March 22, 2023 • 28 mins
Sergei makes the decision to stay in the space station. But a few weeks later something happens that changes everything. Mikhail Gorbachev disappears. What happens over the next 3 days will decide the future of the Soviet Union once and for all. Three days that changed the world.
Like what you hear? Follow us @kscope_nyc on Twitter and Instagram.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
August nineteen, my husband and I were woken up by
a telephone call. It was six thirty in the morning.
It's August nineteen ninety one and Marsha Lipman had just
started working for the Washington Post in Moscow. I woke up.
I picked up the receiver. It was a friend from California,
(00:32):
and what she told me was switch on television. Isn't
what what are you talking about? It's six thirty year
and she said, switch on television. There is a political
coop in Moscow. There was a presenter there reading this
(00:52):
litany of stale, recognizable communists speak. Has stepped down, he's
too sick to do his duties. A new political committee
is now in charge of the country. And I realized that, yes, indeed,
something absolutely horrible was happening, that after years of liberal
(01:16):
reform under Gorbachev, a coup was underway, a coup by
hardliners determined to take the Soviet Union backwards in time,
away from democracy, back to the old authoritarian days. My husband,
by the time, of course, was also awake, and we
were standing there in front of the television. I remember
(01:37):
we're holding hands without normally do this, you know, standing
in front of me television at six thirty in the morning,
held it hands, but it was like he wanted to
hold on to something. Over the next three days, the
Soviet people were going to live through Communism's final reckoning,
three days that would change the world forever. I'm Lance
(02:03):
bass And from Kaleidoscope Exile and iHeart podcasts. This is
the Last Soviet. In the last episode, we left Serge
Kraklev weighing up the decision of a lifetime stay in
space and save the galaxy's only space station, or go
(02:23):
back home to Earth, to Moscow, to his wife and daughter.
I don't know exactly what was going through his head
at the time, but whenever I make a big decision,
like when I had to decide whether to train in
the Russian Space Program, it feels like my brain is
playing a game of ping pong, conflicting thoughts bouncing back
(02:43):
and forth. Suddenly you feel like you've reached some clarity,
and then a new thought just slams its way in.
It's agony, and Serge had a lot of things to
weigh up. First, he had his family to think about.
They were prepared for him to leave for five months,
which was hard enough. But if he stayed, they'd have
(03:04):
no idea when sarage would come home. In a BBC
documentary from nineteen ninety three, Saragey's wife, Yelena, says, I
was so upset at this point. He was meant to
be more than halfway through his five month mission, and
my soul and my heart, I kept thinking, just a
(03:26):
little longer and he'll be back home. All the while,
Saragey is concerned about his family's safety. He knows how
his country is disintegrating, the poverty, the chaos on the streets.
Anything could happen. And it's not just what's happening on
the ground that's wearing Saragey. It's also what might happen
(03:47):
to him to his body, because the thing is humans
aren't actually meant to live in a tin can. In
space and zero gravity, your bones lose density, your muscles weaken.
Then there's the space sickness, nausea and dizziness. Your immune
system starts to break down, you have trouble sleeping. A
(04:11):
few people have been in space longer than six months,
So sarage just didn't know what would happen to him.
That's sarage from the same BBC documentary. He says, first
of all, I had to ask myself, do I actually
have enough strength to stay mentally physically Sarah says, of
(04:37):
course I had doubts. So there are a lot of
reasons for saraga to think, actually, I don't want to
do this. But perhaps there was something else at the
back of Saragey's mind. Because sarage was dedicated to a dream,
the dream of the Soviet Union dominating space. Well, ministers
(05:03):
and all her subdues have been captivated by the charm
of Gagarin was Saragei's hero. He was the first one
of us, sarage says, the first to step into the
(05:26):
great unknown should and so perhaps the thing he focuses
on is that dream of Gagarin, the hero cosmonaut, there
to serve the Soviet Union at all costs, because in
the end, that's what sarage was trained to do, to serve,
(05:48):
to do his job. He says, he felt in his
heart that he could do it, his mind, his body,
he was prepared for this comes up on it, and
so he dials into mission control and he tells them
I will stay, stay to protect the station and serve
(06:10):
my country. But what he didn't know then was that
just a month later everything would change once again. Good evening,
the stunning overthrow of Mikael Garbatoff by Communist hardliners dominates
the news this Monday. Garbertroff is reported under house arrest
as Soviet tanks took our positions throughout Moscow. At seven
(06:43):
am on the Soviet space station, Sergei Krikilev unhooks himself
from his face caught It doesn't sleep well these days,
lying awake for what feels like forever, occasionally falling in
and out of frenetic dreams. He floats into the station's
main module and gets ready for his daily check in.
But before he has a chance to read out his vitals,
(07:05):
the Michian control plays him an urgent broadcast. President Gorbachev
has stepped down. He's too sick to do his due
to us. A new political committee is now in charge
of the country. What serge is hearing is the beginning
(07:28):
of a coup by Communist hardliners against the President Mikhail Korbachev.
