События августа 1991 г. в лицах: штрихи к портрету члена Государственного комитета по чрезвычайному положению Д. Т. Язова

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the thirtieth anniversary of the events called the 1991 August Coup and regarded as an attempt of a takeover. One of its key participants was Dmitry Timofeevich Yazov, the last Marshal of the Soviet Union. The article presents Yazov’s opinion on the causes and nature of the actions of members of the State Committee on the State of Emergency and also a description of the situation by the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic who took part in the so-called release of Mikhail Gorbachev and the arrest of state leaders accused of attempting a conspiracy to remove him from the post of the president of the USSR. Taking into account evaluations given by representatives of the two opposite “sides” of the conflict, the author traces the changing perception of the domestic political events of that time. To solve the research problem, the author studied not only materials from various media and accessible normative documents, but also memories of real participants in the described confrontation. The mentioned sources, including the author’s personal acquaintance with the main character of the article, determined to a great extent the novelty of the study. The formed data bank is quite representative to understand the indicated problem. The main methodological principles of the study are scientific objectivity and historicism. The specific events of Yazov’s life are described in the context of political processes taking place in the country. Nevertheless, the main objective of the article is to reveal the identity of the prominent military leader against the background of the events of the August Coup and their influence on his subsequent life. He did not deny mistakes, but insisted that it did not affect his conscience and officer’s honor. In the author’s opinion, Yazov’s most important conclusion regarding the events of August 1991 is that the idea of creating the State Committee on the State of Emergency was provoked by President Gorbachev himself. As for Boris Yeltsin, he only took an advantage of the situation in order to gain full power. This indirectly confirms the existence of problems in the formation of political and legal culture in the implementation of major state reforms. The material of the article can be useful to everyone who is interested in the latest history of Russia. It records little-known but important elements of the activities of statesmen and state bodies during one of the most acute political breaks in national history.