Word: coups
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...arrest me or take me away somewhere." Returning to his office, he found that the delegation had already bulled its way in. There were four besides Plekhanov. Gorbachev initially named only one: Valeri Boldin, his own chief of staff. It was as if John Sununu had joined a coup against George Bush. The others were finally identified as Oleg Baklanov, deputy chairman of the National Defense Council and in effect leader of the military-industrial complex; a Communist Party hack named Oleg Shenin; and General Valentin Varennikov. In the name of the so-called State Committee for the State...
...treaty would transfer so many powers -- over taxes, natural resources, even the state security apparatus -- to the republics as to make restoring ironfisted Kremlin control of the whole country impossible. Moreover, a new national Cabinet would have been named by representatives of the republics. Some of the eventual coup leaders, including KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov and Interior Minister Boris Pugo, would almost certainly have lost their jobs. The plotters could not afford to let that treaty go into effect...
...Gorbachev by his own testimony was totally unprepared. To some scholars and Soviet officials that appears so odd as to suggest that the President himself had staged a Potemkin coup to win domestic and foreign sympathy. But that seems farfetched. More probably, the very volume and intensity of coup talk had dulled his political antennae; the cry of wolf was sounding old and tired. Alexander Yakovlev, a close adviser, claimed after it was all over that he had even given Gorbachev the names of some likely -- and, as it turned out actual -- plotters. The President, according to Yakovlev, had scoffed...
...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...