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Revisiting An Attempted Coup

Revisiting An Attempted Coup
Willis Sparks
By Willis SparksAugust 17, 2018
Willis Sparks
Willis Sparks is a senior editor for GZERO Daily. He is also a Director in the Global Macro practice at Eurasia Group, where he has worked since 2005. He has made speeches on international politics on every continent except Antarctica. Willis holds degrees from Brown University, the Juilliard School, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He also holds an honorary degree from the Moscow Art Theatre School. A native of Macon, Georgia, Willis has worked as a stuntman at New York's Metropolitan Opera. As a child, he declined an opportunity to spend an afternoon riding the Great American Scream Machine, a rollercoaster, with Ronald McDonald, for money. He has never regretted that decision.
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Finally, tomorrow marks the anniversary of the 1991 coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev in the dying days of the Soviet Union. A small group within the Soviet leadership tried to seize power while the Soviet leader was on vacation, but Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic within the USSR faced down the military, the plot collapsed, and Gorbachev returned to Moscow.

For a closer look, check out this video that Alex Kliment and I made two years ago.

The story is in the news again this week following a new poll on Russian attitudes toward that event. According to the Levada survey, just 6 percent of Russians say the defeat of the coup was a victory for democracy. Some 53 percent say “both sides” (coup-plotters and Yeltsin and pro-democracy activists) share blame for the violence. Among Russians aged 18-24, more than 40 percent said they couldn’t answer the question.

Interesting fact: On the first day of the 1991 coup, Vladimir Putin resigned his position as a KGB intelligence officer to join the fight against the attempted state takeover.

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