Over Quarter of Russians Believe Country Would Be Worse If 1991 Coup Succeeded

Over a quarter of Russian citizens, 26 percent, believe that the situation in Russia would have been worse if the Soviet Union State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP) coup in August 1991 had been successful, a poll revealed on Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the public announcement of the establishment of the GKChP, a body comprising a group of coup plotters, to run the Soviet Union. In the early hours of August 19, 1991, eight top Soviet officials, who disagreed with the policies of USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and the new draft Union Treaty, formed the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the Soviet Union. The coup attempt, however, failed.

According to a new survey conducted by Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), among the 26 percent of Russian respondents who believe the country would have been worse off if the GKChP was able to hold on to power in August 1991, 4 percent believe that the country would have faced a civil war, 4 percent believe that the GKChP members were not suited to lead the country, 2 percent said that the communist leadership and the socialist system would have been preserved, 2 percent said that life would in general have been worse and 1 percent said there would have been no order in the country.

Another 1 percent said that there would be no democracy in Russia in such a scenario, and another 11 percent gave a different or no response.

In turn, 17 percent said that the country would have been better off if the coup plotters managed to hold on to power. Among those, 4 percent argued that in such a scenario the Soviet Union would not have disintegrated.

The pollster surveyed 1,500 people in 53 regions of Russia on August 14.