The organisation of the civil defence of the White House was a spontaneous move. When it suddenly became clear on the morning of the 19th that all was not yet lost, that Yeltsin was willing to oppose the coup and that an organised defence would lend concrete support to his opposition, veterans of the war in Afghanistan stepped forward and assumed control. Later, their efforts were coordinated by the 'White House Defence Committee' under the command of General Kobets. But it was the initiative taken by the people themselves which made the difference in the early hours of Monday morning.
In 1980/81 Andrei Logunov served in the Soviet Army in Moscow's doomed attempt to extend its sphere of influence into Afghanistan and provide the country with a secular and stable government. At the time of the coup he was head of the Moscow chapter of the Afghanistan War Veterans Association. Andrei was at the centre of events amongst the people gathered outside the Russian Parliamentary building. Anya Chernyakhovskaya spoke with him:
AC: Andrei, ever since the war ended, I have been hearing rumours that the 'Afghantsy' (Afghanistan veterans) have been preparing themselves for some kind of battle. That they are armed and are training kids to fight in their clubs under the pretext of teaching them the sorts of skills boy and girl scouts learn. It has never been clear who the 'Afghantsy' have been working for, whose side they are on. But now with the coup we have seen that they are clearly no supporters of the 'iron hand'. On the contrary, they actively defended our fledgling democracy.
AL: I'm aware of the sort of thing you're talking about. I've often been approached by different people demanding proof that, for example, in the local 'Afghan Clubs' we're not training supporters of Pamyat [an ultra-right wing Russian chauvinist organisation]. Obviously somebody benefits from spreading this kind of rumour about the 'Afghantsy'. It weakens our position. I don't know for sure who is behind these rumours.
As for weapons. We didn't have any on August the 19th. We had to arm ourselves with whatever we could lay our hands on: iron bars, shovels, knifes, etcetera. In the right hands, an iron bar and a knife are pretty effective weapons. When people learned that the 'Afghantsy' were organising the defence around the White House, a lot of them breathed easier.
On the other hand, at least in Moscow, there are places where every one is armed. I'm talking about the places where battle units of the Police, KGB and various guards units live. But the lion's share of these weapons has never been listed on inventories, their exact number is not known.
AC: Then how do you know this?
AL: I've been looking into this particular question. I found out. And I know I'm right. Fortunately, on August 19-21, these weapons, which in the hands of irresponsible people would have been deadly, didn't get introduced into the fray. You have to understand, even mace, which our girls are arming themselves with these days, is pretty dangerous, especially if it is used in close confines.
AC: You're opposed to people being armed then?
AL: On the contrary. It makes sense to arm everybody. So that the people we were defending at the White House, for example, could defend themselves. Otherwise we have the unfair situation we've got today. Someone who finds themselves fighting for their lives, and those of their family, has no weapons with which to fight. I'm talking about hand guns, simple things like that.
AC: Let's go back to Monday the 19th. So there you were, unarmed and confused... Or you weren't confused?
AL: I think we were all shocked. A friend of mine was shaking as badly as Yanaev's hands were at that press conference, and my mate isn't the sort of person who scares easily.
But when the first shock had passed we realised we had to do something. We wrote an appeal to soldiers and veterans of the Afghan war: 'No Second Afghanistan at Home!' We ran it off on a photocopying machine and plastered it about the city. Often we didn't even manage to get it pasted up, people were literally tearing the sheets out of our hands. In the second half of the first day, about fifty Afghan vets arrived at the White House. We hadn't called them at this point. But on the morning of the 20th we began ringing all the suburban branches of the Afghan Clubs and letting them know that we were assembling at the White House to defend it.
After we had phoned everyone about four to five hundred turned up. But by the 21st, as it became clearer which way the scales were tipping, several thousand of the lads had come.
AC: Were you satisfied with the way your comrades responded?
AL: No. I had expected a lot more 'Afghantsy' to come than turned up on the square in front of the White House.
