INTL Fall of Soviet Union 30 Years Ago

[Plain Jane]

As tanks rolled in 1991, AP photographer sprang into action

MOSCOW (AP) — On the morning of Aug. 19, 1991, I woke up to a loud rumbling outside. It was the same sound I heard during an earlier showdown between Soviet troops and pro-democracy protesters in Lithuania.

apnews.com

As tanks rolled in 1991, AP photographer sprang into action
By ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO2 hours ago



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FILE - In this Friday, Aug. 23, 1991 file photo, people kick the head of the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, in front of the KGB main headquarters on the Lubyanka Square in Moscow, Russia. The statue was pulled down after the defeat of the August 1991 hardline coup. I was out on the streets, shooting exultant crowds across the city and managed to catch the moment when demonstrators pulled down the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, in front of the KGB main headquarters on the Lubyanka Square - a watershed moment that symbolized the collapse of the repressive Soviet system.(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

MOSCOW (AP) — On the morning of Aug. 19, 1991, I woke up to a loud rumbling outside. It was the same sound I heard during an earlier showdown between Soviet troops and pro-democracy protesters in Lithuania.

It was the sound of battle tanks.

The ominous noise on that morning 30 years ago was coming from the main state TV headquarters, a 15-minute walk from my apartment building in northern Moscow. When I went outside, I saw troops encircling state broadcast facilities and the massive Ostankino TV tower.

The hundreds of tanks rolled into Moscow after a terse statement was broadcast declaring that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who was on vacation at the Black Sea, was unfit to govern for health reasons. A group of hard-line Communist Party officials formed what they called the “State Committee on the State of Emergency” to save the country from “chaos and anarchy.”


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EDITOR’S NOTE: Associated Press photographer Alexander Zemlianichenko rushed into the streets of Moscow on the morning of Aug. 19, 1991, after a group of hard-line Communist Party officials seized power in a coup. The images of demonstrators standing up to the tanks and troops that Zemlianichenko and his AP colleagues made during the tumult and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography.
___
That day, my wife and I were supposed to start our vacation in Cyprus — a long-coveted trip that was our first chance to visit the Mediterranean. Instead, I packed my gear and headed to The Associated Press office, located across the river from the government headquarters of the Russian Federation, one of 15 Soviet republics, which was headed by Boris Yeltsin.

Yeltsin was widely seen as the champion of democratic reforms, defying those hard-liners who were trying to preserve Communist Party rule. His offices in a towering riverside building, dubbed the “White House” by Muscovites, served as a rallying point for those who opposed the coup.
When I reached the building, crowds were swarming the tanks sent to surround the building. Some of the tank crews got out of their vehicles and declared that they would side with protesters.
Yeltsin arrived and climbed atop one of the tanks to make a passionate speech, urging people to stand up against the coup plotters.
I spent that chaotic day taking photos of protesters around Yeltsin’s headquarters and running back the office to have my rolls of film developed.
Later in the day, the leaders of the coup defended their actions at a televised news conference, but they appeared nervous and indecisive. As state TV showed Yeltsin defying them, it became increasingly clear that their plot was doomed.


Tensions remained high, however, and three protesters were killed and several others were injured when a crowd tried to stop a convoy of armored vehicles that they believed was heading to storm Yeltsin’s headquarters.

Hours later, on the morning of Aug. 21, Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov ordered troops to leave Moscow. The next day, Gorbachev flew back to Moscow, and the coup plotters were arrested. One died of a gunshot wound in an apparent suicide.

I was still out on the streets, taking photos of exultant crowds across the city. I caught the moment when demonstrators pulled down a large statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, in front of KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square.

It was a watershed moment that symbolized the collapse of the repressive Soviet system.

The botched putsch dramatically weakened Gorbachev, making Yeltsin the No. 1 political figure and hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union four months later.



https://apnews.com/article/europe-business-moscow-plane-crashes-169569a36712ab9216e49f27a70937f5

 

[Hfcomms]

History may not repeat but it does rhyme. One superpower bit the dust when kicked out of Afghanistan and thirty years later it’s our turn.

