Photo enlargement. Unpublished photographs from the 1991 coup

On August 19, I was not in Moscow. The news of the putsch caught me in the small town of Kuznetsk, Penza Region. On this day, my wife and I quickly got on the train, bribed the conductor and arrived in Moscow. On the morning of the 20th, I immediately went to Barrikadnaya. I was a correspondent for Ogonyok and filmed all the days of the coup in the White House, around it, and after the failure of the State Emergency Committee, on the streets of Moscow, where people celebrated the victory, demolished monuments to Soviet executioners and buried three dead on the Garden Ring. Surprisingly, I remember some of the details as if everything was yesterday, but something was completely forgotten, and each photo reminds of some moment of these three days.

The famous photo, where Rostropovich with a machine gun, was taken in the radio center, in the basement of the White House, where broadcasting was organized to the square for the defenders of the building – during the day the speakers went out onto the balcony, but in the evening and at night they acted from this wheelhouse, because it was believed that on the balcony unsafe. In addition to the most famous shot, several more were taken. Here, for example, is the very first picture, even from the threshold of the radio center. It was made on the night of August 21-22, when they flew for Gorbachev and waited for the return of the delegation headed by Silaev, Rutskoi and other delegates. They were already returning to Moscow, and I walked around the White House and entered this radio room. In the foreground is Sasha Politkovsky from Vzglyad, and behind is Rostropovich with security guard Yura Ivanov, waiting for his turn to speak. He took the machine gun just to twist it in his hands – he did not serve and never held a machine gun in his hands. On Yura’s lap is the first issue of Obshchaya Gazeta, because all mass media were banned by the decree of the State Emergency Committee – except for Pravda, Izvestia and Selskaya Zhizn. And Yegor Yakovlev and the journalists began to publish Obshchaya Gazeta, the first issue of which came out on August 21.

The next shot from the balcony: Investigator Ivanov from the famous Gdlyan-Ivanov couple, who shocked the country with corruption revelations, Oleg Kalugin, a major general of the KGB who made revelations in 1990 and was stripped of his rank, and priest Gleb Yakunin, a representative of the “democratic wing” of the Russian Orthodox Church, subsequently elected to the State Duma.

Here are Gorbachev’s closest ally in perestroika, Alexander Yakovlev (to whom Gorbachev preferred the society of future gekachepists) and Boris Yeltsin’s closest ally Ruslan Khasbulatov, who in 1993 will be his main opponent. Alexander Yakovlev arrived at the White House, where, using his position and connections, he could help his defenders. I worked at Ogonyok side by side with the famous photojournalist with 50 years of experience, Lev Nikolaevich Sherstennikov. Shortly before the putsch, Sherstennikov filmed Yakovlev and made friends with him. He came to Yakovlev’s home in his Zhiguli and said: “Alexander Nikolayevich, let me take you to my dacha so that they don’t arrest you, they don’t follow me.” But Yakovlev asked him: “Lev, nothing is needed, I will stay in Moscow. I will coordinate and help. ” Lev Nikolayevich asked Yakovlev to leave an autograph on the lining of the Zhiguli, and Yakovlev wrote with a felt-tip pen: “The hour of X has come. Our poor country. Alexander Yakovlev “. And on August 19 I was at the White House.

In these two pictures, Boris Yeltsin enters and leaves before and after the performance – he spoke in front of people two or three times a day. From behind it is covered with an armored shield, because the moment of exiting and entering is the most dangerous, it is easy to calculate exactly where a person should be expected, and this is how the attempts on Reagan’s life were organized, for example.

Near the Manezh, people approached the soldiers who were sitting on the armored personnel carriers’ armor and handed them the Bible, saying: “If you start shooting, this is a great sin.” And now a young soldier, instead of a brochure of Marxism-Leninism, for the first time in his life, is holding a Bible in his hands.

