Ever since the death of Stalin, the Soviet Union had proceeded to go through a cycle of attempts at “reform”, followed by attempts to maintain the status quo, followed by another cycle and another… until its demise. But, the Communist system had an inherent block to any real reform. Perhaps the most concise explanation of that block is written in Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book”, in which he states: “communism is the most complete, progressive, revolutionary and rational system in human history” (page 23 of the 1st English Edition). How could anyone even consider that something like that would need reform? However, by the mid-1980s the creeping but steady decline of Soviet economic power relative to other major powers had reached such an obvious level that it could no longer be ignored. Mikhail Gorbachev’s rein as the General Secretary (Chairman) of the Soviet Communist Party and Premier of the Soviet Union was the final attempt at “reform”, “Soviet style”.

There is no question that Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev did try to really change the Soviet system, but it is equally fair to say after six years of his rule, that he was not succeeding. The vast majority of the nomenklatura, (Soviet bureaucracy) while paying lip-service to the statements of their Chairman were above all determined to protect their warm chairs and that meant preventing change or at least making sure that any changes that did happen, took place at a snail’s pace. To minimize resistance to his moves, Gorbachev adopted a “two steps forward, one step backward” policy much like an icebreaker pushes through ice too thick to just shove aside. Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin’s career and relations with Gorbachev were a classic example of this policy.

Gorbachev became acquainted with Yeltsin while the latter was the first secretary of the CPSU Committee   (Communist Party boss) of the Sverdlovsk Region, a relatively minor position. But Gorbachev recognized Yeltsin’s reformist ideas and when Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party he maneuvered Yeltsin into the position of First Secretary of the Moscow City  Committee of the CPSU (the “Mayor” of Moscow). At first they worked well together and Yeltsin was also allowed a taste of the privileges of high Party position, at one point for example getting to vacation with his wife at the Soviet Government guest house in the City of Jurmala, known as the “Benjamin House”, where Gorbachev and his wife had vacationed earlier. Later, Boris Yeltsin was to use the house as a haven during the struggle in the Kremlin. But at this time Yeltsin had become impatient with the slow pace of reform, spoke out about it and got sacked by Gorbachev; for the moment anyway.

However Gorbachev was making some progress with reforms, particularly in the legal field where, since laws, of necessity must be public, behind the scenes foot dragging was not as effective. Most significantly, Gorbachev successfully legislated the end of the monopoly of the Soviet Communist Party as the only legal political party. This, for the first time in its history, opened up the political process of the Soviet Union for genuine elections. The effect was dramatic; in the non-Russian “republics of the SSR”, particularly Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia along the Baltic coast, non-Russian Deputies gained majorities and started declaring “independence”. In the Russian SFSR, Boris Yeltsin was back and was able to return to Moscow.

Boris Yeltsin got elected first as a Deputy to the Russian Supreme Soviet and then, in the next elections as the President of the Russian Federation. And while Russia was not declaring “independence” yet, by now both reformist and conservative Russian politicians supported an increase in the power of the local governments (that is, their own) at the expense of the power of the Central Soviet government.

On the same day that Yeltsin won the election to be the president of Russia: 12 June, 1990, Russia declared its “sovereignty” and thereby limited the application of the laws of the USSR on Russian territory, particularly the laws concerning finance and the economy.

Gorbachev however was vehemently opposed to this trend and at one point particularly directed his anger at the Baltic States. However, faced with the centrifugal forces of nationalism but not wanting to destroy all the reforms he had spent a lifetime to initiate by resorting to Stalinist style repression, Gorbachev tried to preserve the (Soviet) Union by binding it together with a new, more liberal Union Treaty.

