Moscow
  Laurie in Lithuania 1989

Arriving in Moscow in the fall of 1988 to become bureau chief of the ABC Moscow bureau, the Mikhail Gorbachev revolution was still in progress. Words like "Glasnost" and "perestroika" were all the rage. The reforms that Mikhail Sergeivich was instituting in the Soviet system were widely hailed. Oh, there was griping about Gorbachev's order that higher taxes be levied on Vodka, but otherwise "Gorby" remained a popular figure. 

Russians would proudly stand next to a card-board cut out of the Soviet leader when it was placed at a street stall on Moscow's Arbat Street and have their photograph taken with their children and grand-children.


By the time I ended my Russian assignment in 1991, the Soviet Union was at end, Gorbachev had become an object of ridicule, and Boris Yeltsin had been declared the savior of Russia. I watched on New Year's Eve 1991 as the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin and the flag of the Russian Federation raised.
The single most important event that determined these changes was the Moscow Coup of August 1991.The events of that summer weakened Russia's Communist party inexorably, strengthened Boris Yeltsin and the Russian nationalists and destroyed the Soviet Union.

Laurie in Moscow 1990

The coup of August 19, 1991 took everyone by surprise apart from the plotter. Gorbachev was at his dacha in the Crimea. I was on leave in London. London assignment editor Kathy O'hearn awakened me early. I was on the next plane to Moscow. 

Click to see ABC News report from Moscow August 19, 1991

To those of us in Moscow at the time, the coup against Gorbachev seemed as rather a joke. At the news conference they called to formally announce their seizure of power, the conspirators seemed so nervous and tentative.

Gennady Yanayev, hand trembling, alleged that Gorbachev had stepped down for health reasons. 

Yanayev's co-conspirators were Defence Minister Dimitri Yazov, KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchev, Interior Minister Boris Pugo and Prime Minister Valenti Pavlov.Anatoly Lukyanov, chairman of the Soviet Parliament, a few days later emerged a few days later as a key player.

Boris Yeltsin became the ultimate beneficiary of the coup. He defied the plotters, gained tremendous public support and Russian power shifted to him.

I ended my Moscow assignment at the end of 1991. Before I left I watched he Soviet Union pass into history. On New Year's Eve at Red Square, the Soviet flag was lowered and that of the Russian Federation was raised.

Click here for a report on the Legacy of Gorbachev  (Part 1)   (Part 2)

In later years after ending my residence in Moscow, I returned to Russia again. In 1995 to find Russia in turmoil over the war in Chechnya. By then, Gorbachev had passed from the scene and less than four years after his triumph, Boris Yeltsin was in decline. The war in Chechnya combined by poor health speeded Yeltsin's departure.

 

This report from ABC NEWS NIGHTLINE.
NIGHTLINE 
January 9th, 1995
Anchor: COKIE ROBERTS: [voice-over] It's their first television war, and the images are tearing up the soul of the nation, tearing up the people's confidence, tearing up the man the U.S. counts on to build a democracy. Tonight, is Russian spinning towards chaos? 

ANNOUNCER: This is ABC News Nightline. Substituting for Ted Koppel and reporting from Washington, Cokie Roberts. 

COKIE ROBERTS: For weeks now, the story's been flickering at the edges of our awareness, another far-off place, a place most of us never heard of, engaged in another ethnic struggle. The scenes from the conflict became more and more horrifying, but seemed to have nothing to do with us. No more. The bloody battle of Chechnya and the fact that the Russian people are witnessing it on television, this conflict threatens to bring down Boris Yeltsin and puts in jeopardy all of the democratic reforms in Russia. It's a prospect that leaves the U.S. searching for a policy, a way to deal with a potentially out-of-control nuclear power, and with no good alternatives to the Clinton administration's complete commitment to Yeltsin. 

Tonight, the Russian government offered to put down arms for 48 hours, but insisted on restoring Moscow's complete control over the rebellious republic. The overture from the Kremlin came after another day of vicious battle. Here's ABC's Jim Laurie. 

JIM LAURIE, ABC News: [voice-over] The young Chechen boy cries out for help. 'My grandfather is  lying over there,' he sobs. 

For nearly a month, they have suffered the inevitable consequence of war. Russian forces are now closing in on the center of the capital of a tiny region of a million and a half people, a place President Boris Yeltsin is determined to keep as part of Russia. 

The city is named Grozny, which happens to be the Russian word for terrible, and that it is, as Russian planes and artillery have pounded it relentlessly into rubble. Apart from determined Chechen fighters and older civilians, many of whom are ethnic Russians who could not escape, most of the city's 400,000 people have fled. 

