August 19, 1991

Carl Bildt:

Early in the morning 15 years ago - it was Tuesday August 19, 1991 - a TV announcement in the Soviet Union said that emergency rule had been declared, that Michael Gorbachov was sick and that power was now in the hands of an emergency committee namned GKChP.

I can’t believe it’s been 15 years already. Those days in August are still very vivid to me, but not because of what went on in Moscow. Growing up living next to the Iron Curtain this historical event is actually something that I totally missed. Two days earlier on August 17 I had arrived in Texas to start a whole new chapter in my life – being a freshman at an American university. Something that I had dreamt about doing after spending the last three summers in summer school in the DC-area. Let’s just say that there is huge difference between the East Coast and West Texas, and for a month or so I had no idea what went on in the world outside the university walls. To be honestly I hardly understood what went on inside the walls either…

Within two days it was clear that the coup had failed - and that Boris Yeltsin was the new leader of a new Russia. Soon he were to take the bold move of recognizing the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Soon he would outlaw the Communist Party and dissolve the Soviet Union as a whole.

And the world got to see a whole continent go from dictatorship and planned economy to democracy and market economy. A very good ending for something that actually could have ended terribly wrong. At least seen with western eyes.