These hardliners were old school party big wigs in the bureaucracy.
Para Streicher is designed to take authority away military leaders.
The military is worried about losing its political cloud, and
high ranking members of the KGB, the secret police, are
worried they're going to lose political control of the people.
(07:51):
They believed that the Soviet Empire was something to be
proud of. In some ways, these guys were the original
versions of Vladimir Putin, someone who has written and spoken
about restoring Russia to the glory days of the Soviet Union.
He's talked about reuniting the Greater Soviet Union, and now
he's been bumping up this Soviet nostalgia. Yea, he was
(08:14):
actually all about making Russia grade again, long before titald
Trump was talking about making America grade again. By looking
backwards back in nineteen ninety one, the hardliners had the
same aim and so they got together in shadowy back
rooms and had whispered conversations about what to do, and
eventually they came up with an idea, a plan to
(08:37):
stage a military coup in Moscow, and on August nineteenth,
nineteen ninety one, they decided it was their time to act.
From ADC. This is a special edition of World News
Tonight with Peter Jenning. The first thing they do is
(08:58):
lock up Gorbachev at his dacha or summer house and Crimea.
They put him under house arrest with no communication to
the outside world. There's a lot we know tonight hand
still a lot we do not know. There's been no
word from mister Germatophy. Even as specific whereabouts are not known,
it is assumed he is not free. Then they seize
the meeting. Being of somber music on Soviet television was
(09:19):
one of the first clues here that something had happened.
Some people thought somewhat important had died. Early in the morning,
they ordered the army to take over the main television
tower in the north of Moscow. Gas media has been
taken over by this emergency committee. Newspapers are not answering
their phones. Clearly glass nows to openness is under attack.
All scheduled programming is replaced by the ballet swan Lake
(09:44):
on loop. It's interspersed with news flashes. A man in
glasses awkwardly reading a prepared statement from a piece of paper.
This is what Sergei and millions of other Soviets were
hearing that morning. Were waiting, confused, listening to Tchaikovsky over
(10:07):
and over, were standing in frother me television at six
thirty in the morning. Hold it hands, that's Musha Litman again.
It was like he wanted to hold on to something
because the effect, the shock was immediate and strong in
the sense was that everything that will have just lived through,
(10:28):
those times of opening up, of freedom, of wild dreams
coming through, of old constraints falling apart, that this is
about to be over. Both parents they lived in fear.
(10:53):
They unfortunately brought me up in fear. And I dreamed
and expected that my children would not grow up in fear.
I had such wonderful dreams about them growing up in
a free atmosphere. And suddenly it was cut off. It
was being taken away from us with that presenter reading
from his papers. But Masha isn't going to give away
(11:16):
her children's freedom so easily. We need to find out
whether there would be resistance. She heads out on the streets,
and that's when she sees the tanks mingling with the
rush hour traffic. Red army armored personnel carriers on the
(11:37):
streets of Moscow this morning, heading south towards the River Moscow,
towards the White House, the seat of the Russian Parliament.
Tanks from the sofa. Immediately, she has one question on
her Moscow. Would the people join the coup or would
they fight back? Christnell carriers rolled by carrying scores of truth,
(11:58):
some of them brandishing machine guns. When she reached the
parliament she has her answer. This was the best street
party ever held in Moscow. Ardamy Troitsky as a culture
journalist in music critic, but at this moment in time
he was working on an independent TV news channel, a
(12:19):
channel that supported democracy, and as soon as he heard
news of the coup he headed out onto the streets.
It was really like a huge political rave, and of
course it was happening round the clock. It was incredible.
I've never seen anything like these, neither before nor after.
(12:43):
Tanks lined up in front of the Russian Parliament and
stopping them, a huge crowd shouting, singing songs, saying no,
they didn't want to go backwards, and he gathered around
tanks for rating the soldiers. One woman chattered angrily, you
are fascists. They wanted freedom, democracy. They were even trying
(13:05):
to block the tanks with their bodies. One man laid
down in front of a tank to try to halt
its progress. They also started to build barricades. We makeshift
barricades with whatever piece of disused machinery or brickwork was available,
barricades being made out of cars and the buses. One
crane driver joined the effort, shifting concrete blocks to the
(13:28):
delight of the crown. Pieces of methyl and wood and lanterns,
I think build the obstacles designed to prevent any army
attempt to seize the Russian Parliament building. Of course, they
were also faming fun. I mean they communicated, they sang songs,
they flirted. The energy was tremendous because on one hand,
(13:49):
of course people they've been afraid, but they fought this fear.
It was electric. It felt like anything could happen. Some
people were drinking. Indeed there was some boos, but not
a lot of it because we got high on other things.
So we got high on revolution, not on alcohol or grass.
