Pavlik Morozov

I winced when I saw him lying there on the ground. He had always stood here, the whole of my life, perhaps even before I was born - this stone child. He had denounced his father to the Soviet secret police, accusing him of being a 'kulak', a rich peasant, and of hiding grain from the state during Stalin's collectivisation drive in the nineteen thirties. The statue of Pavlik Morozov whose 'ideological soundness' had served as an example to whole generations of blossoming Soviet youth was no longer on its pedestal. An enraged crowd had torn it down. The metal barriers surrounding the pedestal looked like 'hedgehogs', the anti-tank barriers which had stood between Moscow and the Fascists when they came calling in 1941.

In August 1991 a new fascism openly announced itself. But as in the war, we weren't about to hand it power on a plate. That's why I went to the White House.

I spent the night of the 20th standing next to a man who had come from America to Moscow for a Congress of Emigres and Compatriots, then on in the capital. He had never been to Russia before. His grandfather and grandmother had fled the place after the Revolution in 1917. Once in America, his grandfather had never been able to reconcile himself with life in the New World and had committed suicide. On the eve of his departure for the home of his ancestors, his grandmother had blessed her already middle-aged grandson whispering: "God grant that nothing happens to you over there. After all, they're still Bolsheviks."

Indeed, the Bolsheviks had again shown the world of what they were capable, and why they were nevertheless already a relic of history. In particular, the coup was, in the opinion of many, including my compatriot, badly organised from the outset. "A farce, to be honest..." He was saying just as we heard the sound of gunfire down on Kalinin Prospekt. Yet his words still had a calming effect and I began to feel less frightened.

Then I even began to cheer up, early in the morning of the 21st as dawn broke.

When I got home that day my wife asked me:

"Well, what happened, did those Garibaldi bastards turn up?"

And we both started laughing.

Mikhail Shcheglov