The Putsch Addresses the Soviet People

Committee on the State of Emergency, Message to the Soviet People from the State Committee for the State of Emergency. August 18, 1991

Original Source: TASS, 18 August 1991.

Compatriots, citizens of the Soviet Union, we are addressing you at the grave, critical hour for the destinies of Motherland and our peoples. A mortal danger has come to loom large over our great Motherland.

The policy of reforms, launched at Mikhail S. Gorbachev's initiative and designed as a means to insure the country's dynamic development and the democratization of social life has entered for several reasons a blind alley.

Lack of faith, apathy, and despair have replaced the original enthusiasm and hopes.

Authorities at all levels have lost the population's trust. Politicking has replaced in public life concern for the fate of the Motherland and the citizen.

Malicious outrage against all state institutions is being imposed. The country has in fact become ungovernable.

Having taken advantage of the granted liberties and encroaching upon the first sprouts of democracy, there have emerged extremist forces that have embarked on the course toward liquidating the Soviet Union, ruining the state, and seizing power at any cost.

The results of the nationwide referendum on the Motherland's unity have been trampled upon.

Cynical speculations on national feelings are merely a smoke screen to satisfy ambitions.

Neither today's misfortunes of their peoples, nor their tomorrow, worry political adventurists. In creating an atmosphere of moral and political terror and seeking to hide behind the shield of popular trust, they forget that the relations they condemn and disrupt were established on the basis of far broader popular support, which, besides, has passed the centuries-long test of history.

Today, those who are in fact working toward the overthrow of the constitutional system should be brought to account before mothers and fathers for the death of the hundreds of victims of interethnic conflicts.

The fate of more than half a million refugees is on their conscience. They are to blame for the loss of tranquility and the joy of living of tens of millions of Soviet people who only yesterday lived in a united family but today found themselves living as outcasts in their own home.

People should decide what social system should exist, but attempts are being made to deprive them of this right.

Instead of showing concern for the security and well-being of every citizen and all society, persons that have come to positions of power not infrequently use it for interests alien to the people, as a means for unscrupulous self-assertion. The streams of words and mountains of statements and promises only underscore the scanty and wretched nature of their practical deeds. The inflation of power, more frightening than any other kind of inflation, is destroying our state and society. Every citizen feels growing certainty about tomorrow and deep concern for the future of his or her children.

The power crisis has had catastrophic effects on the economy. The chaotic, spontaneous slide toward a market provoked an explosion of egoism-regional, departmental, group, and personal.

The war of laws and encouragement of centrifugal tendencies spelled destruction of the integral national economic mechanism that has been shaping for decades. The result includes sharp drops in the living standards of the vast majority of the Soviet people, and the blossoming of profiteering and the shadow economy.

It is high time people were told the truth: If urgent and decisive measures are not adopted to stabilize the economy, hunger and another spiral of impoverishment are imminent in the near future, from which it is just a step from mass manifestations of spontaneous discontent with devastating consequences. [ ... ]

The increasing destabilization of the political and economic situation in the Soviet Union is undercutting our positions in the world. Revanchist notes are to be heard in some places and demands are being made for a review of our borders. Voices can even be heard speaking of dismembering the Soviet Union and of the possibility of establishing International guardianship over individual facilities and regions of the country. [ ... ]

The State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR is fully aware of the depth of the crisis that has afflicted the country, it takes upon itself the responsibility for the fate of the country and is fully determined to take the most serious measures to take the state and society out of the crisis as soon as possible.

We promise to hold a nationwide discussion of the draft new Union treaty. Each individual will have the right and opportunity to think over this major act and define his attitude toward it because the fate of numerous peoples of our Motherland will depend on what the Soviet Union will be like. [ ... ]

Source: The Soviet Crisis; 'Grave, Critical Hour': A Soviet Message, The New York Times, 19 August 1991.