67 Carrère d’Encausse interview. Revisiting the inter-republic negotiations of the winter before, and anticipating the agreement struck in December 1991, Yeltsin specifically raised with Carrère d’Encausse the possibility of a voluntary “commonwealth” of the three Slavic republics of the USSR—Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
68 Baturin et al., Epokha, 135, 137.
69 V. I. Boldin, Krusheniye p’edestala: shtrikhi k portretu M. S. Gorbacheva (Smashing the pedestal: strokes of a portrait of M. S. Gorbachev) (Moscow: Respublika, 1995), 403.
70 See Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), 412–13; Stewart, “SIC TRANSIT,” 361–62; and Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy (Life and reforms), 2 vols. (Moscow: Novosti, 1995), 2:308.
71 Boris Yel’tsin, Zapiski prezidenta (Notes of a president) (Moscow: Ogonëk, 1994), 54–56; Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 2:556–57.
72 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 96.
73 Voshchanov, interviewed in Prezident vseya Rusi (The president of all Russia), documentary film by Yevgenii Kiselëv, 1999–2000 (copy supplied by Kiselëv), 4 parts, part 3. Gorbachev reports the overture in his memoirs (Zhizn’ i reformy, 2:555) and criticizes Yeltsin for not informing him about it. “Most likely he held it in reserve, never knowing when it might come in handy.”
74 Prokof’ev, Do i posle zapreta KPSS, 244. A number of well-informed Muscovites have told me they are sure that Kryuchkov and the plotters briefed Yeltsin on their plan. No evidence has ever been brought forward. Ruslan Khasbulatov, the acting chairman of the Russian parliament at the time, and later to be a blood enemy of Yeltsin’s, was one of the first to see him the morning of August 19, and he reports that Yeltsin was “flabby and prostrate” at the news of the coup, which can only mean that he had been given no warning. R. I. Khasbulatov, Velikaya Rossiiskaya tragediya (Great Russian tragedy), 2 vols. (Moscow: SIMS, 1994), 1:161.
75 Boris Yeltsin, third interview with the author (September 12, 2002), in which he told me about the Kubinka landing. In Zapiski, 73, he wrote that he landed at Vnukovo, not Kubinka. He also stated there (71) that the putschists considered having his plane shot down. Sukhanov, Tri goda, 15, says the same. These details will not be clarified until independent researchers get access to the archives concerned.
76 V. G. Stepankov and Ye. K. Lisov, Kremlëvskii zagovor (Kremlin plot) (Moscow: Ogonëk, 1992), 119–21; “GKChP: protsess, kotoryi ne poshël” (The GKChP: the process which never got going), part 4, Novaya gazeta, August 13, 2001 (italics added).
77 Viktor Yaroshenko, Yel’tsin: ya otvechu za vsë (Yeltsin: I will answer for everything) (Moscow: Vokrug sveta, 1997), 131–32.
78 Stepankov and Lisov, Kremlëvskii zagovor, 121. The plotters’ plans for Yeltsin’s detention at Arkhangel’skoye-2 are described in ibid., 117–25, 156–57, 160–61, 165–66. In Zapiski, 97–98, Yeltsin recounts another telephone conversation with Kryuchkov, taken at Yeltsin’s initiative from the Russian White House. And Vadim Bakatin, who headed the KGB in the fall of 1991, adds that there was dissension among the Alpha commanders over whether to arrest Yeltsin: Izbavleniye ot KGB (Deliverance from the KGB) (Moscow: Novosti, 1992), 20–21.
79 Stepankov and Lisov, Kremlëvskii zagovor, 123.
80 See Brian D. Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 241–42. Several Russian sources add that at the meeting at which Kryuchkov revealed Yeltsin’s noncooperation, Oleg Baklanov, the party overseer of the military-industrial complex and one of the GKChP octet, scribbled a note to himself saying, “Seize B. N. [Boris Nikolayevich].”
81 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 68. As Yeltsin’s grandchildren prepared to leave the dacha with Naina a little later, his daughters warned them to take to the floor of the car if firing broke out, at which point his ten-year-old grandson asked if they would be shot directly in the head. Den’ v sem’e prezidenta (A day in the president’s family), interviews of the Yeltsin family by El’dar Ryazanov on REN-TV, April 20, 1993 (videotape supplied by Irena Lesnevskaya).
82 Gennadii Burbulis, “Prezident ot prirody” (A president by nature), Moskovskiye novosti, January 27, 2006; and quotation from Mary Dejevsky, a British journalist who was on the spot, interview with the author (September 14, 2007).