Old style Communists, particularly in the State Security Apparatus, were shocked, outraged and terrified by what they were seeing happening to their “beloved motherland” and they didn’t see anything wrong with Stalinist style repression either. On 11 December 1990, the Chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, made a “call for order” over the central television channel in Moscow. Then he started planning for a “state of emergency” at some future time. He invited the Defense Minister of the USSR, Dmitriy Yazov, the Interior Minister, Boris Pugo (formerly from the Latvian SSR), the Prime Minister, Valentin Pavlov, the Vice President, Gennady Yanayev, the deputy Chief of the Defence Council, Oleg Baklanov, the head of Gorbachev’s secretariat, Valery Boldin, and a Soviet Central Committee Secretary, Oleg Shenin to participate in the conspiracy. And he placed Gorbachev under KGB surveillance.

On 29 July 1991, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and the Kazakh President, Nursultan Nazarbayev held a meeting in Moscow, in which they discussed the possibility of replacing hardliners like Pavlov, Yazov, Kryuchkov and Pugo. Then, on 4 August, Gorbachev went on vacation to the Crimea.

The 29 July conversation had been eavesdropped on by the KGB. Furthermore, upon Gorbachev’s planned return to Moscow on 20 August, the Union Treaty which would redefine the balance of power in the USSR was to be signed. So the conspirators ordered 250,000 pairs of handcuffs from a factory in Pskov to be sent to Moscow, Kruchkov doubled the pay of all KGB personnel, cancelled all leaves and placed them on alert and Lefortovo prison was emptied to receive prisoners.

On 17 August the conspirators made the final decision to act. On 18 August a delegation consisting of Oleg Baklanov, Valeriy Boldin, Oleg Shenin, and Deputy Defense Minister, General Valentin Varennikov, flew to the Crimea and presented Gorbachev with an ultimatum: either declare a state of emergency, or resign and appoint Vice President Gennady Yanayev as acting president so as to allow the conspirators to “restore order” in the nation. Gorbachev refused to do either. He was then placed under house arrest by KGB personnel and cut off from all means of communication.

Upon the return of the delegation to Moscow, the conspirators announced the creation of the “State Committee of the State of Emergency”,to manage the country and to effectively maintain the regime of the state of emergency. The Committee members were: Gennady Yanayev, Valentin Pavlov, Vladimir Kryuchkov, Dmitriy Yazov, Boris Pugo, Oleg Baklanov, Vasily Starodubtsev and Alexander Tizyakov.

At 7 AM (Moscow time) on 19 August, 1991, the statement of the State Emergency Committee started getting broadcast over the Soviet central radio and TV channels. The three non-USSR transmitters (including the Russian Federation Radio Station and TV Station) were cut off the air. Four Deputies of the Russian Federation were immediately arrested, but Yeltsin was not one of the four. Military forces, including Red Army units with tanks and armored personnel carriers were sent to occupy key points in the city.
At 9 AM, Yeltsin having arrived at the Russian Supreme Soviet building (the Russian “White House”) issued a joint declaration with the Russian Federation Prime Minister Ivan Silaev and acting First Secretary of the Russian Supreme Soviet Ruslan Khasbulatov, stating that an illegal coup was taking place, urging the military not to support it and calling for a General Strike to demand that Mikhail Gorbachev address the people (which of course would have necessitated releasing him from arrest). Without access to the electronic media, this declaration was distributed the old way, by printed flyers.

Despite the building being ringed by a unit of tanks from the Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division, that afternoon the people of Moscow began to gather around the White House and erect barricades. Then Major Evdokimov, commander of the tank unit, declared his loyalty to the leadership of the Russian Federation and allowed Yeltsin to climb on one of the tanks and address the crowd. Somehow, this episode got included in the evening news program broadcast by the State TV. From that time on, Boris Yeltsin was world famous.

At noon the next day: 20 August, General Kalinin, who had been appointed by Yanayev as the military commandant of Moscow, declared a curfew in Moscow, effective from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. This was considered by many to be an indication that an attack on the White House was being planned.

