Valentin Varennikov, 71, stood up in court, gestured toward former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and his hatred just spilled over. "You are a renegade and a traitor to your people," the former general and lifetime military officer said. "Do you feel guilty for what happened to our great motherland?"The father of perestroika, sitting alone without any aides or lawyers, took most of the tirade in silence. But finally, he could bear no more."In all of your questions, you are lying," Gorbachev burst out. "You are trying to provoke me."The exchange Friday in Russia's Supreme Court was really a fight to write the history of the hardline coup against Gorbachev in August 1991. In an often surreal courtroom drama, Varennikov, a former deputy defense minister on trial for his role in the coup, tried to turn the tables on his former commander in chief.Tensions flared as Varennikov led his own rambling defense interrogation of Gorbachev, addressing the former president only as "witness." More than two dozen of his questions on themes such as what he saw as Gorbachev's failures in reunifying Germany, the war in Afghanistan, and nuclear missiles -- were so far afield that the judge struck them down.In one query, for example, Varennikov mispronounced the name of Gorbachev's daughter when asking if she had suffered during the coup."Call her by her right name: Irina Virganskaya," Gorbachev commanded, as his daughter, sitting in the back of the courtroom, flashed a broad smile.During the questioning by Varennikov and his lawyer, Dmitry Shteinberg, Gorbachev frequently responded with sarcasm or disdain. "These are kindergarten questions," he told Shteinberg at one point. The last Soviet president also told head judge Viktor Yaskin: "Don't be impatient; I know what you are trying to get out of me."At other times, Gorbachev, dressed in a dark pinstripe suit, was the overanxious one. "Let me answer," he said at one point."But Mikhail Sergeyevich, there hasn't even been a question yet," Shteinberg said."Please allow me," he retorted.Just a few feet away from Gorbachev in the visitors' gallery sat the other coup leaders, including former KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, former Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, and Anatoly Lukyanov, former chairman of the Supreme Soviet. Of all the coup leaders, only Varennikov has refused parliament's amnesty granted in February and has insisted on a trial to defend his honor."I'm here because my comrade is on trial in a shameful process," said the former Soviet vice president, Gennady Yanayev, whose shaking hands and uncertain manner on television came to symbolize the failed venture.Yanayev said he shared the same legal fantasy Varennikov played out in the half-empty courtroom on Friday. "It would be logical and right and I believe this will eventually happen if Gorbachev were on trial and Varennikov were on the stand testifying against him," Yanayev said in an interview.In one heated exchange, Varennikov clearly showed his lust to see Gorbachev on trial for allowing the collapse of the Soviet Union. "For now, I am the accused and you the witness for now," he told Gorbachev.When lawyer Shteinberg tried to calm the courtroom with some legal citations, Gorbachev curtly responded: "Thank you for the consultation and free of charge on top of that."For all the snipes, petty accusations and recriminations, Gorbachev's two-day stint on the witness stand, a first in Russian history, uncovered little new ground about the coup which sparked the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet for Gorbachev, who this week testified in parliament and spoke of a possible future run for president in a newspaper interview, it was part of an effort to rehabilitate his battered image."For Gorbachev this is, of course an opportunity to claim the real chain of events of August," said his spokesman Alexander Likhotal. "This is a fight over the findings about what happened and this, of course, is history."