Speaker 1: August nineteen, my husband and I were woken up by
Speaker 1: a telephone call. It was six thirty in the morning.
Speaker 1: It's August nineteen ninety one and Marsha Lipman had just
Speaker 1: started working for the Washington Post in Moscow. I woke up.
Speaker 1: I picked up the receiver. It was a friend from California,
Speaker 1: and what she told me was switch on television. Isn't
Speaker 1: what what are you talking about? It's six thirty year
Speaker 1: and she said, switch on television. There is a political
Speaker 1: coop in Moscow. There was a presenter there reading this
Speaker 1: litany of stale, recognizable communists speak. Has stepped down, he's
Speaker 1: too sick to do his duties. A new political committee
Speaker 1: is now in charge of the country. And I realized that, yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: something absolutely horrible was happening, that after years of liberal
Speaker 1: reform under Gorbachev, a coup was underway, a coup by
Speaker 1: hardliners determined to take the Soviet Union backwards in time,
Speaker 1: away from democracy, back to the old authoritarian days. My husband,
Speaker 1: by the time, of course, was also awake, and we
Speaker 1: were standing there in front of the television. I remember
Speaker 1: we're holding hands without normally do this, you know, standing
Speaker 1: in front of me television at six thirty in the morning,
Speaker 1: held it hands, but it was like he wanted to
Speaker 1: hold on to something. Over the next three days, the
Speaker 1: Soviet people were going to live through Communism's final reckoning,
Speaker 1: three days that would change the world forever. I'm Lance
Speaker 1: bass And from Kaleidoscope Exile and iHeart podcasts. This is
Speaker 1: the Last Soviet. In the last episode, we left Serge
Speaker 1: Kraklev weighing up the decision of a lifetime stay in
Speaker 1: space and save the galaxy's only space station, or go
Speaker 1: back home to Earth, to Moscow, to his wife and daughter.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what was going through his head
Speaker 1: at the time, but whenever I make a big decision,
Speaker 1: like when I had to decide whether to train in
Speaker 1: the Russian Space Program, it feels like my brain is
Speaker 1: playing a game of ping pong, conflicting thoughts bouncing back
Speaker 1: and forth. Suddenly you feel like you've reached some clarity,
Speaker 1: and then a new thought just slams its way in.
Speaker 1: It's agony, and Serge had a lot of things to
Speaker 1: weigh up. First, he had his family to think about.
Speaker 1: They were prepared for him to leave for five months,
Speaker 1: which was hard enough. But if he stayed, they'd have
Speaker 1: no idea when sarage would come home. In a BBC
Speaker 1: documentary from nineteen ninety three, Saragey's wife, Yelena, says, I
Speaker 1: was so upset at this point. He was meant to
Speaker 1: be more than halfway through his five month mission, and
Speaker 1: my soul and my heart, I kept thinking, just a
Speaker 1: little longer and he'll be back home. All the while,
Speaker 1: Saragey is concerned about his family's safety. He knows how
Speaker 1: his country is disintegrating, the poverty, the chaos on the streets.
Speaker 1: Anything could happen. And it's not just what's happening on
Speaker 1: the ground that's wearing Saragey. It's also what might happen
Speaker 1: to him to his body, because the thing is humans
Speaker 1: aren't actually meant to live in a tin can. In
Speaker 1: space and zero gravity, your bones lose density, your muscles weaken.
Speaker 1: Then there's the space sickness, nausea and dizziness. Your immune
Speaker 1: system starts to break down, you have trouble sleeping. A
Speaker 1: few people have been in space longer than six months,
Speaker 1: So sarage just didn't know what would happen to him.
