By Andrei Zolotov Jr.

        The White House defenders during the coup of August 1991 used flowers in a charm offensive to get the tanks to switch sides.

    They ordered tanks and troops into the capital. They isolated Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at his seaside villa and reportedly confiscated the key to the country's awe-inspiring nuclear arsenal. They laid the groundwork for ousting Gorbachev and reversing his liberal policies.

    What the 1991 coup plotters did not have was a clear plan of action, a set chain of command and the resolve to crush the spontaneous protests by tens of thousands of Muscovites.
   

"I will not be another Pinochet," witnesses quoted him as saying. "I am sorry I ever got mixed up in this business."

And what the dozen or so Communist hard-liners behind the plot did not realize was that not only the public, but the military and they themselves had been too transformed by six years of Gorbachev's reforms to follow through with the discipline, decisiveness and cruelty needed for a coup d'etat. They arrested no key figures. Their attempts to limit the flow of information failed. They could not muster the manpower or wherewithal to defeat their opponents by force. Even generals questioned their commands.

    When the army's top brass proposed on Aug. 21 to pull the tanks out of Moscow, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov could do nothing but consent.

    "I will not be another Pinochet," witnesses quoted him as saying. "I am sorry I ever got mixed up in this business."

    Ten years on, most observers agree that the resounding failure of the plotters' attempt to prevent the disintegration of the Soviet Union only served to speed its demise. However, the members of the State Committee for a State of Emergency, or GKChP, remain unrepentant.

    "The committee was created with only one purpose: to stop the collapse of our great state, to salvage the Constitution of the Soviet Union and to protect people from the wild experiments that were carried out on them under the cover of so-called reforms," plotter Vasily Starodubtsev said at a recent news conference. In 1991, Starodubtsev led one of the leading collective farms and was included in the GKChP as a "representative of the people" and outspoken opponent of private farming. Today, he is the governor of the Tula region — one of two plotters who now hold government positions.

    Life Today
Some of the coup plotters feel not just unrepentant, but vindicated — not only by the legal system, which did not convict them, but by Russia's tortuous historical trajectory in the decade since the coup: Praise for democracy and the West turned to disillusionment under President Boris Yeltsin, and ultimately led to the ascent of President Vladimir Putin, a KGB officer and proponent of a stronger state in whose policies the failed "saviors of the motherland" cannot but sense an echo of their unfulfilled agenda.

    Last month, some of them called a press conference to announce their support for Putin.

    "The current leadership is making efforts to restore control over the country," said Valentin Pavlov, a former prime minister, GKChP member and now a private banker. "Today they are trying to do what we attempted to do in the Soviet Union in 1991."

Boys playing on a tank parked near the Kremlin on Aug. 19, 1991.

People of all ages approached the tanks, some out of curiosity, others to ask the crews not to fire.

General Valentin Varennikov is the only plotter who refused to accept amnesty, and thereby to acknowledge any guilt, and was formally acquitted by the Supreme Court in 1994. He has a photo of Putin with World War II veterans hanging on his office wall and pictures from another, more private audience with the president on his desk. Last week, Varennikov, who served a term in the State Duma until 1999 and now heads a veterans organization, proudly presented reporters with a collection of documents drawn up by the GKChP.

    "These documents are relevant even today," Varennikov, 77, said in his resonant baritone, a Golden Star medal glinting on his smart suit. "Today on their basis one can solve problems in the national interest. And back then — all the more so."

    Putin's message of tightening control, strengthening government and improving the economy has some overlap with the declarations of the GKChP read on Soviet television Aug. 19, 1991, and published the following day in state-controlled newspapers.

    "In place of the initial enthusiasm and hope came lack of faith, apathy and despair," the GKChP said in its Address to the Soviet People. "The government at all levels has lost the trust of the population. …The country has in essence become ungovernable. … To remain inactive at this moment, which is critical for the fate of the fatherland, is to assume the weighty responsibility for tragic, unpredictable consequences."

    Decision to Act
On Aug. 4, 1991, Gorbachev left for vacation in the Crimean resort of Foros after holding talks with his political opponent Yeltsin and other republic leaders and finalizing a draft of the so-called Union Treaty, which would have significantly increased the republics' independence. The following day, KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov called a meeting with Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, Communist Party Secretary Oleg Shenin, defense industry chief Oleg Baklanov and Gorbachev's chief of staff Viktor Boldin — all men Gorbachev had appointed and trusted — at a secret KGB residence known as ABC on the outskirts of Moscow. According to prosecutors' charges re-printed last month in Novaya Gazeta, the group believed the Union Treaty signing, scheduled for Aug. 20, would only further fracture the union and must be prevented. The way to do so, they decided, was to introduce a state of emergency.