A trolleybus barricade on Kalininsky Prospekt, now Novinsky Boulevard, view from the side of the White House. There is still a traffic police post there. And the trolleybus in those days became a symbol of resistance, and one such broken trolleybus stood at the Museum of the Revolution for a long time, but then it was removed. Maybe not to remind of something.

In this series of photographs – the defenders of the White House. Someone once again suspects that there are snipers on the roof. Here is the opposite view from the roof – our submachine gunners are looking out for the enemy’s movements. Young guys sleep side by side, probably after Gorbachev’s return and victory. Many were then offended that Gorbachev, having flown in from Foros, did not come to the White House, people did not know that Raisa Maksimovna felt very bad, and Gorbachev accompanied her home. Another shot is a field kitchen. People were around the White House around the clock, they needed to be given at least some hot food. Who brought this field kitchen, I do not know. Another scene from the White House – we see that there was a mess, of course. A block of cigarettes, a jar of jam, Pepsi paper cups. But the soldiers gave the girl an overcoat – there was a heavy downpour at night, everyone got wet and froze.

Yeltsin and Khasbulatov are here before a farewell meeting with Dmitry Komar, Ilya Krichevsky and Vladimir Usov – young guys who died on the Garden Ring. Three coffins were brought from Manezhnaya Square in trucks, and a funeral procession was held, which carried the long tricolor flag of the new Russia. In front of these coffins, Yeltsin said, very informally, addressing his relatives: “Forgive me for not saving your sons.”

Everyone knows that after the victory, people came to the monument to Dzerzhinsky, and it was dismantled, but few remember that the first monument to be overthrown was the statue of Pavlik Morozov from the children’s park of the same name, which adjoined the White House. They picked it off either on the second day of the coup, or on the third. One day, passing by, I suddenly saw that he was lying on the ground. When it started raining, his caring people covered him with plastic, after which he disappeared altogether. The fate of Pavlik Morozov remains unknown to this day – either he was defeated, or someone was taken to the dacha. He was the first victim, the crowd took out all the evil on him.

And at the fence of this children’s park people gathered who could not go to the White House and listened to speakers from the balcony, I photographed their faces at that moment

After dismantling the monument to Dzerzhinsky, at night near the metro Ploshchad Revolyutsii a monument to Sverdlov was knocked down, on which were the inscriptions “Tsareicide” and “Executioner”. They pulled up the crane and very easily removed it without the participation of the crowd, and the pedestal stood for a long time. Now there is a kind of beer restaurant. I did not go to Dzerzhinsky. I didn’t know that it would be demolished and somehow I screwed up this case. Then Sverdlov was also removed, and then little by little Kalinin, who was standing near the military center. There is now a car showroom. And all the monuments were taken to the Muzeon.

At about the same time I went to Staraya Square and saw a crowd of people around the Central Committee of the CPSU. No one rushed inside, but people began to replace Soviet flags with tricolor. Here we see how the man was framed by the police bars and he replaces the flag.

And finally, again – Rostropovich. And now – a victory! Two shots from opposite angles. On August 24, we went in a narrow circle to some White House office to celebrate the victory. Vodka, cognac, no snacks – only watermelon. Opposite Mstislav Leopoldovich is the actor Anatoly Romashin, he was very friendly with Rostropovich, who called him “Tsar”. “Tsar, let’s drink to victory!” To his left, as viewed from behind the table, with a beard is the actor Boris Khmelnitsky, also a friend of Rostropovich. To the left of Rostropovich sits Vladimir Nazarov, who was the artistic director of the concert hall in the Olympic Village, and now works in Kiev, a political émigré and anti-Putinist. The concert hall was “squeezed out” from him. And next to Khmelnitsky is the same security guard, Yura Ivanov. The elderly man in the corner is a wonderful man, the husband of Rostropovich’s sister, Mikhail Andreevich, a translator. Rostropovich went from the White House to his younger sister Veronica to sleep and wash.