind of cutching it, you know, as he was on the kind of podium of the parliament. And and in this very famous scene, you know, Yeltsin, who we must remember again, you know, is considerably taller than uh than um than Gorbachev, you know, physical physically, um, stands over him, uh, and Gorbachev says, Oh, I've got I've just received this report, I'll read it later. And Yeltsin goes, No, read it now, read it. And this was an extraordinarily kind of humiliating, you know, moment. I mean, just to kind of use, you know, use the imperative in that way, read it to the guy who is the president of the country. Um, you know, and and that was the moment that kind of crystallized the kind of change in relationship between them, who was now top dog.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:25

What I learned today, they're such different characters. Like Yeltsin is this sledgehammer. Um, you're perfectly made for that time in Russian Soviet history kind of guy. And and and Gorbachev's this idealist, slightly detached from reality sort of thinker. Yeah. Yeah, but who didn't think anything through either. That was part of the problem. Um fascinating, Tim. And then let's just wrap up that important piece of Russian history. The coups ended. Gorbachev was humiliated, the West didn't know what was going on, and obviously trying to pick a new friend. Um, everyone by then could probably see where this is going. The Russians also got their troops out of many of the Eastern Bloc countries, so it it it really the sphere of influence got much smaller. It was still a nuclear power, but then by Christmas, that same year, four months later, it was all over.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:23

That's absolutely right. So basically, you know, again, as you as you said, uh the whole thing accelerated the processes it was meant to avoid. So, yes, you know, by the end of that year, just over, you know, four months um four months later, the the the Soviet Union w was was was completely over. Basically, the leaders of three of the biggest republics, so Yeltsin for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, uh uh met together and basically they decided the Soviet Union was over, that they were going to they were going to dissolve it. Obviously, we know several other republics out the Baltics, you know, already had had no interest in it. Out in the east, in the you know, Central Asia and so on, th those places, still run by very hard, hard-lined communist leaders, you know, would un undoubtedly have have wanted to preserve it, preserve both communism and the Soviet Union, but but they weren't they weren't given the chance. I mean, once you know Ukraine and Russia and Belarus have decided that it's over, um it's uh it's over. But you know, I think there's one other really important thing to point out of all the things to me uh that that happened in in those four months, uh, to show in a way that the world to some degree you know didn't understand, is uh that um Ukraine voted um uh for independence and uh uh President Bush uh came to uh Kiev, to the Ukrainian capital, at the beginning of that winter and uh gave a speech in in reaction to what was going on uh in which he talked about suicidal nationalism. In other words, you know what does that mean? That that means that America at that point was extremely dubious, uh worried about the breakup of of the Soviet Union and and nationalism in its constituent republics. Well, y you know, if we think about that now, that's you know, that's seems completely weird. Seems completely the opposite of what you would expect um the the United States uh to be saying. But, you know, already, you know, we've got to remember the Soviet Union, um uh a nuclear power. You know, d do do we want nuclear powers to br you know, even ones who've been our a adversaries for uh for for generations, do we want them to break up?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:54

And not know who's c in control and having to call a number of people, because obviously it was you know Kazakhstan. Ukraine there was the weapons weren't just on Russian territory. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:04

I mean that that obviously subsequently, you know, that that um that that speech by Bush became known as the Chikin Kiev speech. But um but uh uh um you know so obviously he was you know obviously m mocked for having done that even then, but but but that's nevertheless the kind of attitude that you know that some people in America were taking.

unknown 1:06:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:26

Incredible. I want to thank you again. Um do you have one last question for our guest, David?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:32

Uh no, I know, just uh sort of reflecting on the interview though, and it's uh it's been uh really, really insightful. Um I think the um um the the point that you made about the fact that we we look at this through kind of a historic lens and you know it's really well documented, it's really well understood. You think about it in terms of the strategy and who was trying to achieve what. But when it came down to it, this was kind of three days of mayhem and nobody had planned too much particularly well. Um and it was people really making it up as it went along, but um it kind of broke open the situation that was there in the Soviet Republic and Russia. Um and the consequence was this enormous um instrumental change uh in uh in our history. And uh yeah, it's a it's just a really fascinating story. So your perspective on it's a really, really interesting thing to think of.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:23

It's different to a historian. Um you're you're a bit of both, actually. But and just you know, I was gluted to be back then when it happened, and because it was such a busy time, you know, Yugoslavia started falling apart, uh Saddam Hussein destructed the entire world, and America was clearly focused on that, and the last thing on their mind was having regional conflicts all around the Eastern Bloc, which, like you said earlier, little conflicts were breaking out on the periphery of the of the Soviet Union. But for us it was in living in the Eastern Bloc. It was not set in stone what we know now. Like if the coup would have succeeded, if they would have had to act together, the history could have been very different. They could have reclaimed territories, they could have threatened the West and and that at the time was still on the brink because it's happened a few times that you think something is set in stone, but it's actually not. It comes down to drunk individuals. It's bizarre.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:14

My memory is much more naive than yours. I I I was a child at school. Uh I remember the the world map on the wall of the classroom. Um, and in 1991, the USSR was this giant pink mass at the top of the map, right? Um and uh towards the end of the year, I remember the teacher trying to explain to us what the CIS was, um, and nobody really understood that. The Commonwealth of Independent States. Exactly. And then and then we went away for the summer holidays, uh, which is kind of uh December, January, came back to school the next year, and there was a new map, and there's a whole bunch of new countries that we had to learn the capitals and the flags of. And it's like, what has happened here? And you've just explained it for me too. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:55

Yeah, geography teachers were struggling to keep up in those days. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:00

Yeah, that's right. I mean, you know, you you you live through history, it a lot of it only makes sense afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:07

And we want to thank you again for for sharing. And to our viewers and listeners for watching, subscribing, downloading, and telling the world about it. This is Putschcast. I'm Oliver Stavid. And uh yeah, check out putcast.com for more coups. If you've got any suggestions, anything you want to learn about, send us an email, putcast at gmail.com. And if you're if you're an eyewitness, if you lived through a coup or a revolution, please let us know. Any Tim's always welcome. Thank you. Uh, very, very nice to be with you. Thank you.