Erstellt am: 18. 8. 2011 - 14:29 Uhr

Vodka politics and the end of the Soviet Union

Reality Check: 20 years since the break-up of the Soviet Union and India's new Gandhi scores points in his anti-corruption campaign

Lessons from 20 years ago: if you’re in charge of a coup, don’t hit the vodka bottle!

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.

Also on Reality Check:

In the steps of Gandhi

In India, anti-corruption campaigner, Anna Hazare, has been given permission to go on hunger strike. He was arrested and jailed on Tuesday as he was about to begin his public, peaceful protest in a park in Delhi, but thousands of his supporters across the country demonstrated to demand his release, and eventually the authorities gave in. The parallels to the peaceful protests of Mohandras "Mahatma" Gandhi are not going unmisssed among Indians, and Hazare himself says he is modelling his protest on Gandhi's struggle for Indian independence. But with corruption so deeply rooted in Indian life, can he make any difference? Our Delhi correspondent, Geeta Pandy, says she thinks he will have a wide reaching effect.

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