Preface

Extract

The world changed on August 19, 1991. On that date, a self-styled “Emergency Committee” of conservative Politburo members attempted to derail and reverse the process of structural reform that had started some six years earlier under the sponsorship of Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The coup backfired two days later because its leaders misunderstood a central political fact of life after perestroika—namely, that political events could no longer be scripted to suit the changing tastes of the party elitte. While the plotters probably suspected as much—indeed, that was one of the reasons why they initiated the coup in the first place—their mistake was in overestimating their capacity to put a stop to this “state of anarchy.” While the vast majority of Soviet citizens acted precisely as the Emergency Committee expected them to—with utter indifference to the ultimate outcome of this elite power struggle—a small minority did not. It was this opposition, not only in the streets, but within party, military, and security organs, that defeated the coup and ushered in the momentous changes that we are experiencing today.