Speaker 1: That's sarage from the same BBC documentary. He says, first
Speaker 1: of all, I had to ask myself, do I actually
Speaker 1: have enough strength to stay mentally physically Sarah says, of
Speaker 1: course I had doubts. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons for saraga to think, actually, I don't want to
Speaker 1: do this. But perhaps there was something else at the
Speaker 1: back of Saragey's mind. Because sarage was dedicated to a dream,
Speaker 1: the dream of the Soviet Union dominating space. Well, ministers
Speaker 1: and all her subdues have been captivated by the charm
Speaker 1: of Gagarin was Saragei's hero. He was the first one
Speaker 1: of us, sarage says, the first to step into the
Speaker 1: great unknown should and so perhaps the thing he focuses
Speaker 1: on is that dream of Gagarin, the hero cosmonaut, there
Speaker 1: to serve the Soviet Union at all costs, because in
Speaker 1: the end, that's what sarage was trained to do, to serve,
Speaker 1: to do his job. He says, he felt in his
Speaker 1: heart that he could do it, his mind, his body,
Speaker 1: he was prepared for this comes up on it, and
Speaker 1: so he dials into mission control and he tells them
Speaker 1: I will stay, stay to protect the station and serve
Speaker 1: my country. But what he didn't know then was that
Speaker 1: just a month later everything would change once again. Good evening,
Speaker 1: the stunning overthrow of Mikael Garbatoff by Communist hardliners dominates
Speaker 1: the news this Monday. Garbertroff is reported under house arrest
Speaker 1: as Soviet tanks took our positions throughout Moscow. At seven
Speaker 1: am on the Soviet space station, Sergei Krikilev unhooks himself
Speaker 1: from his face caught It doesn't sleep well these days,
Speaker 1: lying awake for what feels like forever, occasionally falling in
Speaker 1: and out of frenetic dreams. He floats into the station's
Speaker 1: main module and gets ready for his daily check in.
Speaker 1: But before he has a chance to read out his vitals,
Speaker 1: the Michian control plays him an urgent broadcast. President Gorbachev
Speaker 1: has stepped down. He's too sick to do his due
Speaker 1: to us. A new political committee is now in charge
Speaker 1: of the country. What serge is hearing is the beginning
Speaker 1: of a coup by Communist hardliners against the President Mikhail Korbachev.
Speaker 1: These hardliners were old school party big wigs in the bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: Para Streicher is designed to take authority away military leaders.
Speaker 1: The military is worried about losing its political cloud, and
Speaker 1: high ranking members of the KGB, the secret police, are
Speaker 1: worried they're going to lose political control of the people.
Speaker 1: They believed that the Soviet Empire was something to be
Speaker 1: proud of. In some ways, these guys were the original
Speaker 1: versions of Vladimir Putin, someone who has written and spoken
Speaker 1: about restoring Russia to the glory days of the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: He's talked about reuniting the Greater Soviet Union, and now
Speaker 1: he's been bumping up this Soviet nostalgia. Yea, he was
Speaker 1: actually all about making Russia grade again, long before titald
Speaker 1: Trump was talking about making America grade again. By looking
Speaker 1: backwards back in nineteen ninety one, the hardliners had the
Speaker 1: same aim and so they got together in shadowy back
Speaker 1: rooms and had whispered conversations about what to do, and
Speaker 1: eventually they came up with an idea, a plan to
Speaker 1: stage a military coup in Moscow, and on August nineteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, they decided it was their time to act.
Speaker 1: From ADC. This is a special edition of World News
Speaker 1: Tonight with Peter Jenning. The first thing they do is
Speaker 1: lock up Gorbachev at his dacha or summer house and Crimea.
Speaker 1: They put him under house arrest with no communication to
Speaker 1: the outside world. There's a lot we know tonight hand
Speaker 1: still a lot we do not know. There's been no
Speaker 1: word from mister Germatophy. Even as specific whereabouts are not known,
Speaker 1: it is assumed he is not free. Then they seize
Speaker 1: the meeting. Being of somber music on Soviet television was
Speaker 1: one of the first clues here that something had happened.
Speaker 1: Some people thought somewhat important had died. Early in the morning,
Speaker 1: they ordered the army to take over the main television
Speaker 1: tower in the north of Moscow. Gas media has been
Speaker 1: taken over by this emergency committee. Newspapers are not answering
Speaker 1: their phones. Clearly glass nows to openness is under attack.
Speaker 1: All scheduled programming is replaced by the ballet swan Lake
Speaker 1: on loop. It's interspersed with news flashes. A man in
Speaker 1: glasses awkwardly reading a prepared statement from a piece of paper.
