Constitutional Crisis in Moscow, October 1993, Leeza Arkhangelskaya
From MemoryArchive
Who: Leeza Arkhangelskaya What: Constitutional Crisis When: October 1993 Where: Moscow, Russia
I remember the morning of October 4th 1993; I woke up to my terrified parents bursting into our downtown Moscow apartment at 6 o’clock in the morning. They told me that they were driving home late from a friend’s house at the crack of dawn. As they were driving down the 6 lane street, they gazed with amazement at the completely deserted streets. Since we lived in the center of town, this was quite bizarre, and even terrifying. All of a sudden, recalled my mother, in the middle of the street, appeared about a dozen tanks, heading straight for her little orange Tavria. They seemed to have emerged from underground. The roar and buzzing was so load, and my terrified parents slammed on the breaks and reversed the car to escape from the tanks that surely intended to kill them.
My parents have never seen real tanks before, and they had absolutely no idea what was going on. They knew that there was some political unrest, but than again, these were chaotic times. However, no ne could imagine that this was another coup, only two years after the first one in 1991. My parents sped away from the tanks in their little car, drove over some flower beds, and escaped onto a side street. When my parents came home, we turned on the radio and found out absolutely nothing. No one knew what was happening.
I was somewhat excited by the commotion, but especially happy that I did not have to go to school. We somehow heard that we could not walk on our street, Kutuzovski Prospect, because snipers were supposedly sitting on the roof and shooting at civilians to create chaos. I am not sure if they actually shot civilians, but I definitely heard the gun shots. There was also no TV, because Ostankino television headquarters were partly destroyed and otherwise seized, by whom we did not know. The only station that provided any sort of news on the situation was CNN, which showed live footage of the white house on fire. My uncle actually went to work on that day, and walked down Old Arbat, where snipers were supposedly sitting on the roofs. He was unaware of this at the time, since radio worked but the information was very confused. No one understood what was going on. There seemed to be no understandable reason for the chaos.
Only in retrospect we can now understand what happened.
The attempted coup in Moscow in early October 1993 was the result of a developing conflict. The Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 really began on September 21, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin dissolved the country's legislature, which opposed his wishes to push forward unpopular reforms. At the beginning of 1992, a year after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his government started a monetary and economic policy which was hurting the population and becoming more and more unpopular. The reform of “shock therapy” was refered to by the population as “a shock without therapy”. Due to dissolve of U.S.S.R and the disappearance of the centralized state-planned economy, many traditional economic and trade ties and markets were lost. Living conditions of the majority of Russian population quickly deteriorated. Political and economical instability was exacerbated by the struggle for power between Yeltsin on one side and his opponents in the Russian Parliament (together with Vice President Rutskoi) on the other side.
In December 1992, the very unpopular prime-minister Gaidar was fired, but the conflict was no eased. At the beginning of 1993, both sides attempted to discredit one another and gain more power for themselves in vain.
On September 21, 1993, Yeltsin ordered the dissolution of parliament and that new parliamentary elections would be held on December 12th. Yeltsin attempted to institute a new Consitution, but Congress rejected the decree and voted impeach the president for his uncosntituional actions. Vice President, Alexander Rutskoi, was sworn in as acting President. On September 28, public protests against Yeltsin’s government began in downtown Moscow. For the next week, anti-Yeltsin protests grew, until an overt confrontation erupted in the city on October 2. Rudskoi and his suporters barricaded themselves inside the White House. They were rumored to have stored weapons there as well. Parliament and Rutskoi’s supporters refused to obey Yeltsin’s orders. The communists also supported the Parliament. On October 2, supporters of parliament barricaded the streets and blocked traffic in Moscow. On October 3, a mob of parliament supporters stormed the police stations around the White House, seized the Moscow City Mayor offices. Rutskoi, from the White House balcony urged the crowd of supporters to seize the national television center at Ostankino.
On the morning of October 4, several elite divisions of Russian military decided to support Yeltsin. Tanks rolled up to the White House at around 5:00 am (right as my parents were trying to get home). Firing at the white house began at 7:00 am.
Supporters of the Parliament were equipped with anti-tank guns and they managed to burn several machines. Large crowds of curious teenagers and other Muscovites attracted by the exciting events walked around the White House not understanding the danger that they were in. Nearly 150 people were killed and 1000 injured in those several days. At 5:00 pm. troops stormed the White House and arrested leaders of Parliament and Vice President Rutskoi, who have been hiding out in the White House without water or electricity for several days. At this point the Constitutional Crisis of 1993 ended, and the presidency was restored to Yeltsin.
