What Might Have Been
YANAYEV: Gorbachev told us [he] wouldn’t let the Soviet Union fall apart… After that, on the fourth of August he calmly left on vacation… By that time there was an open fight between the forces that wanted to keep the Soviet Union and the existing social and political system, and those who wanted to destroy it. In March 1991 there was a referendum carried out about the fate of the Soviet Union....