Spymaster, page 46
First, in December 1990, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze stunned all of us in the Congress when he resigned in protest over what he said was a coming Communist dictatorship. Then, in January 1991, Gorbachev—under pressure from his defense and security chiefs—approved the crackdown on the Lithuanian independence movement and the assault on the TV tower in Vilnius. Fifteen people died that night in the Lithuanian capital.
All that spring of 1991, the Communist die-hards around Gorbachev made increasingly threatening speeches. In June, Kryuchkov, Yazov, and Pugo warned of impending disaster if the disintegration of the Soviet Union continued. Kryuchkov hinted darkly that the CIA was behind the breakup and the country’s current troubles. Prime Minister Pavlov displayed extraordinary stupidity when he accused the West of trying to undermine our economy by flooding it with rubles. It was clear that the hard-liners were growing increasingly desperate. When Gorbachev at last found the courage to slap down these Neanderthals, it was too late. They were deeply deluded and believed they could depose Gorbachev and get away with it. When the Soviet leader announced in late July that he would sign a treaty giving unprecedented freedom to the Soviet Union’s twelve remaining republics (the Baltic States were already in the process of bolting), that was the last straw. It was no longer a matter of whether there would be a coup but when.
In early August, Alexander Yakovlev called and asked to meet with me. At one time, he had been Gorbachev’s closest adviser, but as hard-liners like Kryuchkov gained sway over Gorbachev in 1991, Yakovlev lost influence.
“Why don’t you come on over?” I told Yakovlev over the phone.
“No, it makes no sense,” he replied. “Our houses are bugged.”
I suggested we meet in a quiet residential neighborhood not far from the Belorussian Station. We rendezvoused there, and immediately noticed the hubbub on this normally peaceful street. People brushed past us, loitered in nearby doorways, drove slowly by. Clearly, almost comically we were under surveillance. Later, after the coup, a Russian reporter found a document in the KGB archives saying that more than a dozen agents had been assigned that evening to eavesdrop on our street conversation.
“The hell with them,” I told Yakovlev. “Let them do their job.”
“Listen,” he said, “I have something I need to tell you. I met with a colleague of yours from the KGB the other day who told me that there may be attempts on my life and on Shevardnadze’s. I wanted you to know about this in case anything happens to me. I wrote this information down and put it in a safe. Tell me, do you think this is possible?”
“Listen, in Andropov’s time, I would have said it was highly unlikely,” I told Yakovlev. “He was against political assassinations. But Kryuchkov is a madman and there’s no telling what he might do. He is a scoundrel and may resort to anything, so I don’t exclude the possibility of political assassination.”
Yakovlev also expressed the fear that the hard-line elements around Gorbachev might try to pull off a coup. I left my friend that night feeling profoundly unsettled.
On August 18, an old friend of mine from the KGB met me in the street and told me, “Something is up. I know for sure a coup will take place in September or October. It’s all being prepared.” I could only shake my head and hope that even Kryuchkov would not be so foolish.
And then, the following morning, it happened.
I was awakened shortly after six o’clock by a woman who worked for one of my liberal legislative colleagues. She broke the news with one word.
“Perevorot,” she said, the Russian word for “coup.”
“Turn on the radio,” the woman went on. “A coup is taking place. A military coup.”
I hung up and switched on the radio. An announcer was reading a statement by the Committee for the State of Emergency—the band of fools that had deposed Gorbachev. I switched on the TV and there was the movie Swan Lake, the old Soviet standby whenever a leader died or a similarly momentous event took place.
I looked out the window of my seventh-floor apartment, which overlooks Moscow’s Fili Park. It was a glorious summer morning, warm and balmy. All day long I was struck by the contrast: such horrible events were taking place against the backdrop of the most splendid Russian weather. What did these idiots—Kryuchkov, Yazov, Pugo, Pavlov and company—expect to accomplish? What bloody fools!
