Moscow Diary Moscow, Monday, August 19, am: I hope this is not my last message but it could be if the phone lines are shut down. We don't know what's going on. We just heard the official announcement a few minutes ago. So stupid! Things are turning sour. It looks like a coup d'etat. The KGB, the Minister for Internal Affairs and the Defence Minister seem to be the rulers from now on. We hope it's not over yet. Please try to get through to us somehow. We are not receiving anything. It's a miracle that email still seems to be working. But if you suddenly lose sight of us at least don't be surprised. Let's believe it's not the end to everything. Lots of love. Igor the Worried August 19, pm: This is just a few lines before we Golubka people meet and go to the rally in front of the White House [headquarters of the Russian Federation] to distribute our leaflets with 198 ways of nonviolent struggle. We've been pushing our laser printer hard! Yuri had to find a couple of new cartridges. Later today we hope to send out a 'press-release.' We've survived for one day and we know time is on our side. So keep praying for us as we will keep praying for you. Igor the Direct Actor August 20: Again this could be our last message but we will keep trying to keep in touch. It's been a long day! As I write the situation becomes even graver. We just heard an announcement forbidding all the communication and mass media means except the 'official' media which is flooding the country with lies. So we can be cut off any minute. I'm not going to tell you any news because the coverage in the western media should be pretty good - we've seen all kinds of reporters on the front lines today. I'd better share some insight and our personal feelings. The atmosphere during the day was changing all the time. In the vicinity of the White House where we were distributing our nonviolence information - which, by the way, went like hot cakes - everybody had a feeling that the junta has only a few hours before going to jail. But the official propaganda brings much more despair into the situation. This night may be crucial, especially if they follow the Vilnius scenario. However the good news is that the only independent radio station 'Radio EM', although it has been prohibited, is still broadcasting. If they still are on the air tomorrow we'll try to get in touch with them and provide them with some of our materials. Our nonviolence anthology is coming in handy! We worry that we will run out of communication supplies - especially cartridges for printers and photocopy machines. So far we have a good supply of paper. It is important that everyone who can tries to influence the media in his or her country to support the legal government of Russia which is now in the forefront of the opposition to the forces of the coup. It is a pity for us that we cannot be in the front line all the time but we believe that we are doing the right thing at the right moment. Time is on our side. We shall overcome! Igor for Golubka August 21, 9 pm: At last the first real good news from Russia for the past couple of days! As I am writing these lines my TV is on and is broadcasting free stations' reports about the latest developments in the country. The tanks are pulling out of Moscow. At least six of the eight bastards from the junta have been reported to be arrested earlier today at about 3:30 somewhere on the way from Moscow to the airport. But this is not completely reliable information. By the time you receive this you will have a more precise report. Just a second ago it was announced that none of them has been arrested and all are in the Crimea. My guess is they're trying to beg forgiveness from Gorby. It's hard to keep my eyes off the TV screen since more and more information is coming with every minute. Igor the Hopeful August 22: We have won! By 'we' I mean the people, the democracy. We have witnessed a historical victory of the nonviolence of unarmed people over the extreme violence of the military and secret police. The struggle still goes on. There's a hell of a lot of work still to be done. In fact we understand that we have to work on nonviolence education five times as hard as we did before. The latest rumour is that people are about to attack the KGB headquarters in Lubyanskaya Square in downtown Moscow. Bloodshed can happen any minute and must be prevented. We'll probably go there soon although we originally decided to take a 'day off' today. Igor the Exhausted August 23, 2 pm: It's difficult to write after a couple of almost sleepless nights and long days when all Moscow Golubka was running around town, photocopying our nonviolence leaflets, then distributing them among people on the barricades. When I wrote that our flyers went like hot cakes, it wasn't an exaggeration. It was extremely empowering for us to see how crowds of people were gathering around us every time we came to distribute more of our stuff. Maybe it's been the main thing that prevented us from falling into despair. With that comes all the support we've been receiving from friends outside the country. The hard times are not over yet. But we're all well and everyone we know is okay. What happened has helped everyone to realize who is who. People from the west are asking how much credit for the victory should go personally to Yeltsin. He's certainly the most admired politician in this country at the moment. We, too, can't help admiring his decisiveness and courage in organizing resistance to the coup. But it's obvious to us as well that without the support of the people, Muscovites in the first place, all Russians and people from other republics and all over the world, it wouldn't have been possible. Although Yeltsin was the right person in the right place, presumably it could have been somebody else. But nobody could substitute for the people who were literally in the front line and whose blood was spilt in the streets of Moscow and whose courage obviously sobered the attackers. We'll hear more and more about real and fake heroes of the last three days in Moscow, but no matter what they say about their heroic deeds, most of the real heroes will remain unnamed since they are just average Muscovites who have been defending their legitimate government. We feel that the uniqueness of the situation was in the unity of the people with their leaders which made it impossible for the junta to suppress the people and purge the government of Russia. What Golubka did was a 'raindrop in the ocean' but we did what we could. Our main achievement was to distribute our nonviolence leaflets on civil defence, methods of nonviolent action and historical examples of nonviolent struggle. My estimate is that we have distributed between 1500 and 2000 pages but it's difficult to say for sure because some of the materials were on both sides of the paper and some materials were on two or three pages. We were copying flyers simultaneously in different places and distributing them right away. We used our two laser printers, one at Vanya's and the other at Zhenya's. A lot of the materials were photocopied by Natasha at her father's office (paying money for this) and by Zhenya and Vanya at the FSI for free. We distributed most of the stuff to the people on the barricades defending the White House. Some we glued to the walls in the subway and to lampposts in downtown Moscow. The people at the radio 'Echo of Moscow' have a copy of our nonviolence anthology. We hope they'll use it in future broadcasts. I left a copy of the anthology and each of the leaflets with a friend of mine who worked during the coup for the German TV news and who we met in the midst of the crowd a couple of hours before the assault on the Russian Parliament. That's about all we've been able to do. In the end let me tell you that for us it was also extremely important to realize that being a group is something that is difficult to overestimate. Collectively we were able to generated the chutzpah [Yiddish for nerve, gall or courage] needed to do what we did. Igor the Happy Igor Ovchinnikov, a 28-year-old Muscovite, is active in Golubka, a group which organizes workshops on nonviolence, conflict resolution, group ecology and global thinking. This is an abridged version of a diary he posted via email to friends in Europe and the USA. From Peace Media Service, No. 27, September, 1991.