“Tolya, is it serious? - Yes, very "

Do you remember that day well - August 19, 1991?

Almost a minute. Anatoly Alexandrovich has a birthday on August 10, and we always went on vacation the day before - he did not like congratulations, gifts, and offers. That year he said: now it is not the time to leave, it is necessary to discuss a new union agreement with Gorbachev, great difficulties with the Baltic states, I need to talk to Lithuania - to talk with Landsbergis ... I myself left with Ksenia to Pitsunda. There, before breakfast, while my daughter was sleeping, I ran to swim to the beach. And that day I also arranged a morning swim far into the sea, turning it to the beach and I understand: something is happening. People do not sunbathe, all dressed, stand in heaps near radio receivers and listen to the news. I ask: what happened? They answer me: in Moscow a coup, Gorbachev was arrested, Yeltsin is probably killed. Someone asks: and Sobchak? And Sobchak, they answer, the first is banging! I had a reflex - I rushed to the store to buy warm things. Then she ran to our friend Aunt Sonya, asked for permission to bring Ksyusha to her. I return to the hotel and see: at the entrance there is a black Volga, two young people in black suits. I go up, young people show the certificates of the guards Zviad Gamsakhurdia, they say: the Georgian president asks you to move to his residence for security purposes.

“Volodya, at the head of the State Emergency Committee is Kryuchkov, you yourself are on vacation, if we want, we will agree that I have not seen you, because it is not known who will take”

I say to these people: I can’t, not consulting with my husband. We are going to the city executive committee, there we are connected by the turntable with the Mariinsky Palace ( in 1991, the Lensolete worked there. - NT), the assistant to Anatoly Alexandrovich is following him, and leaves the phone on the table. And I hear the calls go to all the phones in the office: the colonel reports such and such-the tank division from Pskov moves to Leningrad, have already passed the meadow. The husband goes to the phone and begins to say in a stray-calm voice: do not worry, is it not for long, how do you sunbathe? He was always a very bad actor ... I can’t stand it and ask: Tolya, is it serious? He: Yes, very. I tell him about people from Gamsakhurdia, he calls him back, then to me: “Well, go, it will be right.”

When did you manage to return to Leningrad?

On August 26, Anatoly flew to our pitsunda, stayed there for three days, then we all returned together, and he went to Moscow.

What did he tell you?

He told how he flew from Vilnius to Moscow for a meeting in Novo-Ogarevo, how he talked with Yeltsin, as later in Sheremetyevo pilots “Pulkovo Airlines” he drove him to the flight field without registration in an office bus, hid in the cockpit. In Pulkovo, Putin met him, from the airport Sobchak immediately went to the headquarters of the Leningrad Military District, where the local GKChP was already sitting. He managed to talk with the commander of the troops of the district General Samsonov in private. Anatoly later told me how he suggested to General Paris: if he wins the State Emergency Committee, Samsonov personally arrests Sobchak, if not, he will not be responsible for the actions of the State Emergency Committee. Samsonov stopped the tanks near Gatchina and then even retained his post ( until December 1991. - NT).

And how did people behave in the immediate environment of Sobchak in those days?

Putin ( in August 1991, the Chairman of the Committee on External Relations of the City Hall of Leningrad. - NT) behaved very dignity. He had a vacation, rested with his family near Kaliningrad, but immediately returned to Leningrad and organized a meeting of Sobchak in Pulkovo. Anatoly said to him: “Volodya, at the head of the GKChP is Kryuchkov, you yourself are on vacation, if we want, we will agree that I have not seen you, because it is not known whose will take.” But Putin remained next to Sobchak. But the behavior of cooperatives, who fed at their own expense, fed those gathering in the square in front of the Mariinsky Palace, especially. They immediately realized that they were at risk of losing, and chosen freedom.

And the current environment of Putin - the brothers Kovalchuki, Rotenbergs, Timchenko - how did they behave?

They were not next to Anatoly Alexandrovich. I think they were not familiar then. Even if they were already Friends of Putin, in the days of the coup, they were not visible and heard.

Photo: Yuri Belinsky and Nikolai Burketov/TASS, Elena Palm/Interfax/TASS