AC: How many 'Afghantsy' are there in Moscow altogether?
AL: Eighteen thousand. A sizeable army. Of course, some of them forget who they are, that they fought in Afghanistan together. Others were only in it for the money to be made on the side. But their reflexes are still there. Their health might be getting worse. Some of them stay in shape, others don't, but their reflexes are still buried inside and functioning. It's not by chance that both our Presidents prefer 'Afghantsy' for their personal bodyguard.
AC: But despite your pessimism now, you acted quickly, as a soldier ought, and took control of the situation. Where were you personally?
AL: I was at Entrance 20 to the White House. From the outset it was clear that from a tactical point of view this was the most vulnerable point in the building's defences. Entrance 20 is at the back of the building. It would have been easy for an assault group armed with machine-guns and grenades to take it. For a tank it would have been a piece of cake.
We also put a team on the roof to repulse a possible landing from the air. Though had it happened it would have been useless trying to stop an armed assault with not much more than our bare hands. But that wasn't going to stop our boys from giving it a go.
'Afghantsy' guarded the other entrances as well and kept up reconnaissance. One of our lads, a captain, had only just got out of hospital. His new artificial leg was giving him trouble, he looked after the students. Most of the students didn't even know how to put a gas-mask on. He gave them hell. It was just like the drills we were put through in boot camp. He even had them marching around.
A lot of misinformation was being spread. For example there was a rumour about snipers on the roofs of nearby buildings. We checked it out thoroughly, didn't find anyone.
We had several reports of KGB types in plain clothes wandering around carrying briefcases and bags which were supposed to be stuffed with mines or grenades. Again, when we checked it out, we found nothing.
AC: Were the 'Afghantsy' responsible for organising the people on the square?
AL: Yes, we did that too. But there were other people from the military too, retired soldiers, KGB operatives, who organised people into the chains looping the White House. They put the men in cordons and tried to get the women and old people to go to the rear.
AC: As a soldier, didn't you understand the hopelessness of trying to defend the White House if the Emergency Committee really wanted to take it?
AL: Of course. But I also couldn't just stand by and do nothing. Although the fact is, it wasn't us who saved the White House. Neither was it the police nor the OMON brigade inside the building nor Yevdokimov's tank division. It was those women and old people who insisted on staying in the defence cordons. They saved the White House simply because they were there. Had anybody tried to storm the building they would have had to shoot the women and old people too. And this in the end was what made it impossible for them to act.
Had we managed to make a clear division, and get the women and old people to leave the cordons with only the younger men remaining, then even if the White House had been armed to the teeth, they would have crushed us! The troops who were ordered to storm the White House and who refused...
AC: You mean the KGB's 'Alpha Group'?
AL: That's right. They're professionals. What's more, they were heavily armed. They were even going to use mortars. The assault was meant to begin with a helicopter landing on the roof. Everything would have been over in twenty minutes. They would have made a mess, but they would have achieved their objective. As it was, the only killing was what happened down there on the Ring Road. One of the dead lads, Dmitrii Komar, was an Afghan vet. I don't know what he was doing down there, but he died a hero.
AC: Are there any 'Afghantsy' in the 'Alpha Group'?
AL: There are 'Afghantsy' everywhere.
AC: Is it true that after defending the White House and when it was all over, the 'Afghantsy' then went and protected the Central Committee of the Communist Party building?
AL: I don't know. I know we did protect monuments and statues at the request of the Police and members of parliament. When the crowd down at Lubyanka opposite the KGB headquarters began smashing the marble base to the statue of Felix Dzerzhinskii we were there. It's one thing to pull down the statue of the man who headed the Cheka under Lenin which later became the KGB. It's quite another to start smashing the pedestal on which the statue sat. The base itself was put there in the 18th Century. Though we were a touch late in getting up there, we did manage to stop them. We had to biff a few drunks down there, knock some sense into them.
