On the morning of the 19th, I woke up from an incomprehensible monotonous hum coming from behind the forest. My family and I then lived in Zhavoronki near Moscow - we rented a dacha there. Having woken up, I was no longer able to return to my morning sleep, but for some reason began to listen to this strange hum. In this unclear, but, as it soon became clear, historically important noise of the time itself. I went out onto the porch.

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.

God knows how many times I have answered questions such as “How you asked Yanaev”, “Tell us how you spent three days in August 91st”, “Was you scared”, “When you realized that the coup could not be successful " and so on. There are already mechanical almost answers: simple, excellent, no, right away.

Since August 21, and most importantly - with the historical events that this date marks, this is what happened, in my opinion. First, perestroika and glasnost split society along ideological lines - to part with the Soviet way of life or not. There were many who stood for its renewal; there were fewer who stood for a decisive break, but still this was a significant part of society - mainly those that were connected with the city, with the emerging new information environment.