Category: Hidden Memories of Parallel Times

“We will not privatize socialism. We will militarize it.” —Gromov, 1993

“The Cold War never ended — it simply reprogrammed itself.”

People learned to smile with closed lips. To whisper instead of shout. To remember that silence was not submission—it was survival.

Following the successful coup d’état on August 19, 1991, the Soviet Union entered a turbulent but decisive period of restoration under a new authoritarian leadership. The junta, initially composed of hardline Communist Party officials, was soon eclipsed by a rising figure within the KGB and Ministry of Internal Affairs—Ivan Gromov, a previously obscure but ruthless…

Inside the August Restoration Coup How Eight Days in 1991 Reshaped the World By Michael C. Hansen – Foreign Affairs Correspondent, BBC World Service Filed: August 2021 (30-year retrospective) Moscow, August 1991. I remember the sky first—blank and steel-colored. The kind of sky that seems to press downward. Heavy. Like something was about to fall.…

In August of 1991, the hand of fate did not tremble — it struck. The coup succeeded. The city held its breath as the tanks did not retreat, as the statues did not fall, as the ghosts of old commissars found flesh once more. Gorbachev vanished into the obscurity of exile. Yeltsin fell not into…