Countering The Soviet Coup Attempt
Kalugin became a firm supporter of Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian SFSR. During the abortive Soviet coup attempt of 1991 led by KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, he led crowds to the Russian White House, center of anticoup efforts, and induced Yeltsin to address the crowds.
After the coup he became an unpaid adviser to the new KGB Chairman Vadim Bakatin. While Bakatin succeeded in dismantling the old security apparatus, he did not have the time to reform it before being fired on November 1991. Ever vocal, Kalugin told the press that in the future, the KGB would have no political functions, no secret laboratories where they manufacture poisons and secret weapons.
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