One of the kingpins of the coup, Oleg Baklanov, notified Gorbachev at Foros on August 18 that they had already arrested Yeltsin, and then modified his story to say they would do so shortly. The available documentation shows Yeltsin to have been high on the general list of seventy persons the GKChP marked for roundup once the tanks went into action. Sixty Alpha rangers were sent in the wee hours of August 19 to the enclosure of RSFSR government dachas in the village of Arkhangel’skoye-2, where Yeltsin slept the night. They had orders to take him alive and hold him on an island at the Zavidovo wildlife reserve ninety miles north of Moscow. Yeltsin was woken up shortly after six in the morning and huddled with his political team, most of whom had been staying at dachas within strolling distance. After first preferring to call a two-hour “precautionary strike” by workers, he moved to more radical tactics. The group put together an anti-coup appeal “To the Citizens of Russia,” which Yeltsin’s daughters typed up in the dacha kitchen and Ivan Silayev telephoned in to the Russian White House. One of its recommendations was for a general strike of indefinite duration.77
Around this time, Kryuchkov revoked the arrest order. He did it upon consultation with Anatolii Luk’yanov, Yeltsin’s former dacha mate, who had fallen in with the putsch and promised to get the USSR Supreme Soviet to provide it with legal cover (though not until August 26). “Kryuchkov was impressed by Luk’yanov’s advice to take a wait-and-see position, letting Yeltsin ‘declare himself’ and giving the people to understand that the democratic leader of Russia was against the imposition of order in the country.”78 Shortly afterward, Kryuchkov tried honey rather than vinegar. It did not work: “Yeltsin refuses to cooperate. I spoke with him by telephone. I tried to make him see reason. It was useless.”79 The one general who wanted “measures to extirpate B. N. Yeltsin’s group of adventurists” by force was Valentin Varennikov, the commander of Soviet ground forces, and he spent August 19 and 20 in Crimea and Kiev, Ukraine. If Varennikov, who fought in Berlin in 1945 and in Afghanistan in the 1980s, had been in Moscow, military behavior toward Yeltsin might have been more ruthless.80
By the time Kryuchkov made news of Yeltsin’s obstreperousness known to his co-conspirators, the president of the RSFSR, after discussion in his team of whether to stay in Arkhangel’skoye-2 and the risks of moving, had been allowed to speed off in a car a little after nine A.M., headed to his office at the White House. He put on a bulletproof vest as he left. Naina Yeltsina said it would not be much use, since his head would be unprotected: “And the main thing is the head.”81 His limousine and several accompanying automobiles drove past paratroopers and tanks. Korzhakov’s bodyguard detail was armed but under orders not to shoot unless the presidential automobile was hit. Yeltsin did not speak to his family again until he phoned Yelena to wish her a happy birthday on the morning of August 21.
Holed up in the White House, Yeltsin, his government, and the parliamentary chairman pro tem, Ruslan Khasbulatov, demanded Gorbachev’s release and coordinated resistance to the putsch and the junta that had mounted it. They propagated their edicts by telephone, fax, and the foreign media, since the Soviet media were closed to them. Yeltsin declared that as president of Russia he was assuming command of all military and police units located in the RSFSR. At half past noon, in gray suit (buttoned at the waist) and tie, he marched onto the White House driveway. He was motivated by curiosity as much as anything and dismissed a warning from Gennadii Burbulis that he would be in danger from snipers, from the bushes or a nearby roof. Four or five aides grabbed at his arm and tried to keep him from going forward. “He was completely fearless—either oblivious of the danger or just thinking it didn’t really matter.”82
