It might have been the most widely advertised coup in history. Rumors and warnings had begun as early as the summer of 1990. According to British intelligence, elements of the Soviet army and KGB actually rehearsed a coup (under the guise of a countercoup) in February of this year. June brought what was soon called the "constitutional-coup attempt." Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov asked the Supreme Soviet for the authority to issue decrees without Mikhail Gorbachev's knowledge, but was rebuffed. In late July hard- liners published an announcement appealing for "those who recognize the terrible plight into which our country has fallen" to support dramatic action to end disorder. They might as well have put up billboards shouting COUP!
In hindsight, even the timing seems screamingly obvious. Gorbachev had designated Tuesday, Aug. 20, for the ceremonial signing of a new union treaty with the presidents of the Russian and Kazakh republics; other republics were expected to sign later. The treaty would transfer so many powers -- over taxes, natural resources, even the state security apparatus -- to the republics as to make restoring ironfisted Kremlin control of the whole country impossible. Moreover, a new national Cabinet would have been named by representatives of the republics. Some of the eventual coup leaders, including KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov and Interior Minister Boris Pugo, would almost certainly have lost their jobs. The plotters could not afford to let that treaty go into effect.
Yet Gorbachev by his own testimony was totally unprepared. To some scholars and Soviet officials that appears so odd as to suggest that the President himself had staged a Potemkin coup to win domestic and foreign sympathy. But that seems farfetched. More probably, the very volume and intensity of coup talk had dulled his political antennae; the cry of wolf was sounding old and tired. Alexander Yakovlev, a close adviser, claimed after it was all over that he had even given Gorbachev the names of some likely -- and, as it turned out actual -- plotters. The President, according to Yakovlev, had scoffed that they "lack the courage to stage a coup."
As late as 4 p.m. Sunday, working at his Crimean vacation retreat at Foros on the speech he intended to give at the treaty signing, Gorbachev telephoned Georgi Shakhnazarov, an aide and friend, who was vacationing nearby. They chatted briefly; Shakhnazarov heard nothing to indicate that his boss was in any way troubled. Less than an hour later, however, at 10 minutes to 5, the head of Gorbachev's security guards entered the President's office and, as Gorbachev later recounted the story, announced that "a group of people" was demanding to see him. Who were they, asked Gorbachev, and why had they been let into the house? They were accompanied by Yuri Plekhanov, the chief of the state security-guard organization, said Gorbachev's man; that was all he knew. Gorbachev picked up a phone to call Moscow. "It didn't work. I lifted the second ((phone)), the third, the fourth, the fifth. Nothing." All his communications had been cut.