PART TWO - THE LAST SOVIET
Screenplay of the Russian film “Birth of a Nation” (“Рождение нация”) (1995)[1]
16. EXT. THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC RALLY AT GORKY PARK, MORNING As the crowd of five hundred stand around the makeshift stage and podium, we see VLADIMIR ZHIRINOVSKY standing at the podium reading from a prepared speech.
ZHIRINOVSKY (yelling)
For too long the Russian people were denied our rights, our freedoms! But the time for change is upon us. The Bolsheviks are running scared comrades! They are scared of you! Of the freedom loving Russian who knows that his voice can no longer be silenced.
Pan to various face shots of adoring onlookers. Several are nodding their heads in approval.
17. EXT. Ulitsa Krymskiy Val- MORNING We see a car driving recklessly down the street swerving wildly as it comes to a screeching halt near the front gate of Gorky Park. As it stops an OLD RUSSIAN WOMAN walking down the sidewalk looks disapprovingly as four men step out of the car. The men are dressed in Soviet military uniforms, but are badly disheveled and visibly drunk. One of the men, CORPRAL HASINOV, is holding a vodka bottle. In the background we can hear the voice of ZHIRINOVSKY on a speaker.
OLD RUSSIAN WOMAN
For shame. What kind of soldiers are you?
HASINOV stumbles up to the old woman and slaps her across the face, knocking her down.
HASINOV
Ha! Old pig!
ORUCOV, SALAHOV, and KHANMAMMADOV all laugh at the old woman. HASINOV spits on her as they stumble towards the rally.
18. EXT. THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC RALLY AT GORKY PARK, MORNING ZHIRINOVSKY is still speaking to the crowd when machine gun fire stops him in mid sentence. We see HASINOV, ORUCOV, SALAHOV, and KHANMAMMADOV stumble through the crowd, which parts like the Red Sea to clear room for the drunken soldiers. ORUCOV is holding his Kalashnikov in the air. HASINOV throws his vodka bottle to the ground, shattering it.
HASINOV
Are you the traitorous pig Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky?
ZHIRINOVSKY (standing firm)
I am he.
HASINOV
You are under arrest for treason.
The crowd begins to stir restlessly and we hear them begin to protest.
ZHIRINOVSKY (addressing HASINOV)
I can assure you, that there are no traitors here except you…and the filth you brought with you!
HASINOV looks at ZHIRINOVSKY with visible anger and contempt. He lifts his rifle to shoot ZHIRINOVSKY, prompting LT. VAULIN, who is standing in the crowd, to tackle HASINOV before he can fire a shot. ORUCOV, SALAHOV, and KHANMAMMADOV immediately raise their rifles and begin firing into the crowd. We see women and children falling from the gunfire as the crowd scream in horror.
ZHIRINOVSKY (addressing the crowd) Comrades! We have been betrayed!
[1] Showings and/or performances of this film is prohibited by the British Board of Film Censors. This film is currently banned in the following countries: United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Hungary.
Witness recounts the events at Gorky Park during coup
Der Spiegel
August 19, 2001
Interviewer’s notes: Der Spiegel interview with Alex Artemiev
DS: So you were among the hundreds who attended the Zhirinovsky rally on August 18th and 19th?
Artemiev: It wasn’t hundreds. It was about thirty. And most of them were just there for the free vodka.
DS: Free vodka?
Artemiev: Yes. Vodka. Zhirinovsky used to promise free vodka to all Russians or some silly thing like that. I was walking past the park with some friends and I heard him on the loud speaker. We didn’t pay him any attention, until we heard something about free vodka. Then we stopped.
DS: Then what happened?
Artemiev: We walked into the tent and started drinking.
DS: So were you a supporter of Mr. Zhirinovsky?
Artemiev: No. I actually thought he was something of a buffoon. But when I got there it seemed like a fun party. Even Zhirinovsky was drunk.
DS: What about when Corporal Hasinov came to arrest Zhirinovsky that morning?
Artemiev: Well, I remember seeing him walk into the tent with three other soldiers. They looked frightened at first, and I remember seeing one of them grab Hasinov’s arm, as if to stop him. But he mumbled something to that soldier and broke his arm free and walked up to Zhirinovsky.
DS: Was Zhirinovsky speaking to the crowd?
Artemiev: No. Most of the people were passed out. The only people who were not were me and one of my friends, Alexey Osokin, and of course Lieutenant Vaulin and some of his friends at the other side of the tent. Zhirinovsky was pretty drunk and sitting on a chair, nearly passed out.
DS: What happened then?
Artemiev: Well, Hasinov walked up to Zhirinovsky and whispered in his ear. But Zhirinovsky didn’t move.
DS: Then what happened?
Artemiev: He started to softly shake Zhirinovsky to wake him up.
DS: Did Zhirinovsky acknowledge him at that point?
Artemiev: No. So he started shaking him harder. That woke him up.
DS: What happened next?
Artemiev: He said something to Zhirinovsky right as Vaulin noticed that he was shaking
Zhirinovsky somewhat forcefully. That’s when the incident started.
DS: Did Zhirinovsky respond?
Artemiev: Yes. He said, and I remember this clearly, he said ‘
I’ve been betrayed!”
DS:
I’ve?
Artemiev: Yes. ‘I’ve been betrayed.’ Singular.
Excerpts from the book: “The Last Soviet: A Biography of Vahid Hasinov” by Mary Kerr.
Published by University of California Press, © 2010.
Chapter V: “The Troublemaker”
Much of the goodwill Corporal Hasinov earned from his time serving in Afghanistan ultimately was lost when he became a vocal supporter of Azerbaijani rights in Germany. In one of the few known and authenticated letters written by Hasinov during his time in Germany he described the deteriorating relationship between the conscripts and the mostly Slavic officers.
