There is no fear

If you type the words “coup August 1991” into Google, on the first page you will see a link to the article “There was no coup on August 19, 1991.” Whatever its author, self-proclaimed historian Nikolai Starikov, means, public opinion agrees with him - according to a recent survey by the Levada Center for The New Times magazine, 48% of Russians do not know what happened in August 1991.

The situation when the mayor's office, on the anniversary of the putsch, moves a rally in memory of the victims to Sokolniki Park no longer looks wild: ordinary participants in the events, musicians who performed at the barricades, politicians for whom the putsch was the start of their careers - no one seems to be considering August 91 -th as an important moment in your biography and even more so a reason for pride. For people who weren’t around that August due to their age, it’s generally incomprehensible: it seemed like they were shooting - well, that’s how they always shot in the early 90s. The putsch is brilliantly absent from the official version of history, as well as from the philistine consciousness; in its place is a gap, an emptiness, and the size of this gap matters.

The place where the putsch is absent would be enough to build on it a story about the birth of the state - this is where the new Russia was forged, not in the offices of the Supreme Council or in the Belovezhskaya rest house, but on the streets and squares, by the will of the people who came to parliament. Or lay the foundation for an official ideology - in which freedom, having defended nights in the rain on the barricades, proves with its own courage that it is more important than lack of freedom. Or build a pantheon of new heroes - those who did not spare their lives to stop the repressive machine clanking with its tracks; It’s no joke, Usov, Komar and Krichevsky were seen off on their last journey by a million people, this is the largest mourning ceremony since Stalin’s funeral. Nothing happened - no symbols, no monuments, no books, no desire to understand what it was and why then everything went wrong. In place of iconography or historiography, as often happens in modern Russia, there was conspiracy theory: the only thing that has been at least discussed in recent years has been various conspiracy theories: who was behind the deployment and, most importantly, the withdrawal of troops - Americans, Freemasons, aliens? Or was there nothing at all (see article by N. Starikov)?

A detailed chronicle of events, set out, in particular, in Sergei Plokhy’s recent book “The Last Empire”, shows that everything is really complicated with the putsch - upon closer examination, it does not fit into the standard versions of the last 25 years, it is not quite the “offensive of totalitarianism” and not at all “an attempt to stop the collapse of the country.” Everything begins to be prepared in three days, almost the main motive turns out to be Kryuchkov and Yazov’s fear of losing their positions, Yanaev is called in on the last night, they either forget about Yeltsin or hope to reach an agreement, the only ones arrested are officers from the “Shield” movement, the main hawk, Prime Minister Pavlov, by the time the emergency is declared, manages to celebrate the onset of new times so much that he leaves for the hospital with a hypertensive crisis, Marshal Yazov is tormented by his conscience and, at the first occasion, gives the order to withdraw troops; in general, behind the introduction of tanks into Moscow there was not a secret lie, but an obvious mess. The forces of the opposing sides were distributed asymmetrically: on the side of the putschists - all the power resources with a complete lack of will and total organizational chaos, in the camp of the defenders of the White House - iron determination, multiplied by the complete absence of forces and the same chaos; in the end, power was not so much won, how much was released. There is a lot of sadness in many things - and no matter what you feel when turning onto Krasnaya Presnya on August 19, it is strange, after the passage of time, to find yourself, if not a thread in someone else’s conspiracy, then at least a link in a chain of accidents; no more inspiring consensus has emerged in 25 years about what people did at the August barricades.

The extent to which the coup has become a silent figure is in many ways proof of its significance. For the current official ideology, the putsch is inconvenient, if only because it became the zero point, the moment from which everything went differently - and there cannot be such turning points in the current ideology: the history of Russia is a progressive movement from greatness to greatness, where Sergius of Radonezh, Stalin and Yeltsin stand on different steps of the same ascending ladder of power. The first day of creation here is dated somewhere back to the time of Prince Vladimir - and August 91 is endowed with the properties of original sin: on the three August days there seems to be a shadow of guilt for everything that happened in the new Russia later. August 1991 - this includes Chechnya, loans-for-shares auctions, “Vote or Lose,” the YUKOS case and the war in Donbass; Even the shells that were not fired from the tanks and the Alpha that abandoned the assault reached their destination in just over two years.

Looking at things soberly, we have to admit that August 1991 also meant full shelves, the opportunity to travel abroad, foreign cars on credit and all world literature in the public domain; but it is stupid to remember hopes that came true and became banal - hopes that were deceived are etched in the memory more strongly. Even looking from the position of the defenders of the White House, and even more so looking at things through their then eyes, it turns out that the heroic nationwide struggle against false ideology, uncontrolled state violence, suppression of freedoms and the omnipotence of the KGB after a quarter of a century led to the triumph of false ideology, uncontrolled state violence, suppression of freedoms and omnipotence of the FSB; in the medium term, the putschists suffered a brilliant victory.

But over a longer distance, things may look different.

The victory over the putschists did not create the future that the victors expected; Whatever meaning was put into the words “Russia must become a normal country” back then, the defenders of the White House who went home were definitely not in it. Likewise, the storming of the Bastille did not lead the next day to the triumph of republican ideals and did not transform France into a community of free citizens; July 14, like August 19, is not the day of an instant solution to all problems, but the starting point of a long movement, the moment from which a completely different story begins.

If we try to formulate the meaning of this turning point, it may turn out that it was during these days that the idea of ​​the state as an inevitable and inhuman evil collapsed. Even in the most turbulent days of perestroika, people who went to rallies or listened to broadcasts of the Congress subconsciously expected that a new 37th was about to begin; the state for them was still a sacred mystical body that generates violence and inspires fear. The state gives work and shelter, the state deprives life and freedom, the state is incomprehensible and eternal, it is impossible to live without relating oneself to it.

And then it turns out that the state is just a few absurd, indecisive people, that tank divisions, secret networks of GB agents, endless party committees and endless camps are an unreliable and fragile screen behind which all too human interests are hidden. That at a critical moment of history, it is not a mystical state machine, but the will of each individual person: a tankman who exchanges telephone numbers with a girl, an engineer who goes to Presnya under a tricolor flag, a general who refuses to comply with a criminal order, a student who is wetting on The barricades of the night are long, he is scared, but he is stronger than fear. And restoring this mystical aura may be more difficult than even reassembling a disintegrated empire: no matter what terrible faces Leviathan makes, it is obvious that the life of people on the territory entrusted to it does not have to be as the state decides - on the contrary, the state can become what they decided. And to live independently of this state, without fear of it and without submitting to it, is not a feat or madness; This is fine.

In Daniil Andreev’s book “The Rose of the World” it is said that Russia is ruled by Zhrugr - a witzraor, a demon of great-power statehood, who feeds on people’s fear of the state or the euphoria of merging with it. In August 1991, Zhrugr briefly unclenched his tentacles, and this event cannot be made non-existent. His subjects may not have fully transformed into citizens, but they certainly learned to see the world differently. The state is not an infernal octopus from a parallel world; it consists of ordinary and in many ways absurd people, obsessed with messianic ideas and at the same time riding corgis on an airplane. State security is not a secret order of all-powerful rulers of the world, but simply an office where people go to make a career. Zhrugr is just a vision of the writer Andreev.

There is no fear, and there will be no more.