That afternoon Kryuchkov, Yazov and Pugo made the decision to order an attack. Kryuchkov’s second in command, KGB general Ageev and Yazov’s second in command, Army general Achalov, planned “Operation Grom” (Thunder). The units to be involved were two KGB Special Forces detachments, “Alpha” and “Vympel”, and paratroopers. These were to be backed up by OMON Special Police, KGB Internal Security troops of the Dzerzhinsky division, three tank units and a helicopter squadron.

But Yeltsin had a defense committee led by General Konstantin Kobets, an elected Russian Federation Deputy and which including a number of other retired generals who had volunteered to defend the White House; some volunteers were armed. That evening Major Evdokimov’s tank unit was withdrawn. This was understood to be the sign that the attack was imminent.

To gather intelligence for the attack, the commander, General Viktor Karpukhin and other senior officers of Detachment “Alpha” together with General Alexander Lebed, deputy commander of the Airborne Troops, mingled with the crowds near the White House. After that, Viktor Karpukhin and the commander of Detachment “Vympel” Colonel Beskov tried to convince General Ageev that the operation was not a good idea, as it would inevitably result in bloodshed. Meanwhile, Alexander Lebed, with the consent of Pavel Grachev, the commander of the Airborne Troops, returned to the White House and secretly informed Yeltsin’s defense committee that the attack would begin at 2 AM, on the 21 August.

At about 1 AM, a column of BMPs (Infantry Fighting Vehicles) of the Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division moving into position for the attack, was blocked in a tunnel by barricades made of trolleybuses and street cleaning machines. In the ensuing confrontation three unarmed demonstrators: Dmitriy Komar, Vladimir Usov and Ilya Krichevskiy were shot dead and several others wounded. The lead BMP was set on fire by the crowd, further blocking the tunnel, though no soldiers were killed.

When the intended time for the attack came, Detachments “Alpha” and “Vympel” did not move on the White House as planned. When Yazov learned about this, he, no doubt fearing widespread disobedience by the rank and file Russian soldiers if further attack orders were given, ordered the Army troops to pull out of Moscow; which they did starting around 8 AM on the 21st of August, 1991. Militarily the putsch was over.

The State Emergency Committee members met in the USSR Defense Ministry building to decide what to do next. The decision was made to send another delegation to talk to Mikhail Gorbachev. This delegation was made up of Vladimir Kryuchkov, Dmitriy Yazov, Oleg Baklanov, Alexander Tizyakov, Anatoliy Lukianov and Vladimir Ivashko. They arrived in the Crimea at 5 PM, but Gorbachev simply refused to meet them. Instead, he demanded that communications be restored and when they were: declared all decisions made by the State Emergency Committee void, dismissed all its members from government positions and ordered the USSR General Prosecutors Office to start a criminal investigation of the coup attempt.

Since a number of the leaders of regional executive committees had supported the State Committee of the State of Emergency, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation by Decision Nr.1626-1, authorized President Yeltsin to appoint leaders of regional administrations, though the Russian constitution at the time did not give such authority to the President.

On 22 August, Gorbachev arrived back in Moscow. On the same day, Kryuchkov, Yazov and Tizyakov were arrested. Boris Pugo and his wife committed suicide when they came for him – or at least, that is the official version. On 23 Auguest Pavlov and Starodubtsev were arrested.

On the night of 23/24 August the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinskiy, the founder and first chief of the CHEKA, which stood in front of the KGB building at Dzerzhinskiy Square (Lubianka) was torn down.
On 24 August Baklanov, Boldin, and Shenin were arrested; Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from the office of General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party; thousands of Muscovites took part in the funeral of Dmitriy Komar, Vladimir Usov and Ilya Krichevskiy; Mikhail Gorbachev posthumously awarded them the title of Hero of the Soviet Union; Boris Yeltsin asked their relatives to forgive him for not being able to prevent their deaths and issued Decree Nr. 83 which seized the archives of the Soviet Communist Party and transferred them to the State archive authorities.