“We are becoming aware of what we were, not just as soldiers, but as Azeris,” Hasinov wrote, “we don’t see ourselves as Soviets anymore. I see the various ethnic groups sticking together and distancing themselves from the Russians.”
It was in this heightened climate that Hasinov garnered the attention of his superiors.
“It was clear that the Russian officers were angry that they were losing Germany and Eastern Europe,” Hasinov wrote, “but they seemed oblivious to the fact that they are still occupying Azerbaijan. I took part in a protest organized by a fellow Azeri. We decided to boycott a planned Soviet referendum, we didn’t want any part of it as long as our country was occupied.”
It was a protest that proved costly for the young Corporal and is widely seen as one of the reasons he was stationed in Moscow in August of 1991 as opposed to with the Soviet 4th Army, which by 1991 was the primary Soviet military force in Azerbaijan, and the one unit that was almost entirely Azerbaijani.
“They tried to make us march to the polling station to vote,” another Azeri soldier who took part in the protest in Germany (and who asked to remain unidentified) recounted years later, “but we stood firm. We Azeris had promised each other we wouldn't vote in any Soviet referendum, so we refused the order.”
The incident caused a backlash against Hasinov, who admitted to a friend in Germany that he knew that the commanders considered him “a problem”. But others noted that it went beyond his refusal to vote, but his determination to protect the rights of his fellow Azeris and demand equal treatment for them.
“There was a lot of racism from the officers,” added the soldier who served with Hasinov in Germany, “they'd call any soldier from the Caucasus a black ass. When Hasinov made those same officers beg him to cooperate, it all but sealed his fate. I think they never forgot that, and they never forgave him.”
Old Soviet military records on Corporal Hasinov have proved extremely unreliable, but most historians do agree that the protest was the deciding factor in sending Hasinov to Moscow after the Soviets pulled out of Germany.
After “Black January” in the early part of 1990 in Baku there was no way the Soviets would send a difficult Azeri soldier there,” stated a Soviet officer who was familiar with Hasinov, “so he was sent to Moscow as part of a construction unit in October of 1990. Unit 600.”
From CNN’s twenty-four episode television documentary Cold War.
© 1998
Courtesy of CNN
Episode 24: “
Conclusions”
Former NBC Moscow reporter Bob Abernethy:
“It was ironic that Hasinov even stayed as long as he did in Moscow. Many of the Azeri soldiers were abandoning ship, going AWOL. Some were going home and taking part in the increasingly volatile war between the Azeris and the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Others were just leaving and going home. The myth of the Soviet Army had collapsed from the inside out. But for whatever reason, Hasinov decided to stay put...the last Soviet. Until he received the call from General Varennikov.
Excerpts from the book “Three Days in Moscow” by Edward Ellis.
Published by Random House © 1999
Moscow, USSR. August 19, 1991. 6:22 A.M.
Although many historians dispute the size of the crowd at Gor’kiy Park on August 19, 1991, there is no dispute as to the issue of sobriety. After drinking all night, those who were present were volatile, drunk, and, for at least a handful, looking for a fight. The arrival of Hasinov, Orucov, Salahov, and Khanmammadov proved to be the spark that ignited the second Russian Revolution. Hasinov’s attempts to arrest Zhirinovsky prompted a violet response from a young Russian officer named Lieutenant Vitali Vaulin, an avowed extreme nationalist who himself would subsequently be tried for war crimes in The Hague in 2005.
“I couldn’t’ believe those four black asses thought they could just walk into our rally and expect us to do nothing,” Vaulin would say in an interview with a Finnish newspaper in 1996, “and to not even tell us who issued the order?!”
Most witnesses confirmed that Vaulin, who outranked the four Azeris, demanded they identify who issued the order. When Hasinov refused to disclose that information, Vaulin responded by issuing his own order for the four men to leave Zhirinovsky alone.
“During this entire incident, Zhirinovsky was cowering next to the podium like a deer in the road,” commented Alex Artemiev, a witness to the event, “he looked catatonic with fear.”
As the incident became louder and more volatile, it had the unintended consequence of awaking other Zhirinovsky supporters. One observer noted from the insignia on the uniform of the four men that they were from Construction Unit 600, a revelation that had the effect of electrifying the crowd even further.
“We knew that there was no way the government would send four enlisted Azeri construction workers to arrest Zhirinovsky,” commented Vladimir Bakatin, a Zhirinovsky supporter who was present at the rally. “And we also knew than many Azeris were abandoning the Soviet army and selling whatever they could on the black market. We had no reason to believe a word these men said. We thought they were mafia. Gangsters. Looking to try and kidnap our leader and take him to Baku for ransom.”
History would go on to argue over who fired the first shot in what many Russian nationalists call “The Battle of Gor’kiy Park.”
“The little one, Salahov, he got scared,” commented Bakatin, “and that’s when he took a shot at Vaulin.”
“Vaulin and Hasinov were arguing about who gave the order to arrest Zhirinovsky,” countered Artemiev, “and Vaulin kept screaming that Hasinov was disobeying a direct order by not leaving. That’s when Vaulin lifted his rifle and shot Salahov in the stomach.”
By most accounts the firefight lasted just twenty seconds before Hasinov, Salahov and Orucov fled. Salahov, who received a gunshot wound to his abdomen, would die the following day at the hospital. Although the number of casualties at Gor’kiy Park is a matter of fierce debate, with Russian nationalists claiming upwards of a hundred Zhirinovsky supporters killed (most independent observes have the number at two), what was undisputed was that as tanks rolled into Red Square and the radio began blaring the declaration by the "Emergency Committee" that it had taken power, Private Khanmammadov lay dead at the feet of Vladimir Zhirinovsky.