The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

Familiar faces greet me outside the chairman’s office: members of the Collegium, heads of directorates. Everybody seems dejected; there is no conversation, no smiles. Kriuchkov starts the meeting without any preliminaries. No one knows what is going on. Out of habit I take brief notes. I try to summarize what Kriuchkov is saying in a single sentence and come up with: “A state of emergency has been proclaimed with the goal of helping to bring in the harvest.” Kriuchkov is very excited and speaks in fits and starts. He concludes by saying approximately the following: “Keep working!” He does not take questions. Plekhanov, the chief of security, pops in. He looks completely crushed. Could it be that he is concerned about the health of the president? He is sick after all. Kriuchkov makes a rallying hand gesture in Plekhanov’s direction, something as: “It’s O.K., it’s O.K. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.” We depart with our heads hanging, exchanging not opinions but mindless curses muttered under our breath.

An inner voice tells me that it is best to keep away from Lubianka, not to get trapped in some unpredictable assignment. Headquarters is always full of people who are eager to use others as a cat’s paw. I am on my way back to Iasenevo. The streets are filled with armored columns. Occasionally there are

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Chapter Thirty-Three

stalled vehicles with soldiers fussing around them. The air is full of diesel exhaust as in the bad times in Kabul. The columns move without hurry and seem endless. To everyone’s surprise they stop at red traffic lights. Clearly something’s off.

Is Kriuchkov off on a risky venture? What’s wrong with the president? Stroke? Heart attack? Can’t figure out a damn thing. Along with the statements of the State Committee on Extraordinary Affairs they are reading Lukianov’s letter concerning the agreement on union. In spirit he is with the SCEA but he is not its member. Where are the countless committees of the Supreme Soviet, where is the mountain, the great pyramid of law-giving authority?

The TV runs stupid cartoons and the radio broadcasts mindless stuff. We have the technical capacity to receive the American news network, CNN. It is an insane situation: we get news about the capital city of our native land from American sources, from various news services, from private telephone calls. No one knows anything. Kriuchkov is always at meetings. It is pointless to ask Grushko about anything, and who would want to.

According to CNN, crowds are starting to gather at Manezh Square [adjacent to the Kremlin] and at the White House [seat of the Russian Federation] on the Krasnaia Presnia Embankment. Telephone calls substantiate this.

Time ticks away but there are no instructions and no information. I ask that copies of the SCEA statements be sent to all stations abroad as well as an order to report on the local reactions to the events in Moscow. The reactions come swiftly—they are acutely negative everywhere except for Iraq. Iraq hails the events. I authorize the telegrams to be sent to Kriuchkov, but on his orders some are diverted to members of the SCEA. Let them read, it won’t hearten them; perhaps it will give them pause.

But nothing heartens us. The airwaves are silent. The teletypes print out Yeltsin’s addresses to the people. These are immediately reproduced and distributed throughout headquarters. The situation in the city is heating up but on the screens there are only cartoons and on the telephones only anxious voices of people who understand and know nothing. My own voice is among theirs.

The most important phone rings—ATS-1—the Kremlin. It is Sergei Vadi-movich Stepashin whom I recently met for the first time. Along with the other members of the Supreme Soviet of Russia he visited the FCD in early summer. I don’t remember his exact words but the sense was clear—something had to be done to avert the approaching tragedy. I am in total agreement with Stepashin; we are moving toward something dreadful.

“We have to talk to Kriuchkov immediately. All this must be stopped. How can we get in touch with him? We are all in Burbulis’s office.”

Leonid Shebarshin, Three Days in August

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I try to find Kriuchkov on another line. I am told that he is in conference with Ianaev [vice-president to Gorbachev]. I call reception and demand that Kriuchkov be summoned. He takes the receiver. I tell him that negotiations are necessary, that an end must be put to everything. He asks for Burbulis’s number and hangs up. To this day I don’t know whether they had a conversation. The airwaves are silent. Toward evening Ianaev holds a press conference. He creates a stupefying impression. It is a huge nail in the coffin of the would-be dictatorship. Beskov and his commando group are in the recreation building. They have received no orders, but they are being fed.

20 AUGUST