![]() KOLESNIKOV: It's all about imperialism primarily and imperialistic thinking. He argues many Russians are now nostalgic for the Soviet Union. MAYNES: Andrei Kolesnikov is with the Moscow Carnegie Center. A mere 10% see the events as a win for democratic values.ĪNDREI KOLESNIKOV: Primarily, this is all about a lack of understanding of your own history, the meaning of one of the most important and significant events in Russian history. A new poll by the independent Levada Center finds a record 43% of Russians now view Yeltsin's victory in 1991 a disaster. Those dramatic events once signaled the birth of a new democratic Russia, but views have changed in the ensuing decades. Within four months, the Soviet Union was gone with him. MAYNES: As crowds gathered to celebrate outside the KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square, soon came the decision by Moscow City Council to remove a statue of Iron Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the KGB. Yeltsin, and seemingly democracy, had won. By August 21, the coup plotters relented and Gorbachev was freed. Three protesters died that first night, but the order for the army to storm the barricades never came. MAYNES: Thousands rushed to join him, erecting barricades outside the building in a dramatic three-day standoff with the army. MAYNES: Soon, Yeltsin made his way to the Russian White House in the center of Moscow and famously climbed aboard a tank and issued a decree urging Soviets to resist and fight for their freedom. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Russian). They failed to wrest Gorbachev's democratic rival, Boris Yeltsin. MAYNES: Communist hardliners had launched a coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, arresting Gorbachev while on vacation in a last-ditch attempt to turn back the clock on democratic reforms, only they made one crucial mistake. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Russian). MAYNES: Andrey Milov, then a university student in Moscow, remembers thinking someone must have died.ĪNDREY MILOV: In about 15 or 20 minutes or so, they started to explain what was going on. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Russian). Then for his successor, Konstantin Chernenko, and then his successor, Yuri Andropov. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Russian). MAYNES: Soviet leaders had also aired the piece while they selected a new leader following the death of Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev. MAYNES: Soviet citizens knew this was not good. ![]() (SOUNDBITE OF PYTOR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY'S "SWAN LAKE") But as Charles Maynes reports from Moscow, attitudes towards that time are changing.ĬHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: On August 19, 1991, as tanks and troops rolled into Moscow, Soviet state television presented a different picture - Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" on loop. Today marks 30 years since dramatic political events in Russia - the failed coup in 1991 that brought the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.
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