On 25 August Boris Yeltsin issued Decree Nr. 90 nationalizing the property of the Soviet Communist Party on the territory of the Russian Federation (which included not only party committee headquarters but also educational institutions, hotels, etc.).

On 6 November, 1991, Boris Yeltsin issued Decree Nr.169 terminating the activity of the Soviet Communist Party in the Russian Federation.

Professor J. I. Grosvalds’ father, Janis Grosvalds had a prominent part in the abortive 1905 revolution and as a result had to flee Latvia, which he did through Klaipeda and Helsinki, emigrating to the United States of America. There Janis Grosvalds became a construction engineer and in time, with another man from Latvia, created a building materials factory which was located outside of Boston.

The crash of 1929 hit him quite hard and led him to return to Latvia. He had been an American citizen, but American law at the time required that a person in this situation return to the US at least every five years and when this proved inconvenient for him, he changed to Latvian citizenship. He also lived on Juras Str. and built a new house just down the street from the Emilija Benjamin House and at virtually the same time, though his was on a much smaller scale of course and finished two year earlier – in 1938.

The younger Grosvalds was born in 1927, in the USA and christened “John” with the very Latvian middle name of “Ilgars”. Because of the pronunciation issues involved, all his life he used Ilgars. He lived on Juras Str. until 1941 when he was 13 and again in 1942-44 and used to walk past the Benjamin house every day.

In the 1930s this was still the old wooden summer house that was quite near to the road and the fence was made of prefabricated panels. When the old house was torn down to make a place for the villa, the fence was sold, moved and reassembled, where it stood around another house for many more years. (It is completely gone now, however.)
In those days several “fierce” dogs roamed the property, but they could be fooled! When they started chasing the boy, barking, (along the inside of the fence) he would abruptly turn around and the dogs would reverse course all the way back to the corner of the property. But by the time they made the full run, he would have run past the other end of the Benjamin property.

One time as he was passing by, he overheard Emilija asking Juris to come and look at something; but Juris replied that it would have to wait, as he was behind the house with a shotgun, shooting crows. (Hunting crows was a common practice in the spring, in that era.)

The new Emilija Benjamin House was built from 1938 to 1940. It was faced with stucco made with white marble chips and shiny white mortar. As a result the house was a beautiful white and shimmered in the sun. (At this time it was common to stucco houses in Latvia with grey granite: but of course the result was a dark grey coloured house.)
A special hill (dune) was raised for the new house. Most material for the higher mound was sand taken from neighbouring dunes on the beach (there were no “dune protection laws” in those times) and 5 – 7 workers hauled sand in wheelbarrows for a year, to do this. After that the dune was covered in topsoil brought by a trainload from Germany but Ilgars did not see that part of it.

When the Soviet Occupation began (June 1940), one of their early edicts was the confiscation (“nationalization”) of all private houses of over 180 sq. meters (1901 sq. ft.) Since the Grosvalds’ house was 270 sq. meters they had to give it up, but they were “issued” a 4-room apartment fairly close nearby as a replacement, which had become vacant because it had belonged to a Baltic German.

Of course Emilija Benjamin’s house was also confiscated and was then used as the Residence for the commander of the Soviet Occupation Forces after Emilija was removed.

Because of his (1905) revolutionary credentials (and a very apparent, keen sense about when to compromise with the occupiers) the elder Mr. Grosvalds enjoyed a good relationship with the Communist Authorities and in the 1940-41 period was appointed the Chief Construction Engineer for Riga but nevertheless avoided being seen as a collaborator after the Germans liberated the city from the Communists in 1941.

During the German era the Grosvalds family regained title to their house on Juras Str., but during the nationalization period someone had fired up the special Swedish furnace improperly and the cast iron had cracked, so the house had no heat and could only be used summer.

By this time Emilija was dead and her heirs did not regain title of the Villa on Juras Str. (though they did get some other properties restored to them). Instead, after the Soviet General was chased away, the new German governor (Reichskommisar and Gauleiter, Lohse) moved in.

