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. The question itself was false from the beginning, because common people never had any doubts whether they needed this proud, great, democratic country, despite its difficulties; 76 percent of the population [backed] keeping the Soviet Union. Who gave the right to the president to ignore the will of the people?
Gorbachev knew everything. Moreover, he was pushing us to these measures because he wanted to solve the most delicate problems in the country, using us but [staying in the shadows], and one of these problems was to neutralize Yeltsin. Gorbachev and Yeltsin pathologically hated each other… because there was very little space for two bears in one den. At first I didn’t want to do it. I was insulted by the manner of the preparations. I was supposed to head the emergency committee, but I was the last to know what was happening, like a jealous wife is the last to learn about her husband’s betrayal… I thought till the very last moment that Gorbachev wasn’t a traitor. But he himself at one point said, “In my heart, I have never been a communist.”
Those three days [were] anarchy. Power was lying on the ground and any adventurer could pick it up, which is what happened. [Yeltsin] is a political Narcissus who had huge ambitions and, as we say, little ammunition. He had neither knowledge nor intellect. Plus he had a passion for alcohol.
I was very upset by the reaction of Moscow or, to be more exact, 50,000 Muscovites, including those who were sincerely mistaken… Now people are saying that we made a foolish mistake by not arresting Yeltsin. First of all, it was never in our plans to arrest Yeltsin or anybody else. Yeltsin returned from Kazakhstan absolutely drunk. So we could have taken him out to the forest for a few days, given him something to drink and there never would have been a Yeltsin.
The fact that for 10 years I have been asked this very question proves that there is nothing else to reproach me for. I didn’t steal anything, I didn’t rob anyone. The only thing to reproach me for is my shaking hands. Shaking hands! I feel like cutting them off… I was nervous.
The economy would not have been thrown back 40 years. There would be no disorder, no corruption, no Chechnya, no disintegration of the Soviet Union… The country would still be great and united.
Absolutely correct. A communist Soviet Union, but at the same time a democratic Soviet Union. We didn’t want a totalitarian state.
