Erstellt am: 18. 8. 2011 - 14:29 Uhr
Vodka politics and the end of the Soviet Union
Lessons from 20 years ago: if you’re in charge of a coup, don’t hit the vodka bottle!
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Vodka first appeared in Russia 600 years ago and it has played its part in clearing or clouding the minds of tyrants, czars, presidents and plotters ever since.
Take the coup attempt in the Soviet Union 20 years ago. In fact as coup attempts go this has to be one of the worst; it was hastily planned and poorly executed by fairly incompetent individuals. Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union and was attempting to balance his personal goals of perestroika and more openness for the soviet bloc against a growing sense of instability in the republics and increasing feelings of mistrust from many around him. The Baltic states, (Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania) along with Georgia had already declared their independence; for the remaining republics he was due to sign a new union treaty which decentralized much of the central government's power to regional capitals.
Whilst relaxing at his holiday villa on the Black Sea, a group of KGB officers turned up. Gorbachev picked up the phone but it had been cut off. For the next 3 days, the villa was under guard and he was repeatedly asked to sign a statement of resignation due to ill-health.
Meanwhile, back in the Kremlin his vice-President Gennady Yanayev was taking the reins of power alongside a State Emergency Committee. But the problem was Yanayev was not comfortable in the limelight and hit the vodka bottle to get him through the next few hours. He fumbled his way through a hastily arranged press conference as television cameras famously focused in on his hands which were shaking dramatically. It’s not exactly clear if he sobered up during the three day coup but years later, the newspaper Novy Vzglyad quoted Yanayev as admitting he had been drunk when he signed the decree deposing Gorbachev, but denied it had affected his judgment: "My body is such that I remain sane even after drinking all my buddies under the table." I guess he hadn’t spent much time with Boris Yeltsin, who on a 1995 visit to Washington D.C. was reportedly found on Pennsylvania Avenue, drunk, in his underwear and trying to hail a cab in order to find pizza.
But here’s a scary after-thought to the events of August 1991. The conspirators ordered 250,000 pairs of handcuffs from a factory and they printed 300,000 arrest forms. All KGB personnel were called back from holiday, placed on alert and their pay was doubled whilst the notorious Lefortovo prison was emptied to receive prisoners. Thank goodness it all ended after a fairly bloodless 3 days.
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