    In a telephone interview this week, Kryuchkov, the mastermind of the coup, said the GKChP members were forced to act quickly and had no time to map out a step-by-step plan.

    "Of course we did not have a detailed plan of action," Kryuchkov said. "The plan was to preserve the integrity of our fatherland and of our state, to have all of our executive bodies working at full strength and, shortly thereafter, to convene the legislative bodies — the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet."

    The Union Treaty, prepared "in secret from the people," would have granted republics the right to determine the share of their taxes to be passed on to the federal government and would have put the army, police and some foreign-policy functions in the hands of local governments, Kryuchkov said.

    "After Aug. 20, there would have been no Soviet Union, we would not have existed as a state," he said.

    According to the prosecutors' documents, following their first meeting, Kryuchkov and Yazov confidentially instructed a select group of their respective subordinates to draft plans for emergency rule, tap the phones of pro-democracy politicians, prepare a group of communications officers to cut off the president's phones and get three army divisions ready to march on Moscow.

    There was one obstacle, the aides said: Given the "complicated situation" in the country — likely a KGB euphemism for six years of democratization — emergency measures required a legal pretext.

   Kryuchkov's plan was to try to persuade Gorbachev to support the state of emergency and, if that failed, to isolate him, say he'd fallen ill and present Vice President Gennady Yanayev as the legitimate acting head of state. By Aug. 17, the GKChP had the support of Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, who two months earlier had tried to convince the Supreme Soviet to help "preserve Gorbachev's health" by transferring some of the president's powers to him. And the chairman of the Supreme Soviet and Gorbachev's personal friend of 40 years, Anatoly Lukyanov — now a prominent Duma deputy and head of the committee on legislation — promised to ensure that the Soviet parliament would approve the introduction of emergency rule within a matter of days.

Hundreds of people swarming around a tank on Ulitsa Gorkogo on Aug. 19.

The street has been renamed Tverskaya Ulitsa.

    According to Varennikov, the plan was tailored for Gorbachev who was known for vacillating between conservatives and reformers and for his unwillingness to assume responsibility.

    "Yes, it was unethical to disconnect the president's phones," Varennikov said. "But knowing his personality, we knew that with the phones working there would be no talking to him — he would be calling everyone on up to [U.S. President George] Bush.

    Varennikov believes Gorbachev could have taken advantage of the plan.

    "Had it succeeded, he could have said, 'I told them so, it is my achievement.' If the GKChP had failed, he could have fired everyone and said he knew nothing. That was his manner: Both with the events in Tbilisi [where 21 died after a peaceful demonstration was scattered by paratroopers with digging tools in 1989] and Vilnius [where 15 were killed when the military opened fire on protesters defending against the seizure of the parliament and television tower in 1990], he said he had not known anything. Of course he had known."

    Despite the plotters' disappointment in Gorbachev and their conviction that he eventually had to be replaced, they still hoped he would go along with their plan.

    "Up until the last day, we thought Gorbachev was an inept man, without a vision, a coward always ready to set someone up," Varennikov said. "We understood he was weak, but we did not think he was a traitor."

    For the plotters, the looming disintegration of the Soviet Union had a simple explanation: decades of U.S. subversion, beginning with the Marshall Plan and Cold War-era directives from Washington aimed at undermining Moscow, and ending with the penetration of the Soviet government apparatus with "agents of influence" such as the main ideologist of glasnost, Alexander Yakovlev. The way Gorbachev surrendered one Soviet position after the other only added to the sense of tragedy.

    Varennikov, a decorated war hero, is still indignant over the situation in the armed forces and the terms for withdrawing troops from Eastern Europe.

    "Canada, which had one brigade in Europe — about 1,200 people — took two years to withdraw it. We were withdrawing 100,000 to 200,000 people a year — into fields, into tents! Gorbachev himself asked [West German Chancellor Helmut] Kohl for 13.8 billion Deutsche marks for the withdrawal. Kohl was ready to give 100 billion. Our facilities in East Germany alone were worth some 90 billion. It was a nightmare, a savagery, a crime!"

    Although prosecutors produced evidence that Kryuchkov began calling meetings to consider introducing a state of emergency in early August, the former KGB chairman said the formation of the GKChP was prompted by a leak of the draft Union Treaty to Moskovskiye Novosti, the pro-Gorbachev flagship of glasnost.

