Put things in order. Alexander Ryklin - About the case of weaknesses

The failed coup of 1991 was remembered primarily by the initial doom of the rebels. Those who decided on a coup d'etat should not look sorry. Putchists with their running eyes and shaking hands already at a press conference on August 19 looked so frightened that it seemed-they were victims of an anti-constitutional conspiracy. The SCCHP symbol was the Vice-President of the USSR Gennady Yanaev, who literally brought convulsions while he tried to babble something, answering the questions of journalists. Even the tanks, introduced on the morning of that day to Moscow, did not particularly scare anyone.

One of them parked near the Novokuznetskaya metro station. A young captain, sitting on an armor with a map launched on his knees, asked the gathered around his fighting vehicle to the onlookers to explain how to get out of the city when they would give an order to retreat. However, by the night from the 20th to the 21st the situation has noticeably aggravated. Then the first clashes occurred, then three defenders of the White House were killed in the tunnel under the new Arbat, and the streets adjacent to the White House were covered with a barricade network.

Nevertheless, the main reason that led to the failure of the coup, the purpose of which was to prevent the signing of the Union Agreement, was not the helplessness and indecision of its main initiators. Dozens and hundreds of thousands of citizens who have entered the streets, first of all, Moscow, predetermined the outcome of the confrontation. It was the mood of people, their unconditional readiness to take a risk to protect the new course, that broke the situation. There would be no “living rings” around the White House - there would be no one to speak to Boris Yeltsin, General Alexander Lebed would not have switched to the side of the people, and the alpha special forces would not abandon the assault plan.

Putchists won 30 years ago, it is unlikely that Vladimir Vladimirovich could count on such a brilliant political career

The current Russian government has a difficult attitude to those events. On the one hand, Vladimir Putin calls the collapse of the USSR "the largest geopolitical disaster", and the putschists just tried to prevent such a scenario. However, the current president of Russia accepted this position directly from the hands of Yeltsin. And, it was unlikely that Vladimir Vladimirovich could have been defeated 30 years ago, it could count on such a brilliant political career. However, this does not completely abolish the fact that the main characters who attempted to shift Mikhail Gorbachev, “take their heads to all these reformers,” “returning the country to the path of confident socialist development,” the current Putin's establishment treats the greatest contempt and disgust. Because - weaklings, started a big business, but they were frightened by blood, they swung, and there was not enough decisiveness. On the air of the Russia-1 channel, the head of the Russian Guard, Viktor Zolotov, recalling those days, directly says : "If there was a storm, then everything would be finished for 15–20 minutes, absolutely." Maybe it is so, but only the reasons why there was no assault, it is not allowed to realize the current Putin's security forces.

There is no doubt that the modern Russian elite is firmly convinced: if tomorrow there is popular unrest in the country, they will be under reliable protection, and the faithful security forces will disperse any notch for the same notorious 15–20 minutes. I must say that this is a generic misconception of almost all dictatorial regimes that have been building up more and more defense lines around themselves for years. In Russia, the guardians of the crown are already there, and all the same, all this may not work if the street protest at some point really turns out to be massive. But only if the protest leaders turn out to be decisive and competent people.

Last fall during the events in Belarus, the overwhelming part of the liberal expert community supported the strategy of the headquarters of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, which mainly came down to at all costs to avoid escalation, a rigid confrontation scenario. The general tone of articles in the independent press came down to the fact that only in this way can the bloodshed can be avoided, which will be given to the death squadrons of the dictator Lukashenko if the protesting masses have specific goals and the unbending determination of these goals to achieve. Because non -violent protest is the naked protest, but not toothless. It is important to note that demonstrations in Minsk and the country as a whole were quite numerous, for example, with Moscow actions of 2011-2012, they simply cannot be compared. If we take into account the total population of the two countries, then in percentage terms the Minsk manifestations were, I think, by an order of magnitude more massive than Moscow.

It must be remembered that, as a rule, the security forces are especially zealously lute inside closed perimeters, in the yards and entrances. Since it is one thing to grab a girl out of the column and in the blink of an eye to drag her into a car factory and quite another - to go to a frontal attack on a thousands of crowds. I'm not talking about opening fire on a peaceful demonstration. Not everyone will decide on it. But the path of a rigid confrontation to the authorities is the only one that can only lead to their quick change. Any other scenarios end with the inevitable tightening of the regime, even more massive and severe repression. Which, in fact, we see today on the example of Belarus.

This, as it seems to me, is the main lesson of the State Emergency Committee - punishers graze before ready to take risks, close -knit and responsible people.

Alexander Ryklin - Moscow journalist

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