Word: coupes
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...plus possibly lesser-known figures. Some of Russian republic president Boris Yeltsin's aides later fingered Baklanov as the chief plotter. The committee announced that it would rule by decree for six months, and began setting up some of the machinery of dictatorship. All newspapers except for nine pro-coup sheets were ordered to stop publishing, political parties were suspended and protest demonstrations banned. Muscovites going to work or to shop Monday morning had to maneuver around troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers that were moving to cordon off or seize key installations...
...obvious even that early that the coup was ill planned and curiously halfhearted. The plotters neglected to carry out that sine qua non of successful coups: the immediate arrest of popular potential enemies before they could begin organizing a resistance. In particular, the failure to make sure that Yeltsin was taken into custody (there were some reports that an attempt at an arrest was made, but botched) was fatal. Inexplicably, the putschists did not even pull the plug on the communications of anyone except Gorbachev. Bush and other foreign leaders were amazed at how easily they could get through...
Within the U.S.S.R. many powerful figures who wound up opposing the coup were initially noncommittal, stayed conspicuously out of sight or played highly ambiguous roles. Alexander Dzasokhov, a secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, tried to paint the party as a resolute opponent of the conspirators. "From the very beginning of the coup," he said, the committee secretariat "kept trying to get in touch with the state Emergency Committee and demanded that they see Gorbachev." In fact, though, Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, says the Central Committee on Monday secretly urged local party organizations to support...
Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh came down with a vaguely defined illness, one of several seeming cases of "coup flu." (Symptoms: cold feet and a weakening of the backbone.) After initially cabling Soviet ambassadors around the world to put a "good face" on the coup, Bessmertnykh climbed out of his sickbed to denounce the plot only after it was falling apart -- too late, as it turned out, to keep from getting fired. General Mikhail Moiseyev, Chief of the Soviet General Staff, was perhaps conveniently on vacation in the Crimea when the coup began. But some of his subordinates claimed...
Even the indomitable Yeltsin reportedly had a moment of irresolution. On Monday morning he hurried to the Russian republic headquarters -- nicknamed the White House because of its marble facade -- and was quickly joined by other coup opponents. One of them, former Soviet Interior Minister Vadim Bakhatin, says they urged Yeltsin to proclaim himself in command of all army and KGB units on Russian republic soil. Bakhatin recounts that Yeltsin was reluctant; he feared that such an order would split the army and perhaps start a bloody civil war. Bakhatin and others, however, convinced Yeltsin that if no one exercising constitutional...