    On Aug. 18, the plotters sent a delegation to Foros to persuade Gorbachev to go along with them. It included Varennikov, deputy defense minister and commander of ground forces; Baklanov, a deputy prime minister; Shenin, Boldin and two KGB generals in charge of Gorbachev's guard, Yury Plekhanov and Vyacheslav Generalov.

   

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Valentin Varennikov, photographed Aug. 9, 2001.

    Accounts differ on how they parted that afternoon. Gorbachev, his family and aides have maintained that Gorbachev was shocked but unwavering in his rejection of their proposal.

    "You are nothing but adventurists and traitors, and you will pay for this. I don't care what happens to you, but you will destroy the country. Only those who want to commit suicide can now suggest a totalitarian regime in the country. You are pushing it to a civil war!" Gorbachev later quoted himself as saying.

    Varennikov said Gorbachev shook the plotters' hands and said, "To hell with you, do what you want!" Shenin, in an interview this week, made an important clarification: Gorbachev's final words, he said, were: "You'll fail anyway!"

    Varennikov flew to Kiev to ensure everything was calm in the Ukranian capital, where the nationalist Rukh movement had been one of the strongest anti-Soviet forces in the country. The rest went to Moscow. By the time the group returned from Foros on the evening of Aug. 18, Kryuchkov and Yazov had persuaded Interior Minister Boris Pugo, who had just returned from vacation, to join the group. At about 8 p.m., Pavlov, Kryuchkov, Yazov, Pugo and Deputy Defense Minister Vladislav Achalov gathered in the Kremlin to make the final decisions. They were soon joined by Yanayev and Lukyanov, who flew in from vacation. Baklanov announced that Gorbachev was sick and Kryuchkov pressed Vice President Yanayev to take over, but, according to prosecutors' reports, Yanayev hesitated.

    "Most of those present did not understand what the whole thing was about," Prime Minister Pavlov was quoted as saying during interrogations in David Remnick's book "Lenin's Tomb." "Emergency measures had been discussed before. So there was nothing unusual about it. But when it came to Gorbachev being sick and no one knowing what was wrong, when it was unclear whether or not he could fulfill his duties, then we hesitated. … Yanayev did not want to sign it. He kept saying, 'Guys, I do not know what to write. Is he sick or not? It's all hearsay.' The rest said, 'Take the decision.'"

    Plan of Attack
On Aug. 19 as the crowd of Muscovites gathering to defend the White House swelled, the plotters appeared less and less sure of how to proceed.

    "In Kiev, everything was wonderful," Varennikov said. "But in Moscow … the situation had turned really nasty."

    According to prosecutors, a plan to raid the White House — "Operation Thunder" — was mapped out Aug. 20 by Achalov and Kryuchkov's deputy Geny Ageyev. Paratroopers were to make inroads into the crowd surrounding the building, and then an Alpha crack unit was to break in, disarm and arrest Yeltsin and his supporters.

    Achalov's deputy, the now famous governor of Krasnoyarsk, General Alexander Lebed, and the commander of the elite Alpha unit, Viktor Karpukhin, came to the White House on a reconnaissance mission.

    "Everything was clear and at the same time nothing was clear," Lebed later wrote in his memoirs. "From a purely military viewpoint, it did not require much effort to take this building. But a different thing was unclear: Why the hell was it necessary to begin with?"

    The human shield around the White House was the main factor precluding the attack. But there were others as well. A constant drizzle and rooftop defenses of broken furniture and machine-gunners, deployed by Yeltsin's freshly appointed Defense Minister General Konstantin Kobets, would make a helicopter landing a highly risky enterprise.

    In addition, air force commander Yevgeny Shaposhnikov not only refused to provide helicopters to the plotters, but went as far as threatening to order a retaliatory attack on the Kremlin if the plotters moved against the White House. Kobets and his aides ran successful "psychological warfare" by spreading rumors among the military officers around the country about various units changing sides.

    Not least of all, the dishonor of raising arms against their own unarmed people under such murky circumstances kept the military — from privates to generals and even Marshal Yazov himself — from staging an attack. Several Alpha officers — supposedly trained to be unthinking killing machines — reportedly told their commander Karpukhin that they would not carry out the order to storm the building.

    Today, most members of the GKChP say they never intended resorting to violence. And the idea that the troops ordered into Moscow in the small hours of the 19th were to be used against the people was one of the many "lies" Varennikov wanted to debunk as he lectured reporters for more than an hour about his version of events. They were moved in only "to guard the facilities," he said, including the Russian republic's House of Soviets, or the White House.