(14:13):
The Soviet people had turned up. They weren't going to
roll over and let the tanks take away their dreams
of a freer, more open country. But as day turned
to night, the party atmosphere started to turn from joy
(14:33):
to fear. Tonight, small groups of Muscovites gathered around bonfires,
determined to see what further action the military will take,
and ur Timmy noticed a sense of dread making its
way through the crowd. I think that there was a
great deal of anxiety. Soldiers have sealed off the Russian parliament. Inside,
officials watch nervously. There were a lot of rumors, increasingly
(14:55):
certain that Russia's great experiment with democracy has suffered irrevers blow.
A lot of rumors coming all the time from everywhere,
Some rumors who were rather frightening, like you know, there
is a KGB division coming to Moscow from somewhere and
they are real killers. We are told that they fear
(15:18):
an attack by military forces loyal to the Committee of Eight.
We've all seen it happen before. In fact, it happened
just a couple of years earlier in China, a brutal
massacre of Chinese students and other protesters by the Chinese army,
where Chinese soldiers shot and killed hundreds of pro democracy
protesters in Tenement Square in Beijing. There was a volley
(15:40):
of tear gas ben without warning, the army opened up
with bullets, firing indiscriminately at the crowd. As nightfalls, the
people on the streets of Moscow can't help but think
maybe this is about to happen to them. We managed
to get a room at a hotel overlooking the barricades
(16:02):
and overlooking the White House. That's Serge Schmimon, the New
York Times correspondent we've been hearing from through the series.
He has a prime spot overlooking the battle outside the
Russian Parliament, and what he sees is terrifying. So then
we all realize that these barricades, dramatic as they are,
(16:23):
you know, they looked like all these images of revolutions
past with flags and slogans, but that they're totally useless
against tanks. The flimsy barricades the people had built were
symbolic they were going to be there, you know, to
protect the future against the past. And then that night
(16:43):
something happened that made everyone think the past was about
to destroy the future. An extraordinary drama here in Moscow tonight,
it seems of destruction of fire on the street, three
tanks drove towards the Parliament. The tanks were commanded by
a guy called Sergey Sorofkin, who until recently was head
(17:05):
of the Russian Army in Ukraine. To reach the building,
they had to get through a narrow underpass. They were
going down to hunder pass, and that's when the people attacked.
Within minutes, the tanks were surrounded mobbed by a crowd.
They were stuck. They got themselves crapped. From there, young
(17:26):
men hurled rocks of Molotov cocktails. Because they were being
fulted by rocks and molotov cocktail. Two men climbed on
board of one of the tanks. Then one of the
hundred pertainel carriers caught fire. It then slammed into the barricade,
and as the smoke cleared, three protesters laid down, one
(17:48):
who said that shold the fulpened fire into the crowd,
and one were definitely shot in the head. On the
(18:17):
Soviet space station, Serge is reading about all this drama
on Maggie's bulletin board. I'd rewrite articles in very simple English.
They would connect. It's like my own system was a
tiny bulletin board, and they called it Rita, which is
my name in Russian. So Rita's information. So I was
their information source. And so he reads the news. Maggie
(18:42):
sent him shots in the nights. He read about an
old world represented by taints and a new one represented
by the people, the people and the security forces, has
not been seen since the early days of the Russian Revolution.
He read about the violence and the deaths of the protesters,
the Soviet food tones blood with three protest is killed,
(19:02):
and the more Sergey read, the more he became charged
with injustice. Soviet tanks should not be attacking the Soviet people.
It's not in the spirit of the ideals. He grew up,
serving ideals that focused on honor and virtue. And by
the evening Sergey had made up his mind. He was
(19:24):
going to do something no serving cosmonaut had done before.
He was going to make a political statement, and so
he wrote a message to send out over the ham
radio waves, a message from outer space, his attempt to
tell his countrymen this is where I stand as a cosmonaut.
(19:47):
And the message went like this, we stand with Gorbachev.
We denounced the coup and I think that's a very
brave act what they did. This is Gaya Quinto on
an Australian radio show. Well, because that went out to
the world, didn't Yes, it certainly did. It was it
was on their space stations as a message which could
(20:10):
be read by all hand radio operators and which was
read by them. And when Garabachev disappeared, no one knew
when he was coming back. And they're left in a
fairly precarious position out there, and they are dependent on
people on earth, and yet they sided with Gabachov and
he didn't come back. It's very courageous. It was courageous
(20:32):
because if Gorbachev's side lost, who knew what would happen
to Sergei and his family back home. This was a coup.
It was reported that coup leaders ordered two hundred and
fifty thousand pairs of handcuffs from a factory outside of
Moscow in preparation for their victory. The infamous KGB jail
was also cleared out, ready to take new prisoners. Those
(20:55):
who opposed the coup, especially such high ranking members of
Soviet society as Cosmonaut, risked prison by speaking out or worse.
