From the archives: Off guard, on guard; Gorbachev upstaged by Yeltsin in joint appearance

This article was originally published in Newsday on Aug. 24, 1991

It wasn't long into their first joint public appearance since an abortive coup that Boris Yeltsin let Mikhail Gorbachev know that the balance of power between them had shifted.

Catching the Soviet president off guard in front of the Russian parliament and millions of television viewers, Yeltsin theatrically held up a document in a blue government folder. "On a lighter note, let me sign a decree suspending the activity of the Russian Communist Party," he said cheerfully.

“Boris Nikolayevich, Boris Nikolayevich," Gorbachev stammered, staring at him aghast, as the Russian Republic president signed with a flourish. Gorbachev's words were drowned out by the cheers and long rhythmic applause of the delighted lawmakers who had faced down tanks to rescue Gorbachev and the country from a repressive coup attempt by hard-line Communists on Gorbachev's senior staff.

Yeltsin's gesture and Gorbachev's protest played out before the Russian parliament provided a dramatic example of Yeltsin's ascendancy in the five days since a Communist coup attempt began.

During a 90-minute appearance in the parliamentary hall that had been the rallying point of resistance, Gorbachev was jeered and humiliated as he tried to thank his rescuers, explain the government shakeup he had begun and answer questions.

The only gentle moment came at the beginning, when he marched dramatically onto the podium along with Yeltsin and the parliament's speaker, Ruslan Khasbulatov.

"I want to especially single out . . . the outstanding role of the president of Russia in all these events, Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin," Gorbachev said, staring at the onetime enemy who had gotten him out of captivity in his Crimean summer home. As a standing ovation began, Yeltsin, moved, put his hand over his heart, then rose and applauded back to the hall.

But after that, the bouquets were replaced by thorns. Gorbachev was mid-sentence at a speaker's lectern, talking about ministers he had sacked as disloyal, when Yeltsin suddenly got up from his chair and handed Gorbachev a report - stenographic minutes of a secret meeting of Gorbachev's own cabinet on the Monday night after an eight-member emergency committee announced it had seized power from the Soviet president.

"Mikhail Sergeyevich, read the document," Yeltsin said.

Gorbachev put it aside for a moment as he announced that his whole government would have to resign. Then he turned to the Russian leaders, curious about how they got the document. "Ivan Stepanovich," he said to Yeltsin's prime minister, Ivan Stepanovich Silayev. "You were there?"

"It was a closed meeting," Silayev said. "No minutes were taken.

"Who took the notes?" Gorbachev asked, but Silayev only shrugged evasively. Then Gorbachev started to read out loud to the muttering hall the catalog of betrayals, of how virtually the entire executive branch had rallied behind the coup committee.

"Katushev," he said, reading the last name and the comments made by the the minister of Foreign Economic Relations: "The staff of the ministry at 10 a.m. considered the situation and gave its full support to the committee."

Vladimir Orlov, head of the Finance Ministry: "We support" the state of emergency "jointly with the banks."

Valery Sychev, State Commitee of Standards, "gave his active support to the committee and offered services to implement its polices."

On and on, it went, one Gorbachev appointee after another.

Then the Russian deputies had their turn at Gorbachev, asking him whether the Communist Party should be designated a "criminal organization." They hissed when he said that Prosecutor General Nikolai Trubin - known for his whitewash of Soviet troop actions against Lithuania in January that left 14 people dead - would investigate the coup.

"I say what I think," Gorbachev retorted to heckling at one point.

"Say the truth," a deputy shouted.

"I say what I think, right or wrong. I hope you accept that," Gorbachev replied.

To the utterly unsympathetic audience, he defended the Communist Party, even after Yeltsin had signed the decree on the party's Russian branch.

"Wait a minute. Not all members of the Russian Communist Party took part in the plot," Gorbachev protested. "If it is established that the Russian [party] committee . . . supported the [coup] committee, I would support such a measure.

"But banning the Communist Party, I have to tell you, would be a mistake for such a democratic Supreme Soviet, for such a democratic president of Russia."

Yeltsin waved away Gorbachev's complaints, saying the party's activities had only been suspended, pending investigation of the coup.