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other words, what didn‘t you put in the book? 

A — Well, I wrote the book because I thought that there is something about that time that people 

should know more about. I thought that I had something to say. Penn State Press didn‘t put any 

ground rules on my book. I put certain ground rules on my book, and the ground rule basically 

was that I am writing about important times, about an important period in history, and I wanted 

to tell it like it was. I also wanted to tell it in a dignified and responsible why. So that was a basic 

ground rule applied to specific situations, applied to specific context. There were specific things 

that I wrote about in some detail or that I left out because I thought that that is unimportant or 

because I thought that, you know, if taken out of context, that could have been misinterpreted. 

Q — Did you have to clear this with Mr. Gorbachev or Mr. Shevardnadze? 

A — No. No. Actually, of course, I wrote the book in English and, therefore, they could not read 

the book and, you know, correct whatever is wrong or mistaken in the manuscript. But the fact is 

that neither Gorbachev nor Shevardnadze, to my knowledge, tried to control what their 

associates or former associates are writing. It‘s the responsibility of those people who write 

about them to be responsible, to be mature. Basically, they‘ve written their own books. They 

have their own idea of what happened. They are prepared to discuss and defend what they were 

doing. If other people have a different opinion, so be it. I understand that that‘s their policy, and 

that‘s why they never ask their associates write books in Russian, which they can very well read. 

They never ask them to give them their manuscript for prior reading. 

Q — Where were you during the coup? 

A — I was in Moscow during the coup. It was the final couple of days of my vacation. I was 

supposed to report to work on the 20th of August. 

Q — 1991? 

A — 1991, yes, d—on the day when the Union treaty was to be signed. So I—as I‘m describing 

in the book, of course, I did not report to work because I didn‘t want to work for people who said 

that they, well, were the country‘s new leadership. I didn‘t want to work for them and, therefore, 

I didn‘t report to work. I spent that time in Moscow doing nothing particularly heroic, but 

certainly not following the orders of those people.  

Q — But what was that day like? And how did you find out that there was an attempted coup?  

A — I found out in the morning when my wife left for work and she said to me that there is 

something strange being read on the radio. I got up in the morning, I switched on the TV and the 

TV was—I think the TV at that time was showing someone playing some classical music. And 

on the radio—then I switched on the radio, and on the radio, they were reading that statement by 

Mr. Lukyanov saying that the Union treaty was a bad treaty; that, therefore, it needed to be