And at that point it looked like the coup was
going to be successful. Three protesters lay down, and now
(21:20):
a hush silence fell over the city, and there were
constant rumors they're coming, and all night people waited for
the tanks, waited for the tanks that would kill them
in their thousands. But the night went on and the
darkness began to lift, and of course in Russia and
the summer, the night is short, and as the sun
(21:43):
began to rise, an extraordinary scene greeted the protesters. For
a moment, it seemed the situation was out of control.
But during the night, the new leadership had lost their love.
The soldiers were gone. The young conscript soldiers on the
streets were bewildered. They too were victims of this coup.
It was one of the most remarkable feelings because there
(22:05):
was no announcement. It was just obvious this coup had failed.
It had failed because nobody joined it, not even Sergei,
not even the dedicated communist cosmonaut Closeted inside the Kremlin,
the acting president Yanaiev and the other plotters decided they
could no longer stay in the city. As they fled
(22:26):
down the airport road, it was a humiliation, an extraordinary
climb down. The people had won, and now out in
the city, there was a different feeling in the air,
a sense that we were entering new, uncharted waters. It's
the feeling I remember most clearly. Tired as hell had
and slept, it had napped and people had made little
(22:50):
bonfires around, you know, to cook on. And the bonfires
were put out, and people moved slowly. They got up,
they gathered up their longings, whatever they had brought for
the vigil. The vast crowd had gathered to remember three
victims of the coup, but in reality they were recording
how close the country had come to disaster. The vigil
(23:11):
to honor the three dead young men, and then silence,
breathtaking stillness, as the crowd stood to remember and honor
the victims of the coup and slowly started walking back
(23:32):
into the city, smiling, laughing. You know, it was just
the feeling of the most pure kind of happiness. There
was nothing to say. There were moments of high emotion,
some fighting back tears. It was just a beautiful August
morning in Moscow, and people were going home because they
(23:52):
had defeated this coup. Many people spoke of this being
a funeral not just for the three men, but perhaps
for the Communist party itself. That marked a total turning
point in then the fate of what was left of
the Soviet Union. Victorious protesters marched through the streets, a
(24:12):
tide of people, bringing with them the banner of independence,
a huge Russian flag and shouts of down with the
Communist Party tearing down signs at the Communist Party headquarters
during a day of proud and peaceful attacks on the
symbols of Communist Russia and scrawling freedom, Freedom across the
walls of the KGB, croud revering in the party's humiliation.
(24:33):
Then they reached the statue of Felix de Zinski, the
infamous leader of the Soviet Union security forces. By this evening,
the demonstrators outside the Luvianko were preparing to tear down
the statue. There was a noose around his neck. Next,
metal cables were attached to the statue. The crane actually
tore him off. The journalist Masha Littman was watching on TV,
(24:54):
and he was dangling in the air for a while.
One elderly Russian and the crowd said, through lives all
my life. But I am glad I lived long enough
to see this. The people had taken back power, and
that was only the start of it. All around the
Soviet Union, statues of the great heroes of the USSR
(25:18):
began falling, stalins and linens and Braznev's all over the country.
The attack at Trzynski was an attack at the KGP,
It was an attack at the Soviet's regime. It was
an attack at the omnipotent government that held its population
and fear. People were no longer scared, and the interfere
(25:43):
really marked the end of the Soviet Union. Within a
few months, the hammer and sickle was lowered over the
Kremlin and replaced by the now familiar white, blue and
red of the Russian tricolor. For most people, this was
a moment of celebration, but for Saragey and the space program,
(26:06):
the collapse of the Soviet Union meant they had no
idea what their own future looked like. And it's at
this point that Maggie, Sarage's friend from Australia, begins to
hear rumors something is wrong on the space station. Journalists
rang up Saragey's wife and asked her about his illness,
(26:31):
which is must have been rather devastating for her to
listen to. And then she heard something even stranger. They
are in space. They're being stranded there, they're being punished.
At one point Sergey said to me and Russian, he says,
they say, we are in prison up here. That's next
(26:54):
time on the Last Soviet. The Last Soviet is a
Kaleidoscope production in partnership with iHeart Podcast and Exile Media,
produced by Sama's Dad Audio and hosted by me Lance
(27:15):
Bass Executive produced by Kate Osbourne and Mangesh Hata Kadoor
with Oz Wallishan and Kostas Linos from iHeart Executive produced
by Katrina Norvelle and Nikki Ettore from Sama's Dad Audio
are Executive producers are Joe Sykes and Dasha Lisitzina. Produced
(27:36):
by Assia Fuchs, Dasha Litzitzina and Joe Sykes. Writing by
Lydia Marchant, Research by Mika Golobovski and Molly Schwartz, Music
by Will Epstein, Themed by Martin Orstrin, Mixing and sound
design by Richard Ward and special thanks to Nando Villa,
Will Lissa Pollock, Will Pearson, conal Byrne, Bob Pittman, and
(27:59):
Isaac Lee. If you want to hear more shows like this,
nothing is more important to the creators here at Kaleidoscope
than subscribers, ratings, and reviews, so please spread the love
wherever you listen.
