“Chtche ne vmerla Ukraine”, Ukraine is not dead yet. The national anthem accompanies the slow hoisting of the national flag with the signatures of hundreds of fighters. A symbol of Ukrainian freedom is celebrated. A statue represents him. Baptized “Motherland” by Kiev. In fact, it is an old giant statue erected by the Soviets and restored from Zelensky who inaugurated it on the eve of Independence Day, wearing a historic green jacket: 24 August 1991 is the fateful date of the declaration which sanctioned the separation from theSoviet Union (the video has been online since yesterday).
The Ukrainians are expecting a targeted Russian raid to bring it down. For Kiev, it’s a challenge. For Moscow, a punishment. There is no escaping history, certain events you can not deny them. Not surprisingly, the Soviets had replicated the rhetorical stereotype present in the great centers of the USSR, namely that of the female fighter (a sort of communist Athena) who held in her right hand a sword pointed at the sky and in the other a shield on which carved hammer and sickle, with a proud gaze directed to the east, focused on the Russian horizon and on Moscaheart of Soviet power. Now the shield bears the trident, which is the coat of arms of Ukrainian resilience. An easy target overlooking the Ukrainian capital. Too greedy for Putinwhich also has another reason to loathe the August 24, 1991 date.
On that same day, as Ukraine gained its autonomy from Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of the CPSU, the most powerful office in the USSR, after dramatic days in which the plot to overthrow him had almost succeeded, and a coup d’état had been thwarted only in extremis. The two facts were closely connected, indeed, one was the cause of the second. For the record, Volodymir Ivasko replaced Gorbachev, but his was only an interregnum. On August 29 he resigned: it was the beginning of a great cleanup. Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Soviet republic of Russia who had managed to cancel the coup led by the KGB, by a multitude of generals and by almost all the members of the government, issued decree number 83 which ordered the transfer of the PCUS archives to the authorities of the state archive. An act fundamentalto raise – if not all – many of the mysteries and crimes in the name and on behalf of the communist regime.
But it is necessary to briefly reconnect the threads of the history of those years, to understand the August putsch and the political end of Gorbachev, dominated by the geopolitical dynamics that he himself had triggered, underestimating their explosiveness: he didn’t want the dissolution of the Soviet Unionbut its modernization and greater democracy, as well as a liberalization of society.
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Let’s go step by step. Gorbachev ascended to the post of secretary general of the CPSU in 1985, when the USSR was in the midst of an economic crisis. He and his staff have a solution in store: the perestroika and the volume, that is, the restructuring of the elephantine and obsolete apparatus of Soviet industry and the transparency of state interventions. A revolution that alarms the right wing of the CPSU, the state apparatuses and the nomenklatura. They know they are being targeted by Gorbachev who wants to fight the corruption endemic and inefficiency. The fears of the Soviet caciques are not without reasons: the liberalization imposed by Gorbachev is received in the most remote republics, such as the Baltic and Caucasian ones, as an invitation to emancipate themselves.
The nationalist resurgences anticipate their demands for separation. As early as 1989, Gorbachev’s liberalization and the release of political prisoners imprisoned in the gulag pushed the Ukrainians to organize themselves to demand and defend their rights to sovereignty. Then the Ukrainian nationalist movement was born Rukh. In the March 1990 elections, the democratic bloc came close to 25 percent of the seats in the National Duma. But this minority is able to influence the parliament which adopts the July 16, 1990 Statement on Political Sovereignty of the Republic of Ukraine. It is the first concrete step towards complete independence. And it is in this turbulent context that the Kgb: the secret services begin to plot against Gorbachev and the young technocrats and ideologues of perestroijka who support him.
The pretext for aggregating politicians, ministers and even the prime minister, as well as alerting generals and officers of the Armed Forces, special forces (Omon, Odon) and the police, are the rebellions of Baltic republics who in 1990 declare theirs split from the USSR. The example is followed by Russia on June 12, which limits the application of Soviet laws, especially those concerning the economy and finance. Gorbachev is cornered: in January 1991 he authorizes the use of the Red Army to regain control of the Lithuania, with fierce fighting. A week later, it’s the turn of the Latvia, where local authorities are dismissed. The crisis, however, is pressing. In Russia there is a shortage of everything: medicines, food, even petrol. Gorbachev’s popularity is on its last legs. Opponents exploit people’s anger and in the March 17, 1991 referendum on the preservation of the USSR (boycotted by the Balts, Georgians, Armenians and Moldovans), 77.85 percent voted for a renewed federation of equal and sovereign republics .
