MOSCOW. Aug 17. (Interfax) - Almost one-half of Russians see the putsch of August 19, 1991 as just one episode in a power struggle among the country's top leadership and don't believe either faction was in the right.

Forty-eight percent said the events of August 19, 1991 were just an episode in the struggle for power, 24% said it was a tragic event with destructive consequences for the nation, 10% said it was a victory for the democratic revolution that did away with Communist Party rule, and 18% were undecided, according to a poll conducted by the Yuri Levada Analytical Center, received by Interfax on Friday.

Asked which side they favored, 33% said they hadn't been able to make out the situation, 21% said they sided with Boris Yeltsin and the democrats, 20% said they were children at the time. Only 8% respondents said they sympathized with the coup plotters at the time. Eighteen percent were undecided.

Forty-six percent of respondent said neither side was in the right, 17% said Yeltsin and the democrats were right, 8% said the putschists were in the right. In addition, 29% respondents were undecided.

Some 28% Russians said Russia has gone in the right direction since that event, 37% said the opposite, and 35% respondents were undecided.

The 16th anniversary of the putsch is on Sunday.

The Levada Center polled 1,600 respondents on August 10-13.