BORIS YELTSIN & THE AUGUST 1991 COUP, TWENTY YEARS ON

THE (SOVIET) UNION- 

BUSTING COUP 

August 18-21, 1991

BORIS YELTSIN 

 making a presidential inspection tour 

of Tyumen' province, 

ten days before the coup 

The web is awash with stories marking the twentieth anniversary of the failed August coup in the USSR, many full of buyer's remorse.  New angles are sought; one has Boris Yeltsin climbing up the tank in front of the White House knowing that no one would shoot at him, so big deal. 

I have long thought that there was more to Yeltsin than this iconic moment; and put it on the record:  "It is his [Yeltsin's] mounting of the tank outside the White House in August of 1991 that remains in most people's minds, but it is his actions on behalf of Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia in January of 1991 that are perhaps the more remarkable." [SIC TRANSIT, Ch. 8, "Endgame"] 

I think there is still a story to be told about what Yeltsin was actually doing in that fateful 1991 summer of his election to the presidency of Russia, a country within a country.  That is coming in RUSSIA REDUX.