Recently, I realized when I missed my chance to become rich — in August 1991, when I happened to be on that very square in Moscow, at that very hour, just a few dozen meters away from the future president of Russia.
I was near the tank, but didn’t climb up
I saw Yeltsin being helped onto a tank, but I didn’t push my way toward him or try to get on that improvised platform that entered history. Instead, foolishly, I rambled about how the whole scene felt like a grand theatrical production.
That day, for some reason, I also told my friends (half-jokingly at the time) that every republic had already (!) become independent. They took it as a joke — unlike the sincere determination of Muscovites and people from the Moscow region to stand against the State Emergency Committee (GKChP).
Muscovites against the coup: anxiety and jokes about the collapse
Muscovites and suburbanites were truly against the coup.
“Will they make us march in formation again?” — I still remember the words of a worried employee at a suburban holiday retreat where I had spent ten days.
Does that holiday house still exist? And where is that woman now? Has she changed her mind?
History has no subjunctive mood
Evaluations of August 1991 may vary among my readers. But history has no subjunctive mood (at least not yet). Yeltsin won. Others lost.
The documentary “The Nineties”: A shared past
The early years of the fifteen former Soviet republics were more or less similar. Gradually, differences deepened. The 2016 documentary series “The Nineties” covers that first decade, and is understandable to people across the former USSR. I liked the film.
Yeltsin’s stare in Tashkent
Almost ten years after the Moscow events, I saw Boris Yeltsin up close again — this time in Tashkent, at a joint press conference with Islam Karimov in Durmen. The Russian president stared at me intensely. Did he remember me from the White House square? Hardly. It was probably just the reaction of a very sick man to a red dress.
📎 One of my articles about Yeltsin: “Yeltsin is ready to fight, especially with westernizers”
Were you on that square?
Have you ever found yourself in the right place at the right time? And what came of it?
Were you, perhaps, also at the square in front of the White House in Moscow in August 1991?
2025: What if I had climbed the tank?
Now I wonder: if I had climbed up that tank — could I have changed the course of history in a way that would’ve spared us today’s nightmare?
By the way, in that photo, the one I always found most unpleasant is the man standing highest, to the left of the flag. Recognize him? Viktor Zolotov.