Photo: Lilia Sharlovskaya
Former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev said the lessons of the emergency committee were still relevant. According to him, the democratic path of development is the only right one for Russia.
Gorbachev recalled that he refused to sign a decree establishing a state of emergency in the USSR because he considered the steps of the State Emergency Committee to be criminal. In this regard, he appealed to the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet, arguing that coupmen were cheating people and trying to seize power.
Gorbachev is confident that the people of the Soviet Union do not want to return to the old order and that democratic institutions have stood the test. At the same time, it entrusts the State Emergency Committee with much of the responsibility for the collapse of the country, which it appears to have saved.