The Real Story Of The 1991 Soviet Coup

In August of 1991 there was a coup attempt against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup was organized by the KGB chief and attempted to replace Gorbachev with his vice-president, Gennady Yanayev.

The purported reason for the coup, by hard-line Communists who were opposed to Gorbachev's reforms, was to stop him from signing the New Union Treaty, which would decentralize the Soviet Union by replacing it's original founding treaty.

Gorbachev was placed under house arrest while on vacation. He got news of what was going on by listening to the BBC on a transistor radio. The country was to be administered by an "Emergency Committee", known as GkChP (which would make a good password because it contains a mix of caps and lower case), or sometimes as the "Gang of Eight".

Action during the coup was mostly limited to Moscow and was nearly bloodless. Three civilians were killed and three true believers in Communism died of suicide when the coup failed. The coup is almost universally considered to have been very disorganized and poorly planned. Yanayev came across as an uninspiring speaker. Some got the impression that the coup leaders were intoxicated during a press conference. 

The leaders of the coup gave up after three days.

The coup did not accomplish it's objective of restoring traditional Communism and halting Gorbachev's reforms. But it destabilized the country and hastened it's breakup. The following December the Belovezha Accords were signed in Minsk, which ended the Soviet Union.

The big winner of the coup attempt was Boris Yeltsin. The best-known news images of the coup are Yeltsin standing on a tank in Moscow and another of him holding up the new Russian flag. Yeltsin proceeded to the Russian White House and appeared very much in control, in contrast with Gorbachev who was under house arrest far away. The west supported Yeltsin during the coup.

The coup was apparently attempted by hard-line Communists who were opposed to Gorbachev's far-reaching reforms. Yeltsin had earlier been an ally of Gorbachev but the two split because Yeltsin wanted to go even further with reform. He had publicly destroyed his Communist Party membership card and resigned from the Politboro. Yeltsin was willing to let the Soviet Union break up altogether, whereas Gorbachev was only trying to reform it.

So many questions arise from this unsuccessful coup.

The KGB was a very capable organization. How did it manage to facilitate something that not only failed so miserably but actually brought about what it was supposedly trying to prevent?

It is very interesting that the leaders of the coup were pardoned and having tried to overthrow the government of their country didn't seem to hurt their future careers.

Boris Yeltsin ended up as the star of the show who defeated the coup, which sent Gorbachev into an irrevocable political decline. Troops involved in the coup had Boris Yeltsin surrounded, before he proceeded to the Russian White House. They could have easily arrested him, but they didn't.

Not arresting Yeltsin is likely what caused the coup to fail. It was also somewhat of a shock how the leaders of the coup suddenly gave up.

Boris Yeltsin served two terms as President of Russia. He resigned at the end of the last millennium. According to some reports he was the first leader of Russia or the Soviet Union who left voluntarily.

The next point of interest concerns Yeltsin appointing Vladimir Putin as his successor. Yeltsin had first put Putin in charge of the FSB, the state security service that is the Russian descendant of the Soviet KGB, and then named him as his successor.

What is so interesting here are how completely different Yeltsin and Putin are as leaders. The two could scarcely be more different. Putin could be described as the anti-Yeltsin. Yeltsin was about capitalism and privatization, which allowed the "oligarchs" to take control of quite a bit of the country's wealth, and who now have an arch-enemy in Putin.

Putin has lamented what a "catastrophe" the breakup of the Soviet Union was. But it was his mentor who chose him as his successor, Yeltsin, who brought about the breakup. When a leader chooses his successor it is always one who, more or less, agrees with his views and will continue his policies. How is it possible for a leader and his successor to be so completely different?

With that background here is the question of the day. Was the 1991 Coup staged? Was it all a show, organized by the head of the KGB to discredit the hard-line Communists, as well as Gorbachev, and get Yeltsin into power? Yeltsin would serve until the end of the millennium, at which point he would retire after naming the head of the KGB's successor organization as his successor.

FROM THE "TIME OF TROUBLES" TO MININ AND POZHARSKY 

To really understand this unsuccessful coup attempt, which ended up benefitting Boris Yeltsin so much, which enabled him to eventually hand over leadership to Putin, let's have a look at a monument in Moscow's Red Square. This monument is in a very prominent position, just outside the Kremlin and adjacent to St. Basil's Cathedral.

The monument is of Minin and Pozharsky. In the late Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Centuries, Russia was going through the period known as the Time of Troubles after the end of the Rurik Dynasty. The neighboring Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had taken advantage of the chaos to invade and take control of Moscow. 

Minin, a merchant, and Pozharsky, a prince, raised an army and liberated Moscow. This was a new beginning and soon the Time of Troubles was over. The next dynasty was the Romanovs, which would rule for three centuries. The liberation of Moscow is a national holiday, National Unity Day, which is celebrated on November 4.

Under the founding Rurik Dynasty, Russia had developed into a nation. The first Tsar of Russia had been Ivan the Terrible. He was no doubt named by his enemies. He built the iconic St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square. 

