Yazov Quotes

On 13 November, Gorbachev met with a group of over 1,000 Soviet military officers, elected to the Supreme Soviets and other public positions. The discussion was so fraught that its complete record was not published. The military obeyed their commander-in-chief, yet he was clearly losing their respect. One week later, Yazov was in Paris accompanying Gorbachev at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. The Soviet leader was among thirty-five leaders who signed the Paris Charter for a New Europe, and also the CFE Treaty. During the ceremony the Soviet diplomat who had negotiated the treaty overheard the Marshal, who stood close by, muttering to himself: “This Treaty means we have lost World War III without a shot being fired.

Nicholson was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on March 30, posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and the Legion of Merit. In an unprecedented move, President Ronald Reagan signed the papers to promote him posthumously to the rank of honorary lieutenant colonel. Three years later, amid the thawing of relations between the superpowers as Gorbachev met with Reagan at summits in Geneva and Reykjavik, an official apology for his death was finally issued by Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov. President Reagan had consistently brought up the subject of his killing at every opportunity with the Soviets.

when Gorbachev tried to restructure the Soviet Union into a federation of independent republics, but with the Communist Party still in control over the economy. A committee formed by Gorbachev’s Vice President Gennadi Yanayev, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Defense Minister Dmitriy Yazov, KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, and other high ranking officials, put Gorbachev under house arrest while he was on vacation. They reintroduced censorship of politics and the newspapers, and banned all political activity. They thought the population would support them, including most politicians, but they were wrong. Boris Yeltsin, who was the President of the Russian Republic, declared the coup illegal, and ended up with the support of the majority of the Russian citizens. The coup collapsed, when the military wouldn’t kill the people trying to protect the Russian Parliament building, nor would they put the Russian politicians under arrest. When he returned to power, Gorbachev was left without popular support from the citizens or the political class.

On August 21, the Soviet defense minister, Dmitry Yazov, gave the order for troops to be withdrawn from Moscow. The State Committee for the State of Emergency had lost, and along with it, the U.S.S.R. had, too. On returning from his dacha in Crimea, Gorbachev evidently expected to be greeted by rejoicing crowds as a liberated hero. People were happy to see him back, but only as further evidence that the putsch committee had been defeated. Gorbachev's expectation of consolidating his authority on a surge of support came to nothing. All the admiration and support was for Yeltsin and a new government, the people who had taken risks and acted resolutely. This was strengthened when testimony was produced suggesting that Gorbachev might have had a part in preparing the conspiracy, or at least knew of it in advance and, in his usual way, decided not to take sides either with the Soviet conservatives or with the Russian reformers but to wait and see who came out on top. Indecision is a cardinal sin in an era of change. In an instant, Gorbachev lost everything. Once again, as happens during revolutions, something mind-blowing had occurred. On Monday he was, if not the most popular of leaders, the universally acknowledged president of a vast nation, with power over the world's largest army and over the industry and agricultural enterprises of a territory covering one-sixth of the world's land area-and the power to start a nuclear war. Come Thursday, he was nobody. He still retained a personal limousine, his secretaries, and a special telephone, only now no one was calling him. Whatever might be documented in seemingly unchallengeable statutes protected by a constitution and an army of lawyers, the center of power had shifted to Yeltsin, transferred in some intangible manner. Nobody really understands exactly how it happened, but neither was anyone in any doubt that the transfer of power had taken place. On December 8, 1991, the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republics, and Ukraine pulled of a spectacular ruse. Their leaders, Stanislav Shushkevich, Boris Yeltsin, and Leonid Kravchuk, met in a forest in Belarus, where they declared that, since their three republics had been the founders of the U.S.S.R., they had the right to dissolve it, which they would proceed to do. In its place they established the Union of Independent States. From their point of view, the trick made good sense: the presidents of the republics wanted to put Gorbachev and all his officials out of contention and to seize unfettered power for themselves. That is what was behind their action, and to implement it they needed formally to put an end to the indestructible U.S.S.R. Nowadays, people go on about what a mistake that action-the Belovezha Accords-was. One of those publicly lamenting it is Vladimir Putin. With great intensity and passion, he claims the accords was "a major geopolitical disaster." Well, it didn't seem like that to me at the time (and I'm not claiming to be a repository of objective truth, just relaying what my feelings were). It was just one more item on the television news-well, perhaps an item that rated a bit more discussion that usual, but there was no sense of portentousness. If those who gathered in the woods executed a crafty and, to be honest, rather deceitful and devious legalistic maneuver, they were only confirming something that was already obvious, namely that the U.S.S.R. no longer existed as a real country.