Soviet Coup Archive - Images

This directory, only available through the web site, contains scanned photos taken by Maxim Markevitch, at the time a 25 year old graduate student at the Institute for Space Research in Moscow.

  1. This is the first picture taken on the first morning (19 August), near the Krymskii Val bridge. As he was not sure if they would allow him to take pictures, the shot was taken from his bag - thus the strange orientation.

  2. Again, taken the same first morning, the tank guns are directed to the right of the Kremlin. The picture was taken from Borovitskii bridge.

  3. A colonel sitting on the machine gives a press conference to a crowd of people, persuading the people that the troops are in the town to help police to keep the order - Manezhnaia Square, the afternoon of 19 August.

  4. A trolleybus (21 August, near the White House) with graffiti. There is an old patriotic poem, which has a line in it something like, "We will put the fireball to the cannon tightly." Two letters have been changed in the graffiti and now it translates so something like, "We will put the fireball to the body of Pugo," the name of the minister of police. By the time this photo was taken, Pugo had already shot himself.

  5. Several people with cameras on a tank in Manezhnaia Square on the afternoon of 19 August. No one takes all the events seriously, considering it as a good reason to get out to the street and to take pictures