Speaker 1: This is what Sergei and millions of other Soviets were
Speaker 1: hearing that morning. Were waiting, confused, listening to Tchaikovsky over
Speaker 1: and over, were standing in frother me television at six
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning. Hold it hands, that's Musha Litman again.
Speaker 1: It was like he wanted to hold on to something
Speaker 1: because the effect, the shock was immediate and strong in
Speaker 1: the sense was that everything that will have just lived through,
Speaker 1: those times of opening up, of freedom, of wild dreams
Speaker 1: coming through, of old constraints falling apart, that this is
Speaker 1: about to be over. Both parents they lived in fear.
Speaker 1: They unfortunately brought me up in fear. And I dreamed
Speaker 1: and expected that my children would not grow up in fear.
Speaker 1: I had such wonderful dreams about them growing up in
Speaker 1: a free atmosphere. And suddenly it was cut off. It
Speaker 1: was being taken away from us with that presenter reading
Speaker 1: from his papers. But Masha isn't going to give away
Speaker 1: her children's freedom so easily. We need to find out
Speaker 1: whether there would be resistance. She heads out on the streets,
Speaker 1: and that's when she sees the tanks mingling with the
Speaker 1: rush hour traffic. Red army armored personnel carriers on the
Speaker 1: streets of Moscow this morning, heading south towards the River Moscow,
Speaker 1: towards the White House, the seat of the Russian Parliament.
Speaker 1: Tanks from the sofa. Immediately, she has one question on
Speaker 1: her Moscow. Would the people join the coup or would
Speaker 1: they fight back? Christnell carriers rolled by carrying scores of truth,
Speaker 1: some of them brandishing machine guns. When she reached the
Speaker 1: parliament she has her answer. This was the best street
Speaker 1: party ever held in Moscow. Ardamy Troitsky as a culture
Speaker 1: journalist in music critic, but at this moment in time
Speaker 1: he was working on an independent TV news channel, a
Speaker 1: channel that supported democracy, and as soon as he heard
Speaker 1: news of the coup he headed out onto the streets.
Speaker 1: It was really like a huge political rave, and of
Speaker 1: course it was happening round the clock. It was incredible.
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like these, neither before nor after.
Speaker 1: Tanks lined up in front of the Russian Parliament and
Speaker 1: stopping them, a huge crowd shouting, singing songs, saying no,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to go backwards, and he gathered around
Speaker 1: tanks for rating the soldiers. One woman chattered angrily, you
Speaker 1: are fascists. They wanted freedom, democracy. They were even trying
Speaker 1: to block the tanks with their bodies. One man laid
Speaker 1: down in front of a tank to try to halt
Speaker 1: its progress. They also started to build barricades. We makeshift
Speaker 1: barricades with whatever piece of disused machinery or brickwork was available,
Speaker 1: barricades being made out of cars and the buses. One
Speaker 1: crane driver joined the effort, shifting concrete blocks to the
Speaker 1: delight of the crown. Pieces of methyl and wood and lanterns,
Speaker 1: I think build the obstacles designed to prevent any army
Speaker 1: attempt to seize the Russian Parliament building. Of course, they
Speaker 1: were also faming fun. I mean they communicated, they sang songs,
Speaker 1: they flirted. The energy was tremendous because on one hand,
Speaker 1: of course people they've been afraid, but they fought this fear.
Speaker 1: It was electric. It felt like anything could happen. Some
Speaker 1: people were drinking. Indeed there was some boos, but not
Speaker 1: a lot of it because we got high on other things.
Speaker 1: So we got high on revolution, not on alcohol or grass.
Speaker 1: The Soviet people had turned up. They weren't going to
Speaker 1: roll over and let the tanks take away their dreams
Speaker 1: of a freer, more open country. But as day turned
Speaker 1: to night, the party atmosphere started to turn from joy
Speaker 1: to fear. Tonight, small groups of Muscovites gathered around bonfires,
Speaker 1: determined to see what further action the military will take,
Speaker 1: and ur Timmy noticed a sense of dread making its
Speaker 1: way through the crowd. I think that there was a
Speaker 1: great deal of anxiety. Soldiers have sealed off the Russian parliament. Inside,
Speaker 1: officials watch nervously. There were a lot of rumors, increasingly
Speaker 1: certain that Russia's great experiment with democracy has suffered irrevers blow.
