Moscow, December 25, 1991

“Mr. Baker, when he and I had a four-and-a-half-hour meeting here in Moscow, never told me that, so those who doubt the success of the commonwealth should beware and not be so pessimistic. The people here are weary of pessimism, and the share of pessimism is too much for the people to handle. Now they need some belief, finally.”

He ends the interview beaming and wishing everyone, “Happy Christmas!”

The proceedings are recorded by a broad-faced man with a short haircut standing at a discreet distance with a heavy film camera on his shoulder. Yeltsin’s personal cameraman, Alexander Kuznetsov, has the task of recording the Russian president’s daily activities. He sees his role as providing footage of Yeltsin that will be sufficiently flattering so that “Naina is satisfied and his daughters will not be making faces in front of the television.” He is secretly an admirer of Gorbachev and was in negotiations with Andrey Grachev to work for the Soviet president until he received a more tempting offer from Yeltsin. He did not mention this when he was being hired, as “Yeltsin couldn’t stand Gorbachev.”

The job of recording the colorful Russian president’s life and times, he reflects, puts him “in the front row of the political theatre of the time, enjoying the performance of the best actor at the end of the second millennium.” Nevertheless, in Kuznetsov’s opinion, “It is Gorbachev’s name that will be written in history in gold writing—and Yeltsin’s only in capital letters.”⁶

Chapter 17 PERFIDIOUSNESS, LAWLESSNESS, INFAMY

On Saturday, August 17, 1991, KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov invited a small number of highly placed party members to join him for a steam bath in a secret KGB guest house at the end of Moscow’s Leninsky Prospekt. They included Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov; Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov; President Gorbachev’s chief of staff, Valery Boldin; and two other senior party officials, Oleg Baklanov and Oleg Shenin.¹

Wrapped in towels, they made small talk. Kryuchkov told them of an intelligence report that seemed to show Gorbachev kowtowing to America. It wasn’t until they had dressed and were drinking vodka and Scotch whisky at a trestle table in the garden that Kryuchkov revealed the reason they all had been invited.

The country was facing total chaos, he said. Gorbachev was not acting adequately. He had intelligence that Gorbachev planned to fire the prime minister and other members of government, including himself, after the ceremonial signing of the new union treaty on the following Tuesday. The treaty would mean the end of the USSR and could not be tolerated. If Gorbachev would not lead them, and if they could not control him, he would have to be forced to leave the scene.

It was time to make a move, he went on. Gorbachev was due to return from his Black Sea vacation on Monday. They would send a delegation to Foros tomorrow, Sunday, and ask the president to join them in declaring a state of emergency. If he refused, they would invite him to resign. They would set up an emergency committee and do what was needed themselves.

All went along with the plan. Yazov offered to provide a military plane to fly to Foros. In the meantime he would bring troops into Moscow to demonstrate to the populace where power lay. The defense minister smirked at Boldin. He joked that when Gorbachev saw that his chief of staff was involved, he would say, “Et tu Brute?” Boldin was hardly in a mood for humor, however. He was ill with a liver ailment and had been on an IV drip in the hospital for a week, but he had signed himself out because the country was disintegrating and “I simply had to set my personal considerations aside.”

The plotters were told by Kryuchkov that Interior Minister Boris Pugo was an instigator of the plan and he was also confident that Vice President Gennady Yanayev would cooperate once he was informed. He was also sure they could handle any resistance from the general population. Two hundred and fifty thousand pairs of handcuffs had been ordered from a factory in Pskov, and Lefortovo prison made ready for an influx of detainees.

The coup got under way the next day, Sunday, August 18, with the house arrest of Mikhail Gorbachev. A military plane provided by Yazov landed at the Belbek military base near Foros at 5 p.m. after a two-hour flight from Moscow. On board were Baklanov, Shenin, Boldin, and another enthusiastic putschist, General Valentin Varennikov. The four men represented the pillars of the Soviet establishment. Baklanov, with broad earnest face and furrowed brow, was head of the Soviet Union’s military-industrial complex. Shenin, prematurely bald with large domed forehead, was the Politburo member responsible for party organization. Boldin, besides being Gorbachev’s chief of staff, was a senior member of the Central Committee. Varennikov, in large rimless glasses with a thin moustache and lank hair combed over in Hitler style, was commander of Soviet land forces.