Death Of An Empire - Episode 3

Episode 3 - the August Coup 1991 : the failed coup, the fall of Gorbachev and the rise of Yeltsin

Episode three explores the August 1991 Coup attempt and the final months of the Soviet Union. Seamus Martin had just arrived as correspondent for the Irish Times six weeks earlier. We hear from well known economic and finance commentator in Ireland, Constantin Gurdgiev on his assessment of Boris Yeltsin who rallies crowds in defence of the White House and becomes the hero of the event. “How often to you get to live in a world where the country that you were born in really doesn’t exist anymore” Constantin Gurdgiev. While Seamus is in Moscow during the twentieth anniversary of the coup he meets Oleg Baklanov one of the conspirators behind the August 1991 coup which was intended to save the Soviet Union from Gorbachev’s re-structuring but which ultimately led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union by December 1991.