Rewriting the History of the '91 Coup

A few days before its third anniversary, the case of the attempted coup that shook the world in August 1991 has unravelled and its history -- and perhaps that of Russia -- is being rewritten.


General Valentin Varennikov walked free from his Moscow courtroom Thursday and his political ideas, like those of his 13 comrades who tried to overthrow Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, have begun to look fashionable.


Even some of the victors of August 19-21 1991 have begun to repudiate the role that they played. In an ironic twist Alexander Rutskoi, who as Russian vice-president commanded the defense of the White House against the August coup plotters, was full of praise on Thursday for Varennikov, the general who had faced him down with tanks.


"Today with all my heart and soul I can congratulate General Varennikov on a brilliant victory, congratulate the prosecutor who showed his mettle and really acted within the law," Rutskoi said.


Varennikov, alone of the coup plotters refused to accept a parliamentary amnesty offered them in February and insisted on going on trial.


The prosecutor said the case did not stand up and Thursday Varennikov was exonerated of a charge that could have carried the death penalty.


Rutskoi said the August coup looked very different three years on in the light of what was known about it now. He suggested he subscribed to the theory that Gorbachev himself was implicated in the events.


"I think that the investigation ought to carry on because very many questions remain with regard to Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev," Rutskoi said.


The court too on Thursday pointed the finger at Gorbachev, saying that he had suspiciously failed to combat or resist the plotters during the attempted coup, which collapsed after three days due to bad planning, lukewarm support and public resistance led by Yeltsin.


Lilya Shivtsova, a Moscow political analyst, highlighted three reasons why the coup trial had collapsed three years on.


First of all, she said, the violence of last fall, in which many more people died than in 1991, had made the August coup a delicate political issue. The opposition did and could argue that if prosecutions were being made about the three deaths of August 1991, then charges should be brought about the scores who died in October 1993.


The parliamentary amnesty of February, which exonerated all involved in both episodes, effectively turned the page on them.


"It was a kind of bargain to make everyone forget about the September-October events," Shivtsova said.


Secondly, the great "democratic dawn" of 1991 no longer looks so rosy to most of the population. To many Russians the year when the coup plotters made their move may seem a better era, when the metro fare was still in kopecks and Abkhazia was still a favorite holiday resort.


"A new presidential campaign has begun. No one wants to highlight 1991. It is the time everyone wants to forget," Shivtsova observed.


So much have Russians forgotten the fear and uncertainty of those few days in August that last December they elected two of the accused coup plotters -- former speaker of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union Anatoly Lukyanov and farmers union boss Vasily Starodubtsev -- to parliament.


The third and most compelling reason why the August coup trial had become an embarrassment is that the re-creation in some form of the old Soviet Union, the state the plotters said they were trying to hold together, is now back on the agenda.


Varennikov neatly turned the tables in his trial, saying that he had been trying to preserve the state and that Gorbachev, not himself, should be held to account.


Re-integration of the ex-Soviet states has become the latest rallying call for the opposition to Yeltsin and Yeltsin's team is hurrying to catch up.


"The thesis behind the social political movement Derzhava, its major strategic objective is to restore the great power-state Russia within the borders of the Soviet Union," Rutskoi said Thursday of the new movement he has formed.


Yeltsin's men have started talking about something less iron-clad, a progressive convergence of ex-Soviet states, beginning with Russia's two western Slavic neighbors, Ukraine and Belarus.


But against this backdrop, the August coup leaders have suddenly become untouchable. The fact that they appeared on television to announce their seizure of power; that they effectively imprisoned the country's president; and that they ordered tanks into the capital causing the deaths of three young men -- all these undeniable facts have been forgotten.


Instead, Gorbachev, the man who lost most by the coup, is heaped with blame.