At the start of this campaign in Russia, there was not much debate about the need to bring the Chechens to heel. The Chechens are seen traditionally by Russians as unsavory, people heavily involved in organized crime. They are Muslims, led by a ruthless, uncompromising former Soviet general named Dzhokhar Dudayev. He inflamed Russian passions further by boasting that Chechnya wasn't the only region of Russia ready to break away. 

DZHOKHAR DUDAYEV, Chechen President: [through interpreter this evil empire] People in other republics are bound to consider the decolonization of Russia. Other nationalities within Russia will also want to leave 

JIM LAURIE: [voice-over] And there's an economic reason, too, why tiny Chechnya could not be allowed to leave: oil. 

Ltc. DIMITRI TRENIN, Military Analyst: 
It's also a republic through which a couple of pipelines pass, and the Russian government is- is very much interested in keeping the oil reserves of the Caucasus region very much under Russian control

JIM LAURIE: [voice-over] But in pursuing that control, Boris Yeltsin and his small circle of advisers failed to understand the lack of preparedness of his military, the fanatic determination of the Chechens, and the human cost, magnified by the scrutiny of Russia's newly freed press and television. For weeks now, Russians have been watching their first television war. Their last one, in Afghanistan, got little coverage. This time, the image of young Russian boys, green troops grotesquely sprawled on the icy streets of Grozny, struck home at once. 

Yevgeni Kiselev of independent Russian television broadcast nearly two hours of war news last night, with fresh news from his reporters at the front. 

RUSSIAN TV CORRESPONDENT: [through interpreter] Russian special forces are moving freely within 200 yards of the Chechen presidential palace. 

YEVGENI KISELEV, Independent TV Anchor: We managed to stir up emotional feelings against the war in the hearts and souls of our audience. 

JIM LAURIE: [voice-over] What was also portrayed, to devastating effect, was the utter humiliation of the Russian army in the initial ground assault on the Chechen capital a week ago. 

[Laurie on camera] The spectacle of disorganized and demoralized Russian troops came as a shock to most people, and to any veteran Moscow-watcher who once stood here on ceremonial days to see  Russia's military might pass through Red Square, it reflected the deep crisis in the military and in the Yeltsin government. 

[voice-over] It seemed plain the Russian army was but a shadow of its former self. 

PAVEL FELGENHAUER, Military Analyst:
Russian politicians tend to look at their army as a fire squad. It is one minute of work, and they're out there doing the job. But it is not so, no army is capable of such things, you know? The American army, it was preparing for the Gulf war more than half a year. 

YEVGENI KISELEV: And I think they clearly underestimated the enemy. They overestimated their own resources. They failed to say no to their president when the military operation was clearly not prepared. 

JIM LAURIE: [voice-over] The blunders in Chechnya raised more questions about Boris Yeltsin. The man who stood atop a tank to defend democracy in 1991, the man who was widely supported when he used force to end a parliamentary rebellion two years later, now has been abandoned by Russia's new democrats. His recent behavior has seemed increasingly erratic, the long absences, the reported drinking, last year seizing the conductor's baton and wildly leading a German band, actions now for which he's mocked in a new Russian TV puppet show. 

Like Gorbachev before him, having fought for change, he has been left increasingly isolated and  surrounded by old cronies and hardliners. Boris Fyodorov once served as Yeltsin's finance minister. 

BORIS FYODOROV: President Yeltsin is a child of his times, with lack of education, who was probably very good at fighting the old system, but who is very bad at understanding what should be constructed and what new society we are building, where we are going. 

JIM LAURIE: [voice-over] Most political observers here believe Yeltsin will continue to muddle through. On paper, Yeltsin is one of the most powerful presidents in the world. Voters gave him broad executive powers in 1993. While there has been some talk of a coup to topple Yeltsin, there is a greater fear here that he and his hard-line allies will move to cancel or postpone presidential elections, scheduled  for next year. Others simply fear a Russian administration badly adrift. 

BORIS FYODOROV: It's a constant process of crisis, which becomes a permanent one, where the links between the executive power, president and government, and reality in the country becomes weaker and weaker. 

JIM LAURIE: [voice-over] The Russian military mourned today the loss of a major general, the highest-ranking of several hundred soldiers killed in Chechnya. Despite the 48-hour truce declared today, the shattered city of Grozny seems set to fall to the Russians. But Chechens vow a prolonged guerrilla war, which could keep Russian soldiers in Chechnya indefinitely, and the Yeltsin government in perpetual crisis. Jim Laurie for Nightline, in Moscow.
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