Bu 1991 Morozov was working as an assistant to the chief of staff of President Gorbachev. His immediate superior in the government hierarchy was none other than Valery Boldin, a leader among the government insiders who remove the president from office that year. For reasons that made perfect sense to the plotters, the coup d'état took place during the holiday month of August: like thousands of others, the Morozovs were out of town when trouble broke out in the streets around the parliament building. They were staying with friends in Volgograd. When they got back to Moscow they found there was no one who would give Oleg Viktorovich another government job. For a year the family lived on Irina Morozovna's university salary of 120 roubles a month, while Oleg tried to get casual driving jobs where he could. The couple's Daewoo was their own and Kazan, where they had retained their dacha, was "only" a twelve hour drive to the east by road: Oleg reassured his family that when he was driving it was a sign that he was resting. He also found some newspaper work between 1991 and 1993, contributing as a columnist to , a newspaper based in Kazan. Only after a year and a half did he find more permanent work, employed by a non-profit operation called "NPO Biology" ("НПО Биотехнологии"), initially responsible for public relations, and later listed as a deputy director.