Three days that shook the world
As witness to history, correspondent
recalls amazing events of '91 coup attempt
By Eileen O'Connor
CNN Washington Bureau

(CNN) -- August is always slow. That's what they say in the news business anyway. In August 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev was at his dacha on the Black Sea, getting some rest after a successful summit with U.S. President George Bush. Bush too had the "vacation" sign out at the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Gorbachev needed a break. It hadn't been a good year for the Soviet leader. Even his supporters like Edvard Shevardnadze, the former foreign minister, and Alexander Yakovlev, his closest adviser, had quit, sounding ominous warnings about impending right-wing coups.

Nevertheless, Gorbachev insisted he had the support necessary to go ahead with the signing of a new union treaty that would reshape the Soviet Union as a more loosely bound connection of sovereign states. Many were hopeful that the treaty could be the beginning of the dismantling of the old Communist state. Until then, Gorbachev had talked about openness, restructuring, but in August there was an action plan. However, this plan meant the old party bureaucracy could be out of power, losing its perks and privileges.

Still, most Russians, including Boris Yeltsin, the newly elected leader of the Russian Republic, were at their dachas when an announcement came on radio and television.

'Is it true?

The ominous tones on the airwaves declared a committee, led by Gorbachev's own vice president, Gennady Yanayev, had taken over and established a state of emergency in order to save the country.

The committee's statement talked of Gorbachev's "inability to perform his duties for health reasons."

My friends called, asking, "Is it true?"

Our simultaneous translator -- whom I was calling to come into work -- asked, "Will this get me in trouble?"

I told him I didn't know.

"What should I do?" he asked.

I told him that only he could decide, but if he was afraid, we would understand.

After a moment's pause, he said, "What am I saying? Of course, I'll be right there."

No one knew what was happening. We literally broke the news to several members of parliament and people at the foreign ministry. In between re-readings of the announcement, some radio stations played "Swan Lake" or even more somber music. Whenever such music pre-empted regular programming, Kremlin watchers were sure that someone high up had died. Was Gorbachev dead?

We immediately got on the phone.

The coup attempt appeared to be well-organized, with the KGB chief and the defense minister on board.

We dispatched our crews to the outskirts of Moscow to see if tanks or troops were on the move from nearby barracks. I went with one team to the Russian White House, right across from our bureau, to track down Yeltsin.

But that left us short a camera. We needed one on the roof to do "live shots," where a reporter, Steve Hurst or I, would answer anchor questions and fill in viewers on the latest developments. So I ran downstairs to my apartment to get my newly purchased VHS camera, which up until now had been recording my 10-month-old daughter's latest attempts at walking. We hooked it up. It wasn't pretty, but it worked.

Just as I got to the Russian White House, I noticed the ambassadors of several countries already there. This was too important to send underlings.

Yeltsin stands up to the coup

As Russian president, Yeltsin urged a general strike until Mikhail Gorbachev was restored to power.

Yeltsin, flanked by his advisers, including Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, declared the ouster of Gorbachev as unconstitutional and called for a general strike and peaceful protests.

Years later, Kozyrev told me he kept wondering when the soldiers would storm the room. Every one of Yelstin's advisers thought it was only a matter of time before they, and we, were all arrested.

But we weren't. Just as I was interviewing another of his advisers after the press conference, I saw a group of security men sweep by. In their midst was that familiar white head of hair. Yeltsin was going out the front door, down the steps and into the streets.

My cameraman and I ran. As we tried to get in front of the group, running backward down the stairs, one of the security men knocked me off my feet. With no one to guide him, my cameraman Michael Johnson, fell backward, tripping a 220-pound cameraman, who fell on top of him and our camera, breaking off the viewfinder. Yeltsin kept going.

Behind us, there was a rumble. Tanks. On the bridge and down below the Russian White House. Yeltsin was striding toward one.

There was only one thing that would save our view of the moment. Gaffer tape. We quickly taped the camera back together, and Michael got the shot that came to symbolize the coup, the picture of Yeltsin up on that tank.

