‘Dad, wake up—there’s been a coup’
“Dad, wake up! There’s been a coup!” A girl rushes into a room, shouting. Her father, half-asleep, replies groggily: “That’s illegal.”
For Chinese audiences today, this exchange immediately evokes the sudden detention of Zhang Youxia, a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the CCP organ commanding the armed forces, and Liu Zhenli, chief of the PLA’s Joint Staff Department, the military’s operational headquarters. Yet this scene did not unfold in the People’s Republic of China. It took place in the Soviet Union—the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China’s ruling Leninist party, once regarded Moscow as its ideological “elder brother.” The coup was the Aug. 19, 1991 putsch, the event that directly precipitated the collapse of Soviet Communist rule.
The father and daughter were Boris Yeltsin, then president of the Russian Federation, and his daughter Tatyana.
Why revisit this episode now? Because events unfolding inside China bear an unsettling resemblance to that decisive moment in Soviet history.
General Michael Flynn, a former U.S. national security adviser and senior intelligence official, has described the arrests of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli as “a coup within the Chinese Communist Party.” The Xi Jinping leadership, meaning the party center dominated by Xi as CCP general secretary, moved with abnormal speed to announce their downfall.
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Yet the response—or more precisely, the silence—of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the CCP’s party-controlled armed forces, suggests that the situation is far from resolved.
Xi Jinping has long been obsessed with avoiding the fate of the Soviet Union. Yet the power struggle he has personally initiated may be driving China toward precisely the outcome he fears most: a Chinese analogue of the August 1991 coup—one that could ultimately bring down the CCP regime itself.
The hidden spark: a wiretapped conversation
On Aug. 19, 1991, the Soviet Union announced the creation of a “State Committee on the State of Emergency,” a temporary junta formed by senior party, military, and security officials, declaring emergency rule in parts of the country. Claiming that President Mikhail Gorbachev was incapacitated by illness, Vice President Gennady Yanayev assumed presidential powers. The announcement shocked the world. This was the August Coup.
The chain of events began weeks earlier. On Aug. 4, Gorbachev left Moscow for his summer residence in Foros, Crimea. Some warned him that his colleagues might act in his absence. He dismissed the idea. “They don’t have the nerve to oppose the president,” he said. He was wrong.
According to Yeltsin, the immediate trigger was a secret wiretap.
Days before his departure, Gorbachev held a critical conversation with Yeltsin. Midway through, Yeltsin suddenly fell silent. Gorbachev asked, startled, “Boris, what’s wrong?”
Yeltsin later recalled an overwhelming sensation that someone was standing directly behind him, listening.
“Let’s go out onto the balcony,” Yeltsin said instinctively. “I think someone’s listening to us.” Gorbachev scoffed but followed him outside.
After the coup, investigators discovered vast archives locked in two safes—verbatim transcripts of Yeltsin’s conversations over several years, recorded around the clock. Among them was that very conversation with Gorbachev.
Yeltsin later concluded that this recording may have been the fuse that ignited the August 1991 crisis.
The safes belonged to Valery Boldin, Gorbachev’s chief of staff and gatekeeper to the presidency—without Gorbachev’s knowledge.
What had been said?
Yeltsin urged Gorbachev to remove several deeply unpopular officials, naming Vladimir Kryuchkov, chairman of the KGB, the Soviet state security service, and Dmitry Yazov, the Soviet defense minister and top uniformed officer. After discussion, Gorbachev indicated he might also dismiss Boris Pugo, the interior minister overseeing police forces, and Valentin Pavlov, the Soviet prime minister.
Every word was overheard by the KGB.
From palace intrigue to open putsch
On Aug. 18, while Gorbachev was still in Crimea, his security chief reported that a group of senior officials had arrived to see him. “I invited no one,” Gorbachev replied. He tried calling Moscow—Kryuchkov, Yanayev—only to find all lines cut.
He immediately understood the gravity of the situation.
Gathering his family, he warned them that “anything could happen.” His wife, Raisa, later recalled thinking of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, murdered after the Bolshevik seizure of power. She knew what communists were capable of.
Gorbachev allowed the visitors in. They included senior KGB officers, Oleg Baklanov, vice chairman of the Defense Council overseeing military industry, Valery Boldin, his chief of staff, Oleg Shenin, a Central Committee secretary responsible for party organization, and Valentin Varennikov, commander of Soviet ground forces.
“Who sent you?” Gorbachev demanded.
“The Committee,” came the reply—the State Committee on the State of Emergency.
“I created no such committee. Who did?”
Varennikov was blunt: sign the emergency decree or hand power to the vice president.
Gorbachev erupted. “You are adventurers and traitors. You will pay for this. Only those seeking suicide would impose totalitarian rule now. You are pushing the country toward civil war.”
They handed him the committee’s membership list. Gorbachev was stunned. Yazov, whom he had personally promoted. Kryuchkov, his longtime associate. Boldin, his most trusted aide for over a decade. All had betrayed him.
After leaving, the KGB ordered Gorbachev placed under stricter isolation. On the return flight to Moscow, the plotters began drinking.
Back in Moscow, the coup moved into the open. Claiming Gorbachev’s illness, Yanayev—his hands visibly trembling—signed the decree assuming power. Yazov, Pugo, Kryuchkov, Pavlov, Baklanov, and others followed.
In China’s political system, these figures would roughly correspond to the vice president, premier, vice chair of the Central Military Commission, ministers of state security and defense, the minister of public security, and other core power holders.
This is precisely the inverse of Xi Jinping’s current maneuver.
