If anyone had a reason to feel fearful in 1990, it was the party and the KGB, which were fast losing control over the situation in the country. Faced with mass rallies outside the Kremlin, the Communist Party was forced to abolish the sixth article of the constitution that guaranteed its monopoly on power. The KGB—the “combat division” of the Communist Party—was also under pressure. By 1990 the liberal media, with Moskovskie novosti in the vanguard, turned its cannons on the KGB. Watching the party surrender its political monopoly, many KGB officers felt disoriented and exposed.
