PRESIDENT Gorbachev moved swiftly to purge his Kremlin team on his return to Moscow yesterday, but it was Boris Yeltsin who set the agenda for revolution.
Almost drunk with exhilaration over the collapse of the hardline putsch, the Russian people threw the reform process of the past six years into astonishingly high gear.
Mr Gorbachev reappeared to tell the story of his ordeal at the hands of the conspirators, and a triumphant Mr Yeltsin issued a decree stripping the Communist Party of its right to operate in the security force apparatus.
In the streets, perestroika became people power as thousands of demonstrators celebrated the hoped-for end, finally, of repression in the Soviet Union by toppling the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the symbolic father of the KGB.
Seven of the eight conspirators were under investigation for their part in what Mr Gorbachev described as a coup d╒Ätat, while the eighth committed suicide. In Lithuania, which no longer considers itself part of the union, the Soviet army withdrew from the television centre it had held since January╒s bloody events in Vilnius.
At a press conference, President Gorbachev told the dramatic story of his three days of isolation and fears that he might be murdered. He revealed that the coup began at 4.50pm last Sunday, when the conspirators arrived uninvited at his Crimean dacha and he discovered that his telephones were cut off.
He said that the coup plotters demanded the transfer of his powers to Vice-President Gennady Yanayev. He told them: ╥Go to hell.╙ When they asked him to resign, he said: ╥You will never live that long.╙
During his incarceration, Mr Gorbachev said he continually demanded that communications be restored and that an aircraft be provided to take him back to Moscow.
Mr Gorbachev looked fit and in good spirits. But he admitted that talk of his alleged ill health made him fear an attempt to poison him.
He spoke of the outstanding role played by Mr Yeltsin in defeating the coup. ╥The demonstrations by the people of Moscow and Leningrad,╙ he said, ╥were better than any plebiscite on the need for reform to continue.╙
