Collapse of USSR - Three days that shook the world in August 1991.

central Moscow Moscow's regional KGB headquarters early morning of August the 19th 1991 this is the officer and Duty oil the events of the day could have reversed the country's history it was an attempt to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev and put his reforms on hold tanks and other hardware have been moved into Moscow the city's key points have been taken over August the 19th 1991 Monday early in the morning teacher Tatiana yakovleva switched her TV on and saw the following picture instead of the usual programming every channel was broadcasting Tchaikovsky's famous ballet I turned the TV on to check the latest news and I was so surprised to see Swan Lake everywhere I was switching the TV channels for a long time thinking maybe there was something wrong with my TV set at the same time as the ballet broadcast more than 700 tanks and armored personnel carriers were being stationed in the streets the plotters were in the Kremlin meanwhile Moscow's so-called White House was at the center of civil resistance at the time it housed the Russian parliament where the people's deputies met in session I know don't get repetitive it was past 7:00 in the morning when the security chief came to my place when I opened the door he told me I had better go to the White House right away as far as I could tell there was a coup going on in the country that's how I learned about it we decided to take a roundabout route instead of going straight to this building the COO was led by top brass and high-ranking communist officials they had expected to get support from the population who were dissatisfied with the long-drawn process of perestroika they decided to make short work of Gorbachev's reforms the situation was quite odd the country was in turmoil there was a revolt of the hungry people standing in line for sausages stooped to fistfights but and there were pervasive shortages on the consumer market but the country's president waved goodbye to everybody and headed down south to the Crimea to relax the Crimean Peninsula southern shore Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's private residence near the village of forus both it and scores of surrounding hectares became a prison for the head of state here he spent several days in what amounted to confinement better blow up the sight can be seen from all sides you get an almost bird's-eye view of it from that mountain the road leading to the residence can easily be blocked with stones after those events the joke here was that Gorbachev's residents must have been deliberately built in this place so that he could be easily cut out from the outside world yes got about your waste away KGB colonel Lev Tolstoy was directly involved in the events of those days he is a direct descendant and namesake of the celebrated Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy before he rose to the rank of colonel he served as a bodyguard on August the 18th 1991 top KGB officials ordered him to block all exits from the Gorbachev residence I have no idea what would have happened if Gorbachev and others had tried to escape from the residence but I do think he would have faced very unpleasant consequences this is exclusive footage of the residence of the first Soviet president the splendid park was laid out almost on bare rocks this had special significance because Gorbachev was known to be very fond of strolling by the seaside these are rizona Cedars these pines and these shrubs were all planted just before the territory was to be commissioned in 1988 well starting away that was a short while before Mikhail Gorbachev's first visit here the Crimean residence was codenamed territories area in KGB documentation the interior design of the main building reflected the wishes of Racer Gorbachov a-- the president's wife she was with Mikhail Gorbachev throughout the forest ordeal we built what I would describe as internal defenses their men carrying guns with live ammunition were posted all over the place they were under strict orders not to allow provocations the Soviet president study was on the second floor close to the hall it was here that Mikhail Gorbachev learned about his complete isolation from the outside world that I'm what your convenient me how Gorbachev study looks just like it was back then this is his desk and that telephone was meant for communicating with government officials the line was shut down at 4:00 p.m. on August 18th at Cucina Gorbachev remained in his residence moreover measures to isolate him were reinforced still further Valeri shock was the one who guarded the gate to the residence during the coup KGB officers from Moscow kept a close eye on him along with other local agents will you bring at the special measures were taken the truck was stationed on the helipad we were preventing allocable on touching down the wing walking a tractor with the trailer outside the gates was meant to prevent water vehicles breaking through into the compound maja reinforced security from the motions were introduced throughout to be yes army general Valentin Verena cough was one of the key figures in the coup attempt on August the 18th 1991 he visited Gorbachev at his residence in the Crimea which marina cough asked the Soviet President to recognize the legality of the coup we knew what we were going to do I told him all that could somehow be fitted into a state of emergency Gorbachev retorted by exclaiming that a state of emergency was bound to bring machineguns and blood in its wake at the core or you can I rely 'zed that other people as well as my family would suffer no doubt blood would be spilled certainly in such a vast country as ours this country takes time to get worked up or when it does you can hardly stop it my belief is the country's modernization without blood August 19 1991 Moscow 11 a.m. a crowd halts armored personnel carriers heading for the city centre demonstrators climb one of them chanting no to fascism hundreds of people gather on Manesh square in central Moscow they are ready to oppose the so-called State Committee on the state of emergency people who met each other back then during the - still keep in touch and remember those events hello hello hello brothers haven't seen in a hundred years but my parents woke me up in the morning they told me that a coup was