MOSCOW. Aug 19 (Interfax) - A relative majority of Russians (41%) see the August 19, 1991, putsch in the former Soviet Union as a tragedy which had harmful implications for the country and its people.
The number has grown 14% in the past 20 years, from 27% in 1994, Levada Center told Interfax referring to a nationwide poll held in late July.
The events are seen as a tragedy mostly by businessmen (52%), pensioners (48%), Russians older than 55 (49%), people with secondary education (46%), respondents with a low and high consumer status (46% in each category) and people in cities with a population less than 100,000 (51%).
Some 36% described the August 1991 events as an episode in the struggle for power and their number has considerably reduced since 1994 (53%). The opinion is mostly shared by salary workers (44%), the unemployed (43%), Russians younger than 25 (44%), people with less than secondary education (42%), people with a low consumer status who can afford only food and clothes (42%) and villagers (44%), the sociologists said.
Only a few people (9%) insist that 1991 was the year of "victory of a democratic revolution which put an end to the Communist Party rule." The opinion is mostly asserted by present-day executives and managers (22%), businessmen and specialists (17% in each category), Russians aged 25 to 40 (12%), people with higher education (14%), people with a high consumer status who can easily afford a car (21%) and Muscovites (33%).
Thirteen percent insist that Boris Yeltsin and the democrats were the good guys in the confrontation of August 1991, and 14% say so about the GKChP putsch committee. Most respondents (54%) say neither side was right.
In the opinion of 74% of the respondents, the country took a wrong turn after the putsch. This is mostly said by businessmen (64%), salary workers (55%), pensioners (54%), Russians older than 55 (55%), people with a low consumer status (50%) and people in cities with a population from 100,000 to 500,000 (58%).
Twenty-seven percent of the respondents argued the opposite, and 26% were undecided.
The political crisis of August 1991 was triggered by the attempt of some senior Soviet officials to disrupt the signing of a new union treaty. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was isolated in his Crimean residence for that purpose.
The establishment of the State Emergency Situation Committee (GKChP) comprising Soviet Vice-President Gennady Yanayev, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, the Soviet President's Defense Council Deputy Chairman Oleg Baklanov, Interior Minister Boris Pugo, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, State Security Committee Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov and some others was officially declared on August 19, 1991.
GKChP banned the activity of opposition parties and movements and a number of newspapers. Troops were deployed in Moscow. Mass demonstrations and protest rallies in Moscow, Leningrad and some other cities responded to the GKChP moves.
RSFSR President Boris Yeltsin and other leaders of the Russian Federation headed the resistance. Yeltsin's decrees described the establishment of the GKChP as an attempted coup and union executive agencies, including law enforcement bodies, were subordinated to the RSFSR president.
The GKChP was liquidated on August 22. Its members and some other officials, among them Soviet Supreme Council Chairman Anatoly Lukyanov, were arrested. Pugo committed suicide.
The State Duma amnestied GKChP members in 1994.
A decree issued by Boris Yeltsin on August 23, 1991, suspended Communist Party activity in the RSFSR (it was banned on November 6).
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev declared his resignation from the position of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee Secretary General and asked Central Committee members for voluntary dissolution on August 24, 1991. The activity of the union authorities was paralyzed.