The first thing I did was load my hunting rifle. This was a melodramatic gesture, but in the first minutes of the coup I had no idea what to expect. Clearly, if Gorbachev was deposed and a crackdown was under way, I would be high on the list of people to be arrested. Were we about to be thrown back decades, to the nightmare of the Stalin years? I didn’t know. But loading my gun gave me a small measure of comfort.
I called Yakovlev at 6:20 A.M. His wife answered the phone.
“Is Alexander Nikolayevich available?” I asked.
“No, he’s still in bed,” she replied.
“Listen,” I told her. “Do you know there’s a coup taking place?”
“No, what do you mean?” she said.
“Turn on the radio,” I said. “They are playing the announcement over and over.”
She handed the phone to her husband.
“Oleg, what is it you’re saying?”
“There’s a coup taking place. It’s on the radio right now,” I told my old friend.
“Podonki (scumbags)!” he barked into the phone. There was a pause of several seconds and then, “We must be prepared for anything.”
We signed off, and I knew Yakovlev was right. Kryuchkov and his fellow plotters wouldn’t hesitate to disband the Soviet Congress. And if they did so, I knew that my arrest wouldn’t be far behind.
I stepped onto the balcony off my bedroom. Gazing down on the quiet courtyard and parking lot seven floors below, I saw a Zhiguli sitting off to one side of the lot in a place where few people ever park. Surveillance team, I thought, and resolved to get out of my apartment. There was no sense sitting at home, waiting to be arrested. I planned to head downtown and join whatever voices were resisting this idiotic adventure.
I told Ludmilla I was leaving. She didn’t protest, but the strained look on her face told me that she was even more worried than I was.
“What is going to happen to you now?” she asked. I just shrugged, but she knew as well as I that the best place to be on this day was on the streets.
Around 8:00 A.M., as I was preparing to leave, a reporter from the BBC in London called. He wanted my assessment of the situation, and I told him, “As I understand it, this is an adventure on the part of those who have always wanted to restore the old order. But I am sure they will fail and in two or three days everything will be clear.”
I was trying to put on a brave face, and knew that my words were more wishful thinking than anything else. I did believe, however, that we had come too far, ever to go back again. I believed democratic forces would ultimately prevail, but I had no idea how long or how bloody the struggle might be.
In the lobby of my building, which mainly housed KGB generals and Communist Party officials, a young woman pushing a baby stroller greeted me. She immediately burst into tears and said, “Mr. Kalugin, you must do something! This is an impossible situation. They are trying to bring back the old regime. Please do something!”
I told her I would do what I could. Her words had a strangely cheering effect. If this young woman, the daughter of a KGB general, was so violently opposed to the coup, then there was hope. She was proof that there was something deep inside the Soviet people that would resist a return to the past.
I looked at the Zhiguli parked off to the side. Three men, unmistakably KGB, sat in the car and watched me as I moved toward my automobile. As I pulled out of the parking lot, the Zhiguli began following me, as did another surveillance car parked on the street. They stayed right with me, making no effort to conceal that I was under close surveillance.
I headed down Kutuzovsky Prospect for the Russian parliament building—the White House—on the banks of the Moscow River. I parked across the street and walked over to the building, followed on foot by a KGB surveillance team. Armored personnel carriers had begun moving down Kutuzovsky Prospect, but so far there were no tanks in sight. There were very few people in front of the parliament building, and it would have been a cinch to storm the White House and arrest Yeltsin and all inside. As became clear later, however, the coup leadership hesitated to take such a drastic step, and when Kryuchkov finally did order his elite Alpha commando group and Russian paratroopers to take the White House, the officers refused.
