In Parliament, Questions and Calls for Change

Deputies of the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature, debated the coup attempt and its consequences Monday:

“Five years after the nuclear disaster, we have just had to to live through a political Chernobyl. The resolutions and decrees of the Emergency Committee (leaders of the coup attempt) smelled of threats. . . . These decrees showed like an X-ray machine who was who, and we now know what could have happened if the plotters could have gotten access to the nuclear trigger.”

--Yuri N. Shcherbak, deputy from the Ukraine.

‘It Took a Coup’

“Today, we have before us perhaps . . . the most favorable conditions for rapidly progressing in our political and economic reforms. For six years . . . the whole system of the Communist Party of the (Soviet Union), as a part of the state structure, delayed and put the brakes on any reforms we attempted. . . . These six years of attempts to reform the unreformable was our main mistake, and this is something we should have recognized a long time ago. . . . It took a coup d’etat to (make us see) it.”

--Anatoly A. Sobchak, mayor of Leningrad.

‘What Will Happen?’

“The most crucial problem of the present moment is not the assessment of what has happened and not the consequences. But the most crucial problem of the moment is: What will happen to the center? What will happen to the present federal agencies? The center has fully outlived itself. It is dead. It has committed suicide.”

--Levon Ter-Petrosyan, president of the Armenian republic.

‘It’s a Great Tragedy’

“To our great regret, a tragedy which we all foresaw did occur, and it’s a great tragedy. . . . The laws of the country turned out to have no force to overcome the crisis. . . . All of the country is now waiting for us to do something--a proper evaluation of events and decisions on our part which (will) make it impossible for this to recur in the future--in order that the country not fall into a situation of total chaos.”

--Yuri Blokhin, a leader of Soyuz, a conservative parliamentary group.

‘Move to Bolster Authority’

“I think that we should move to bolster the authority of our legal bodies, and, first of all, the president of the country.”

--Mintimer Shaimiyev, president of the Supreme Soviet of the Tatar Autonomous Republic.