Speaker 1: A lot of rumors coming all the time from everywhere,
Speaker 1: Some rumors who were rather frightening, like you know, there
Speaker 1: is a KGB division coming to Moscow from somewhere and
Speaker 1: they are real killers. We are told that they fear
Speaker 1: an attack by military forces loyal to the Committee of Eight.
Speaker 1: We've all seen it happen before. In fact, it happened
Speaker 1: just a couple of years earlier in China, a brutal
Speaker 1: massacre of Chinese students and other protesters by the Chinese army,
Speaker 1: where Chinese soldiers shot and killed hundreds of pro democracy
Speaker 1: protesters in Tenement Square in Beijing. There was a volley
Speaker 1: of tear gas ben without warning, the army opened up
Speaker 1: with bullets, firing indiscriminately at the crowd. As nightfalls, the
Speaker 1: people on the streets of Moscow can't help but think
Speaker 1: maybe this is about to happen to them. We managed
Speaker 1: to get a room at a hotel overlooking the barricades
Speaker 1: and overlooking the White House. That's Serge Schmimon, the New
Speaker 1: York Times correspondent we've been hearing from through the series.
Speaker 1: He has a prime spot overlooking the battle outside the
Speaker 1: Russian Parliament, and what he sees is terrifying. So then
Speaker 1: we all realize that these barricades, dramatic as they are,
Speaker 1: you know, they looked like all these images of revolutions
Speaker 1: past with flags and slogans, but that they're totally useless
Speaker 1: against tanks. The flimsy barricades the people had built were
Speaker 1: symbolic they were going to be there, you know, to
Speaker 1: protect the future against the past. And then that night
Speaker 1: something happened that made everyone think the past was about
Speaker 1: to destroy the future. An extraordinary drama here in Moscow tonight,
Speaker 1: it seems of destruction of fire on the street, three
Speaker 1: tanks drove towards the Parliament. The tanks were commanded by
Speaker 1: a guy called Sergey Sorofkin, who until recently was head
Speaker 1: of the Russian Army in Ukraine. To reach the building,
Speaker 1: they had to get through a narrow underpass. They were
Speaker 1: going down to hunder pass, and that's when the people attacked.
Speaker 1: Within minutes, the tanks were surrounded mobbed by a crowd.
Speaker 1: They were stuck. They got themselves crapped. From there, young
Speaker 1: men hurled rocks of Molotov cocktails. Because they were being
Speaker 1: fulted by rocks and molotov cocktail. Two men climbed on
Speaker 1: board of one of the tanks. Then one of the
Speaker 1: hundred pertainel carriers caught fire. It then slammed into the barricade,
Speaker 1: and as the smoke cleared, three protesters laid down, one
Speaker 1: who said that shold the fulpened fire into the crowd,
Speaker 1: and one were definitely shot in the head. On the
Speaker 1: Soviet space station, Serge is reading about all this drama
Speaker 1: on Maggie's bulletin board. I'd rewrite articles in very simple English.
Speaker 1: They would connect. It's like my own system was a
Speaker 1: tiny bulletin board, and they called it Rita, which is
Speaker 1: my name in Russian. So Rita's information. So I was
Speaker 1: their information source. And so he reads the news. Maggie
Speaker 1: sent him shots in the nights. He read about an
Speaker 1: old world represented by taints and a new one represented
Speaker 1: by the people, the people and the security forces, has
Speaker 1: not been seen since the early days of the Russian Revolution.
Speaker 1: He read about the violence and the deaths of the protesters,
Speaker 1: the Soviet food tones blood with three protest is killed,
Speaker 1: and the more Sergey read, the more he became charged
Speaker 1: with injustice. Soviet tanks should not be attacking the Soviet people.