under way I was actively involved in a youth democratic movement so I said if no one I know was arrested right away this is no coup at all yes there were tanks but people were blocking them off what kind of coup is it if tanks can be stopped short on their tracks a small radio set is one of the most treasured mementos from those days people used it to listen to the few independent stations that were still on air one report said the Air Force refused to side with the coup according to another and military garrison in st. Petersburg also refused to back it it was great to hear the people in many towns were supporting us a minor radio station called echo of Moscow was the main source of news in those days the KGB shut it down in the first few hours of the coup but whether by fair means or foul its staff managed to regain access to the airwaves at one point we even used telephone lines to reach out to our audience there was no link between the studio and the transmitter so our engineers used an analog telephone line by all accounts those were turbulent times Christians Gosei users meanwhile the coup organizers called a press conference in Moscow many took note of Gennady and iove's trembling hands he named himself the country's head of state claiming that Gorbachev had fallen ill the press conference reached a turning point after a question from Tatyana Malkina the then 24 year old journalist do you realize that what you have done today is a coup do we see parallels with your actions in Soviet history 1917 or 1964 for your claim that a coup took place during the night Yap was ruled where yes I would disagree with you was because all legal and constitutional norms were complied with sub routinely just say that they looked hesitant would be an understatement on you agree they looked as if life was dying out of them and there was no vitality left in there as she faces and shifty eyes they look like people who had lost a battle before they had a chance to start it August 19th 1991 1208 a spontaneous rally began in Moscow's Manezhnaya square the crowd swelled as more and more people arrived the event in Moscow are described as anti-constitutional coop there are calls for an open-ended general strike from this day on we are protesting until our demands are met no to fascism no to fascism on August the 19th 1991 top KGB officials in Moscow ordered reinforced security precautions at Gorbachev's residence in the Crimea on the same day mikhail gorbachev videotaped what has since become a famous address a to has taken place this antique institutional is best initrah non-gaussian but there was little chance of the tape being taken out of the compound on the same day coast guards protecting the residents attempted to establish contact with the president since I was serving in one of the KGB's naval units I was not allowed to communicate with the president therefore I asked my wife to write a note in her own handwriting the note said that the sailors were ready to take the president to a place of his choice one of my subordinates took the note to the security guards asking him to hand it over to Gorbachev when he came back they told him that nobody will be allowed to approach the residence and intruders will be shot Gorbachev's residence was secured from the sea even better than from the land or legally Aachen was one of the security guards there during those days nobody could approach the shore within less than 4 nautical miles without being spotted by the guards if they saw the intruder as a possible threat they were under orders to open fire what's a young lady Azalea regrew some permanent unit scour the woodlands Oh a poorly saw snipers were in position on the mountain well in their corner there was a soldier with the machine gun on top of the cliff near the bay what remains of it can still receive their daughter pay for all celebration a health resort for communist functionaries and their families was near the residence of the Soviet President August is high season there the resort was crammed with holidaymakers to capacity Pavel fear Sauve of the forest resort was in charge of discos and other entertainment program on August 19th I said this to the head physician look the country's President Mikhail Gorbachev is under arrest near here shall we cancel the dances no she said the guests should not suffer let them dance the situation with Gorbachev doesn't concern us Moscow August 19 1991 13 20 water cannons attempt to break through to the downtown area demonstrators damaged some of them and force them to turn back meanwhile the coup organizers ordered the arrest of the President of Russia Boris Yeltsin at the time he was at his residence near Moscow the chief of his security guards Aleksandr kozakov was with him they drove a service car to Moscow and reach the city unhindered Yeltsin was seated between two guards he flatly turned down the idea of wearing a bulletproof vest so we simply put it over him just in case that heavy vest weighing 9 kilos was of the kind worn in the army the driver was told to go as fast as he could without stopping no matter what Yeltsin managed to get to the White House where he reunited with his team later he climbed a tank to read out a message to a large crowd that had gathered outside the White House we proclaim all the decisions and orders by that committee illegal by then White House defenders had set up a makeshift barricade near the building in a bid to block the access of military vehicles everybody was dragging whatever they could lay their hands on a trolley bus stop there the driver got out and lowered the trolleys the trolley boss was left standing across the road the barricade was here that's how we began blocking all approaches to the building the Crimea the city of Sevastopol a Soviet Black Sea Fleet Based 50 kilometers from Gorbachev summer residence throughout the coup first rank captain Simeonov waited for an order to rescue Corbett chav but with the defense ministry part of the coup their rescue plan was ignored yet a way that what they read at first the pockets of resistance were to be suppressed we'll need second the president was to be found and taken under our protection third the remaining pockets of resistance were to be eliminated and we were to help evacuate the president by sea the upshot of it was that naval commanders only sent a telegram to Gorbachev