WHY WAS BORIS YELTSIN NOT NEUTRALIZED?
The TV news commentators would have us believe that hard‑liners staged a coup to oust Gorbachev and revert to the old style Communist government but, because of the democratic forces already unleashed in the USSR and the courage of the people, the coup failed. But, one major fact does not fit into that theory and that fact is Yeltsin. The two key figures promoting change in the Soviet Union are Gorbachev, who wants moderately paced change, and Yeltsin who wants the rate of change to greatly speeded up. In recent months, many have accused Gorbachev of sacking reformers and putting representatives of the old guard in positions of power. Some, including Yeltsin, have gone as far as to suggest that, in this way, he laid the foundation for the coup. Now, if the coup was genuine, surely the hard‑liners would have silenced the two key reformers, Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The very fact that Yeltsin was not neutralized shows that either the coup was badly bungled or it was designed to fail! Why wa