Speaker 1: It's not in the spirit of the ideals. He grew up,
Speaker 1: serving ideals that focused on honor and virtue. And by
Speaker 1: the evening Sergey had made up his mind. He was
Speaker 1: going to do something no serving cosmonaut had done before.
Speaker 1: He was going to make a political statement, and so
Speaker 1: he wrote a message to send out over the ham
Speaker 1: radio waves, a message from outer space, his attempt to
Speaker 1: tell his countrymen this is where I stand as a cosmonaut.
Speaker 1: And the message went like this, we stand with Gorbachev.
Speaker 1: We denounced the coup and I think that's a very
Speaker 1: brave act what they did. This is Gaya Quinto on
Speaker 1: an Australian radio show. Well, because that went out to
Speaker 1: the world, didn't Yes, it certainly did. It was it
Speaker 1: was on their space stations as a message which could
Speaker 1: be read by all hand radio operators and which was
Speaker 1: read by them. And when Garabachev disappeared, no one knew
Speaker 1: when he was coming back. And they're left in a
Speaker 1: fairly precarious position out there, and they are dependent on
Speaker 1: people on earth, and yet they sided with Gabachov and
Speaker 1: he didn't come back. It's very courageous. It was courageous
Speaker 1: because if Gorbachev's side lost, who knew what would happen
Speaker 1: to Sergei and his family back home. This was a coup.
Speaker 1: It was reported that coup leaders ordered two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand pairs of handcuffs from a factory outside of
Speaker 1: Moscow in preparation for their victory. The infamous KGB jail
Speaker 1: was also cleared out, ready to take new prisoners. Those
Speaker 1: who opposed the coup, especially such high ranking members of
Speaker 1: Soviet society as Cosmonaut, risked prison by speaking out or worse.
Speaker 1: And at that point it looked like the coup was
Speaker 1: going to be successful. Three protesters lay down, and now
Speaker 1: a hush silence fell over the city, and there were
Speaker 1: constant rumors they're coming, and all night people waited for
Speaker 1: the tanks, waited for the tanks that would kill them
Speaker 1: in their thousands. But the night went on and the
Speaker 1: darkness began to lift, and of course in Russia and
Speaker 1: the summer, the night is short, and as the sun
Speaker 1: began to rise, an extraordinary scene greeted the protesters. For
Speaker 1: a moment, it seemed the situation was out of control.
Speaker 1: But during the night, the new leadership had lost their love.
Speaker 1: The soldiers were gone. The young conscript soldiers on the
Speaker 1: streets were bewildered. They too were victims of this coup.
Speaker 1: It was one of the most remarkable feelings because there
Speaker 1: was no announcement. It was just obvious this coup had failed.
Speaker 1: It had failed because nobody joined it, not even Sergei,
Speaker 1: not even the dedicated communist cosmonaut Closeted inside the Kremlin,
Speaker 1: the acting president Yanaiev and the other plotters decided they
Speaker 1: could no longer stay in the city. As they fled
Speaker 1: down the airport road, it was a humiliation, an extraordinary
Speaker 1: climb down. The people had won, and now out in
Speaker 1: the city, there was a different feeling in the air,
Speaker 1: a sense that we were entering new, uncharted waters. It's
Speaker 1: the feeling I remember most clearly. Tired as hell had
Speaker 1: and slept, it had napped and people had made little
Speaker 1: bonfires around, you know, to cook on. And the bonfires
Speaker 1: were put out, and people moved slowly. They got up,
Speaker 1: they gathered up their longings, whatever they had brought for
Speaker 1: the vigil. The vast crowd had gathered to remember three
Speaker 1: victims of the coup, but in reality they were recording
Speaker 1: how close the country had come to disaster. The vigil
Speaker 1: to honor the three dead young men, and then silence,
Speaker 1: breathtaking stillness, as the crowd stood to remember and honor
Speaker 1: the victims of the coup and slowly started walking back
Speaker 1: into the city, smiling, laughing. You know, it was just
Speaker 1: the feeling of the most pure kind of happiness. There
Speaker 1: was nothing to say. There were moments of high emotion,
Speaker 1: some fighting back tears. It was just a beautiful August
Speaker 1: morning in Moscow, and people were going home because they
Speaker 1: had defeated this coup. Many people spoke of this being
Speaker 1: a funeral not just for the three men, but perhaps
Speaker 1: for the Communist party itself. That marked a total turning
Speaker 1: point in then the fate of what was left of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. Victorious protesters marched through the streets, a
Speaker 1: tide of people, bringing with them the banner of independence,
Speaker 1: a huge Russian flag and shouts of down with the
Speaker 1: Communist Party tearing down signs at the Communist Party headquarters
Speaker 1: during a day of proud and peaceful attacks on the
Speaker 1: symbols of Communist Russia and scrawling freedom, Freedom across the
Speaker 1: walls of the KGB, croud revering in the party's humiliation.