    Kryuchkov said the plotters had not anticipated that the state of emergency would enjoy unanimous public support, but they had always planned to act "first and foremost via political measures" and there was "certainly no plan to use force" or to storm the White House.

    Furthermore, Kryuchkov said cryptically, even if there had been a plan to arrest Yeltsin, it was never realized. He would not say whether such a plan had in fact existed.

    "Yeltsin arrived safely from his dacha to the White House," he said. "Do you think we couldn't have arrested him if we had wanted to?"

    Indeed, the issue of Yeltsin's relationship with the plotters remains one of the most puzzling questions in the story of August 1991. Kryuchkov said he had been in regular contact with Yeltsin and his aide, Gennady Burbulis, throughout the standoff, trying to reach an agreement "on the basis of preserving the Soviet Union." He declined to elaborate.

    What Went Wrong
While none of the plotters seems to regret the attempt to unseat Gorbachev, all of them offer a similar diagnosis for why the operation failed: poor planning, diffuse leadership and lack of resolve to follow through with what they had started.

    Varennikov — who credits himself with preventing anti-coup demonstrations in Kiev — blamed Kryuchkov and other plotters for failing to suppress the protests in Moscow.

    "We had agreed that if certain destructive forces begin staging rallies, all of it had to be nipped in the bud," Varennikov said. On Aug. 19, he said, he sent five coded telegrams to Moscow demanding harsh actions.

    "The inaction in regard to the destructive forces, although everything had been agreed upon in advance, is absolutely inexplicable," the general proudly read from one of those telegrams. "Idealistic speculations about 'democracy' and 'legality' may lead everything to failure with harsh consequences personally for every member of the GKChP and for people who actively supported them. …

    "We insist that measures be taken to liquidate the group of adventurists led by B.N. Yeltsin. The Russian government building has to be immediately and reliably blocked, deprived of water supplies, electricity, telephone and radio communications, etc."

    After a pause, Varennikov explains: "You see, I give recommendations here. Yeltsin used all of them in 1993 and, moreover, shot at the building from tanks" — a reference to Yeltsin's bloody standoff with parliament, when he ordered tanks to fire on the White House he had defended just two years earlier.

    Shenin agreed that the plotters should have been more decisive.

    "Within the committee [GKChP], the entire spectrum of power was represented — everybody who makes concrete decisions. But there was no time to build up the hierarchical structure. When the time came to make decisions, someone had to pull the lever." But nobody did.

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Oleg Shenin, photographed Aug. 15, 2001.

    Shenin also said the GKChP should have followed the lead of its opponents and been much more active in generating popular support by communicating directly with the people.

    And, of course, their effort was hindered by "unprecedented betrayal, which had plagued our society much earlier, but especially after 1985" when capitalist ideas began to penetrate the Soviet Union.

    Shenin said he spent the night of Aug. 20 in Kryuchkov's office and was there when Alpha commander Karpukhin and deputy defense chief Achalov said they were unwilling to storm the White House.

    "As early as the morning of the 20th, I realized that everything was going in the wrong direction, in an inconsistent and indecisive way," Shenin said. "But the culmination was in the early hours of the 21st, when I saw officers with big epaulets coming to Kryuchkov's office and saying [about raiding the White House] 'Oh, that's dangerous, a lot of blood is inevitable, people will die!' And Baklanov and I were sitting there saying that rejecting all this [the plan to storm the White House] was equal to failure.

    "We had to act more consistently, aggressively; perhaps we could have preserved the country. At the very outset, I should have been more active and insisted that I be the one in charge."

    Backfire
The result of the coup turned out to be the opposite of its stated goals: Instead of restoring a centralized Soviet Union, the GKChP's failure only further undermined the central government and expedited the country's disintegration. For the plotters — and many others — that was a tragedy.

    On the day the coup collapsed, Pugo shot himself and his wife, and Chief of General Staff Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev — who was not directly involved in the plot but rushed to Moscow to support the GKChP — hanged himself. "I knew Sergei Fyodorovich [Akhromeyev] really well," Yazov said in an interview published Thursday in Komsomolskaya Pravda. "He could not live with what happened to his country."

    Today, one of the hardest things for the plotters to hear is the accusation that they were the ones who destroyed the country they intended to save.

    "This three-day action could not be the reason for all the events that followed, including the disintegration of our great country," Varennikov said. "It could have [helped] cast off the masks, exacerbate the situation, but destroy the Union — no. Everything had been leading up to what happened."

    Yevgenia Borisova contributed to this report.

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