U.S. Soccer Chief Watches History Unfold in Moscow

Alan Rothenberg, president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, toured the Kremlin Monday in Moscow, even as military vehicles rolled through the streets outside.

Although he and his wife, Georgina, were told beforehand that it had been announced on state radio that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev was ill and had resigned, Rothenberg was unprepared for the sight that greeted him as he left the Kremlin.

“Man, it was a shock,” he said Wednesday from Montecanti, Italy, where he is attending an international youth soccer tournament. “The entire Kremlin was ringed with tanks and trucks.”

Rothenberg flew into Moscow on Saturday to watch the U.S. national team play the Soviets in an exhibition that night.

After losing to the Soviets, 2-1, the U.S. team left Moscow on Sunday morning, but the Rothenbergs stayed to meet with Soviet soccer officials and to sightsee.

“I hadn’t been to the Soviet Union before,” Rothenberg said. “It was an interesting visit.”

Rothenberg toured Leningrad Sunday and returned by plane to Moscow later in the day.

“The actual happenings were a total shock to everybody,” he said of Monday’s attempted coup. “We had been there for two days, and many of the people we were with were very open in discussing the very difficult situation that existed there, from an economic standpoint. So, in that sense, it really wasn’t a shock, but I think nobody had any inkling that this was in the works.

“In fact, we were going on a tour of the Kremlin Monday morning, and we were met at 8 o’clock and told that it was just announced that Gorbachev had resigned.

“The reaction was strange because it seemed like there was this total dichotomy: On the one hand, they were really enjoying the freedoms they had, including the ability to sit and talk to us and complain about things. Then, on the other hand, it was clear that the economic (conditions) were just horrible for the people, and they didn’t know what to do.

“The young man who was taking us around was a 21-year-old college student and as the day wore on, it was clear that he was visibly scared--less for his personal safety than for what (he thought) was going to happen.

“He had been talking to us for two days about the future and what he was going to do with his life, and it seemed so clear that it would be stripped away from him.”

As Rothenberg and his wife began their tour of the Kremlin, soldiers had started to gather in the streets, “but it didn’t seem awfully strange,” he said. Once inside, they viewed a religious service--only the third read there since the 1917 revolution, they were told.

“It was a virtual historic day and then we walked out of the Kremlin and. . . . It was a shock,” Rothenberg said.

Tanks and other military vehicles had pulled into Red Square.

“At that time, it was very interesting because it was calm,” Rothenberg said. “People weren’t sure what was happening, but the trucks and tanks were just sitting there. The soldiers--most of them were just sitting on the tops of the tanks. They didn’t have any armament showing. They were kind of staring straight ahead.

“But in many cases, they were just talking to the citizens--even the citizens that yelled at them. It looked like it was a show of force more than anything else.

“Then, as we started to walk the city, the crowds just started to build, and then you (saw) dumped-over trolley cars to block (traffic). And rumors were (rampant). You’d stop people in the street and our guide would tell us what they were saying: ‘Gorbachev was dead,’ ‘(Boris N.) Yeltsin had been arrested,’ and the like.”

As the crowd continued to build, it was instructed by men carrying megaphones to gather at the Russian Parliament building, Rothenberg said. Tanks had been placed in front of a bridge and across a street to block cars, he said, but foot traffic was heavy.

Rothenberg said he saw Yeltsin briefly address the crowd.

Despite the chaos, Rothenberg said he was not frightened.

“It was not menacing at the time,” he said. “The only fear I had was that it would build and build and that suddenly they would shut the country down. The thought did go through our head, ‘Maybe we ought to get out of town right now,’ rather than wait until the next day.

“There was a lot of confusion among the people in the streets, but it did not look menacing, even at the Russian Parliament building. The impression I got was, the people who were running the coup wanted very, very much not to frighten the people and not to do anything drastic. . . .

“I think they were hoping that with a visible show of force, rather than an actual show of force, that they would quiet things down.

“And I must tell you, even notwithstanding the crowds, the general reaction of most of the Russian people was total resignation. We would ask them, ‘What do you think happened?’ ‘Do you really believe that (Gorbachev) is sick and has resigned?’ They’d just shrug their shoulders and give you a look that made it clear that they didn’t believe, ‘But what are we going to do about it?’

“They wouldn’t even discuss it. We’d say, ‘Come on, that’s preposterous. You know that didn’t happen.’ And they would just say, ‘We’ll see.’

“At that time, there was no gunfire, and the soldiers were clearly not only under instructions but personally not interested in doing anything menacing. We walked right up to the tanks. We were standing on tanks, taking pictures.

“The (soldiers) were 18- and 19-year-old kids. They had either a stone face or a bewildered look in their eyes.”

Still, Rothenberg said that he was relieved when he was able to fly out of Moscow, as scheduled, Tuesday morning.

“Partly because of what was going on and partly because. . . . It’s an interesting country, obviously, but it’s just so backward in so many ways,” Rothenberg said. “My reaction was, I can’t believe that for 50 years we were afraid that these people were going to control the world, because they can’t even run their own lives.

“Everything is so decrepit and run down. I guess they must have a great military--I guess we can’t doubt that--but in terms of everything else, it doesn’t work. And the thought that we were worried all this time that they were going to dominate us is just shocking.”

En route to Italy, Rothenberg stopped briefly in Frankfurt.

“When we landed, I said, ‘I never thought I’d be so happy to be in Germany,’ ” he said.

He and his wife will return home to Los Angeles next week.

On the way back, “I think we’ll avoid the Soviet Union,” he said.