After he spoke to the people gathered there, which were not many, I ran the tape toward the bureau. There was no way to drive. The road was clogged with tanks and filling up with people.

Babushkas, Russian grandmothers, were approaching the soldiers on top of the tanks and armored personnel carriers, asking them, "Why are you here?" I heard one ask, "Does your mother know you're doing this?"

I kept running, but I knew as I heard the soldiers' confused replies that something wasn't quite right with this coup. The so-called "committee" didn't seem to have the military, at least the foot soldiers, firmly behind it.

When I reached the office, we ran the tape. As I was leaving to go back to be near Yeltsin in the Russian White House, I ran into another friend, journalist Sasha Lubimov, coming to our office. Lubimov's television show, "Vzglad," or "View," had been shut down a few weeks earlier. "I'm here to help," he said.

'They won't let us tell the story'

Lubimov and some other Russian TV journalists we knew shot their own video and brought it to our office for the next two days, until the coup unraveled.

"They won't let us tell the story," they would say, "please let us tell it through CNN."

As I traveled to various Soviet republics in the days after the coup, people would come up to me on the streets, in hotels and offices, hugging me, thanking me. We hadn't known it, but as Soviet TV showed "Swan Lake," local governments in places like Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia and elsewhere were putting out CNN, taking it off the satellite and translating it into the local language, live.

At one point during the coup, we heard the committee wanted to shut us down. But technicians at Soviet TV, which supplied our satellite uplink, later told us they had questioned the paperwork, sending it back for more signatures.

Low-level workers were defying the coup leaders.

Coup plotters, from left, Boris Pugo, Gennady Yanayev and Oleg Baklanov go public with the formation of a State of Emergency Committee. Yanayev said he was assuming the presidency due to Gorbachev's poor health.

Those acts of defiance and the growing number of tanks joining the thousands of people gathered outside the Russian White House, where Yeltsin was staying, spelled trouble for the coup leaders.

In Leningrad and other cities around the Soviet Union, thousands took to the streets to protest against the coup committee members, whom Yeltsin called "a bunch of adventurists" intent on reintroducing a "concentration camp" regime.

The one time the committee's leader, Yanayev, appeared, his hands shook uncontrollably. It was at a press conference on the first day of the coup attempt. Shortly after, it was announced Yanayev was being replaced by his deputy due to a bout of high blood pressure.

Still, inside the Russian White House, tension ran high.

At times, Yeltsin and his advisers were convinced tanks would move on the building. We had taken over an office in an upper floor, with a crew inside and outside the building. At one point, three people were killed when troops fired on a crowd of protesters after they pelted an armored personnel carrier (APC) with a homemade Molotov cocktail, setting the APC on fire.

Gorbachev restored but not for long

As the tanks sat below my baby daughter's window, my husband and I worried. Eventually, an American diplomat I knew took her out of the country, on a flight to New York, to the waiting arms of my sister and my parents.

But then, almost miraculously, we heard from Yeltsin's advisers that they were going to the Black Sea to bring Gorbachev back. The coup was over.

Coup plotters who had tried to speak to Gorbachev -- to negotiate a way out -- were arrested. Unknown to all of us at the time, Gen. Mikhail Moiseyev, the armed forces chief of staff, had decided to halt the movement of troops toward the Russian parliament. The military sided with Yeltsin and the people.

Despite thanking Yeltsin and the "decisive actions of the democratic forces of the country" for restoring his rule, Gorbachev did not denounce the Communist Party quickly enough for many people. For many of us watching, even then, we knew his rule would not go unchallenged.

Looking back, it is impossible still to be anything but awed by the bravery of so many people who took to the barricades they erected outside the Russian parliament. Young, old, workers and intellectuals all united in hope of a better future, where their voices could be heard and would never again be silenced. I have always felt lucky and honored to have been there, a witness to history, and to the birth, literally, of a new country.

Eileen O'Connor, a CNN national correspondent based in Washington, spent seven years in CNN's Moscow bureau, the last three as bureau chief. Her coverage of the August 1991 Soviet coup earned CNN a Peabody Award.