By Wednesday morning Volodia had become an expert navigator of the White House barricades, which extended for blocks beyond the actual Russian parliament building. After picking up Irina and me, he maneuvered through seemingly impassable routes, depositing us at the Hotel Ukraina across the river from the White House. Ben and some other reporters had managed to grab an hour or two of sleep at the Hotel Ukraina, and Irina and I brought them cookies and soft drinks for breakfast. These were the non-nutritional, high-energy mainstay of my diet during much of my five frantic years covering the Soviet Union.
After yet another cookie breakfast I waded through the crowds to the emergency session of the Russian parliament called by Yeltsin. In the lobby I mingled with parliamentarians and journalists. “We have won,” said a smiling Lev Timofeev, a gentle writer who spent years in prison for the intellectual honesty of his essays on Soviet economics. Others told me essentially the same thing—that, having made it through a crucial night with no attack, it now appeared the military was in rebellion and would not come after Yeltsin.
I remained unconvinced as I went into the parliamentary chamber. Before the session got under way someone had a seizure; the man’s desperate gasps seemed to me a horrible metaphor for Russia’s struggle against the putschists.
Russia’s top leaders took the stage—Yeltsin, Prime Minister Ivan Silaev, vice president Aleksandr Rutskoi, and the parliamentary chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov. These four men presented an incredible profile in courage throughout the coup; it remains incomprehensible to me that their alliance collapsed soon afterward—that Rutskoi and Khasbulatov later became the bitterest of Yeltsin’s enemies.
After the dramatic speeches in parliament I rushed home to file for “Morning Edition.” On the Garden Ring Road I noticed that the tanks parked outside the Foreign Ministry press center had disappeared. What could it mean? The press center was hardly a major strategic target, yet it was one of the few buildings where tanks had been stationed. I needed to find out what was happening at Red Square, but traffic in central Moscow made it impossible to go check and still make my Morning Edition deadline. Volodia dropped me at home, then dashed off with Ben to inspect Red Square.
Unlike most of my colleagues, who lived in foreigners’ compounds, I rented a tiny Soviet apartment. An elderly neighbor got on the elevator with me, sorting through her mail.
“Our newspapers are very sad today,” she told me. “Everything is very sad today.”
“Maybe it will all turn out all right,” I said, not stopping to explain why I felt a sudden burst of optimism.
Half an hour or so later my optimism was confirmed. Ben called to say that he and Volodia arrived in time to witness the parade of tanks leaving Red Square. Soon after that I went on NPR with the first concrete news indicating the coup was ending.
The rest of the day was a wild parade of rumors. Some putschists had committed suicide. No, they all boarded a plane to seek asylum in Central Asia. No, they were drunk in the Kremlin. No, they had been arrested. No, they were headed down to see Gorbachev, to beg his forgiveness….
As the hosts of NPR badgered us for confirmation of each story, I recall finally going on one broadcast, running through every rumor I had heard in the past couple of hours, and ending by advising the host to “take your pick.”
“Who’s in control, who’s running the country?” the hosts persisted, until about 4:00 A.M. on Thursday, when “All Things Considered” was heading into its final hour. Damned if I knew. All I could say with certainty was that the putschists were gone, Muscovites had deliriously celebrated theirdeparture at the White House, and Mikhail Gorbachev was back in Moscow. An NPR host wanted to know what Gorbachev’s return meant for the future of the Union Treaty, a document defining new relationships among Soviet republics. I pointed out that since dawn was just approaching, and democracy seemed out of danger for the moment, most of Moscow was getting some well-deserved sleep; the fate of the Soviet Union could be resolved later, after everyone woke up.
4
The August 19 Press Conference
INTERVIEW WITH TATIANA MALKINA
The mass-circulation magazine Ogonëk (October 5–12, 1991) published this interview with Tatiana Malkina, a twenty-four-year-old journalist for the newspaper Nezavisimaia gazeta. Tatiana Malkina rose to fame at the August 19 press conference of the Emergency Committee when she alone dared to pose the unequivocal question: “Could you please say whether or not you understand that last night you carried out a coup d’état? ” The following account weaves interview material with commentary by the journalist Asya Kolodizhner.
Malkina: The 19th of August is my birthday. Mom got up at six in order to prepare a lot of food for me to take to the office for a birthday celebration. All departments of Nezavisimaia gazeta are in a single large stable, a section of the former “Voskhod” factory. At work we’re all crazy about one another and so I decided at once to treat everyone. Suddenly my mother woke me up: “Get up, Tania, they’re saying something on the radio….” Half asleep, I responded grumpily: “Come on, Mom, can’t you let me sleep once a year.” My mother then turned up the radio all the way. And imagine, there I was, the angelic birthday girl, lying in bed and swearing horribly. Mom’s used to that. Now I had to wake up my colleagues and argue over who was going to wake up the chief….
But of course no one canceled the refreshments. Tania’s excited coworkers greeted the victuals with a thunderous ovation. At the office, Tania first of all set about calling Yanaev’s secretary.
Malkina: During the previous two months at Nezavisimaia gazeta we frequently discussed a similar version of the coup. We imagined and tried to figure out who would do what to whom. I am a big fan of odious figures. And those of us in our department agreed early on that [in case of a coup] Gennadii Ivanovich Yanaev was mine….
For most of the summer Tania aggressively sought meetings with the Vice President, whose secretary, Vladimir Nikolaevich, was politeness personified, and who promised that if Gennadii Ivanovich was going to grant an interview to anybody, then of course it would be to Nezavisimaia gazeta…. Then he confidentially informed her that Yanaev just couldn’t see her right now. You see, the Vice President had some ambassadors to see… from Mauritania, Tanzania…. The list of Gennadii Ivanovich’s state duties was endless (maybe he was getting ready for the coup?). Tania punctually rang Vladimir Nikolaevich twice a week, and he soon got to know her.
Malkina: Every now and then I got angry and said, “Listen, it’s not that the press takes such a lively interest in Gennadii Ivanovich. Could it be really difficult to find time for a thirty-minute interview?”
“Now Tania,” responded the secretary, “a half hour is not nearly enough for your newspaper. We need to find time for a serious discussion.”
Eventually, my boss told me: “Just forget about him. Who cares about this Gennadii anyway?” And then the Emergency Committee came along.
On the 19th I placed my call. “Vladimir Nikolaevich, you owe me one. Everything has changed completely, everything has become s-o-o-o interesting. Gennadii Ivanovich is our President now, just about….”