At 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 19, Yazov ordered all military units to high alert. Soldiers were recalled from leave. Special forces advanced toward Moscow’s ring road, preparing to seize the capital.
Is today’s China truly so different?
At the same time, KGB Alpha Group, the elite counterterrorism unit of Soviet state security, surrounded Yeltsin’s dacha outside Moscow. They were not told their mission. Kryuchkov’s decision to delay Yeltsin’s arrest would prove decisive.
The White House standoff and a tank-top speech
Yeltsin donned a bulletproof vest beneath his suit and headed for the “White House”—Russia’s parliament building and symbol of elected authority. Alpha Group followed, taking up positions. They carried a list of 70 names, prepared to arrest them at any moment.
Inside the White House, Yeltsin and his allies mobilized rapidly. An “Appeal to the Citizens of Russia” was broadcast nationwide. Muscovites flooded in, erecting barricades.
Yeltsin established a Russian Defense Ministry inside the building and appointed Konstantin Kobets, a career army general, as defense minister.
Shortly after noon, Yeltsin climbed onto a tank and read Decree No. 59, declaring all decisions of the emergency committee illegal and void on Russian territory.
That afternoon, a battalion of the Ryazan Airborne Division defected to the White House defenders. The crowd erupted.
Inside the Kremlin, panic mounted. Yanayev muttered hysterically, “I’ll shoot myself.” Pavlov collapsed and was hospitalized. Yazov had moved troops into Moscow but hesitated to act.
At a humiliating press conference, journalists asked directly: “Is this a coup?” On live television, viewers watched the leaders’ hands shake, faces flushing and blanching. Asked about Gorbachev’s health, their answers collapsed into incoherence.
Public resistance surged. Nearly half of regional newspapers published not only the committee’s decrees but also Yeltsin’s appeals.
Crowds outside the White House grew. Thousands obtained weapons, reinforced barricades, and prepared to resist.
A 55-year-old woman named Bogachyova spoke for tens of thousands:
“I am ready to die here. All my life I was taught obedience—Young Pioneers, Communist Youth League, trade unions, the Party. Never resist. Be a screw in the machine. On Monday morning I heard tanks on the highway. These beasts think they can do anything to us. They removed Gorbachev; now they threaten our elected government. I am not afraid of curfew. If necessary, let the tanks crush me.”
When the military refuses to kill
The troops sent to Moscow did not understand their mission. They did not regard the White House defenders as enemies. Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, commander of the Soviet Air Force, publicly declared: “We will not use force against the people.” The navy followed.
The emergency committee ordered an assault on the White House. No one would carry it out. Alpha Group commanders refused. As Yeltsin later learned, the officers did not want to be scapegoats. “They were not democrats,” he said, “but they refused to die for idiots like Kryuchkov and Yazov.”
At an internal Alpha Group meeting, a senior officer stated: “They want to wash their crimes in our blood. Each of you must act according to conscience. I will not attack the White House.”
Even Viktor Karpukhin, the general assigned to command the assault, withdrew two hours before it was scheduled. “It would have been a massacre,” he told reporters. “I didn’t have the courage.”
Shaposhnikov and Pavel Grachev, commander of the airborne forces, went further: if the coup forces attacked, the air force would retaliate—bombers would fly over the Kremlin and eliminate the plotters.
Yazov turned pale. Urged to act, he snapped: “I will not be Pinochet.”
The balance tipped decisively toward the White House—though inside, Yeltsin and his team remained on edge.
The night the coup collapsed
In his memoirs, Yeltsin recalled dozing briefly around 2:30 a.m. when gunfire erupted and aides shook him awake. “My first thought was: it’s over. The attack has begun.”
They rushed him downstairs, fitted him with a vest, and put him in a car. The nearby U.S. Embassy residential compound could have evacuated him in seconds, with American consent already secured. Yeltsin refused. He would not abandon the tens of thousands protecting him.
Instead, he was taken to an underground bunker. After hours, he insisted on returning upstairs despite reports that three protesters had been killed.
At 3 a.m. on the third day, KGB chief Kryuchkov called the White House. Speaking to Gennady Burbulis, Yeltsin’s closest political adviser, he said simply: “It’s over. You can sleep.”
Under mass resistance and military disobedience, the coup collapsed. At 8 a.m., generals unanimously ordered troops to withdraw from Moscow.
For the protesters, survival felt unreal. Facing death together, they discovered unexpected solidarity.
One woman recalled: “On the barricades, there was a brotherhood you never feel in ordinary life. In that extreme moment, I saw the depth of human goodness. I never knew my country had so many decent people.”
How the August coup accelerated communist collapse
On Aug. 21, Gorbachev’s communications were restored. He called Yeltsin first. “Mikhail Sergeyevich,” Yeltsin shouted, “we held out for forty-eight hours with our lives.”
His second call was to George H. W. Bush, then president of the United States, who said he and his wife had been praying for him.
At 2 a.m. on Aug. 22, Gorbachev returned to Moscow. On orders from the Russian prosecutor, Yazov, Kryuchkov, and other coup participants were arrested.
On Aug. 23, Yeltsin ordered the suspension of the Russian Communist Party. The Soviet Central Committee headquarters was sealed.
On Aug. 24, Gorbachev resigned as general secretary and dissolved the Central Committee—effectively ending the Bolshevik era.
In the days that followed, Yeltsin transferred Communist Party archives and assets to Russian state control. Five days later, he declared the Communist Party an illegal organization in Russia.
The August coup plotters never imagined that their attempt to save the system would instead hasten its destruction.
Xi Jinping’s rule has already produced countless unfinished projects. What we may be witnessing now is the ultimate one: a terminal failure, personally directed and personally deployed.