urging him to hold on that telegram was received by Liubov euroval an employee of the forest post office hundreds of telegrams addressed to Gorbachev were arriving from all over the Soviet Union KGB men immediately seized all such mail those three days almost 18 1920 by the most destroyed days in my life boy who had no idea whether we would be allowed to go home and be arrested MiG's were simply left to run the war Moscow was bracing for the worst case scenario people inside the White House expected an assault on the building with that possibility in mind they inspected all of the basements secret passages leading out into nearby courtyards some of the regular reports coming in here claimed that an assault on the building of the Supreme Soviet would begin in an hour's time but why would they need an assault the building is like an aquarium all you need to do is just answer it and that's all there is to it I got this ready Ashley go the assault order was in fact given to the KGB so called alpha unit the men were already on high alert but for the first time in the unit's history they demanded an open debate and a vote on the order before launching operation marthy it's over the commander asked everybody to voice their opinion on the operation and whether an assault was necessary at all yes yes most of the men with a service record of more than 5 years said no to the operation the operation was called off but casualties were still unavoidable in the early hours of August the 21st 1991 the crews of several armored vehicles were ordered to move to another location in the city White House defenders attempted to stop them because they thought the vehicles were heading towards the Parliament building to attack it three young men as a result liubov comer spent the night waiting for her son shortly before the August events he had served as a soldier in Afghanistan he went to the White House after hearing an appeal from vice president Alexander Oates coy who called on people to go and defend democracy when my son had rude skies appeal he went to the barricades because that was a call from someone who served in Afghanistan too but a day before I asked him if he was going to the barricades and he said no that he had his feel of fighting in Afghanistan he had no business monkeying around at barricades but on Tuesday it was a different story absolutely on Wednesday I learned that he was no more after that tragedy it became obvious the coup had failed tanks began leaving Moscow on August the 21st a car carrying Russia's vice president would Scoy overtook one of the convoys he was rushing to the airport to bring Mikhail Gorbachev back to Moscow there was a total mess both on land and in the air none of the ground controllers guided our flight not even during the landing regardless it was a trouble-free flight when we touched down the aerodrome superintendent drove up to the plane I introduced myself and said I needed a car and a bus to take us to Gorbachev no problem comrade rats coy he said go right ahead routes quois plane with Gorbachev on board touched down in Moscow on August the 22nd 1991 the coup had failed but the Soviet President had in effect returned to a different country much had changed during those three days in August you know I defended the Soviet Union to the last bullet that's what I did but I failed the finale of the standoff central Moscow the monument to Felix Rosinski the founder of Soviet secret police standing in front of KGB headquarters in Lubyanka Square is pull down it was a symbol of the beginning of a new epoch the bright future which the Communists had been talking about for seventy years finally became a possibility we could build it with our own hands we were used to the fact that the state was omnipotent that it could break and destroy anyone but this time nothing happened people had risen like a wall we said no enough at approximately the same time the Prosecutor General's Office launches an investigation into the role of the coup organizers the plotters tried to pass the blame onto Crimean frontier guards initially the team of investigators of the Prosecutor General's Office displayed tolerance of that then they began dropping hints regarding us to repent and take the whole blade for Gorbachev's isolation otherwise we would face charges of high treason as military men we became very bitter when we heard the word treason and we're sure boys would be however the frontier guards were later acquitted only those who gave the orders were arrested the driving forces of the coup led by gennady yanayev a year later they were released from prison under an amnesty yan i have died in 2010 this is an excerpt from one of his last interviews many misguided decisions were made during those three days in august 1991 tanks should not have been brought in and demonstrated for she should not have been used a few mumsy where we marked all that could have been done in a different way the war when people today are asked whether they want a revival of the soviet union only nine percent say yes there is no chance of the state being revived in the form of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev has never returned to summer residence since August 1991 now it's the property of the Ukrainian state however top officials rarely vacation there the former KGB Colonel Tolstoy makes no secret of the fact that even now he has no right to talk about some aspects of what happened then Gorbachev's Crimean residents still harbors many secrets relating to those three days in 1991 only when new information has been Declassified will it be able to shed light on them to be frank this place is not considered to be very lucky at all would that's me y-yeah this is the officer on duty August 22nd 1991 5:00 a.m. Boris Yeltsin declares that the reactionary coup has failed and thanks to defenders of the white house 12 p.m. for the first time the three colored flag is raised over the Supreme Council of Russia Yeltsin Yelton only five months are left before the collapse of the Soviet Union

Channel: Balamut

Views: 174,642

Rating: 4.7354259 out of 5

Keywords: Soviet Union (Country), Yeltsin, Country Music (Musical Genre), Three, Three Days, Our, Lives, Become, Rainbow, USSR, Russia, Moscow, Tanks, Collapse, Brink, of, WWIII

Id: VAPk7z5Yzrw

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 15 2012