Word: coupes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...imagination. Inside and underneath the area are the interrogation rooms and cells where in past decades thousands of citizens came face to face with state power -- and often terror. So it was with some trepidation that a massive crowd advanced into the square in the aftermath of the failed coup -- but its nerve soon strengthened. Within hours, thousands cheered as the statue of "Iron Felix" Dzherzhinsky, who founded the secret police immediately after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, was toppled from its central pedestal. It was a symbolic act of purgation -- and revenge...
Equally striking was the response from what used to be the most dreaded organization in the Soviet Union. Nothing. In the coup's aftermath, the KGB -- it calls itself the Sword and Shield of the Communist Party -- showed itself to be as divided and traumatized by the actions of its disgraced chief, Vladimir Kryuchkov, as was another pillar of power, the army. Once the plot had unraveled, the agency released a statement declaring that "KGB servicemen have nothing in common with illegal actions by the group of adventurists." After a bewildering two-day shuffle of leaders, Vadim Bakatin, a liberal...
...early as the first day of the coup, TIME Moscow correspondent James Carney got an unmistakable indication of the KGB's ambivalence about the putsch. As he stood interviewing soldiers outside the Moscow Hotel, he was approached by a casually dressed man in his 30s who introduced himself as KGB agent Alexander Maisenko and produced the proper red identification card to prove it. "Not all of my colleagues in the KGB think that what is happening is a good thing," he said. "Putting the army in the streets against the people is wrong...
George Bush realized he might be inadvertently backing the wrong horse in the Soviet power struggle when the text of a one-page letter from Boris Yeltsin reached him as he flew from Maine to Washington aboard Air Force One. Bravely resisting the coup against long odds, Yeltsin implored Bush to bring "the attention of the world and the United Nations" to bear on Moscow and "demand the restoration" of President Mikhail Gorbachev. Yeltsin added what for Bush are magic words, asking for "operational contacts." Translation: "Give me a call...
Yeltsin penned his plea after Bush had delivered his first tentative remarks about the intentions of the coup plotters Monday morning. Bush had carefully -- and, it later seemed, prophetically -- suggested that the putsch might fizzle. "Coups can fail," said Bush. "They can take over at first, and then they run up against the will of the people...