August nineteen, my husband and I were woken up by
a telephone call. It was six thirty in the morning.
It's August nineteen ninety one and Marsha Lipman had just
started working for the Washington Post in Moscow. I woke up.
I picked up the receiver. It was a friend from California,
(00:32):
and what she told me was switch on television. Isn't
what what are you talking about? It's six thirty year
and she said, switch on television. There is a political
coop in Moscow. There was a presenter there reading this
(00:52):
litany of stale, recognizable communists speak. Has stepped down, he's
too sick to do his duties. A new political committee
is now in charge of the country. And I realized that, yes, indeed,
something absolutely horrible was happening, that after years of liberal
(01:16):
reform under Gorbachev, a coup was underway, a coup by
hardliners determined to take the Soviet Union backwards in time,
away from democracy, back to the old authoritarian days. My husband,
by the time, of course, was also awake, and we
were standing there in front of the television. I remember
(01:37):
we're holding hands without normally do this, you know, standing
in front of me television at six thirty in the morning,
held it hands, but it was like he wanted to
hold on to something. Over the next three days, the
Soviet people were going to live through Communism's final reckoning,
three days that would change the world forever. I'm Lance
(02:03):
bass And from Kaleidoscope Exile and iHeart podcasts. This is
the Last Soviet. In the last episode, we left Serge
Kraklev weighing up the decision of a lifetime stay in
space and save the galaxy's only space station, or go
(02:23):
back home to Earth, to Moscow, to his wife and daughter.
I don't know exactly what was going through his head
at the time, but whenever I make a big decision,
like when I had to decide whether to train in
the Russian Space Program, it feels like my brain is
playing a game of ping pong, conflicting thoughts bouncing back
(02:43):
and forth. Suddenly you feel like you've reached some clarity,
and then a new thought just slams its way in.
It's agony, and Serge had a lot of things to
weigh up. First, he had his family to think about.
They were prepared for him to leave for five months,
which was hard enough. But if he stayed, they'd have
(03:04):
no idea when sarage would come home. In a BBC
documentary from nineteen ninety three, Saragey's wife, Yelena, says, I
was so upset at this point. He was meant to
be more than halfway through his five month mission, and
my soul and my heart, I kept thinking, just a
(03:26):
little longer and he'll be back home. All the while,
Saragey is concerned about his family's safety. He knows how
his country is disintegrating, the poverty, the chaos on the streets.
Anything could happen. And it's not just what's happening on
the ground that's wearing Saragey. It's also what might happen
(03:47):
to him to his body, because the thing is humans
aren't actually meant to live in a tin can. In
space and zero gravity, your bones lose density, your muscles weaken.
Then there's the space sickness, nausea and dizziness. Your immune
system starts to break down, you have trouble sleeping. A
(04:11):
few people have been in space longer than six months,
So sarage just didn't know what would happen to him.
That's sarage from the same BBC documentary. He says, first
of all, I had to ask myself, do I actually
have enough strength to stay mentally physically Sarah says, of
(04:37):
course I had doubts. So there are a lot of
reasons for saraga to think, actually, I don't want to
do this. But perhaps there was something else at the
back of Saragey's mind. Because sarage was dedicated to a dream,
the dream of the Soviet Union dominating space. Well, ministers
(05:03):
and all her subdues have been captivated by the charm
of Gagarin was Saragei's hero. He was the first one
of us, sarage says, the first to step into the
(05:26):
great unknown should and so perhaps the thing he focuses
on is that dream of Gagarin, the hero cosmonaut, there
to serve the Soviet Union at all costs, because in
the end, that's what sarage was trained to do, to serve,
(05:48):
to do his job. He says, he felt in his
heart that he could do it, his mind, his body,
he was prepared for this comes up on it, and
so he dials into mission control and he tells them
I will stay, stay to protect the station and serve
(06:10):
my country. But what he didn't know then was that
just a month later everything would change once again. Good evening,
the stunning overthrow of Mikael Garbatoff by Communist hardliners dominates
the news this Monday. Garbertroff is reported under house arrest
as Soviet tanks took our positions throughout Moscow. At seven
(06:43):
am on the Soviet space station, Sergei Krikilev unhooks himself
from his face caught It doesn't sleep well these days,
lying awake for what feels like forever, occasionally falling in
and out of frenetic dreams. He floats into the station's
main module and gets ready for his daily check in.
But before he has a chance to read out his vitals,
(07:05):
the Michian control plays him an urgent broadcast. President Gorbachev
has stepped down. He's too sick to do his due
to us. A new political committee is now in charge
of the country. What serge is hearing is the beginning
(07:28):
of a coup by Communist hardliners against the President Mikhail Korbachev.
These hardliners were old school party big wigs in the bureaucracy.