 

[Plain Jane]

AP WAS THERE: 1991 Soviet Coup

In August 1991, a group of hard-line Communist Party officials tried to remove Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev from power. The move sent shock waves around the world, which feared a rollback of Gorbachev’s reforms and his efforts to end the Cold War.

apnews.com

AP WAS THERE: 1991 Soviet Coup
By The Associated Press2 hours ago



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FILE In this Monday, Aug. 19, 1991 file photo, Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Federation, makes a speech from atop a tank in front of the Russian parliament building in Moscow, Russia. In the capital, where thousands of protesters confronted soldiers on tanks and armed personnel carriers, Yeltsin climbed atop one military vehicle and urged the Russian people to fight back with an immediate general strike. (AP Photo, File)
In August 1991, a group of hard-line Communist Party officials tried to remove Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev from power. The move sent shock waves around the world, which feared a rollback of Gorbachev’s reforms and his efforts to end the Cold War. The putsch collapsed in three days as throngs took to the streets of Moscow in defiance. The events dramatically weakened Gorbachev’s rule and precipitated the collapse of the 74-year-old Soviet Union about four months later.

Associated Press writer Ann Imse covered the failed coup. Thirty years later, the AP is making a version of her story available, with photos.

Soviet Hard-liners Seize Power From Gorbachev
By ANN IMSE
Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW (AP) — Communist hard-liners backed by tanks and troops seized power today from President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in a coup that threatened the reforms he used for six years to transform the Soviet Union and end the Cold War.


Vice President Gennady Yanayev said he was taking over as acting president under a state of emergency, supported by an eight-member committee that includes the KGB and top military and police officials.

Gorbachev was detained at his vacation home in the Crimea, said a spokesman for Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic.

Yeltsin quickly moved into the forefront of resistance to the takeover. He ordered Soviet soldiers, police and KGB agents to follow his command on the territory of the sprawling Russian republic, which includes Moscow.

In the capital, where thousands of protesters confronted soldiers on tanks and armed personnel carriers, Yeltsin climbed atop one military vehicle and urged the Russian people to fight back with an immediate general strike.

“I’m not going to order my troops to shoot Boris Yeltsin,” one military commander was quoted as saying.

It was unclear if the confrontations would lead to large-scale resistance to the coup.
No injuries or deaths were immediately reported in the protests.

Late today, the official Soviet news agency Tass reported Yeltsin’s condemnation of the coup and his call for a general strike, a move that may reflect feuding between pro- and anti-coup factions at the agency.

Yeltsin also received support from leaders of the republics of Kazakhstan and the Ukraine.
As President Bush joined other Western leaders in condemning the coup, there were also reports of a new crackdown in the breakaway Baltic republics.

Yanayev (pronounced yah-NEYE-yeff), at his first post-coup news conference, denounced the Yeltsin-led resistance as “dangerous and irresponsible ... fraught with the potential of armed conflict.”

But he added: “We will do our utmost not to use force against civilians.” Yanayev claimed that Gorbachev “is now on vacation” in an undisclosed “safe place.”


“He is very tired after all these years, and he will need some time to get better. We hope … he will take office again,” he told reporters.

The emergency decree announcing the takeover early today had said Gorbachev, 60, was unable to perform his duties for health reasons. However, there has been no recent indication he was ill.

Gorbachev was to have returned to Moscow today for Tuesday’s signing of a treaty, opposed by hard-liners, that would have given the restive republics more power at the expense of the Communist central government.

In Moscow, hundreds of armored vehicles poured into the streets, and long columns of tanks churned up the pavement. Dozens of armored vehicles surrounded the Russian Federation building.

The vehicles later backed off several hundred yards and the intervening space filled with hundreds of pro-Yeltsin demonstrators. They used barricades of trucks, buses and bricks to protect the building and Yeltsin inside.

Late in the afternoon, most of the armored vehicles around the Russian headquarters had left.
Russian deputies reported that 38,000 copies of Yeltsin’s appeal to the people of Russia have been printed up and were being distributed at airports and train stations.

More than a hundred members of the Russian legislature gathered at the Russian Parliament and decided to split up into groups and talk to soldiers throughout Moscow, hoping to persuade them not to support the coup.

In the rain-soaked streets of central Moscow, many of the protesters engaged in shouting matches with Soviet soldiers.

“We won’t stand for it!” cried Muscovite Alexander Muzhin.