Flashing my deputy’s badge, I entered the high-rise parliament building. I immediately ran into Leningrad mayor Antoly Sobchak and other reformers who were scurrying about the hallways, their faces filled with tension and determination. Around 11:00 A.M., Yeltsin gave a press conference inside the parliament, and his angry, defiant words stirred me and thousands of others. When the press conference ended, the Russian president, surrounded by a few bodyguards, strode out the front entrance of the White House, down a flight of steps, and marched over to a line of a half dozen tanks that had taken up positions near the Moscow River. I followed and watched from a few yards away as Yeltsin, in what would become the enduring image of the coup, clambered aboard a tank and told the soldiers and officers not to obey the orders of the plotters. It was an inspired move and went a long way toward rallying the Russian people, many of whom would later see the pictures on CNN. After the Russian president went back inside the White House, the tank commanders revved up their engines, emitting choking clouds of diesel smoke, then clattered up and down the road in front of the parliament before rumbling away. They clearly had no idea what to do, and their indecision, coupled with the evident unwillingness of the soldiers in armored vehicles to shoot fellow Russians, gave me hope that the putsch could be defeated.
I decided to head downtown to the headquarters of the city’s Communist Party Committee, where I had several good friends. As I walked back to my car, I was followed by several KGB men. Much to my surprise, one of them came up behind me and said, “Oleg Daniilovich, you know what we suggest? Move your car out of here. There’s a big crowd coming from downtown and they may smash your car.”
A friendly warning from the very men assigned to follow and perhaps arrest me, was another sign to me that the hard-liners at the top may have badly miscalculated. Sitting in the Kremlin, they thought they could say the word and the masses would follow. But only hours after the coup began, the scene on the street, and the obvious reluctance of the security forces to follow the State of Emergency Committee, boded ill for Kryuchkov and his gang.
As I walked to my car, a crowd of more than a thousand people was streaming down Kalinin Prospect, heading toward the White House. Some of the marchers caught sight of me and began to yell, “Hey, General! Join us! Lead us to the White House!”
I found myself swept up by the crowd, which was shouting, “Long Live Yeltsin!” and “Down with the putschists!” We arrived in the plaza behind the Russian parliament, and the people in the crowd asked me to go inside and ask Yeltsin to address them. I made my way through the crowded halls to the president’s antechamber, which was packed with dozens of assistants and legislators, as well as bodyguards armed with machine guns. Yeltsin was closeted with his aides, but Vice President Alexander Rutskoi promised that he himself would soon address the ever-growing crowd.
I drove to the headquarters of the Moscow Communist Party, located on Staraya Square next to the Party’s Central Committee building. My KGB shadows were still with me, and they parked their car not far from mine. My deputy’s badge assured me entrance into the imposing gray stone building, and soon I was in the office of a good friend, Alexei. Though he worked in the Party apparatus, he had as little idea as I did about the intentions and resolve of the coup leaders.
“Oh, Oleg,” he sighed. “These scoundrels. What are we going to do now?”
We were standing near an open window, and Alexei looked down at the surveillance team waiting for me below.
“Listen, are they after you?” Alexei asked.
“Yes, they probably are,” I replied, not wanting to unduly alarm him.
“You must get out of here,” my friend said. “You never know what they will do to you. You must escape. I’ll organize it for you.”
The Communist Party buildings on Staraya Square made up an enormous, interconnected complex of offices. There was even a network of tunnels underneath, including a top secret subway line that would take Party officials out of the city in case of nuclear attack, revolution, or other calamity. There were exits in the building that had not been used for years, and Alexei knew just such an escape route, located at the other end of the building more than one hundred yards away from the main entrance. Alexei showed me the little known exit, then went and got his Volga, which had curtains over the windows. A few minutes later he pulled up to the exit and I hopped into the car, unseen by the surveillance teams. It was about 2:00 P.M. I learned later that my KGB trackers stayed in the Staraya Square parking lot until 9:00 P.M., watching my car and waiting for me to emerge.
I decided to go to the Hotel Rossiya, where some of my fellow deputies who lived at the hotel were gathering. I quickly found my colleagues, and we talked for hours about the situation, making plans to continue the work of the Russian parliament should the coup leaders be so foolish as to storm the White House. Around 10:00 P.M., I decided to go to the White House. We heard, however, that a curfew had been imposed and I figured it would be better to spend the night at the Rossiya and head for the parliament the first thing the next day.