After close and stormy negotiations, eight republics approve the new Treaty of the USSR as a union of sovereign states with a common president, foreign and military policy. The signing is scheduled for August 20, in Moscow. In the meantime, negotiations continue and the eight republics are joined by four others, including Ukraine, ready to sign the agreement (not the three Baltic republics). But other clouds gather on the horizon. On 28 June, the Mutual Economic Assistance Council was dissolved. July 1st is the turn of the Warsaw Pact. Gorbachev blames stress. He needs to recharge. He thinks of doing it in Crimea, in the presidential dacha of Cape Foros. He knows that the sword of Damocles of a potential coup hangs over his head. Aleksansdr Jakovlev had already warned him in July 1990 that it could happen after the XXVIII Congress of the CPSU.
There had been other ominous signs. On 11 December 1990 Vladimir Kryuchkov, president of the KGB, had made an “appeal to order” from a TV channel of the Central Soviet Television. On the same day (it would be known years later) he had commissioned two officers of the services of prepare a plan of measures to be adopted in the event that a state of emergency was declared in the Soviet Union. They are the pieces of a complicated puzzle: little by little, Kryuchkov involves Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Defense Minister Dmitry Jazov, Interior Minister (Boris Pugo), Vice President Gennadij Janaev, Deputy Head of the Defense Council Oleg Baklanov in the conspiracy , the head of the Gorbachev secretariat and the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Oleg Senin. Gorbachev cannot but have sensed this. But he holds on. The others don’t give up. A State Emergency Committee is created, the purpose of which is to restore (Soviet) order. Gorby doesn’t give in to requests to declare a state of emergency. On June 17, 1991 Pavlov requests extraordinary powers to Soviet Supremobut Gorbachev opposes it.
Moscow is seething with intrigue. And desperate moves. Like that of mayor Gavril Popov who meets the US ambassador in Moscow (Jack F. Matlock jr.) and informs him of what is happening. The US Secretary of State, James Baker, in turn warned his Russian counterpart Aleksandr Bessmertnych. What then he told Gorbachev is not yet very clear, there are conflicting versions. The fact is that on July 23, 1991, in the newspaper Sovestskaya Rossiya an article appears entitled “the word to the people”, signed by some officials of the CPSU and some intellectuals close to the party which ask for decisive action to prevent catastrophes. It is now war without quarter. On July 29, Elstin e Nursultan Nazarbaev, Kazakh president, hypothesize to disintegrate the government, ousting Pavlov, Jazov, Pugo, as well as to dismiss Kryuchkov, replacing the premier with the same Kazakh president. But for months the KGB has planted bugs everywhere. Worse, to do it is a bodyguard of Gorbachev, a certain Vladimir Medvedev.
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Gorby leaves for Crimea on August 4, plans to return to Moscow on the 19th. On the 17th the members of the State Committee for the State of Emergency, i.e. the conspirators, decide to act and isolate Gorbachev, blocking all communication to and from the dacha. In the meantime, the coup military forces are being organised, which are stationed in Moscow and in the major cities. A delegation meets Gorbachev, but ends up with insults. Committee members order 250,000 pairs of handcuffs from a Pskov company, as well as 300,000 forms for arrests. The KGB issues a list of wanted people, among which Boris Yeltsin stands out. The wages of Kgb agents are doubled. Kryuchkov issues a statement sanctioning the end of perestroijka. In the night between 18 and 19 August, Tass sends a dispatch in which it affirms itself Gorbachev’s inability to governfor health reasons. A little later, again the Tass warns that the state of emergency is in place and that it will last six months. Message repeated by radio and TV, then followed for three days by the music of Swan Lakeaccording to Soviet tradition when the country is in mourning or under attack.
There are tons of essays and hundreds of web pages on the hectic hours that followed these announcements and how Yeltsin managed to avoid arrest. The result is that in the end the popular mobilization and the hesitation of many officers they avoided the worst. Operation Grom to conquer the White House fails, the members of the conspiracy are arrested and imprisoned. Gorbachev returns, but Yeltsin dictates the conditions. He has to leave office. It does so at the same time as the signing of Ukrainian independence on August 24th 32 years ago. Subsequently confirmed by the referendum of 1 December 1991: the consensus is 92 percent.
In those days, Vladimir Putin works under the direct authority of Anatoly Sobtchak, a law professor, the first non-Soviet mayor of Leningrad, which had taken back its original name of St. ‘abroad. A mission in which Putin throws himself without reservations but in which he also operates in the shadows. While Ukraine abandons Russia and Putin curses the dissolution of the USSR, promising himself that one day everything would go back to the way it used to be, there are those who investigate his alleged reckless activities and brokerages. Officially, minerals, oil and timber are sold in exchange for foodstuffs to supply starving St. Petersburg. Except that the former leave, the latter arrive with difficulty.
Of course, there is no documentary evidence. A local deputy, Marina Salié, had tried to shed light on these trafficking, publishing a document that questioned Putin. The file was covered up by the mayor: a choice dictated by political realism. He wanted to avoid a crisis in a very delicate and dangerous moment of transition. Putin, meanwhile, had enrolled several former KGB agents in the ranks of the town hall, linked to the gangs that controlled the port. Devoted Chekists who will follow him to Moscow.