Sunday 18 August
I took them round Red Square, back home for tea, then out to Tatyana’s for the Quaker meeting. Elspeth is very excited by her first step outside Europe and loves Moscow. Dad, however, is going to write a stiff letter to Aeroflot because they didn’t give her the vegetarian meal he’d ordered. Nikolay says the minister will probably resign. When we came home from the Quakers there were fireworks in the distance for Pilots’ Day and children in the metro were wearing their fathers’ military caps. There was a lot of activity in my street and a priest was out walking with people in his full priestly garb. Tomorrow is the feast of the Transfiguration, a big date in the Russian Orthodox calendar.
Monday 19 August
At 7.30am Valya rang to ask if I’d heard the news. Gorbachev was deposed last night and a committee of Yanaev, Pugo, Kryuchkov and Yazov have appealed to the nation. I spent a maddening half hour trying to get news. The TV was showing cello and piano duets, and only one channel was working. A strained new newsreader read a long statement about the Union Treaty. I couldn’t get the BBC and finally got an official Russian channel, which quoted TASS as saying a state of emergency had been declared nationwide for six months. The Emergency Committee had decreed that all its pronouncements took precedence over republican laws, and said it would honour its international obligations. Radio Liberty said the states of emergency were localised. Apparently the coup may have been timed to forestall the signing of the Union Treaty tomorrow, which would formally have reduced the USSR to nine republics.
I went out to get bread and milk. The shops were busy but everyone was silent, the way they were when the Joint Patrols were introduced. I admire the way Russians take things; they’re very politicised, but have an inbred sense of when to keep their own counsel. I couldn’t get any line to the Cosmos Hotel – all apparently jammed. I tried to make my appointment with the USSR Foreign Ministry as they had asked, but Marina the secretary said expressively, “Nikak sevodnya” – “No way today.”
Managed to call the Cosmos Hotel from town at 10.30am and told Elspeth there’d been a coup. “Where?” she asked. Went up and took them all to the Botanical Gardens in the morning, then down town to drop them off at their Intourist City Bus tour. When we came out of Prospekt Marx metro a young man was leafleting at furious speed. It was a call for a general strike by Moscow students. Someone else had the official statement by Yeltsin, Silaev and Khasbullatov, and a big crowd quickly gathered to read it. A man in a black shirt was pressed up behind me and I could feel his heart pounding on my arm. Yeltsin denounced the unconstitutionality of the coup and called for a general strike until Gorbachev is allowed back to report to Parliament.
When we rounded the corner onto the main street we saw the strike had already started. Trolley buses were pulled across the road, blocking each main junction. There was no traffic and people were milling around the streets. Red Square was blocked off by busloads of troops. Gorky Street was empty except for a lot of pedestrians, all very quiet, but like us, watching for something to happen. A young man walked up the centre of the street shouting that the RSFSR Supreme Soviet was surrounded by troops and calling people to a meeting at 4.00pm. Dad was terribly concerned that Elspeth should get a bus ride round the city, so I came home in the rain. There were armoured cars pulled up in the Manezh amongst the trolley buses and I wondered if they too had joined the strike. Three tanks were lined up by Kammenny Most and foot soldiers were taking up positions. On the way home I bought a melon from two girls in the street and told them there were tanks in the Manezh. They were startled and said, “Maybe something will happen then.” They’d seen armoured cars and all sorts passing all day.
I listened to the radio and made phone calls. Viktor`s mother said that she’d had a very cultured day watching Swan Lake, classical concerts etc. and totally deprived of news. When I got back at night Swan Lake was starting its second round. Managed to contact the office, and also the landlord phoned me, asking me to call if anything was wrong. Nice.
Met Mum, Dad and Elspeth for dinner at the Moskovskye Zori. Not surprisingly their bus tour had been cancelled. The nine o’clock news came on and we had the full benefit of the Extraordinary Committee’s press conference, decree and statements. I noticed nobody watched except me, but everyone must be attuned to the language because suddenly people would guffaw without turning their heads – particularly when Yanaev said they were giving Gorbachev a rest so he could “recoup his strength”; and also when the Committee said that after the first day of the State of Emergency “everyone was visibly breathing more easily”. I learned from the broadcast that there is a State of Emergency in six places: Moscow, and presumably the five breakaway republics. Also, oddly enough, that the Committee for Constitutional Supervision has denounced the State of Emergency as unconstitutional. It is quite refreshing and heartening that opposition to the coup is based on legal grounds.
On the way home Yeltsin’s fly posters had been put up in the metros. Someone had scrawled on one, “At ten o’clock the tank drivers came over on the side of Russia.” I heard later from the Trans-National Radical Party, who are at the barricades, that ten tanks are rumoured to have swapped sides.
I keep being overwhelmed by the arrogance of the non-elected Extraordinary Committee, but then I’m just a naive foreigner. They will have their hands full anyway, and I don’t know how they expect economic help from the West. Yeltsin is in a fantastically difficult and important position, but his first statement looked good. Radio Liberty said Georgian troops had been brought into Moscow. An odd choice, I’d have thought.
News from elsewhere: I got through to Leningrad at midnight. They’ve still got their TV channel and Sobchak, the Mayor, has done a strong half-hour broadcast calling for a general strike, threatening to prosecute anyone who obeys the Extraordinary Committee, and promising to defend Leningrad against attack. Viktor is convinced the coup is a bluff, badly timed, and will be over in a week. Apparently two people were named as Extraordinary Committee members without their consent. They have dissociated themselves from it and vowed loyalty to Yeltsin. I lay under my mosquito net, watching the ballerinas and listening to Radio Liberty until the small hours. TV and radio have been seized in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and there was shooting in Riga. The Soviet Embassy in Washington says it has no information except for what it receives from US media.
Tuesday 20 August
The morning news said ten tanks outside the RSFSR Supreme Soviet had turned their turrets round to protect the Parliament. Some paratroopers have also swapped sides. Only nine newspapers are allowed to publish, but one of them, Izvestiya, has joined the general strike. Bush came out against the coup, has called for Gorbachev’s reinstatement, and refused US economic aid. The World Bank too. The London office rang: half the Kuzbass mines are out on strike. If Gorbachev is under house arrest, Amnesty will take him up as a prisoner of conscience.
I think today was the day of the generation gap. Nikolay came round at breakfast, with no coat, even though it was raining heavily. He’d moved out yesterday because his mother supports the coup. He had no information and was quite frightened. I filled him in with what I knew. He said the Armenian president had come out in favour of the coup. Odd – I’d have thought their future lay with close contact with Russia. It turned out later to be a false rumour.