Following the coup, Alexander Bovin was appointed Soviet Ambassador to Israel in mid-December, 1991. But he is better known for the role he gave up, a role he had played for two decades. In what was the Soviet Union, Alexander Bovin is considered the doyen of political commentators. At the time of the events in August, he was still working at Izvestia which had been his home for the last twenty years. Before he went to Izvestia, he worked for many years as a consultant and analyst for the Communist Party Central Committee. He was closely associated with Yurii Andropov, Gorbachev's patron and Chairman of the KGB who was elected General Secretary of the Party following Brezhnev's death. But even while Brezhnev was still alive, during the 'stagnation years' as the final years of Brezhnev's leadership are known, Bovin was still able to say more than most of the other political commentators of his time.
During the August coup, he attended the press conference given by the Emergency Committee on the Monday afternoon which was broadcast live around the nation. Ostensibly he was there to report on it for Izvestia. But watching him, he seemed singularly uninterested in what was being said. Sprawled across a chair in the back row, he would glance at the floor, then the walls, then rub his eyes. His gaze seemed to be taking everything in, except what was taking place behind the raised table at the front where the coup leaders were trying to justify their actions. Suddenly his voice cut across the room. He pounced on Starodubtsev, the former chicken farmer, asking him how he had managed to worm his way into this company of conspirators. A moment of silence hung, it enveloped Starodubtsev. There is this image of his head nodding from side to side while his mouth hung open in a grin which split his face from ear to ear. But no sound came out:
JJ: What were you thinking about during the press conference?
AB: About how it was all so uninteresting.
JJ: Why?
AB: The whole coup gave the impression of not being very serious, right from the start. There was a sense that some kind of operetta was being staged. And I simply couldn't take these people seriously. I know them. They're old and grey. I didn't even intend asking any questions at the press conference. I was sitting in the back row, just watching. But then I asked myself: why are they all taking this so seriously? I should lighten things up a bit, have a laugh and at the same time rub their noses in it a bit. So I asked them about Starodubtsev. Well, you heard how they reacted.
The next day I got a phone call. On this direct line to the Kremlin here. And they were ringing about him. This male voice comes on the line: "You bastard," that sort of thing, "You bastard, we'll make you remember that press conference yet!" Well I asked him very politely: "Excuse me, but are you too afraid to give me your name? Does that mean that you already know you've lost?" And then I added, just as politely: "So you can go and get fucked." And I replaced the receiver. That was the sort of conversation I had, interesting heh?
JJ: Was it the only one of this kind?
AB: Yes, there were a lot of other telephone calls. People were ringing me from London, from New York, from around the Union. They were all congratulating me on this question I had asked. And it was only then that I began to understand that, entirely by accident, I had hit the bull's eye. I never expected that my question would have the significance it did. And then letters began pouring in, telegrams, and I realised that I had fluked a bull's eye. Gorbachev said to me: "You know, you killed the junta with that one question."
JJ: When Gorbachev was barricaded at Foros, he made four videos with his, let's call it his political testament. Rumour has it that one of these videos was intended for you.
AB: Yes.
JJ: But why namely to you?
AB: He simply felt that I was reliable. He felt that if the tape got to me, I would immediately do the right thing. He planned to get the tape from there to me here, so that I would then spread it round. But the situation was changing very quickly. He wanted to get the tape to me on the 20th, but on the 21st it was already all over. So the video never made it to me.
It was already clear at the press conference that the whole thing was a joke. That the coup would collapse within a few days. Neither I nor my colleagues at the newspaper Izvestia had any doubts whatsoever.
JJ: Of course, it's possible to say now that the whole thing was a joke...
AB: Nothing of the sort. It was clear the whole time that it wasn't serious.
JJ: In what sense?
AB: In the sense that they would hold out two, perhaps three days, and that's all. I wasn't scared in the least, just a bit irritated. I came in here to work, to the newspaper. The feeling was the same here: these people were incidental, they'd be swept aside. I rang Yeltsin straightaway. And when I found out that he hadn't been arrested, it was clear that they were going to lose their game. And at the press conference, looking at their faces, it was more than clear that they had already lost.
JJ: What about you here at Izvestia, weren't you offended that the Emergency Committee didn't close you down?
AB: Of course we were offended. But the fact of the matter is that the coup leaders were confident of the support of our Chief Editor. All the staff were on one side of the fence while the Chief Editor was on the other. We spent all three days fighting with him. As he is the Chief Editor, he controls the printing presses. But we got rid of him the day after the coup was smashed. First thing Thursday morning, we said to him: "That's all, get out." We kicked him and one other guy out of the editorial office. The Chief Editor tried to stop us. He kept bleating that this wasn't legal, that he had been appointed by the President. But we told him we'd made a decision and that was that.
JJ: You say that you phoned Yeltsin. Which means they didn't even cut his phones.
AB: They made a mistake there. Of course, they're not idiots. They're pretty intelligent people after all. And they understood that the majority of the people in the country supported them. The majority, I'm convinced of that! Because if you hold a referendum and write four words - order, sausage, freedom, glasnost - and ask the people to strike out the two superfluous words, the majority will cross out freedom and glasnost, and leave order and sausage. The coup leaders were perfectly aware of this. It was what they were counting on. But like people from the past, with their pre‑perestroika psychologies, they were operating on the principle that they only had to say "KGB", and everyone would be terrified and behave like sheep.