“It’s our army. They will support us,” said Gasha Kolchin, a 20-year-old medical student at Moscow State University, as he rode on a tank in a downtown street, clutching a red-white-and-blue, pre-revolutionary Russian flag.

“We are not afraid. We are sure that democracy will win in our country,” he said.

President Bush, who cut short a Maine vacation to return to Washington, put aid to the Soviet Union on hold and urged Western allies to do likewise. He was highly critical of the overthrow of Gorbachev “by a very hard-line group,” saying it violated the Soviet Constitution.

“Coups can fail,” Bush said. “What hasn’t been heard from yet is the people of the Soviet Union.”
Western leaders said they expected Moscow to honor international commitments in arms control and other matters. Bush and Gorbachev signed a historic Strategic Arms Control Treaty on the reduction of nuclear weapons only weeks ago.

Reports said some internal airports around the country were being closed, although airlines said operations were apparently normal at Moscow’s international airport.

Military action was reported in other Soviet republics. The Soviet military commander of the Baltics informed the governments of the three republics he was assuming control and they faced arrest if they resisted, Latvian officials said.

Soviet warships reportedly blocked the main harbor in Estonia and troops silenced Lithuanian television and radio.

“If needed, I will put my head on the block because we can’t retreat,” said Estonian President Arnold Ruutel.

Former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, a key architect of Gorbachev’s reform-minded international policies, said the West should move to back reformers in the Soviet Union.

“The West should show its solidarity with reform movements in the country. What is happening now is a tragedy for the West, for the Soviet Union and for the East as well,” he told The Associated Press.

Some independent Soviet media were silenced, and word of the takeover came from official outlets, such as the Tass news agency.

The new ruling committee announced it assumed emergency powers at 6 a.m. today (11 p.m. EDT Sunday). Yanayev, who took over as acting president, said the changes were temporary and did not mean a renunciation of reforms or affect the Soviet Union’s international commitments.

Even so, the takeover threw into question Gorbachev’s policies of creating a free-market economy, granting autonomy to the nation’s republics and carrying out arms control agreements with the United States.

It was unclear if Yanayev, 53, a little-known provincial official when Gorbachev chose him as his deputy in December, held the main power or if he was merely a figurehead.

The decree banned disruptive demonstrations and strikes and said disobedient elected officials and political parties would be suspended. It said a committee would be created to establish control over the media and that a curfew may be necessary.

The new Union Treaty that Gorbachev was to have signed Tuesday was opposed by hard-liners, who said it would effectively hobble the central government’s power and transfer authority to the republics. The hard-liners said that the 15 republics would be subject to national laws.
Sources said the overthrow had been in the works since Friday. That day, a former Gorbachev aide and reformer, Alexander Yakovlev, had said publicly that Stalinist hard-liners were plotting a coup. He also resigned from the party.

The hard-liners also moved against reformists outside Moscow. Announcers on Leningrad television read the Tass announcement and said Leningrad’s reformist mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, had been removed from office.

 

[Plain Jane]

Remembering the 1991 coup against Gorbachev – DW – 08/19/2021

On August 19,1991, the world held its breath. A coup in Moscow sent ripples through Germany, as well. Christian F. Trippe takes a personal look back at those fateful days.

www.dw.com

A DW reporter remembers the 1991 coup against Gorbachev
On August 19,1991, the world held its breath. A coup in Moscow sent ripples through Germany, as well. Christian F. Trippe takes a personal look back at those fateful days.




Gorbachev, it turned out, would survive

I used to work as a reporter for a regional television station in Düsseldorf and had prepared a piece about the imminent withdrawal of British troops from Germany. On August 19, a Monday, her Majesty's Armed Forces were to announce at a press conference what was to become of the more than 60 base locations of the British Army of the Rhine.

The Cold War was over. All of Europe was disarming. Barracks were being closed everywhere. In Germany, everyone was looking forward to enjoying the upcoming "peace dividend." That was the mood at the time, just following the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Soviet Union was no longer the enemy, and, under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, things could only get better — we in Western Europe were quite sure of that. "Gorbi" would finally put an end to the East-West standoff.