Reichskommissar Lohse had plans to create a large park around the Benjamin House and to raze the surrounding buildings, but the only things they got around to actually doing, were building an air-raid shelter (bunker) next to the house, which is now on the neighbouring hotel’s property and painting the formerly gleaming white house with camouflage stripes which, while faded, are still visible today. This was done in 1943, when the Soviet Air force was sufficiently reequipped, largely with American airplanes, to once again be a threat. Because of the location of the bunker the small street next to the house, leading to the beach, Vanaga Str. was closed and remains closed to this day. Also, in the 1930s Juras Str. was a dirt road. It was first asphalted during the German Occupation and the work was done by the R.A.D. (the Reichs Arbeits Dienst).

During the German era, security for the house was provided by a platoon of security personnel which Ilgvars Grosvalds believes were some sort of Police and not military troops. (He does not remember the uniforms well enough to describe the precise insignias.) The security detachment was billeted in the house at Juras Str. 6 (the Hasselbaum house) and the Benjamin House itself was routinely guarded by a three man shift. Reichskommissar Lohse used to move around in a closed (hard-top) car (I. Grosvalds did not recognize the make) which was always preceded by a military type car mounting a machine-gun.

Reichskommisar Alfred Rosenberg came to visit for one day and on that day was also scheduled to visit the City of Jelgava. There was very heavy security that day with a security officer stationed every 100 meters on the roads all through the City of Jurmala. Ilgars Grosvalds himself recalls seeing Reichskommissar Lohse one day (probably not the day of Rosenberg’s visit) as he came out through the big mechanically slide-able window in the front of the house in his Peacock Suit (this was the Latvian nickname for the, heavily “decorated”, brown, NSDAP Party, uniforms) and greet his arriving guests with the Nazi salute.

When the Soviets came back (late fall, 1944) the Grosvalds house was re-confiscated and because the entire zone around Juras Str. was now used as residences for high Soviet officials, no one from the family could even dare go near the area. There were actually two buildings on what had been the Grosvalds property and in 1959, the rear building burned down. Since it would not have done for the high Soviet officials to see a burned out building in their area, a battalion of Red Army soldiers was brought in and in two days all evidence of the building was removed and a dune of white beach sand created in its place.

Immediately after the war, Vilis Lacis, the man who was directly responsible for sending Emilija Benjamin to her death in Siberia, spent a lot of time at the Benjamin house, but was officially given a residence nearby, at the end of Undine Str. This house no longer exists. He lived there in 1945-46, but from 1946 onward had a residence in the “Marienbad Hotel” building.

The Benjamin house was used as an official guest house of the Soviet Government until the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991.

Janis Grosvalds passed away in 1960; in reply to a question as to why he had not tried to return to the USA, he explained that such an attempt “would not have been safe”. His father’s sister did however return to America in 1950 (it was safer for a woman to try to get permission for something like this), where the partner to the building materials factory bought out the Grosvalds share and with that money the sister bought a house in New York.

His son, (Professor) John Ilgars Grosvalds studied chemistry in the USSR in the 1950s and spent his life in that field.

After the restoration of the independence of the Republic of Latvia in 1991, Ilgars and his brother recovered title to their father’s property on Juras Str. but decided to sell it as they did not have the resources to restore what was left of the now dilapidated building. It took them over ten years to find a buyer and as the money had to be divided 8 ways there was not very much.

In the early 1990s Ilgars Grosvalds met Johanna Benjamin (the widow of Juris, the adopted son of Emilija) and was invited to the consecration of the Emilija Benjamin House after it had been restored to their family heirs. The Consecration was performed by the (Lutheran) Archbishop of Latvia, Rev. Gailitis and was accompanied by a musical performance by Inese Galanta at the piano and Maestro Kokars with the “Ave Sol” choir.

Johanna Benjamin lived in the house until her death in 1999.