Incidentally, I've never figured out where all the vodka came from, down at Lubyanka. Everyone knows where all the food and cigarettes came from at the White House. That was courtesy of the traders from the stock exchange and the co-operatives. They were doing everything out of goodwill, giving it away. But there wasn't a gram of alcohol there. On the other hand, vodka was being doled out left right and centre down on Lubyanka. Something else interesting is that it was a completely different crowd down at Lubyanka from the people who had defended the White House. When it was a question of destroying and tearing down, a different mob turned up and they had other things on their minds.
AC: Now that a month has gone by since the coup, what are your feelings and conclusions. Are you still on a high?
AL: I wasn't on a high then, and I'm not now. I get the feeling that the system which allegedly collapsed along with the collapse of the coup is nevertheless still functioning. In real terms, nothing in our lives has changed. I don't feel that anything has changed. I'm not aware of any decrees or laws that have been passed which might truly and irrevocably improve our lives as a whole or even individually.
Added to this feeling are things I know about which cannot be brushed aside. For example the fact that they've started cleaning out sections of the army. A lot of Police, KGB and Army officers who refused to obey the orders of the State Emergency Committee and turned up to help defend the White House have since been dismissed. Getting rid of them goes like this: "Well lads, you're heroes, but you didn't carry out your orders. Congratulations for doing what you did, but we're going to discharge you for not carrying out your orders!" It's a wonder they're not being court-martialled. The bastards who organised the coup, and you have to remember, most of them are still out there, free, they're just getting even. For the officers getting the boot, it's terrible. What the hell did they do anything for? Wouldn't it have been better to just stay at home the way most people did, doing nothing and waiting for manna from heaven. When you see them just accepting it, it sort of kills something deep down inside.
I would call this settling of accounts by those who escape Yeltsin's net the third wave after the coup. The first wave is the arrest of the 'gang of eight' and their trial. The second wave will be when Yeltsin's people clean out everyone they can find who was connected with the eight.
AC: With waves like this, you're talking about a very stormy sea. Remember what Pushkin wrote: "God spare us a Russian rebellion, terrible it will be."
AL: That's not all. First, a lot of innocent people are going to drown in these waves. Second, the turmoil itself is going to be disastrous for the economy and the country. But worst of all, our psyches haven't been affected at all. Right now we can curse, make demands and struggle till we finally get something done. But deep down inside we the people still have the psychology of browbeaten slaves while our politicians remain our masters. In the past, they were accustomed to ordering people about and getting what they wanted when they wanted it. It will be the same now.
There is some glimmer of hope though. People with a possessive psychology are beginning to appear amongst us. And I don't mean possessive in the sense of those apparatchiks treating the state's coffers like their private money box. I mean the people who came down to the square in front of the White House: young stockbrokers, entrepreneurs, members of co-operatives. No one's going to deny that they were there!
I'm certainly not about to. Of course they were there. And as someone organising the defence of the White House, I was glad to see them. These people have already smelled the sweetness of private enterprise, tasted business, and they came down to the square to defend it. And if we're talking about people with a new psychology that hasn't been poisoned by Soviet society, then we can talk about those kids, the twenty-year-olds too, who were at the White House.
That's one side of the coin. But as events showed, if we remember how big Moscow is, then these people were only a drop in the ocean.
My feeling is that things will get even worse in the future.
AC: What do you mean?
AL: The old powers are not going to simply disappear, even if the conspirators in the coup are convicted. The old system has its roots buried too deeply in our society for one jerk to pull it out. The system isn't just some sort of wart you can simply cut out, it's a cancer riddling the body.
AC: What do you think is the main danger in the future?
AL: We have to stop patting ourselves on the back. There's no need to go on handing out medals, putting people on pedestals. And we can't allow a witch-hunt, signs of which, unfortunately, are already emerging. The coup leaders had 250,000 pairs of handcuffs ready for the democrats during the coup. Let's hope they don't get used for another purpose.