Interior Ministry Archives: Gorbachev Killed
During the hot summer days of 1991, when Soviet tanks rolled into Estonia after the KGB and Communist hardliners had staged a coup in Moscow, Estonian authorities received a message on August 19 that Mikhail Gorbachev had been killed.
An entry in the border police log reads: "23:00 - 22:00 Gorbachev was killed. Representative of the Russian Democratic Party in Estonia."
According to Tarmo Vahter, senior editor at Eesti Ekspress who found the entry in the archive while doing research for his book, "Vaba riigi tulek 1991" (Arrival of the Free Republic, 1991), he had never before heard of such a party and could not say who its Estonian "representative" was.
However, the fact that this information was logged means that it was considered of vital importance by the republic's authorities. According to Vahter, it illustrates well the atmosphere of the day - during the three dramatic days of the August coup, when the fate of democracy hung by a thread, it was impossible to tell truth from fiction.
By the next day, the coup had lost its impetus, Moscow was filled with pro-democracy demonstrators and that night the Estonian legislature proclaimed independence.
On August 21, Gorbachev returned to Moscow from his Crimean captivity to find the power balance had shifted, irretrievably, in favor of Boris Yeltsin who, as President of Russia, was ready to recognize the Baltic States' restoration of independence.
Erkki Sivonen