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The Soviet coup and collapse caught watchful America by surprise
By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press, 8/17/2001 13:51
WASHINGTON (AP) There were rumblings in the summer of 1991 that Soviet hard-liners were up to something.
Still, George Bush was caught off guard by a midnight phone call at his home in Maine telling him Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned for health reasons.
By dawn, the vacationing president knew this story was a ruse. In truth, eight of Gorbachev's political enemies had detained the Soviet president at his home on the Black Sea and were leading a coup to oust him. ''We were surprised like everybody else,'' Bush scribbled in his diary on Aug. 19, 1991.
Although ever watchful of its rival of half a century. America was unprepared when the Soviet Union started to spin apart. Bush did not know the attempted overthrow of Gorbachev 10 years ago Sunday was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. The sheets were being turned down on the deathbed of a superpower. Within 14 weeks, America's great Cold War adversary would be gone.
The Bush home on the rocky shores of the Atlantic turned chaotic. Hurricane Bob was roaring up the coast.
Boston Red Sox players, who had planned to golf with Bush that morning, arrived at the house bearing souvenirs for youngsters in the Bush clan. But golf would have to wait.
While workers boarded up the home, Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, sipped coffee and hit the phones. Almost all top administration officials were on vacation. Secretary of State James Baker III was at his ranch in Wyoming and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was fishing in Canada. ''Tanks on the street in Moscow put the whole world on edge,'' Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., said then.
Earlier in the year, the world had watched the reunification of Germany, where the Cold War had begun. Only three weeks before the attempted Soviet coup, Bush and Gorbachev had signed a treaty to cut long-range nuclear weapons by about one-third. Bush had called Gorbachev the West's ''best hope'' for reform.
Now, the president was figuring out how to deal with the mix of military, KGB and political conservatives behind the coup.
Should the United States recognize the coup plotters? Was Gorbachev safe? If Bush flew back to Washington, would it appear the United States was in a crisis? What was to become of Soviet nuclear weapons? ''We didn't know the current status of the coup,'' Scowcroft recalled. ''The president's inclination was to condemn it outright, but if it turned out to be successful, we would be forced to live with the new leaders.''
At 7:30 a.m., journalists crowded into a small Secret Service building in Maine to hear Bush's first statement.
Bush was cautious. He didn't want to burn bridges. He spoke of a ''disturbing development.'' To avoid saying the coup was illegal, the president labeled it ''extraconstitutional.'' He put Soviet aid on hold.
Bush said the United States would work with whoever was in power to encourage democratic reforms. He also noted coups can fail. ''They succeed at first and then run against the will of the people,'' he said. Back in Washington that night, Bush got tougher. He called the coup a ''misguided and illegitimate'' effort that ''bypasses both Soviet law and the will of the Soviet peoples.''
The president believed the overthrow attempt was precipitated by Gorbachev's scheduled signing the following day of a treaty that would have given the Soviet republics more independence from Moscow. Condoleezza Rice, now national security adviser to Bush's son in the White House, was on the National Security Council at the time and monitored developments.
Rice said Gorbachev started to show the strains of his country's turmoil in November 1990, a time she marks as the beginning of the end both for him and the Soviet Union. ''After a career of always choosing to do the more liberal thing whenever challenged, Gorbachev suddenly tried to bring around him people who wanted to turn the clock back people who ultimately betrayed him,'' she said later.
Had the coup been instigated in January or February of 1991, it might have succeeded, she said. But by August, both the KGB and military were weakened by reformers in their ranks. ''The coup was really just the last death throes of the Soviet Union the old trying one last time to fight back.''
The day the coup began, Western leaders watched on television as Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation, stood on a tank to rally hundreds of thousands of citizens demonstrating in support of Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union. ''Yeltsin is out there on top of a tank saying this coup must be reversed,'' Bush wrote in his diary. ''You have to give him credit for enormous guts.''
Bush had kept Yeltsin at arm's length earlier. In 1989, Bush refused to meet him in the Oval Office, preferring instead to stop by during Yeltsin's meeting with the national security staff. Yeltsin, a burly man with a flair for the dramatic, had criticized Gorbachev for slow-moving reforms.
At the time, Bush didn't want to snub Gorbachev, who had become a friend. Yeltsin's name now was a rallying cry of reformers.
The day after the coup began, Bush called Yeltsin and told him America was behind both him and Gorbachev.
