Vladimir Nikolaevich responded gently, playing along as it were, that Yanaev was terribly busy and had pressing business affairs. He asked me to call back in an hour. When I did so, he was very severe with me. He said that there would be no interview today, but that there was going to be a press conference at five o’clock. But he said nothing about the special one-time pass for the press conference or about the fact that it would be hopeless trying to attend it.
Tania went to the press conference with a colleague. At the entrance to the building there was a huge crowd, some guards, and admission for “pool” reporters only. Journalists are used to surprises, and after a long altercation with the guards, Tania’s colleague got inside and handed some sort of pass to her behind the back of one of the guards.
Malkina: There was a second checkpoint right in front of the entrance to the auditorium, where you again had to show a pass. Once more we had to dodge and enter together as a single “pool.” The officer who frisked us almost got hold of my mace cartridge, which I covered with a handkerchief. Luckily, however, he didn’t realize what it was. Oh, you know, I said to him, those are my personal items, feminine things, and I nervously began to enumerate all kinds of cosmetic items. In short, we slipped through.
During the press conference I wanted to stand up, pull a stupid face, and pronounce in a serious tone: “Gennadii Ivanovich! You know today’s my birthday. Now in 1968 at this time you were sending troops into Czechoslovakia, but I was only a year old, and now today you’ve offered me this present. A classy present! Thank you!” Then I would shed a few tears….
We were almost late, and we entered simultaneously with the… leaders. Suddenly, my mood turned ugly. Oh, what asses! It was not just that they were scoundrels and criminals, no, it was simply a panopticon…. “Good heavens,” I thought, they are far outside the bounds of reason, they are irrational and the irrationality can set in for good.“ You know, they made me experience such a feeling of rage that I simply wanted to strangle them…. And yet the journalists were still asking such flabby questions. When it comes to poor Ignatenko [Gorbachev’s press secretary], they hack at him as hard as they can, but now these same handsome things can’t even open their mouths… not a word…. All the foreigners were sleeping or something…. The only serious question came from the journalist from La Stampa. But questions like this are not for these rulers manqués.
After the press conference people began to recognize Tania on the street and in the subway. The reactions were diverse. A female TV viewer called the editorial offices, insisted on speaking to the editor-in-chief, and vented her anger about Tania’s behavior at the press conference. For some reason, she above all did not like Tania’s dress. Then a young man sent in some verses… which also contained a few words about her dress.
Tania’s mother wore this dress in her youth. It was considered to be a holiday outfit, and Tania would wear it if on a given night she said to herself, “Tomorrow I’ll be a lady.” And on the 19th she was wearing it; it was her birthday, after all. Her… usual form of dress is a pair of jeans and a sweater.
Malkina: I do not want to be remembered by my fellow citizens as a heroine because of that one question. Any journalist from the Nezavisimaia gazeta would have asked a similar question. The press conference was a purely emotional moment, and indeed we realized even that morning that the whole thing was a soap opera and that the strings were being pulled from backstage….
There were many young journalists among those who did not allow the news blackout to develop. The majority of workers at the newspaper Rossiia are under thirty. They all stayed at the White House during the coup and released over forty leaflets. Tania Voloshina, who is twenty-seven and the mother of four-year-old Sasha, and Lena Moskaleva, who is twenty-two with two children, led the editorial team of Rossiia on the fifth floor of the White House for three days and three nights…. Moscow Echo did not stop its work for an hour, even after it was taken off the air. Democratic publications put out the “Obshchaia gazeta.”[87]
Any of the young people who are accustomed to using Aesopian language or to concealing their gestures of defiance could have asked a question like Tania’s. They do not find it necessary to struggle against self-censorship, like their older colleagues. They are also unaware, it would seem, of Glavlit [the USSR censor]. These journalists were not educated by Prague 1968, but by the Baltics….
A truly independent press is on its way.
5
A Russian Reporter Remembers the Coup
INTERVIEW WITH VALERII KUCHER
Valerii Kucher is a journalist from Magnitogorsk. In 1983 he became the editor of Magnitogorskii rabochii, a local newspaper he helped transform into a radical mouthpiece of glasnost during the Gorbachev years. Kucher’s outspoken journalism won him a seat in the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies in March 1989. He was elected to the new Soviet parliament as a representative of the Journalists’ Union. At the time of the coup he was the editor o/Rossiiskie vesti, the weekly newspaper of the government of the Russian Federation. He was interviewed in Moscow in March 1992 by Irina Mikhaleva, who works for the Moscow Bureau of National Public Radio.
We were awakened by a call from Magnitogorsk. It was a little after 6:00 A.M. in Moscow. It was my daughter. The time difference is two hours. “Do you have a coup d’état there?” We did not understand what she was talking about. “Turn on your radio—you have a coup d’état.” So we turned on the radio at six in the morning and we heard the announcement.
I drove to the White House at once. On my way there, I passed by several tanks. The first person I saw at the White House was General Kobets. We actually ran into each other as we were entering the White House. He was very agitated and kept repeating: “Damn it, damn it, we must organize something, we must do something, we must organize something.”
“But what happened? What are we to do?” I asked him and followed him to his office. I tried to find out what was happening.
“I have just come back from Yeltsin’s dacha,” he said. “We have decided we must organize the defense of the White House. The situation is dangerous—it’s a putsch. Anything could happen now.”
It was hard to understand what was really going on at that point, because there was nobody from the top leadership around.
Mikhaleva: What was your emotional state at that moment?
Kucher: I felt agitated and disoriented. I should tell you, though, that I was not vacillating, was not trying to make up my mind what side I was on. No, it was completely clear to me. I was not even conscious of any decision. Just as you aren’t conscious of your heartbeat, so I was not conscious of the decision. It came naturally, it went without saying…. But I did feel anxious, agitated, because there was no information about anything. I called the editorial office of the newspaper [Rossiiskie vesti], told them where I was, and asked them to stay put and wait for me. That’s how I reacted at the beginning. I tried to stay in close touch with the people in the leadership.
Mikhaleva: What was the scene at the White House?
87
This was the name of the joint newspaper put out during the coup by eleven newspapers banned by the Emergency Committee.