The suicide of Boris Pugo should have sobered Mikhail Gorbachev more than other Soviets. Pugo was Gorbachev's interior minister who betrayed him and became part of the Gang of Eight that tried to overthrow Gorbachev. When the coup collapsed, Pugo apparently figured death was the only way out for him.
Gorbachev appointed Pugo to replace a moderate, let him run roughshod over the Baltics and expected that would appease Pugo and other hardliners. Of course, it didn't. Pugo had tasted blood and was not publicly taken to task by Gorbachev for ordering brutal attacks against unarmed nationalist demonstrators in the Baltics. Emboldened, Pugo decided to bite the hand that fed him.There was no mourning in the Baltics when Pugo took his own life, unless it was by those who would like to have done it for him. He commanded the ruthless Black Berets, and he got the job after serving as the head of the KGB in Latvia.
It didn't take much to convince the Black Berets that they had every right to kill and maim other citizens of the Soviet Union. Pugo pumped them up by telling them they were fighting "fascists" and enemies of the nation. He lavished gifts on them and praised them generously.
Then he turned them loose on the Baltics. When they murdered unarmed demonstrators or took over local government buildings, Pugo claimed they were renegades, acting without orders from him. Gorbachev parroted the same line. Neither man tried to stop them.
Pugo was determined to put down the rebellious Baltic republics. Soviet army paratroopers drew first blood in Vilnius, Lithuania, when they used tanks and guns against unarmed protesters.
Seven days later, Pugo's Black Berets followed the example and shot their way into a Latvian government building in Riga. They took hostages and opened fire on a crowd of protesters, killing five. Knowledgeable intelligence sources have consistently maintained that Pugo directed the attack.
To his shame, Gorbachev publicly absolved the Red Army of its actions in Lithuania and the Black Berets of their attack in Latvia. Gorbachev agreed with a whitewash investigation that claimedthat the victims in Vilnius, the ones who were run over by tanks, were actually killed in traffic accidents or were stuffed under the tanks by other Lithuanians who were trying to create martyrs.
As for the Black Berets, Gorbachev lamely said he would investigate the matter, and he never did. In fact, he stood by silently while the Black Berets repeatedly raided border posts set up by Lithuanian and Latvian officials.
The border posts have been routinely burned by Black Berets since January. The unarmed men in those posts are beaten, and a dozen of them, over the months, were murdered by Pugo's men.
From Gorbachev, there was only silence. Getting away with murder in the Baltics gave Pugo the courage to join the coup plotters and try to overthrow the president he had come to see as weak, wishy-washy and vulnerable.