British troops had been stationed in West Germany since World War II. They were stationed at bases in Rheindahlen, Herford, Bielefeld, Dortmund and elsewhere. They arrived as occupation troops and stayed as NATO allies. At the height of the Cold War, there were up to 100,000 soldiers from the United Kingdom stationed in Germany. Many of them brought their families along.


Watch video02:09
Steinmeier marks 80 years since Nazi invasion of Soviet Union
Their imminent departure was another step toward a world free of East-West rivalries. But then the phone rang. It was August 19. On the other end of the line was the military's press officer, who said: "Stop Everything. Our withdrawal plans from Germany are suspended. A coup is underway in Moscow. We are even hearing that Gorbachev may be dead." He went on to say that Britain's Cabinet was holding crisis talks at the very moment.
Shortly thereafter, the news agencies were reporting that German Chancellor Helmut Kohl would be cutting short his traditional summer vacation at Lake Wolfgang to return to Bonn immediately.

Soviet Union's 'disintegration'
Years later, Kohl said the coup in Moscow had "not surprised him very much." What was surprising, though, was the timing of it. That evening, the Tagesschau, Germany's premier news broadcast, reported that the chancellor had met with party and parliamentary group leaders to discuss the situation in Moscow. Whenever a crisis cabinet convenes, it is commonplace that the chancellor not only invite government representatives but also the leaders of Germany's opposition parties to the talks.

East Germans foundd a new hero in Gorbachev

At the time, no one was aware just how serious the situation was. But I still remember that many people were worried about Gorbachev's personal well-being — and how great the relief was when the Soviet head of state reappeared in Moscow three days later.

The coup attempt shifted the balance of power within Moscow's political establishment and set a political chain reaction in motion. A few days later, the foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia met in Bonn, the then German capital, with Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. Their common goal: to resume diplomatic relations.

The people of the Soviet Union, Kohl wrote in his memoirs, "won a great victory for democracy, freedom and justice." But it was also clear to the German government that the coup had accelerated the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which many saw as irreversible, leaving in its wake a long trail of political uncertainties. Genscher spoke in retrospect about his and the chancellor's "concerns about what political, military and economic consequences a disintegration of the Soviet Union might entail." That is why he and Kohl approved Gorbachev's plans to remake the Soviet Union from the ground up, with a renewed treaty.

Boris Yeltsin became the first president of Russia in 1991 and served until 1999

Gorbachev, then Yeltsin
The referendum calling for a continuation of the Soviet Union failed, and people across Russia got an opportunity to get to know another politician: Boris Yeltsin. They saw him perched on the tank in front of the Russian White House. They saw him standing up to the people behind the coup. What was clear to everyone was that a new political wind was blowing in Moscow.

The coup attempt put Moscow under the political magnifying glass and showed everyone how fragile the country's future was. Old-style Soviet elites clung to the status quo. But, in doing so, they only accelerated what they were hoping to prevent: the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Incidentally, the plans for the withdrawal of British NATO troops from West Germany were then presented to the public a few weeks later.

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[Nowski]

I remember this day very vividly. I remember discussing this
with some coworkers, and I said at the time,
that the communists left Russia, and came to the ZUSA.

Not doubt now in my mind, that is exactly what occurred.

My how so much has changed since that day.

The new Russia today, is more like the old ZUSA was then,
and the new ZUSA today, is more like the old Soviet Russia was then.

Today I get most of my news, from RT and Sputnik News,
and Russia Beyond. I trust them more than even Fox News.

Please be safe everyone. Realize and know, that the end is now here.

Regards to all.

Nowski

 

[dstraito]

One thing I have learned from history.....

is that people do not learn from history!

 

[Wiley]

And this is how the people celebrated the end of communist Russia...
6:10 RT

View: https://youtu.be/_W7wqQwa-TU


And now, young dumbasses across America are begging for communism. Damn idiots are signing their own death warrants.

 

[Tex88]

History may not repeat but it does rhyme. One superpower bit the dust when kicked out of Afghanistan and thirty years later it’s our turn.

You know what else the US has in common with the SU back in the day? A caste of confused octogenarians in charge.

'Member when Reagan became president and there was howling and whining how ooooooold he was? Damn, would be nice to have a fresh-faced youth of a mere 69 right about now. Teddy Roosevelt was just shy of 43 when he took office.