Gorbachev Returns to Power

Mikhail Gorbachev, Television Interview. August 22, 1991

In the early morning hours of August 22, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev returned to Moscow after being held under house arrest at his Black Sea dacha. At the airport he was greeted by a cheering crowd of officials and well-wishers, and delivered the following address.

Original Source: Pravda, 23 August 1991.

The most important thing is that everything that we have done since 1985 has already brought tangible results.

Society, our people, are now different, and this became the main obstacle in the way of this reckless adventure undertaken by a group of individuals right from the beginning. I will yet make a statement on this because our society must know about this, the whole world must know about this, about what was being concocted here, and what they wanted to do to me, and what they wanted from me, and what they failed to get from me. I will speak about this, perhaps tomorrow, or at the latest, the day after tomorrow. I will give a news conference. The attempted overthrow did not succeed.

I congratulate our people who have both a sense of responsibility and a feeling of dignity; they are concerned that there should be a feeling of respect for all those in whom they have placed their trust. Under the cover of attractive slogans and taking advantage of the difficulties of which we are well aware, difficulties which we are concerned about and which we intend to resolve, that pitiful bunch, and there can be no two opinions on this matter, wanted to plunge the people and our whole society into a catastrophe. They did not succeed. That is one of the greatest triumphs of perestroika.

What they tried to do to the president these days, and his family, as for 72 hours, we were surrounded by armed forces from both land and sea? They wanted “to break” him, but nothing came of this.

I express my gratitude to the Soviet people. I express my gratitude for the principled stand taken by the Russians, to the president of Russia, Boris Nikolaevich Eltsin, to the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, to all the deputies, to all the worker collectives who took a decisive stand to block this reckless adventure.

That is something that we can be proud of, that such a resolute and uncompromising stand was taken on this issue. We are facing a lot of problems, and we know about them, and they are a matter of concern to us. I was working on these problems even when I was planning to go on vacation, and in fact, I was working on these problems during my vacation — I refer to the problems of food, fuel, finances, the ruble, the situation on the market, what is going to happen to our people tomorrow — all these problems must be resolved.

These people took advantage of the difficulties of the transitional period, and the tension in society and anxiety about what is going to happen to us, and decided to carry out far-fetched plans that would have plunged our society into utter turmoil. That was a reckless adventure. I rejected it outright when their emissaries came to me with a proposal to support their reckless undertaking. And I told them that this would “be the end of them and the country.” I was resolutely against it. I demanded that a Congress be convened immediately, or at least a session of the Supreme Soviet. I shall yet present the details of all that happened during these days a little later on.

The president of the country was blocked off, isolated from the people, from the country, from the world, and he had to persevere and uphold his stand. Apparently, their aim was “to break” the president morally, “to break” him there by putting pressure on his family. But nothing came of all this. Nothing came of this because above all I was convinced that they would not succeed. I will tell you all about it later on.

Source: CNN, Cold War Experience,1998.

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