Bush said he was prepared to call Soviet Vice President Gennady Yanayev, a man to whom he once sent fishing lures, now a coup conspirator. Yeltsin protested, saying the call would legitimize the coup.
Bush refrained.
He flew back to Maine. The hurricane, slapping the Atlantic coast, had spared the 26-room home of stone and shingle built by his grandfather. But the tempest in Moscow continued to envelop him.
The next day, he talked again to Yeltsin, who was holed up in the Parliament building. Yeltsin seemed optimistic about Gorbachev's chances of returning to power.
Some of the conspirators were showing signs of weakness, he said. A few had suddenly become ill with what became known as ''coup flu.''
Bush took a break. He went out on his speedboat Fidelity and was plying the choppy waters when Gorbachev called unexpectedly. A translator made small talk with him until Bush could get ashore to take the call in his bedroom.
The coup had failed. Gorbachev was safe. He was headed back to Moscow. But he would not be in power much longer.
Gorbachev resigned on Christmas Day, the Soviet Union
disbanded and, after 74 years, the hammer and sickle
flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time.
''We have no historical experience with a great power
dying in its bed,'' Rice said. ''He let the Soviet
Union go quietly into the night.''
By Associated Press, 8/17/2001 13:51
Some American perspectives on the failed 1991 Soviet coup and the death of the Soviet Union:
''Did the intelligence community get it 100 percent right on the rapidity of the decline, the rapidity of the implosion of the Soviet Union? I would have to say no, nor did anybody else.'' former President Bush.
''I ... remembered seeing the five woebegone leaders of the conspiracy on television and they looked to me like a variation on Jimmy Breslin's book: This was 'The Gang That Couldn't Plot Straight.' I doubted if these bunglers could overthrow the dog catcher and take over the pound.'' Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now secretary of state.
''One of the things that's fascinating about the coup is that it was run by all of the people whom we in the West had feared the people who were running the Soviet juggernaut. And it was botched in almost every conceivable way.'' Brent Scowcroft, Bush's national security adviser.
''It was rather sad actually to see Gorbachev come back, almost seemingly unaware of what had happened. By the time of the end of the coup, Boris Yeltsin was the political authority in Russia and it was only a matter of time until Gorbachev had to step aside.''
Condoleezza Rice, then on Bush's national security staff, now White House national security adviser. ''Gorbachev is a historical figure of enormous importance. When the time came in December of 1991, (he) sat on television, on Christmas night, and said: 'Seventy years never mind. Let the hammer and sickle come down from above the Kremlin for the last time, and the tricolor go up,' and it happened peacefully.'' Rice.
''Did the intelligence community get it 100 percent right on the rapidity of the decline, the rapidity of the implosion of the Soviet Union? I would have to say no, nor did anybody else.'' former President Bush.
Reagan probably came the closest. At it's heart, his entire foreign policy towards the USSR was based on his assessment that the Soviet system was much weaker than it looked and that it could be undermined peacefully through strength in the West. But I think even he was caught by surprise how quickly the efforts of the 80's succeeded in bringing down the house of cards.
Reagan probably came the closest. At it's heart, his entire foreign policy towards the USSR was based on his assessment that the Soviet system was much weaker than it looked and that it could be undermined peacefully through strength in the West. But I think even he was caught by surprise how quickly the efforts of the 80's succeeded in bringing down the house of cards.
Unfortunately, Reagans military efforts helped USSR to stay strong, solid and consolidated. Quite opposite to the conservative media claim [liborats keep their mouth shot on this to cerdit Reagan not]. All this had [and could] happen before 1985, but any nation consolidates against the external threat - no matter how good or bad the government is.
"The house of cards" fall once Reagan offered a peace deal - and terms matched desires of the people. In this situation, even the people who were running the Soviet juggernaut [and keeped the West in fear] could not turn the clock back.
Note that the coup in 1991 dissappeared without a trace in few days - without single bomb, shot ot threat from the West! The West was IN FEAR [Brent Scowcroft], Russians [and other ex-USSRs] were at the streets.
Unfortunately, Reagans military efforts helped USSR to stay strong, solid and consolidated
Sorry, but leaders in the USSR say that we basically spent them to death on the military front.
Had the coup been instigated in January or February of 1991, it might have succeeded, she said. But by August, both the KGB and military were weakened by reformers in their ranks. ''The coup was really just the last death throes of the Soviet Union the old trying one last time to fight back.''
A January or February coup would have ocurred during Desert Storm. It would have been a much more serious crisis.
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