Matvei Ganapol’skii, Ekho Moskvy, 20 Aug 1991, 16:05
Matvei Ganapol’skii, Ekho Moskvy, 20 Aug 1991, 16:05
Live coverage of the GKChP putsch in August 1991 from the Echo of Moscow radio station. Demonstrates the chaos of the moment, the putschists' failure to control their message, and the power of the newly independent media.
Perestroika
1991
On the first day of the coup, television and radio stations were either blocked or taken over by the GKChP including the reform-minded radio station Ekho Moskvy. By the next day, however, Ekho Moskvy was back on the airwaves and soon it proved itself an indispensable source of information for Muscovites and for anyone following the events in the capital. This recording from 20 Aug 1991 begins with an interview between host Matvei Ganapol’skii and journalist Oleg Poptsov, who has been at the epicenter of the standoff between the GKChP’s tanks and Yeltsin’s resistance for most of the last twenty-four hours. After recapping the events of the last day, Ganapol’skii asks Poptsov what listeners can do “to show that they oppose this illegal act” of the GKChP. Poptsov encourages them to come to the White House (the center of the standoff) and show their support by numbers. Hundreds of thousands of Muscovites heard the call and flooded to the Krasnopresnensk neighborhood where they built barricades and continued to protest into the night, even as the GKChP prepared to take strategic points by force. It was in defending one of these barricades that three protesters would die that night, Dmitrii Komar’, Vladimir Usov, and Il’ia Krichevskii, the only three to lose their lives in protesting the coup.
Next the recording turns to an advisor of the Supreme Soviet who reads a rhymed appeal to the Red Army soldiers who had been asked to secure certain strategic points in Moscow for the coup, and against whom the thousands of citizens came out to protest.
Заглушите моторы, танкисты!
Зачехли автомат свой, солдат!
Посмотри, сколько жизней невинных и чистых
Рядом с вами шеренгой стоят
Посмотри, может мать или брата
Ты увидишь стоящих в мольбе
Стой солдат нет уж больше возврата
К жизни нищих в казарменной мгле.
Turn off your engines, tankists!
Put your gun away, soldier!
Look, how many innocent and pure lives
Stand around you holding hands
Look, perhaps your mother or brother
You’ll see standing in prayer
Stop, soldier, you can’t go back anymore
To a poor man’s life in barrack darkness.
Yeltsin, Boris, Gorbachev, Mikhail , Rutskoi, Aleksandr (Alexander), and Shevarnadze, Eduard
Moscow
Matvei Ganapol'skii, "20 Avgust 1991," Ekho Moskvy, 20 August 1991: https://echo.msk.ru/sounds/2039428.html