83 The quotation and details of his decision are taken from my third Yeltsin interview. Khasbulatov has written (Velikaya Rossiiskaya tragediya, 1:163) that he and others persuaded Yeltsin to get up on the tank, but Yeltsin’s account contradicts this. Viktor Yaroshenko, a Yeltsin adviser who was present, has said Yeltsin may have seen a young man lie down on the ground in front of another tank minutes before, and the man’s bravery may have influenced him. Friends pulled the man from the path of Tank No. 112 with a split-second to spare. The scene and Yaroshenko’s comments are captured in Prezident vseya Rusi, part 3.
84 The appeal and other major documents from August 1991 can be found at http://old.russ.ru/antolog/1991/putch11.htm.
85 Victoria E. Bonnell and Gregory Freidin, “Televorot: The Role of Television Coverage in Russia’s August 1991 Coup,” in Nancy Condee, ed., Soviet Hieroglyphics : Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 32.
86 That was the peak crowd at the White House. But there were about 200,000 pro-Yeltsin demonstrators on August 20 at Moscow city hall on Tverskaya Street, where the police and military presence was slighter, and significant demonstrations were mounted at many Russian and Soviet cities. See Harley Balzer, “Ordinary Russians? Rethinking August 1991,” Demokratizatsiya/Democratization 13 (Spring 2005), 193–218.
87 When the unassuming Lobov addressed a rally in Sverdlovsk, the commander of the local military district threatened to lock him up. Lobov then warned that he would call a general strike. The standoff was averted by the collapse of the coup. Oleg Lobov, interview with the author (May 29, 2002).
88 Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 434; Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 172. Richard Nixon thought Bush’s praise of Yeltsin grudging and that the putsch had shown that Bush had been “wrong all along” about the relative merits of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Crowley, Nixon in Winter, 64.
89 John B. Dunlop, “The August 1991 Coup and Its Impact on Soviet Politics,” Journal of Cold War Studies 5 (Winter 2003), 112–13. Bush’s decision and the “bitter protests” of the National Security Agency were first reported in Seymour M. Hersh, “The Wild East,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1994. Testified one U.S. official, “We told Yeltsin in real time what the communications were. . . . We monitor every major command, and we handed it to Yeltsin on a platter.” The NSA’s concern was about disclosure of American monitoring capabilities. President Bush decided, properly, that helping Yeltsin at a turning point was a more important stake.
90 “Throne out of bayonets” was an expression of the English theologian William R. Inge ( 1860–1954). I do not know how Yeltsin came across it.
91 The Yeltsin speech and the comments about the Kremlin are in Stepankov and Lisov, Kremlëvskii zagovor, 163–64, 179. In his interview with me (May 22, 2000), Shaposhnikov said he prepared a written order on shooting up the Kremlin and discussed implementation with local officers.
92 Yel’tsin, Zapiski, 114.
93 Quotation from Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris Yel’tsin: ot rassveta do zakata (Boris Yeltsin: from dawn to dusk) (Moscow: Interbuk, 1997), 115–16. See also Robert V. Barylski, The Soldier in Russian Politics: Duty, Dictatorship, and Democracy Under Gorbachev and Yeltsin (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1998), 131–34. Yeltsin had known Bakatin, the former party boss of Kirov province, for some time and had considered him as a vice-presidential running mate. But he never met Shaposhnikov before demanding that Gorbachev appoint him—they had spoken by telephone only. Author’s interviews with Bakatin (May 29, 2002) and Shaposhnikov.
94 Dejevsky interview.
95 I. Karpenko and G. Shipit’ko, “Kak prezident derzhal otvet pered rossiiskimi deputatami” (How the president answered the Russian deputies), Izvestiya, August 24, 1991.
96 Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 438.
97 See on this point Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 423–25.
98 As paraphrased by Gorbachev’s chief negotiator, Shakhnazarov (S vozhdyami i bez nikh, 462).