But people have changed, at least in Moscow and Leningrad. In order for the coup leaders to turn the objective factors on which they were relying into popular action, they had to hold the centre. The history of all coups shows this. If you don't manage to hold onto power in the centre, it doesn't matter, even if the whole country supports you, you'll still lose. But they didn't manage to seize power in the centre. And they failed because here people weren't frightened. They weren't frightened! One percent of the city's population went to the White House, perhaps less than one percent of all Moscow. Had even one tank really tried, it would have smashed all those barricades. But they never even envisaged actions like this, since they had never counted on meeting any opposition. And this is the same reason why they didn't shut down the telephone system. The fact of the matter is they didn't understand the psychology of the people. And they broke their own necks on account of it.
JJ: When you say; "The people have changed." You mean one percent of them.
AB: Yes... But don't you think it's enough? You have to understand that in politics the consciousness of the people changes in a very uneven manner. Those actively involved at the outset in society are always a tiny minority. Except of course for mass revolutions, when millions rise up. Usually though, small groups of people bring about huge transformations. Which was the case here in Moscow too. Incidentally it was not the workers, but more likely the intelligentsia which did all this. It was, if you like, a counter coup of the intelligentsia, young people and the intelligentsia. They were the main groups that opposed the coup. The rest were the silent majority. Had the coup succeeded, they would have supported the junta. But the junta did not succeed, and they supported the democrats. But there is a danger inherent here. The social preconditions of the coup have not disappeared. All the problems are still there, all our troubles and the unhappiness of the people are still there. You know, in his time Hegel said: every moment in history repeats itself twice: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. But in our case, it may be the other way round. We've had our farce. But if it repeats itself, it will be a tragedy.
JJ: And how, if it happens, do you think this tragedy will develop?
AB: How am I supposed to know how it will develop? I can't see into the future. You have to go to an astrologer or palm reader for that. I'm just an average person, I'm no mind reader. I only know that it is going to be difficult this winter.
JJ: A lot of people talk about the Polish option, the Yugoslav option, the South Korean option.
AB: I'm not interested in this sort of rubbish.
JJ: Well how do you feel yourself?
AB: I'm for the Russian option.
JJ: And what is that?
AB: I don't know, we'll see.
JJ: But you're convinced it might be a tragedy?
AB: Of course it might be. But you can't be absolutely sure of anything in history. The whole of history is a confluence of incidences which form necessity. How can I be absolutely convinced. There is a possibility but the likelihood of it is beyond my knowledge.
JJ: What can you tell us of the role of the Central Committee in these events?
AB: I haven't worked in the Central Committee for a long time. How can I talk about this? Any person can only talk about what they themselves did or saw. I'm a journalist, I sit here in Izvestia. But I haven't been inside the Central Committee in ten years, I don't even know anyone there anymore. How can I talk about what the Central Committee did? Though of course, like everyone else, I know that the Central Committee, the secretariat, supported the coup leaders. As a result of which it was shut down. This is as clear as two times two.
JJ: You say 'shut down'. But all the same you can read in the newspapers today that, for example, a group of deputies goes somewhere to claim party property. They go looking for it, but it's already gone. They can't find it. Where...
AB: There has been a lot of disregard for the law here. Gorbachev never had the right to ban the Party. He never had the right to seal their buildings, or seize their property. All this is being done with clear disregard for the law. Our papers are writing about this. But as they say, a revolution always breaks the law. Maybe it is true about Party property disappearing. But the law had already been broken.
JJ: I wanted to ask you why the think the coup leaders didn't call on the support of so strong a parliamentary faction as Soyuz.
AB: Had the Congress of Peoples' Deputies assembled, then most likely Soyuz would have actively supported the state of emergency. But after all, this was a conspiracy. It was done by a narrow group of people. Once they had done it, clearly they were then counting on the support of the parliament. But they never got that far.
JJ: Yes, you talk about a farce. But the effects of these events were much more than would have been expected from a farce.
AB: This is often the case with history. You can toss a snowball down a mountain and end up with an avalanche when the conditions are right. And that's what happened here. It just needed a bit of a push to set off a whole chain reaction. Internally, the situation was ripe for this. And that's what happened.
JJ: But doesn't that suggest it was a revolution after all?
AB: Even two revolutions. The first revolution, we'll call it the national democratic revolution, it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. While the second revolution was a popular democratic revolution which led to the change in power.
JJ: But has the Party really been destroyed?
AB: Yes, it no longer has its apparatus, its structure. But obviously it will reappear in some other form. There will definitely be a left opposition.
JJ: Don't you get the sense that it is the same people sitting in these new organs of power who earlier sat in the various party structures?
AB: Well, where else can they go? You're not going to put the lot of them in prison?! After all, who are Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Shevardnadze? People from that very system! But now they're making a revolution. When a new generation comes through, in about twenty years time, then everything will be different. But in the meantime it will be these people doing all the work, and it is hard work too.
JJ: And you don't see any contradiction between these old people and the new situation in the country?
AB: I see one hundred contradictions. One hundred. Our whole life is riven by contradictions now. But I believe that these new structures will change these old people. Some will change. Others won't. Different people will react differently to the situation. Some will change, others won't. It's the same everywhere.