Para Streicher is designed to take authority away military leaders.
The military is worried about losing its political cloud, and
high ranking members of the KGB, the secret police, are
worried they're going to lose political control of the people.
(07:51):
They believed that the Soviet Empire was something to be
proud of. In some ways, these guys were the original
versions of Vladimir Putin, someone who has written and spoken
about restoring Russia to the glory days of the Soviet Union.
He's talked about reuniting the Greater Soviet Union, and now
he's been bumping up this Soviet nostalgia. Yea, he was
(08:14):
actually all about making Russia grade again, long before titald
Trump was talking about making America grade again. By looking
backwards back in nineteen ninety one, the hardliners had the
same aim and so they got together in shadowy back
rooms and had whispered conversations about what to do, and
eventually they came up with an idea, a plan to
(08:37):
stage a military coup in Moscow, and on August nineteenth,
nineteen ninety one, they decided it was their time to act.
From ADC. This is a special edition of World News
Tonight with Peter Jenning. The first thing they do is
(08:58):
lock up Gorbachev at his dacha or summer house and Crimea.
They put him under house arrest with no communication to
the outside world. There's a lot we know tonight hand
still a lot we do not know. There's been no
word from mister Germatophy. Even as specific whereabouts are not known,
it is assumed he is not free. Then they seize
the meeting. Being of somber music on Soviet television was
(09:19):
one of the first clues here that something had happened.
Some people thought somewhat important had died. Early in the morning,
they ordered the army to take over the main television
tower in the north of Moscow. Gas media has been
taken over by this emergency committee. Newspapers are not answering
their phones. Clearly glass nows to openness is under attack.
All scheduled programming is replaced by the ballet swan Lake
(09:44):
on loop. It's interspersed with news flashes. A man in
glasses awkwardly reading a prepared statement from a piece of paper.
This is what Sergei and millions of other Soviets were
hearing that morning. Were waiting, confused, listening to Tchaikovsky over
(10:07):
and over, were standing in frother me television at six
thirty in the morning. Hold it hands, that's Musha Litman again.
It was like he wanted to hold on to something
because the effect, the shock was immediate and strong in
the sense was that everything that will have just lived through,
(10:28):
those times of opening up, of freedom, of wild dreams
coming through, of old constraints falling apart, that this is
about to be over. Both parents they lived in fear.
(10:53):
They unfortunately brought me up in fear. And I dreamed
and expected that my children would not grow up in fear.
I had such wonderful dreams about them growing up in
a free atmosphere. And suddenly it was cut off. It
was being taken away from us with that presenter reading
from his papers. But Masha isn't going to give away
(11:16):
her children's freedom so easily. We need to find out
whether there would be resistance. She heads out on the streets,
and that's when she sees the tanks mingling with the
rush hour traffic. Red army armored personnel carriers on the
(11:37):
streets of Moscow this morning, heading south towards the River Moscow,
towards the White House, the seat of the Russian Parliament.
Tanks from the sofa. Immediately, she has one question on
her Moscow. Would the people join the coup or would
they fight back? Christnell carriers rolled by carrying scores of truth,
(11:58):
some of them brandishing machine guns. When she reached the
parliament she has her answer. This was the best street
party ever held in Moscow. Ardamy Troitsky as a culture
journalist in music critic, but at this moment in time
he was working on an independent TV news channel, a
(12:19):
channel that supported democracy, and as soon as he heard
news of the coup he headed out onto the streets.
It was really like a huge political rave, and of
course it was happening round the clock. It was incredible.
I've never seen anything like these, neither before nor after.
(12:43):
Tanks lined up in front of the Russian Parliament and
stopping them, a huge crowd shouting, singing songs, saying no,
they didn't want to go backwards, and he gathered around
tanks for rating the soldiers. One woman chattered angrily, you
are fascists. They wanted freedom, democracy. They were even trying
(13:05):
to block the tanks with their bodies. One man laid
down in front of a tank to try to halt
its progress. They also started to build barricades. We makeshift
barricades with whatever piece of disused machinery or brickwork was available,
barricades being made out of cars and the buses. One
crane driver joined the effort, shifting concrete blocks to the
(13:28):
delight of the crown. Pieces of methyl and wood and lanterns,
I think build the obstacles designed to prevent any army
attempt to seize the Russian Parliament building. Of course, they
were also faming fun. I mean they communicated, they sang songs,
they flirted. The energy was tremendous because on one hand,
(13:49):
of course people they've been afraid, but they fought this fear.
It was electric. It felt like anything could happen. Some
people were drinking. Indeed there was some boos, but not
a lot of it because we got high on other things.
So we got high on revolution, not on alcohol or grass.
