The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

by Serhii Plokhy

The KGB commandos were also refusing to storm the White House. The all-powerful espionage organization was crumbling under Kriuchkov’s feet. If one trusts claims made later by Vladimir Putin, the future president of Russia, that day the KGB chief received an unexpected call from St. Petersburg. Mayor Anatolii Sobchak, who supported Yeltsin, asked what had happened to the letter of resignation submitted a year earlier by his deputy, the thirty-eight-year-old KGB lieutenant colonel Vladimir Putin. That day Putin allegedly submitted his second letter of resignation. His allegiance was to Sobchak, not to the coup leaders. As Putin recalled later, he respected Kriuchkov, but “when I saw the criminals on the screen, I understood immediately that it was all over: they were done for.”