MOSCOW: Backed by fearsome military might the chiefs of the Soviet army KGB and police and fellow hard-liners sequestered Mikhail Gorbachev clamped a state of emergency on Moscow and swiftly moved to freeze or gut many of the deposed Soviet president’s reforms
Olive-drab tanks armored personnel carriers and troop trucks by the hundreds rumbled through the streets to support the conservatives with the force of arms A defiant Russian President Boris Yeltsin called on the Soviet soldiers to ignore illegal orders and demanded an unlimited nationwide strike to bring the putschists to their knees.
Thousands of frightened outraged Muscovites braved a menacing cordon of Soviet armor to rally outside the Russian republic’s government headquarters on the Moscow River which rapidly warned into the chief focus of resistance to the self-proclaimed Committee for the State of Emergency in the U.S.S.R.
Soldier’s officers and generals! The clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country. They must not be allowed to bring eternal night declared Yeltsin who had climbed onto a tank earlier in the day to plead with the troops
Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to streets in Moscow Tuesday and Wednesday even as reports of gunfire were heard in the streets defying a ban as Russian president Boris Yeltsin and former minister Eduard Shevardnadze declared that the junta dictatorship will not last
Svoboda (freedom) Za Democratizatsyia (hail democratization) Yeltsin Rossiya Rossiya slogans rent the air $ Muscovites gathered outside the Russian legislature’s building wading through barricades of tanks armored personnel earlier transport buses and other vehicles blocking the roads.
A similar scene was witnessed outside the Moscow city council building where the meeting was addressed and Moscow. Mayor Gavril Popov a supporter of Yeltsin.
Yeltsin who Tuesday morning issued an ultimatum to Soviet parliament chairman Anatoly Lukynov to arrange within 24 hours his meeting with ousted president Mikhail Grachev and to allow a team of foreign doctors to examine him (Gorbachev) told the cheering crowd that the illegal decisions of the anti-constitutional Junta would not be valid in Russia.
The Emergency Committee citing the ostensible danger of chaos anarchy and fratricidal civil war decreed in its Resolution No.1 that all press and broadcast organs are now subject to official control that political parties that break the peace are to be shut down that govt bodies that violate Soviet law are to be dissolved and that strikes and demonstrations are banned.
There was no alternative but to take resolute action to stop the country from sliding into disaster Gennady Yanayev elevated from vice president to acting president earlier in the day told a news conference called to explain and justify the transfer of power.
Pressed repeatedly for details on Gorbachev’s where abbots and physical condition Yanayev said that he is on vacation and undergoing treatment in the Crimea where he had gone earlier in the month.
Yanayev said that the 60-yr-old Gorbachev is worm out from serving as Soviet leader since 1985
He grew very tired over these years and he will need some time to get better Yanayev said speaking at a Foreign Ministry building guarded by at least five tanks
Nothing threatens Comrade Gorbachev He is in a safe place except that he needs some time to feel bauer.
Yeltsin’s press secretary Pavel Voshchanov reported that Gorbachev is being detained at his Crimean summer dacha; but that assertion could not be independently confirmed.
Within hours of announcing the Kremlin power transfer that stunned the world Yanayev and his comrades were moving rapidly and ably to assure themselves a virtual monopoly over the Soviet air waves as well as to muzzle the press which had experienced unprecedented freedom under Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost or openness.
By midday Yeltsin said all Soviet radio and TV facilities were in the hands of the rightists.
Yanayev imposed a state of emergency throughout Moscow in the afternoon claiming that there had been attempts to organize rallies street processions and marches in defiance of Resolution No.1
In Resolution No.2 the committee suspended publication of all but nine Moscow based newspapers. Among those banned supposedly only until publications reregister with the Emergency Committee were the liberal or radical Moscow News Kuranty Nezavisimaya Gazeta and Komsomolskaya Pravda the largest circulation daily in the land.
Leningrad Baltic States ,In Leningrad the country’s second-largest city the military commander Colonel General Viktor Simonov went on television to announce that military censorship is being imposed on the press and that army patrols have been authorized to check citizens’ identification papers and search them.
The commander of the Baltic Military District Colonel General Fyodor Kuzm in announced that he is taking charge in the independence-minded republics of Estonia Latvia and Lithuania Latvian officials said.
Troops were said to have invaded television facilities in Riga the Latvian capital and to have shut down broadcasts.
In Lithuania the radio and TV stations in Kaunas were stormed about 9 a.m. by paratroopers and the phone exchange in Vilnius was also occupied govt spokesmen said.
In Estonia authorities reported that Soviet warships have entered the harbor in Tallinn the capital.
Vytaut as Landsbergis president of Lithuania called on the world to support his republic from the danger of Soviet military intervention. Crowds rallied to serve as human shields outside the parliament in Vilnius.
Despite the huge display of military force only one death -in Latvia was reported. Message to Foreign Nations
The Emergency Committee moved quickly to reassure the United States and other nations that the new leadership will remain true to commitments made by the Soviet president who brought about the end of the Cold War won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize and signed the strategic arms treaty last month in Moscow with President Bush
We wish to live in peace and friendship with everyone Yanayev said. Yanayev told reporters that he has sought the backing of leaders of the Soviet republics and that an absolute majority supports the committee’s intention to restore order to the country.
Indeed the heads of the Ukraine and Kazakhstan the largest Soviet republics after Russia dissociated themselves before the end of the day from Yeltsin’s call for a general strike.
What happened had to happen say Leonid Kravchuk of the Ukraine blaming national disorder.
Citing the critical state of the Soviet economy the Emergency Committee in its first resolution ordered the Cabinet of Ministers to take an inventory of the country’s most critical food and consumer goods and take steps to safeguard their stockpiling and distribution.
With the Spector of a possible famine looming because of a projected drop in the annual grain yield special labor brigades of workers students and soldiers will be sent to the villages of the country for the saving of the harvest.
Additionally the govt was ordered to come up with an urgent plan within two weeks to arrest the decline in oil production the single most important source of foreign trade.
(Los Angeles Times)
Article extracted from this publication >> August 23, 1991