Waking up at 6:30, I walked to Staraya Square, where my car still sat and the surveillance team had long disappeared. I wanted to see how Ludmilla was, so I drove home. As expected, the surveillance teams were waiting for me, but by this time I didn’t care. The night had passed quietly in the capital, and the crowd of defenders in front of the White House had hit five thousand people and was growing. There was nearly total silence from the coup leaders; at the time we were baffled by their inaction, but later it would emerge that they were in utter disarray. Some, like Vice President Gennadi Yanaev and Prime Minister Pavlov, were constantly drunk. Others, such as Defense Minister Yazov, were losing their resolve. Tuesday, August 20, we knew none of this, and the atmosphere in the city was menacing.
Ludmilla was overjoyed to see me. I breakfasted and fielded still more calls from reporters. A German TV station wanted me to come in for a studio interview, and I agreed. Shortly after 9:00 A.M., they sent a car for me, and, followed by the two KGB surveillance cars, we headed to the German television bureau on Gruzinskaya Street in the center of town.
After the interview, I left on foot. I had decided to take the Metro to the White House and was taking the escalator to the subway platform when I heard a man’s voice behind me.
“Don’t turn around,” he commanded. “You will be arrested, but not today. I will warn you when it is coming. But your friends [and fellow legislators] Gdlyan, Yakunin, and several others will be arrested today. Gdlyan has already been arrested. Portnov is already under arrest and Belozertsev will be arrested soon. You are not on the list today, but I will warn you when it happens. Do not turn around.”
He shoved a piece of paper into my hand and said, “Call me. My home phone number is written there.”
I followed his instructions and never looked back. Shoving the paper in my pocket, I glanced at the crowded subway platform for my newfound KGB friend or other members of the surveillance team. I didn’t spot anyone suspicious. Things were certainly getting strange.
The weather had turned cloudy by Tuesday afternoon, day two of the coup. Thousands of people had now gathered at the White House, which had become the center of resistance to the putsch. Yeltsin had issued decrees calling on all Russians to disobey the plotters and stage a nationwide strike. Outside a few key cities such as Moscow and Leningrad, the masses were waiting to see how the drama in the capital would play itself out.
When I arrived at the White House, a steady stream of reform politicians was addressing the swelling crowd in the square behind the building. The leaders stood atop a balcony and boomed their calls for resistance into a microphone. Below, Muscovites roared their support and cursed the plotters. That afternoon, I was asked to address the crowd, and I relayed to them what the KGB officer had told me that morning on the escalator.
“My dear friend [and legislator] Father Gleb, you will be arrested today,” I told the silent crowd. “I want to warn you. I know it from a source in the KGB. Not everyone in the KGB is a bad guy. Some are real friends of ours, and they told me you would be arrested today. Gdlyan and Portnov are already under arrest. I want you all to know these things. . . . Beware, KGB agents are in the crowd and they may try to provoke you. They will try to get inside the White House to start a rebellion from within.”
As I had walked into the White House, a man approached me and said he was a KGB officer. “I want to speak,” he said. “I want to show that not all KGB men are scoundrels. I am one of those who aren’t.”
He showed me his ID. I told him to join me, and after I spoke, he took the microphone. “I am a KGB officer and I denounce these adventurers,” he said to the cheering crowd. “I want to tell you that not all KGB people are behind Kryuchkov. I will be here with you.”
I stayed in the White House from that moment on, giving interviews to foreign and Soviet journalists and doing whatever I could to rally people to the defense of the Russian parliament. I saw the renowned émigré cellist and conductor of the Washington Symphony, Mstislav Rostropovich, and chatted with my colleagues from the parliament. I couldn’t believe the putschists would try to storm the building, but as darkness fell Tuesday the situation became more threatening. We had reliable information from sources in the KGB and the army that an attack on the White House was planned for early Wednesday morning. (In fact Kryuchkov and Co. couldn’t find anyone willing to carry it out.)
