30yrs on from coup that set stage for Soviet collapse

When a group of top Communist officials ousted Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev 30 years ago and flooded Moscow with tanks, the world held its breath, fearing a rollback on liberal reforms and a return to the Cold War confrontation.

But the August 1991 coup collapsed in just three days, precipitating the break up of the Soviet Union that plotters said they were trying to prevent.

The putsch began when several Gorbachev's top lieutenants arrived at his Black Sea vacation home on Aug. 18 to urge him to impose a nationwide state of emergency.

They were trying to prevent the signing of a union treaty between Soviet republics set for two days later - a document Gorbachev saw as a way to shore up the crumbling Soviet Union and the coup plotters perceived as its effective demise.

After Gorbachev refused to endorse the state of emergency, the coup plotters cut off his communications and left him isolated at his residence.

On Aug. 19, 1991, the Soviet Union woke up to the televised broadcast of the Bolshoi' Theatre's Swan Lake ballet that set a solemn background for state TV anchors to read a terse statement declaring that Gorbachev was unfit to govern for health reasons and the State Committee on the State of Emergency was created to save the country from sliding into "chaos and anarchy."

Just as the statement came, hundreds of tanks and other armoured vehicles rolled into Moscow in a massive show of force.

Quickly after, thousands of people opposed to the coup began gathering around the building of the government of the Russian Federation, one of 15 Soviet republics led by Boris Yeltsin, who enjoyed broad popularity as the leader of pro-democracy forces.

As crowds of demonstrators around Yeltsin's headquarters swelled, coup plotters were hesitant.

Vladimir Kryuchkov, the KGB chief who was the top mastermind behind the coup, had the KGB's Alpha commando unit surround Yeltsin's residence near Moscow but never issued an order to detain him, allowing Yeltsin to drive to his headquarters unimpeded.

"We decided to try to get to the office despite the risks," said Yeltsin's top associate, Gennady Burbulis.

Some of the troops who encircled the Russian government building declared they were joining protesters after they were surrounded by crowds.

After arriving at his office, Yeltsin climbed atop a tank deployed to block the building and urged people to stand up to the coup in a passionate speech.

Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press, Burbulis recalled that he was trying to discourage Yeltsin from mounting the tank because of high risks, but the president dismissed the warnings.

"It was in Yeltsin's character to resolutely and unabashedly defend what he considered right," Burbulis said.

Within hours, it became clear that the coup was crumbling.

When members of the State Emergency Committee showed up at a press conference, they were sweating, stuttering and some couldn't prevent their hands from trembling as they went on the defensive, struggling to fend off sharp questions from the media.

Later that evening, the main prime time news programme on state TV showed the nervous and indecisive coup plotters along with a defiant Yeltsin defying the coup from atop a tank - the contrasting images that signalled that the putsch was heading to its demise.

"The problem was they lacked political will and the willingness to take responsibility for the country," Viktor Alksnis, a hardline member of the Soviet parliament who was a strong proponent of a state of emergency, said of the coup plotters.

The following day, up to 200,000 rallied near the Russian government headquarters to defy the coup, and the putsch organizers never dared to use force to try to disperse the huge crowds of protesters who built barricades and roamed the streets, ignoring a curfew imposed by the coup plotters.

"There was a lot of excitement, enthusiasm, resolve and a strong belief in our consolidation and eventual victory," Burbulis said.

Another Yeltsin's ally, Andrei Dunayev, who served as a deputy interior minister, quickly ordered about 1,000 cadets of police academies to come to Moscow to protect Yeltsin's headquarters with weapons.

Their deployment helped discourage the coup plotters from using force, Dunayev charged. "Imagine what a bloodbath it could have been," he said.

Amid the tensions, a violent clash between troops and protesters in a tunnel less than one kilometre (half-a-mile) from the Russian government left three protesters killed and several others wounded.

Protesters, who feared that the convoy of armoured vehicles was heading to storm the Russian government building, blocked the street with electric buses and moved to stop the vehicles when they tried to ram through the barricade.

Speaking to the AP in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, Gennady Veretilny recalled how he was wounded as he was trying to save Dmitry Komar, a protester who got stuck in one of the vehicles and was killed.

"The armoured vehicles were ramming electric buses trying to shove them away," Veretilny said.

"I saw the rear hatch was open and a guy hanging from there. Any normal person's first action would be to help and try to pull the guy out, I ran up to him, reached my hands, and then a gunshot rang from over there and I felt burning and pain."

Hours after the clash, Soviet Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov ordered troops to pull back from Moscow. Later on Aug. 21, some of the plotters flew to Gorbachev's Black Sea residence to try to negotiate with Gorbachev but he refused to meet with them.

The coup plotters were arrested and Gorbachev flew back to Moscow on Aug. 22 only to see his power dwindle and Yeltsin calling the shots.

"He was kept prisoner for three days by the organizers of the coup, but when he was freed and had the possibility to return to Moscow, he was already the hostage of Yeltsin because he owed to him his liberation," said Andrei Grachev, who served as Gorbachev's spokesman in 1991.

Less than four months later, Yeltsin and leaders of other Soviet republics declared the Soviet Union defunct and Gorbachev stepped down on Dec. 25, 1991.

The arrested coup plotters faced trial but were amnestied in 1994.

Grachev argued that Gorbachev made a mistake underestimating the danger that his hardline lieutenants posed to his rule.

"He was considering them to be too mediocre, incapable of organizing anything serious or challenging him or presenting a real danger," Grachev said.

Gorbachev, 90, has spoken about the coup with bitterness, describing as the fatal blow to the Soviet Union.

"Those three days of imprisonment were the harshest test in my life," he wrote in his memoirs. "The organizers of the August coup thwarted an opportunity to preserve the union state."

Burbulis, meanwhile, lamented what he described as the country's failure to get rid of the vestiges of its authoritarian past and falling back into Soviet-style repressive patterns.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has famously described the Soviet collapse as the "greatest political catastrophe of the 20th century," has been accused by critics of a steady rollback on post-Soviet freedoms during his two decades in power.

Authorities have intensified a crackdown on opposition activists and independent media ahead of September's parliamentary elections, widely seen as a key part of Putin's efforts to cement his rule.

"Thirty years later, we are still stuck in the post-imperial mindset," Burbulis said.

"The power has become the ultimate value for some, along with restrictions of freedoms and controls over civil society, not to mention direct restrictions of freedom of election."