The immediate afterglow of the failed coup attempt in August 1991 must rank as one of the more optimistic periods in Russian history. In August 1991, like many other times in Russia’s past, Kremlin rulers had issued orders to suppress the people. This time around, some of the people resisted. For three days, a military stand-off ensued between those defending elected representatives of the people in the White House – the home to Russia’s Congress of People’s Deputies – and those carrying out orders issued by non-elected leaders in the Kremlin. Popular resistance to the coup attempt was not widespread. In fact, except for Moscow, St Petersburg and the industrial centres in the Urals, there were no signs of resistance at all. But this concentrated opposition, especially in Moscow, produced major consequences for Russia’s history. In this round of conflict between the Russian people and their rulers, the people prevailed. The victory created an atmosphere of unlimited potential. One Western publication declared, ‘Serfdom’s End: a thousand years of autocracy are reversed’.

The triumph, however, also fuelled inflated expectations about what was to come next. The victors immediately accomplished some symbolic gestures, such as the arrest of the coup plotters and the destruction of Feliks Dzerzhinsky’s statue outside the KGB’s headquarters. But the bigger tasks of creating a new state, economy and polity soon erased the euphoria of August 1991 for Russia’s political leadership. Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the unquestioned hero of the dramatic August events, most certainly seemed overwhelmed.