67 Carrère d’Encausse interview. Revisiting the inter-republic negotiations of the winter before, and anticipating the agreement struck in December 1991, Yeltsin specifically raised with Carrère d’Encausse the possibility of a voluntary “commonwealth” of the three Slavic republics of the USSR—Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
68 Baturin et al., Epokha, 135, 137.
69 V. I. Boldin, Krusheniye p’edestala: shtrikhi k portretu M. S. Gorbacheva (Smashing the pedestaclass="underline" strokes of a portrait of M. S. Gorbachev) (Moscow: Respublika, 1995), 403.
70 See Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), 412–13; Stewart, “SIC TRANSIT,” 361–62; and Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy (Life and reforms), 2 vols. (Moscow: Novosti, 1995), 2:308.
71 Boris Yel’tsin, Zapiski prezidenta (Notes of a president) (Moscow: Ogonëk, 1994), 54–56; Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 2:556–57.
72 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 96.
73 Voshchanov, interviewed in Prezident vseya Rusi (The president of all Russia), documentary film by Yevgenii Kiselëv, 1999–2000 (copy supplied by Kiselëv), 4 parts, part 3. Gorbachev reports the overture in his memoirs (Zhizn’ i reformy, 2:555) and criticizes Yeltsin for not informing him about it. “Most likely he held it in reserve, never knowing when it might come in handy.”
74 Prokof’ev, Do i posle zapreta KPSS, 244. A number of well-informed Muscovites have told me they are sure that Kryuchkov and the plotters briefed Yeltsin on their plan. No evidence has ever been brought forward. Ruslan Khasbulatov, the acting chairman of the Russian parliament at the time, and later to be a blood enemy of Yeltsin’s, was one of the first to see him the morning of August 19, and he reports that Yeltsin was “flabby and prostrate” at the news of the coup, which can only mean that he had been given no warning. R. I. Khasbulatov, Velikaya Rossiiskaya tragediya (Great Russian tragedy), 2 vols. (Moscow: SIMS, 1994), 1:161.
75 Boris Yeltsin, third interview with the author (September 12, 2002), in which he told me about the Kubinka landing. In Zapiski, 73, he wrote that he landed at Vnukovo, not Kubinka. He also stated there (71) that the putschists considered having his plane shot down. Sukhanov, Tri goda, 15, says the same. These details will not be clarified until independent researchers get access to the archives concerned.
76 V. G. Stepankov and Ye. K. Lisov, Kremlëvskii zagovor (Kremlin plot) (Moscow: Ogonëk, 1992), 119–21; “GKChP: protsess, kotoryi ne poshël” (The GKChP: the process which never got going), part 4, Novaya gazeta, August 13, 2001 (italics added).
77 Viktor Yaroshenko, Yel’tsin: ya otvechu za vsë (Yeltsin: I will answer for everything) (Moscow: Vokrug sveta, 1997), 131–32.
78 Stepankov and Lisov, Kremlëvskii zagovor, 121. The plotters’ plans for Yeltsin’s detention at Arkhangel’skoye-2 are described in ibid., 117–25, 156–57, 160–61, 165–66. In Zapiski, 97–98, Yeltsin recounts another telephone conversation with Kryuchkov, taken at Yeltsin’s initiative from the Russian White House. And Vadim Bakatin, who headed the KGB in the fall of 1991, adds that there was dissension among the Alpha commanders over whether to arrest Yeltsin: Izbavleniye ot KGB (Deliverance from the KGB) (Moscow: Novosti, 1992), 20–21.
79 Stepankov and Lisov, Kremlëvskii zagovor, 123.
80 See Brian D. Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 241–42. Several Russian sources add that at the meeting at which Kryuchkov revealed Yeltsin’s noncooperation, Oleg Baklanov, the party overseer of the military-industrial complex and one of the GKChP octet, scribbled a note to himself saying, “Seize B. N. [Boris Nikolayevich].”
81 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 68. As Yeltsin’s grandchildren prepared to leave the dacha with Naina a little later, his daughters warned them to take to the floor of the car if firing broke out, at which point his ten-year-old grandson asked if they would be shot directly in the head. Den’ v sem’e prezidenta (A day in the president’s family), interviews of the Yeltsin family by El’dar Ryazanov on REN-TV, April 20, 1993 (videotape supplied by Irena Lesnevskaya).
82 Gennadii Burbulis, “Prezident ot prirody” (A president by nature), Moskovskiye novosti, January 27, 2006; and quotation from Mary Dejevsky, a British journalist who was on the spot, interview with the author (September 14, 2007).
83 The quotation and details of his decision are taken from my third Yeltsin interview. Khasbulatov has written (Velikaya Rossiiskaya tragediya, 1:163) that he and others persuaded Yeltsin to get up on the tank, but Yeltsin’s account contradicts this. Viktor Yaroshenko, a Yeltsin adviser who was present, has said Yeltsin may have seen a young man lie down on the ground in front of another tank minutes before, and the man’s bravery may have influenced him. Friends pulled the man from the path of Tank No. 112 with a split-second to spare. The scene and Yaroshenko’s comments are captured in Prezident vseya Rusi, part 3.
84 The appeal and other major documents from August 1991 can be found at http://old.russ.ru/antolog/1991/putch11.htm.
85 Victoria E. Bonnell and Gregory Freidin, “Televorot: The Role of Television Coverage in Russia’s August 1991 Coup,” in Nancy Condee, ed., Soviet Hieroglyphics : Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 32.
86 That was the peak crowd at the White House. But there were about 200,000 pro-Yeltsin demonstrators on August 20 at Moscow city hall on Tverskaya Street, where the police and military presence was slighter, and significant demonstrations were mounted at many Russian and Soviet cities. See Harley Balzer, “Ordinary Russians? Rethinking August 1991,” Demokratizatsiya/Democratization 13 (Spring 2005), 193–218.
87 When the unassuming Lobov addressed a rally in Sverdlovsk, the commander of the local military district threatened to lock him up. Lobov then warned that he would call a general strike. The standoff was averted by the collapse of the coup. Oleg Lobov, interview with the author (May 29, 2002).
88 Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 434; Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 172. Richard Nixon thought Bush’s praise of Yeltsin grudging and that the putsch had shown that Bush had been “wrong all along” about the relative merits of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Crowley, Nixon in Winter, 64.
89 John B. Dunlop, “The August 1991 Coup and Its Impact on Soviet Politics,” Journal of Cold War Studies 5 (Winter 2003), 112–13. Bush’s decision and the “bitter protests” of the National Security Agency were first reported in Seymour M. Hersh, “The Wild East,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1994. Testified one U.S. official, “We told Yeltsin in real time what the communications were…. We monitor every major command, and we handed it to Yeltsin on a platter.” The NSA’s concern was about disclosure of American monitoring capabilities. President Bush decided, properly, that helping Yeltsin at a turning point was a more important stake.
90 “Throne out of bayonets” was an expression of the English theologian William R. Inge ( 1860–1954). I do not know how Yeltsin came across it.