A Japanese diplomat confirmed that Mikhail Gorbachev was alive the day after an August 1991 coup attempt by Communist Party hard-liners, making Japan possibly among the first countries to get information about the safety of the Soviet Union's leader, a Japanese diplomatic document has showed.
Masaru Sato, an official at the Japanese Embassy in Moscow at that time, met with a senior Communist Party member on Aug. 20, 1991, and confirmed that Gorbachev, who had been placed under house arrest by coup figures at his vacation retreat in Crimea, was "resting" there, according to the document declassified in late December by the Foreign Ministry.
