I watched the Victory Meeting from outside the Russian Parliament at lunchtime. Muscovites were given their due in good speeches by Yeltsin and Popov, and the crowd was euphoric. All sorts of decrees were announced: nationalising the Communist Party headquarters in Moscow, renaming the square “The Square of Free Russia”, proposing a Russian national army, de-Partyising the armed forces, and nominating Yeltsin as Hero of the Soviet Union, which he has undoubtedly been. It was his day and Gorbachev wasn’t mentioned once.
But for all the understandable joy, things teetered on the disconcerting. Father Gleb Yakunin invoked all the Messianic tendencies and said how “Russia” had saved the country, and had saved the world. Shevardnadze, who got the warmest reception from the crowd, said that the dead should be buried in the Kremlin wall and if there wasn’t enough room, the other bodies should be dug out. The crowd loved it, but of all sophisticated politicians, why did he say that and appeal to those sorts of instincts? The TV commentator later asked why Shevardnadze hadn’t taken action to stop the first coup attempts last January. (Irina said she had a lot of questions for the TV commentator, who had led a charmed life in the Brezhnev era.)
Dr Yury Savenko came round in the afternoon and said, “I think we may congratulate each other.” Tolya came round after his third night on the barricades and gave a Victory sign.
Gorbachev came back to Moscow – for the first time not sawing the air with his hand, and looking more relaxed and smiling than I’ve ever seen. In some ways the coup is like an operetta: the President held in some remote exotic place, then restored to the kingdom; the baddies all fleeing to the land beyond the east river. Where were they going? It all seems odd to me. Apparently Yelena Bonner has been asking the same questions. A number of people think Gorbachev was involved in the coup and prepared to come back in charge of the State of Emergency if it was a success. I saw a handwritten sign in the metro that Pugo had shot himself.
Irina and I had planned to go to an Italian film, but it was cancelled, so instead we walked round the barricades, as many other people were doing. There was a huge stench where thousands of people had been going to the toilet over two nights. Lorries and cars were lying on their sides and some things were still smouldering. For all that, the place looked more alive and human than usual. It’s normally a very sterile and remote part of town. As we walked back down Herzen Street we were congratulated by a number of drunks, then a huge shower of fireworks burst up over the Kremlin – an impromptu Salute to Victory Day.
I took Irina to look round our office, now half-plastered and whitewashed, but still a bit of a mess. I asked her to use her imagination and she later said the door frames reminded her of the palace at Kuskovo, so I guess she was. She came back for a cup of tea and we had a nice talk. I like her motivation for doing things. She says she’s still a lieutenant in the military reserve.
On TV there was a rock concert live from outside the Winter Palace in Leningrad. Somehow rock music seems to sum it all up. It’s energetic and defiant. I heard it blaring from a parked car near the Taganka today and loved it. Everything was so silent during the coup.
Friday 23 August
Last night a crowd pulled down the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky outside the KGB. So, less than a year after it was laid, the memorial stone to Stalin’s victims stands alone in Dzerzhinsky Square.
I had a massage from Tanya, who’d also been at the barricades. She was seething about the coup and full of “those Red fucking bastards”, through clenched teeth, as she hammered my back. She reckons Gorbachev was in on the coup, after seeing his press conference yesterday. She kept calling him “Gorbaty” – “the hunchback”. She said she’d seen a war veteran with all his medals go up the front of the queue yesterday and the crowd had driven him back. Very unusual. It really does seem to be a generational thing, this political divide. One of her nice quotes: “They say Raisa had a heart attack. I bet she did – worried about her fur coat.”
Saturday 24 August:
Official Day of Mourning in Moscow
I’ve spent most of the morning crying or near to tears. What seemed like a victory seems more like a tragedy inflicted on a very misfortunate people, and it’s not all over yet. Many people spoke at the Manezh, including Gorbachev, but on occasions like that, who people really are shows in their tone of voice and the way they can understand grief and express it for everyone else. Yelena Bonner spoke with real suffering in her voice and linked the deaths in Moscow with Baku, Karabakh, Alma-Ata and Vilnius, and also with all the prisoners who died in Perm and Mordovia. She said to families of the dead in Moscow that nothing will ever take away the pain for them, “but I promise you, they did not die in vain”. A young Afghan veteran also spoke very simply and movingly.
A rabbi said the Kaddish and a Russian Orthodox choir sang, most of the men young and some crying as they sang. The TV commentator said fighting has started in Georgia and in Baku, so it looks like the civil war comes nearer.
I too think Gorbachev’s role in the coup is very suspicious; there are so many unanswered questions. Why, when the RSFSR MPs came to “liberate” him, did he have Lukyanov and Ivashko in one room and three of the putsch committee in another? If he was supposed to be incommunicado, how did he manage to call Arkady Volsky? Shakhnazarov was supposed to be under arrest with him, then rolls up in Parliament on Wednesday. He’s now appointed as Minister of Defence the man who supplied the tanks for the coup in Moscow. Really, the country doesn’t feel safe from him.
My laundry is shut until 9 September, and as I have no hot water I took my washing up to Hella and Siffra’s. They were both writing their copy until midnight and hyper with exhaustion, after all the last week’s events. We started discussing the conspiracy theory, all sceptical at first, then talked ourselves into it more and more. They think Gorbachev will be out in a few days.
Yesterday I took a letter from the London office to the Human Rights Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Smirnov received me, grinning broadly, and said Alexander Bessmertnykh had just been replaced as USSR Foreign Minister. He certainly had a very bald and unconvincing narrative to tell at his press conference, and I later learned that he’d instructed all Soviet embassies to remove Gorbachev’s picture. I also dropped material off at the Shevardnadze Association. Shevardnadze was giving many TV interviews. His assistant, Sorokin, said simply, “We have had a great victory.”
I finally got my visa registered at the Visa and Registration Department. For the first time they had a TV on, very loudly, and the staff and the queue were watching Gorbachev answering questions from the RSFSR Parliament. Yeltsin humiliated him, using the showman tactics which so disconcert me.
The newspapers are so interesting now, I’m reading them from cover to cover and they take ages. Izvestiya has immediately removed Lenin from its masthead and quickly settled its year-long dispute, by getting rid of its reactionary editor.