Russia’s No-Good, Very Failed Coup, and Jill Lepore on Amending the Constitution

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march on Moscow last weekend, which killed more than a dozen Russian soldiers, fizzled as quickly as it began, but its repercussions are just beginning. The Wagner Group commander issued a video from Belarus claiming that he did not attempt a coup against Putin but a protest against the Defense Ministry. David Remnick talks with Masha Gessen and the contributor Joshua Yaffa, who has written on the Wagner Group, about what lies ahead in Russia. Both feel that by revealing the reality of the war to his own following—a Putin-loyal, nationalist audience—Prigozhin has seriously damaged the regime’s credibility. If an uprising removes Putin from power, “there will be chaos,” Gessen notes. “Nobody knows what happens next. There’s no succession plan.” Plus, Jill Lepore on amending the Constitution: suggesting a constitutional amendment these days is so far-fetched, it’s almost a punch line, but the Framers intended the document to be regularly amended, the historian Jill Lepore tells David Remnick. She argues that the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment sank the country into a political quagmire from which it has not arisen, and her latest historial project brings awareness to the problem of amendability.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:11.0	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:14.4	30-some years ago, in August 1991, as a Russia correspondent for the Washington Post,
0:20.5	I watched a coup unfold with tanks on the streets of Moscow.
0:25.3	The coup was plotted by Soviet hardliners in the KGB and the military, and it aimed to force Mikhail Gorbachev from power.
0:32.8	After three days, it failed.
0:35.3	But history was made. The coup itself became yet another nail in the coffin
0:40.0	of the old Soviet empire. So a lot of things were going through my mind a week ago as we watched
0:46.8	a rogue commander's tanks seized control of a southern Russian city, a major city, and then
0:53.0	race north from Moscow.
0:55.3	Then it was over as quickly as it had begun.
0:58.2	But its repercussions are just beginning to be felt in the Kremlin and throughout Russia.
1:03.2	And to understand those repercussions, I'm talking with two of our contributors,
1:07.5	Masha Gessen, who has written deeply about Putin's autocracy in Russia,
1:11.4	and Joshua Yaffe, who's been covering the war in Ukraine. Josh has written on the Wagner
1:16.2	group, the mercenary army that was headed by Yvgeny Pregozhen. I spoke with Masha and Josh
1:22.6	last week. What was PregoGosian thinking?
1:28.5	This was, he now talks about it in terms of a protest, but hardly it seems like the march on Washington.
1:35.3	Rarely do protests involve tanks and armored personnel carriers.
1:38.9	So what did he have in his head?
1:41.9	Not that I really have any idea, but nonetheless, since...
1:47.0	Not that would be disappointing.
	...

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