Chapter 9 - Epilogue

		On the final day in July 1991, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed in the Kremlin. Speaking to an audience of diplomats, legislators, military leaders, and television viewers worldwide, President Bush defended the treaty: "Neither side won unilateral advantage over the other. Both sides committed themselves instead to achieving a strong effective treaty." President Gorbachev struck a similar theme: "Here in Moscow, some will point to our unilateral concessions, while in Washington there will be talk about concessions made to the Soviet Union. . . . Sharp criticism is to be expected from those who want faster and more ambitious steps toward abolishing nuclear weapons. In other words, this treaty will have to be defended."¹⁷
		Collapse of the Soviet Union, Continuity of Arms Control
Russian President Boris Yeltsin, standing on a Soviet tank, declared the coup d'etat illegal and called for a general strike and civil disobedience, Moscow, August 19, 1991.		Within three weeks of the signing of the START Treaty the Soviet government was threatened on August 19 by a coup d'etat. The coup leaders acted to halt implementation of the All-Union Treaty, which ceded significant powers to Russia and the other Soviet republics. However, in the early hours of the revolution the leaders appeared hesitant and uncertain. Opposition appeared quickly. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and thousands of his supporters went into the streets of Moscow, protesting the unconstitutional seizure of power.¹⁸By chance, Master Sergeant Gary Marino and Joe Murphy, two American INF Treaty inspectors from Votkinsk, were in Moscow picking up the weekly mail when the revolution began. As they walked out of the U.S. Embassy, Marino noticed "the ground began shaking as the sound of tanks became deafening outside of the perimeter fence. As I ran back to the hotel...tank after tank rolled methodically toward the Kremlin. While crossing the Moscow River, I looked down Kutuzovsky Prospekt at the endless number of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and other military vehicles."¹⁹

Marino and Murphy stayed in their hotel long enough to pick up a camera, then went back into the streets. Crowds began to gather. "At a five-way intersection by the bridge," Marino recalled, "people began to block traffic and attempted to break up the convoy and disrupt movement by commandeering buses and electric trams."²⁰ Then, as they were standing among the crowd, Yeltsin came out of the Russian Parliament Building, climbed up on a tank, and began rallying the people against the coup plotters. When the Russian president finished his speech, he walked through the crowd shaking hands, including those of the two Americans.

By the end of the week the coup had failed. However, when President Gorbachev returned to power, his government and the Communist Party were seriously weakened. Within ten days the party had been abolished, the All-Union Treaty had been reaffirmed, and power had shifted to President Yeltsin and the leaders of the national republics. Over the next six months, domestic issues dominated the revolutionary agenda, but foreign issues, especially those concerning control of nuclear weapons and the conduct of arms control treaties, continued to evoke intense interest.

On the morning of August 19, 1991, Soviet tanks proceeded down Kutuzovsky Prospekt towards the Russian Parliament Building, Moscow.

Soviet tank in front of Hotel Ukraine, the hotel used by all American INF inspectors from 1988-1991.