USSR, as a great power, ceased in December of 1991, but in effect you’re right: the events of August 1991 determined the further fate of Soviet Empire.
Excuse me, Eugene, can’t you describe more thoroughly what was happening in Russia in August of 1991. Our press covered these events such way, that they seemed at the same time tragic – emotionally – and exaggerated grotesque – mentally. And then, two weeks later, as it usually happen, everyone forgot about it. Don’t you think that common people usually can’t keep in their minds the events beyond two-weeks-ago? Even terrorist acts in Manhattan that had stricken the whole world on the September 11 began to be covered by clichés like “black Tuesday” two weeks later, though demand for “antidepressants” has risen abruptly. And when ten years will pass, many people will mix up the “black Tuesday” of 1929[30] and “black Tuesday” of 2001.
Don’t worry, Mr. Watson, the matter with long-lasting memory is not better in Russia, but however I’m ready to tell you about tragic events of August 1991.
How long did they last?
According to the official version – four days, but in fact – five.
Why so different?
You may remember, Watson… excuse me – Mr. Watson.
Please, call me just Watson.
So, Watson, the majority of people learnt about GKChP from TV on August 19. And for the most of people it was like bolt from the blue.
Like “boom”, – I corrected him significantly, remembering the tile of the film on backside of the “Historical Picnic”, – and what does the abbreviation GKChP mean?
Well, if that’s better for you, let it be “boom”. And GKChP in Russian is – State Committee of Emergency State. Well, of course, you understand that it can’t be created in the morning of August 19. They has been preparing beforehand, and perhaps, secretly, but appeared not on the 19th, but on 18th, when those crazy GKChP members left for Foros in Crimea to make arrangements with Gorby – so, probably, you here on the West still tenderly call this camel.
Why camel?
Because he’s “Gorby” for you, but for us he is merely camel, loaded with your nonsense about all-human values. Sorry, Watson, may be, I touched inappropriately your political passions?
Please, Eugene, go on. And don’t worry about my political passions, for I myself have just begun to understand them. And why did you call those members “crazy”?
Ah, because even those, who arrived to Foros on the 18th to try to persuade Gorby to commit the emergency state, couldn’t agree with each other. And when, on the 19th, they appeared on TV screens to the music of Tchaikovsky with their good intentions, which, as usual, cover the road to the hell, it was written in their faces and even in the hands of their leader – Janayev.
What does it mean – “written in hands”?
Well, his hands were trembling, and camera showed several times close-up of his hands, as luck would have it. It can be said that those eight crazy people, or may be playing the role according to the script written in advance, for non-thinking crowd staring on TV screens, sat their enemy – Eltsin – on the tank near White House on the 20th.
Russian President? But didn’t they see that he was their enemy?
Who knows, he might be at one with them: it might be just show. And to say about the excited crowd on the square before the White House, where Russian government had a place, for them Eltsin was undoubtedly an “invisible enemy”, whom they mistook for a saviour. The crowd understood that he really was an enemy, when in two years economy became unsteady to the declarations of the success of reforms and the same crowd was lead to the same square near White House and directly pointed to the enemy. I think that even on August 20 this drunkard pretending to be a Thunderer knew that he would throw away to the sewage all the stories of your Gorby. That’s why Eltsin has climbed on the tank, like Lenin in the April of 1917 on the armoured car, exciting the crowd by slogans defending USSR President. I still feel nauseous of all this “circus shapito[31]”, carrying out the clown-theatre to the Moscow streets: the troops, tanks in the streets of our capital, the curfew announced in Moscow on the 21st of August, the rumours about the storm of White House were spread… “Революционн-н-эры хреновы” – he shouted the last phrase in Russian.
How did you say? Repeat please, – I asked having heard the familiar word from the third “picnic”.
It’s for mostly for me. “Революционн-н-эры хреновы” – it means “bad, grotty, good-for-nothing revolutionists”: both those who planned that “putsch” and those who opposed it. Have you ever seen such “putschists” and “revolutionists”? All that the last head of KGB needed was to appoint the skin diver to look after Gorby and then give him an order to pull down the legs of this camel and hold him under the water for some minutes, while he would be swimming in the Black Sea on the special dacha in Foros. Then they would validate the official report, and Janajev, for example, on August 19, with his sorrowful mug, would inform the whole world that “great misfortune befell the Soviet people” and that the funeral of “untimely perished” General Secretary would take place on the Red Square, and then USSR could still exist, carrying out the reforms in some other ways.
Was I right, Eugene, – I threw the test retort, – or it seemed to me, that you have called this putsch the “circus Shapiro”?
No, Watson, you got mistaken in Russian idiom, – Galba smiled leniently. – Any Shapiro has nothing to do with it. You know, “shapito” is a large tarpaulin tent, and under it there’s usually circus arena and stands for spectators. There were plenty of such circuses in Russia before, they lead a nomadic life, and a standard of professionalism in some of them was ridiculously low. And it became a custom in Russia, when people want to laugh at some failed official measure they call it sometimes “circus shapito”.
What about revolutionists, – he continued his thought, interrupted by my question about the circus, – everything is conditional in our time: if you have won and have thrown out the ruling regime, and the international public is favourable to you, you will be called a “revolutionist”, but if your hands were trembling, and you were frightened to the extreme, or the world public is not in sympathy with you, you are doomed to become a “putschist”. In other words one should distinguish, from which positions the assessment of historical event is made. Thus, for example the events of October, 1917 in Russia for the West are just some “Bolshevik’s tricks”, which made a totalitarian state out of empire. As a result a great problem for the West appeared, and lasted 72 years, in total accordance with the prediction of Nostradamus about the fate of what now is known as USSR. However for those who had overthrown the demoralized monarchy in Russia, the same events are – The Great October Revolution. Another example from the history of your state: in the middle of XVII century Cromwell, supported by Parliament, chopped off the head of your king and declared Republic – it’s revolution; but if the king would has coped with Parliament and chopped off Cromwell’s head, the same event will be most likely called putsch of aristocracy by the same bourgeois historicists.
There was a long pause. Galba looked somewhere aside, drinking his coffee in small gulps as if he was restoring in his memory what he has gone through.
It can be said, – he continued his story, – that “curfew” was the last act of GKChP. It was clear already, that the “putschists” have sold themselves to future “tsar Boris”. But it’s not such people who make history! – Eugene suddenly raised his voice passionately and began to speak with abrupt phrases, as if he was replaced by someone else: “The real struggle with bourgeois democracy is in future still! You’ll do nothing with Russia. New mothers, and not only in Russia, will bring up new “Pauls”, ready to give their lives for people’s happiness.”
I was partly strike by this change in him and asked him a question, for dampening his ardour and returning to the theme of our conversation: “Excuse me, Eugene, but what “Pauls”, if I’ve heard correctly, were you talking about?”