FULLERTON : Russians to Speak at CSUF on Failed Coup

A Russian general and a Russian journalist will give their eyewitness accounts of the failed Soviet coup last August and the unraveling of the Soviet Union in a talk Sunday at Cal State Fullerton.

Russian Maj. Gen. Sergei Stepashin, now chairman of the Russian Federation’s security committee, and Victor Yugin, chairman of the St. Petersburg mass media committee, will speak at 7 p.m. in the University Gymnasium. General admission is $5, $3 for Cal State Fullerton students with identification.

Both men were elected deputies to the Russian Parliament in 1990, long before the events that brought an end to the Soviet Union.

During the attempted coup, Stepashin was one of the leaders in organizing the defense of the Russian Republic’s Moscow headquarters, where Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin sought refuge.

Afterward, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev named Stepashin to lead a special commission investigating the KGB’s role in the failed coup. Since then, the mayor of St. Petersburg has tapped Stepashin to organize security for the city’s free-enterprise zone.

Yugin had been chief editor of the radical St. Petersburg newspaper, Smena, or “New Generation.” After his election to the Russian Parliament, he led the republic’s committee on mass media. During the coup, Yugin helped establish direct radio broadcasts from the Russian seat of government.

Their lecture is being co-sponsored by the university’s Russian and East European area studies program under Russian history professor Robert S. Feldman.