Speaker 1: Then they reached the statue of Felix de Zinski, the
Speaker 1: infamous leader of the Soviet Union security forces. By this evening,
Speaker 1: the demonstrators outside the Luvianko were preparing to tear down
Speaker 1: the statue. There was a noose around his neck. Next,
Speaker 1: metal cables were attached to the statue. The crane actually
Speaker 1: tore him off. The journalist Masha Littman was watching on TV,
Speaker 1: and he was dangling in the air for a while.
Speaker 1: One elderly Russian and the crowd said, through lives all
Speaker 1: my life. But I am glad I lived long enough
Speaker 1: to see this. The people had taken back power, and
Speaker 1: that was only the start of it. All around the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, statues of the great heroes of the USSR
Speaker 1: began falling, stalins and linens and Braznev's all over the country.
Speaker 1: The attack at Trzynski was an attack at the KGP,
Speaker 1: It was an attack at the Soviet's regime. It was
Speaker 1: an attack at the omnipotent government that held its population
Speaker 1: and fear. People were no longer scared, and the interfere
Speaker 1: really marked the end of the Soviet Union. Within a
Speaker 1: few months, the hammer and sickle was lowered over the
Speaker 1: Kremlin and replaced by the now familiar white, blue and
Speaker 1: red of the Russian tricolor. For most people, this was
Speaker 1: a moment of celebration, but for Saragey and the space program,
Speaker 1: the collapse of the Soviet Union meant they had no
Speaker 1: idea what their own future looked like. And it's at
Speaker 1: this point that Maggie, Sarage's friend from Australia, begins to
Speaker 1: hear rumors something is wrong on the space station. Journalists
Speaker 1: rang up Saragey's wife and asked her about his illness,
Speaker 1: which is must have been rather devastating for her to
Speaker 1: listen to. And then she heard something even stranger. They
Speaker 1: are in space. They're being stranded there, they're being punished.
Speaker 1: At one point Sergey said to me and Russian, he says,
Speaker 1: they say, we are in prison up here. That's next
Speaker 1: time on the Last Soviet. The Last Soviet is a
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope production in partnership with iHeart Podcast and Exile Media,
Speaker 1: produced by Sama's Dad Audio and hosted by me Lance
Speaker 1: Bass Executive produced by Kate Osbourne and Mangesh Hata Kadoor
Speaker 1: with Oz Wallishan and Kostas Linos from iHeart Executive produced
Speaker 1: by Katrina Norvelle and Nikki Ettore from Sama's Dad Audio
Speaker 1: are Executive producers are Joe Sykes and Dasha Lisitzina. Produced
Speaker 1: by Assia Fuchs, Dasha Litzitzina and Joe Sykes. Writing by
Speaker 1: Lydia Marchant, Research by Mika Golobovski and Molly Schwartz, Music
Speaker 1: by Will Epstein, Themed by Martin Orstrin, Mixing and sound
Speaker 1: design by Richard Ward and special thanks to Nando Villa,
Speaker 1: Will Lissa Pollock, Will Pearson, conal Byrne, Bob Pittman, and
Speaker 1: Isaac Lee. If you want to hear more shows like this,
Speaker 1: nothing is more important to the creators here at Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: than subscribers, ratings, and reviews, so please spread the love
Speaker 1: wherever you listen.