In 1989 Yeltsin left the CPSU. He became a national hero. Yeltsin demanded the closure of privileged shops ("distributors") and hospitals for the Party nomenclatura  and the Kremlin  elite, he urged  the ruling  class to give up their "personal ", that is to say their official, cars and country houses, he went to work  by bus, stood in line at the local polyclinic and, in a strange and inexplicable incident much dwelt upon by the press, he fell off a bridge, and a ll this made him extremely popular throughout  the country.

Komsomol and Party members hurriedly left their posts for commercial organizations, which were subsidized by Party money. They got preferential credit and licenses for purchasing foreign goods and exporting raw materials.  Theirs was a special and highly privileged business elite in Russia.
Huge sums of money left the country via joint ventures, limited liability companies and mushrooming firms and were transferred to bank accounts abroad. A premonition of disaster caused the Party to prepare for going  underground. Uncontrolled by anybody or anything, Communist Party money was pumped out of the country through multiple channels. But that is a separate issue.
I think many people involved in business were aware of that powerful stream of money, which seemed to be going nowhere. Business is very sensitive to the movement of capital, especially big sums. The money should eventually surface somewhere as produce. Otherwise, it immediately becomes obvious tha t something is amiss.
The country was in for big trouble. On the morning of August 19, 1991 a coded cable arrived at the headquarters of the regional party committee of Kalmykia:
"Classified:
To the first secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Parties of the Union Republics,  Regional and District Party Committees. In view of the imposition of the state of emergency take measures to involve Communists in activities  aimed  at supporting the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR.
ln your practical activities you shall be guided by the Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Further information on the corning Plenary Session of the Central Committee and other events will be supplied later. No  1 16/
Secretariat of the CC of the CPSU".
The top echelons of the Kalmyk Party nomenclatura stood to attention while the people of Kalmykia, just as people all over the Soviet Union, could not understand what was happening in Moscow. The plants and state institutions continued to function, people did not take to the streets and squares. Augusto Pinochet had this to say about that attempted coup d’état: "They have tried to do in the Soviet Union what I did in Chile eighteen years ago." At the same time the  well­ known Chilean  military  expert Raoul  Sor wrote:  "If one looks at the "technical" aspect  of  the  overthrow it will  become absolutely obvious that your conspirators had no determination whatever to see it through.  The  Chilean   military   began bombing the  presidential palace from the  air  during  the very first hours of the putsch and then  President Allende died. From a military point of view the move was absolutely nonsensical, but at the same time it instilled horror into people and paralyzed their will to resist..." lt might have happened though.
- "We must act more determinedly!" Yazov said on the evening of the 20th at the council meeting of military and KGB heads, held in the Ministry of Defense. "We have helicopters and tanks and we will certainly use them."
The conspirators were considering the possibility of bombarding the first and second floors of the White House with helicopters. Only the warning given by the commander in chief of the Air Force, General Shaposhnikov, not to use aircraft made them abandon that plan.
We should not forget the gold stockpiled by the Nazi party of the 3rd Reich. Where is it? And how much of it is there? How is it kept? Where will it surface and how will it fire? Maybe it has already surfaced and is being worked? A growing anti-Fascist movement is developing in the West. Neo-Fascist parties are sprouting up in Russia. And it is still too early to exclude the Communists. The Party's gold reserves would be able to finance any movement, overthrow or new putsch.
There was something very strange, even laughable, about the notorious Committee for the State of Emergency of August 1991. The leakage of Russian gold and Party money was also rather bizarre. There are many riddles in those two interconnected facts. To me the following is certain: Party money will operate as a terrible destructive force for Russia.
After August 1991 I began to feel intimations of disaster. The country was exalting and celebrating the victory, but in spite of that I smelt death in the air during those days. Hysterical individuals appeared on the streets in whose eyes I read terrible anguish and a thirst for blood. Little by little, the country was going mad. Everyone realized that it was not yet over. Everything pointed to an impending slaughter. Dark shadows hung over the country. To many the murder of the priest Alexander Men and the death of Andrei Sakharov was a bad omen. National, political and other varied forces clashed with each other and found themselves deadlocked.  The rehearsal for the use of force was over. Civil war loomed on the horizon. The country was becoming ungovernable, rent apart by inner contradictions. And who knows where we would have ended up had not Yeltsin exploited the situation, and liquidated the diarchy by concentrating full authority in his hands. In these circumstances it was absolutely imperative that power is held in one strong fist. The Soviet Union was precipitously heading for disintegration. The union republics demanded sovereignty.
Then the famous Belovezhskaya Puscha Conference took place. The Russian state confirmed the republics' right to self-determination. The Gordian knot of acute socio-political and inter-national problems was cut. Power was redistributed to republican structures and the ill-famed "parade of sovereignties" began.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
The President's Crown of Thorns
1995