(14:13):
The Soviet people had turned up. They weren't going to
roll over and let the tanks take away their dreams
of a freer, more open country. But as day turned
to night, the party atmosphere started to turn from joy
(14:33):
to fear. Tonight, small groups of Muscovites gathered around bonfires,
determined to see what further action the military will take,
and ur Timmy noticed a sense of dread making its
way through the crowd. I think that there was a
great deal of anxiety. Soldiers have sealed off the Russian parliament. Inside,
officials watch nervously. There were a lot of rumors, increasingly
(14:55):
certain that Russia's great experiment with democracy has suffered irrevers blow.
A lot of rumors coming all the time from everywhere,
Some rumors who were rather frightening, like you know, there
is a KGB division coming to Moscow from somewhere and
they are real killers. We are told that they fear
(15:18):
an attack by military forces loyal to the Committee of Eight.
We've all seen it happen before. In fact, it happened
just a couple of years earlier in China, a brutal
massacre of Chinese students and other protesters by the Chinese army,
where Chinese soldiers shot and killed hundreds of pro democracy
protesters in Tenement Square in Beijing. There was a volley
(15:40):
of tear gas ben without warning, the army opened up
with bullets, firing indiscriminately at the crowd. As nightfalls, the
people on the streets of Moscow can't help but think
maybe this is about to happen to them. We managed
to get a room at a hotel overlooking the barricades
(16:02):
and overlooking the White House. That's Serge Schmimon, the New
York Times correspondent we've been hearing from through the series.
He has a prime spot overlooking the battle outside the
Russian Parliament, and what he sees is terrifying. So then
we all realize that these barricades, dramatic as they are,
(16:23):
you know, they looked like all these images of revolutions
past with flags and slogans, but that they're totally useless
against tanks. The flimsy barricades the people had built were
symbolic they were going to be there, you know, to
protect the future against the past. And then that night
(16:43):
something happened that made everyone think the past was about
to destroy the future. An extraordinary drama here in Moscow tonight,
it seems of destruction of fire on the street, three
tanks drove towards the Parliament. The tanks were commanded by
a guy called Sergey Sorofkin, who until recently was head
(17:05):
of the Russian Army in Ukraine. To reach the building,
they had to get through a narrow underpass. They were
going down to hunder pass, and that's when the people attacked.
Within minutes, the tanks were surrounded mobbed by a crowd.
They were stuck. They got themselves crapped. From there, young
(17:26):
men hurled rocks of Molotov cocktails. Because they were being
fulted by rocks and molotov cocktail. Two men climbed on
board of one of the tanks. Then one of the
hundred pertainel carriers caught fire. It then slammed into the barricade,
and as the smoke cleared, three protesters laid down, one
(17:48):
who said that shold the fulpened fire into the crowd,
and one were definitely shot in the head. On the
(18:17):
Soviet space station, Serge is reading about all this drama
on Maggie's bulletin board. I'd rewrite articles in very simple English.
They would connect. It's like my own system was a
tiny bulletin board, and they called it Rita, which is
my name in Russian. So Rita's information. So I was
their information source. And so he reads the news. Maggie
(18:42):
sent him shots in the nights. He read about an
old world represented by taints and a new one represented
by the people, the people and the security forces, has
not been seen since the early days of the Russian Revolution.
He read about the violence and the deaths of the protesters,
the Soviet food tones blood with three protest is killed,
(19:02):
and the more Sergey read, the more he became charged
with injustice. Soviet tanks should not be attacking the Soviet people.
It's not in the spirit of the ideals. He grew up,
serving ideals that focused on honor and virtue. And by
the evening Sergey had made up his mind. He was
(19:24):
going to do something no serving cosmonaut had done before.
He was going to make a political statement, and so
he wrote a message to send out over the ham
radio waves, a message from outer space, his attempt to
tell his countrymen this is where I stand as a cosmonaut.
(19:47):
And the message went like this, we stand with Gorbachev.
We denounced the coup and I think that's a very
brave act what they did. This is Gaya Quinto on
an Australian radio show. Well, because that went out to
the world, didn't Yes, it certainly did. It was it
was on their space stations as a message which could
(20:10):
be read by all hand radio operators and which was
read by them. And when Garabachev disappeared, no one knew
when he was coming back. And they're left in a
fairly precarious position out there, and they are dependent on
people on earth, and yet they sided with Gabachov and
he didn't come back. It's very courageous. It was courageous
(20:32):
because if Gorbachev's side lost, who knew what would happen
to Sergei and his family back home. This was a coup.
It was reported that coup leaders ordered two hundred and
fifty thousand pairs of handcuffs from a factory outside of
Moscow in preparation for their victory. The infamous KGB jail
was also cleared out, ready to take new prisoners. Those
(20:55):
who opposed the coup, especially such high ranking members of
Soviet society as Cosmonaut, risked prison by speaking out or worse.
And at that point it looked like the coup was
going to be successful. Three protesters lay down, and now
(21:20):
a hush silence fell over the city, and there were
constant rumors they're coming, and all night people waited for
the tanks, waited for the tanks that would kill them
in their thousands. But the night went on and the
darkness began to lift, and of course in Russia and
the summer, the night is short, and as the sun
(21:43):
began to rise, an extraordinary scene greeted the protesters. For
a moment, it seemed the situation was out of control.