After the death of Ivan the Terrible is when chaos began. His son, Feodor I, became tsar but was an inept ruler. When Feodor died childless, which was the end of the Rurik Dynasty, his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, became tsar. He attempted reforms, and was popular at first, but then lost his popularity.

The chaos continued. There were a series of pretenders to the throne, known as "False Dmitrys".  One of these is what led to the invasion by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and their capture of Moscow. That was followed by the raising of the army to liberate Moscow by Minin and Pozharsky, followed by the greatness of the new Romanov Dynasty.

THE MODERN REPETITION OF HISTORY

Now, let's go to more modern times. History has a way of repeating itself. We often repeat history without realizing it but sometimes it is repeated intentionally. 

Josef Stalin was the modern reenactment of Ivan the Terrible. The similarities between the two are striking. Like Ivan the Terrible, Stalin made the Soviet Union into a great power but at the price of heavy oppression. Stalin won the Second World War and made the Soviet Union into a nuclear power. 

Ivan the Terrible purged the nobility of his time with his secret police. Stalin purged anyone that he thought might have a remote chance to threaten his power, or expressed the slightest criticism, with his own secret police. Like Ivan the Terrible, Stalin was forever suspicious of conspiracies against him. Ivan the Terrible got rid of his own government, the Chosen Council, just as Stalin would purge most of the "Old Bolsheviks", the original Communist revolutionaries.

Ivan the Terrible was followed by the weak leadership of his son, Feodor I, and the "Time of Troubles" began. His death was the end of Russia's founding Rurik Dynasty. This was repeated in modern times, although not immediately, as the Soviet Union after Stalin ended up being led by a series of elderly members of what became known as the "Old Guard". These were Leonid Brezhnev and then the short reigns of the elderly and ailing Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Andropov and Chernenko both spent much of their terms in office in hospital. Communism was clearly fading as an ideology and the economy was in trouble.

Boris Godunov had followed Feodor I, which was the end of the Rurik Dynasty. Godunov was a reformer and at first there was hope, before his popularity declined. This was repeated in modern times by the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev, after the end of the Old Guard of Communism. Gorbachev, like Godunov long before him, was a reformer who was initially popular, although it didn't last.

That was the history that was repeated inadvertently. Now we come to the history that, I am sure, was repeated intentionally. This intentional repetition of history revolves around Boris Yeltsin, who succeeded Gorbachev after the end of the Soviet Union, and leads to Vladimir Putin.

Soviet Communism was clearly finished and there was no more reason for the Soviet Union to exist. The Soviet Union was loosening and Boris Yeltsin had been elected as President of Russia, although the union did still exist. Gorbachev was a Soviet Communist who had done his best. But he was trying to save the country and it's system by reforming it, instead of getting rid of it, and it was time to move beyond him. 

This was a modern version of the the "Time of Troubles" and the next step would be a reenactment of Minin and Pozharsky rallying the people to turn everything around by liberating Moscow from foreign control. The trouble was that there was no foreign invasion to rally against. So what they would do is create their own invasion. That invasion was the 1991 Coup Attempt.

Boris Yeltsin emerged as the hero of the apparently failed coup. Gorbachev slipped further and his career, as well as the Soviet Union, would be over by the end of the year.

The two iconic news images that emerged of Boris Yeltsin was him standing on a tank, to address the people, and holding up the new flag of Russia.

But what do you notice here, with regard to the monument of Minin and Pozharsky? Boris Yeltsin made sure to be in the global news standing on a tank, in the same way that Minin is standing on the monument.

It caught my attention that, in this famous news image, Boris Yeltsin is holding up the new Russian flag with his arm at exactly the same angle as Minin on the monument. I am sure that this was planned to resonate with history.

Going by this history, the modern reenactment of the "Time of Troubles" began when Gorbachev took over in 1985. The original Time of Troubles had lasted for fifteen years, from 1598 to the crowning of Michael Romanov in 1613. This would be the beginning of the great Romanov Dynasty, who would reign for three centuries and build St. Petersburg as their capital city. The Communists had changed the name of the city to Leningrad but now it was changed back to St. Petersburg.

This staged coup attempt worked so well that two years later, as President of Russia, staged a "self-coup", as described in the Wikipedia article "1993 Russian Constitutional Crisis". Yeltsin dissolved his own parliament and sent the military to arrest lawmakers. Tanks shelled the building known as the Russian White House.

So the arrangement was that Boris Yeltsin would be President of Russia until the new millennium. That would reenact the fifteen years, from 1985 to 2000. He would then hand power over to Vladimir Putin, who reenacts the Romanovs taking power. Putin is from St. Petersburg, which the Romanovs built as their capital city, and the new Russian flag, replacing the Communist flag, was actually the old Romanov flag. Image from the Wikipedia article "Flag of Russia".

Vladimir Putin is alleged to have a palace like the exquisite Romanov palaces in and around St. Petersburg. But it is on the Black Sea, and not near St. Petersburg. This completes the repetition of the history of four hundred years ago, with the modern "Time of Troubles" being over and Vladimir Putin being the return of the glory of the Romanov Era. Image from Google Earth.