But during the night, the new leadership had lost their love.
The soldiers were gone. The young conscript soldiers on the
streets were bewildered. They too were victims of this coup.
It was one of the most remarkable feelings because there
(22:05):
was no announcement. It was just obvious this coup had failed.
It had failed because nobody joined it, not even Sergei,
not even the dedicated communist cosmonaut Closeted inside the Kremlin,
the acting president Yanaiev and the other plotters decided they
could no longer stay in the city. As they fled
(22:26):
down the airport road, it was a humiliation, an extraordinary
climb down. The people had won, and now out in
the city, there was a different feeling in the air,
a sense that we were entering new, uncharted waters. It's
the feeling I remember most clearly. Tired as hell had
and slept, it had napped and people had made little
(22:50):
bonfires around, you know, to cook on. And the bonfires
were put out, and people moved slowly. They got up,
they gathered up their longings, whatever they had brought for
the vigil. The vast crowd had gathered to remember three
victims of the coup, but in reality they were recording
how close the country had come to disaster. The vigil
(23:11):
to honor the three dead young men, and then silence,
breathtaking stillness, as the crowd stood to remember and honor
the victims of the coup and slowly started walking back
(23:32):
into the city, smiling, laughing. You know, it was just
the feeling of the most pure kind of happiness. There
was nothing to say. There were moments of high emotion,
some fighting back tears. It was just a beautiful August
morning in Moscow, and people were going home because they
(23:52):
had defeated this coup. Many people spoke of this being
a funeral not just for the three men, but perhaps
for the Communist party itself. That marked a total turning
point in then the fate of what was left of
the Soviet Union. Victorious protesters marched through the streets, a
(24:12):
tide of people, bringing with them the banner of independence,
a huge Russian flag and shouts of down with the
Communist Party tearing down signs at the Communist Party headquarters
during a day of proud and peaceful attacks on the
symbols of Communist Russia and scrawling freedom, Freedom across the
walls of the KGB, croud revering in the party's humiliation.
(24:33):
Then they reached the statue of Felix de Zinski, the
infamous leader of the Soviet Union security forces. By this evening,
the demonstrators outside the Luvianko were preparing to tear down
the statue. There was a noose around his neck. Next,
metal cables were attached to the statue. The crane actually
tore him off. The journalist Masha Littman was watching on TV,
(24:54):
and he was dangling in the air for a while.
One elderly Russian and the crowd said, through lives all
my life. But I am glad I lived long enough
to see this. The people had taken back power, and
that was only the start of it. All around the
Soviet Union, statues of the great heroes of the USSR
(25:18):
began falling, stalins and linens and Braznev's all over the country.
The attack at Trzynski was an attack at the KGP,
It was an attack at the Soviet's regime. It was
an attack at the omnipotent government that held its population
and fear. People were no longer scared, and the interfere
(25:43):
really marked the end of the Soviet Union. Within a
few months, the hammer and sickle was lowered over the
Kremlin and replaced by the now familiar white, blue and
red of the Russian tricolor. For most people, this was
a moment of celebration, but for Saragey and the space program,
(26:06):
the collapse of the Soviet Union meant they had no
idea what their own future looked like. And it's at
this point that Maggie, Sarage's friend from Australia, begins to
hear rumors something is wrong on the space station. Journalists
rang up Saragey's wife and asked her about his illness,
(26:31):
which is must have been rather devastating for her to
listen to. And then she heard something even stranger. They
are in space. They're being stranded there, they're being punished.
At one point Sergey said to me and Russian, he says,
they say, we are in prison up here. That's next
(26:54):
time on the Last Soviet. The Last Soviet is a
Kaleidoscope production in partnership with iHeart Podcast and Exile Media,
produced by Sama's Dad Audio and hosted by me Lance
(27:15):
Bass Executive produced by Kate Osbourne and Mangesh Hata Kadoor
with Oz Wallishan and Kostas Linos from iHeart Executive produced
by Katrina Norvelle and Nikki Ettore from Sama's Dad Audio
are Executive producers are Joe Sykes and Dasha Lisitzina. Produced
(27:36):
by Assia Fuchs, Dasha Litzitzina and Joe Sykes. Writing by
Lydia Marchant, Research by Mika Golobovski and Molly Schwartz, Music
by Will Epstein, Themed by Martin Orstrin, Mixing and sound
design by Richard Ward and special thanks to Nando Villa,
Will Lissa Pollock, Will Pearson, conal Byrne, Bob Pittman, and
(27:59):
Isaac Lee. If you want to hear more shows like this,
nothing is more important to the creators here at Kaleidoscope
than subscribers, ratings, and reviews, so please spread the love
wherever you listen.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!