Two-day civil war
On October 3 and 4, 1993, tragic events took place in Moscow that almost pushed Russia to a Yugoslav split. The bloody drama that broke out 23 years ago inflicted a deep and very painful wound on the country. Until now, there is no consensus in Russian society on the October events of 1993, and discussions on this topic, as a rule, turn into fierce debates about who is right and wrong.
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The main result of the October conflict was the complete elimination of the system of authorities that had developed under the USSR. President Yeltsin and his supporters retained power and consolidated their victory with the adoption of a new constitution.
Causes of the conflict. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Supreme Council of the RSFSR, according to the 1978 Constitution, was competent to resolve all issues related to the RSFSR. After the USSR ceased to exist, the Supreme Council was an organ of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation (the highest authority) and had enormous power and authority, despite amendments to the Constitution on the separation of powers.
Sooner or later it was bound to happen that the main law of the country, adopted under Brezhnev, was to stand in the way of Big Hapok Yeltsin and the team of “reformers,” limiting their rights and freedom of action. In addition, the first year without the USSR and the first steps of the team of young democratic thieves who began economic “reforms” with “shock therapy” actually brought the country a powerful painful shock without any therapy.
Rampant banditry, devastation, hyperinflation, rapid rise in prices, loss of all savings by the population, shutdown enterprises and non-payment of wages for months have taken their toll. The popularity of Yeltsin and his circle, which was at its zenith after the August “putsch,” very quickly grew into hatred of their recent idol. Already at the beginning of May 1993, the country was shocked by thousands of rallies and demonstrations calling on Yeltsin and his team to resign on good terms.
The conflict was inevitable, since the warring parties saw the prospects for the political and socio-economic future of Russia in completely different ways. The biggest controversy was caused by economic reforms, and neither side was willing to compromise.
By that time, the balance of forces had been determined. Yeltsin was supported by the Council of Ministers headed by Chernomyrdin and Moscow Mayor Luzhkov. Numerous beneficiaries of the country's already launched deriban and holders of thieves' "common funds" who came out of the shadows openly stood on the side of the current government. Who else would provide a dazzling chance for the “blues” to exchange ill-gotten banknotes, hidden in mattresses from the watchful eye of the OBKhSS, for real factories, newspapers and ships.
The Supreme Council of the Russian Federation at that time was supported by the popular majority and labor collectives - the “red belt”, now forgotten and gone into oblivion. The deputies were also supported by Russian Vice President Alexander Rutskoy.
The crisis entered its active phase on September 21, 1993, when Yeltsin told urbi et orbi in a televised address that he had issued a decree on a phased constitutional reform, according to which the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Council were to cease their activities.
However, according to the current Constitution of 1978, Mr. Yolkin did not have the authority to dissolve the Supreme Council and the Congress. His actions were regarded as unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court decided to terminate the powers of President Yeltsin. Speaker of the Russian Armed Forces Ruslan Khasbulatov even called his actions a coup d'etat.
In the following weeks, the conflict only escalated. Members of the Supreme Council and people's deputies were actually blocked in the White House, where communications, electricity and water supplies were cut off. The building was cordoned off by police and military personnel. In turn, opposition volunteers were given weapons to guard the White House.
The situation of dual power could not continue for too long and ultimately led to mass unrest, an armed clash and the execution of the House of Soviets.
On October 3, supporters of the Supreme Council gathered for a rally on Oktyabrskaya Square, then moved to the White House and unblocked it. Vice-President Rutskoi called on them to storm the city hall on Novy Arbat and Ostankino. Armed demonstrators seized the city hall building, but when they tried to get into the television center, tragedy broke out.
The materials of the criminal case investigating the events around the Ostankino shopping center clearly contradict the myths of Yeltsin’s propagandists, since it follows from them that the shopping center was stormed by a group of 20 people led by the would-be general Makashov, and the shopping center was defended by almost 900 military personnel and police officers with 24 armored personnel carriers. Not the other way around. The rest of the people gathered around the television center were ordinary onlookers and just random people who, by the will of fate, were drawn into tragic events.
The investigation established that on October 3, 1993, the security of the complex of buildings of the Ostankino television center was provided by 87 employees of the 4th department of the Security Directorate of the Moscow City Internal Affairs Directorate. They were armed with 84 pistols and 37 machine guns with the corresponding amount of ammunition. There were the necessary means of communication, personal protection, and special equipment. They were assigned 20 military personnel from military unit 3179, armed with 19 machine guns and a pistol.
At urgent requests from the management of the television center, the commander of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation sent additional units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to Ostankino to assist in protecting the complex of buildings. At about 16:30, 84 military personnel from military unit 3641 arrived there, but they did not have firearms. The fighters had body armor, helmets and rubber sticks.
At 17 p.m., almost simultaneously with Makashov’s group, on the direct order of the leadership of the internal troops, 6 armored personnel carriers arrived at the television center and together with them 105 military personnel of the special forces detachment “Vityaz” armed with standard weapons under the leadership of the unit commander, as well as another 14 soldiers from the military unit 317a, armed with machine guns. Armored personnel carriers were placed around the building for all-round defense.
Reinforcements for the defenders continued to arrive. By 19:23, the ranks of the “besieged” were joined by 3 employees of the 23rd Department of the Security Directorate, who were armed with 31 pistols and one machine gun; 27 riot police officers of the Moscow Department of Internal Affairs on railway transport, armed with 111 machine guns and three pistols; 3641 military personnel of military unit XNUMX, led by the unit commander. Together with them came the Deputy Commander of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, General Golubets, who took command.
However, the shopping center security had no intention of shooting at those gathered. They were pushed to this by the idiotic (if not worse) actions of Makashov, who put forward ultimatums, and the stupid actions of his militants, who did not have basic skills in handling military weapons. For example, among the attack aircraft, a certain volunteer was seen with an RPG-7, taken from the riot police, unsuccessfully trying to load a grenade launcher in full view of the guards. The incompetence with weapons put pressure on the military’s psyche, but they made no attempt to neutralize him. And even after Makashov’s next ultimatum to clear the television center, when two trucks of supporters of the Supreme Council rammed the entrance to ASK-3 and the window next to it, there was no resistance. The officer in charge of this area asked for permission to open fire in order, as required by military regulations, to repel an attack on a protected facility. The commander of the Vityaz and the deputy commander of the internal troops who was in ASK-1 forbade this, although shots at radiators and car wheels could “defuse” the situation without bloodshed.
And yet, the nerves of one of the defenders could not stand it and a shot rang out from their side, wounding one of Makashov’s guards in the leg, to which the attackers responded by firing a grenade launcher at ASK-3. Witnesses note a double explosion and talk about two explosive devices, but photographs from the scene of the collision show a representative of the “alternative Ministry of Internal Affairs” holding an RPG-7 with a tandem warhead. The shot in the leg of a security guard and the death of Private Sitnikov served as the impetus for senseless shooting to kill people.
In one of these incidents, the son of cosmonaut Egorov, who became a doctor like his father, died. The young man rushed to provide first aid to the wounded, struck by bullets from an armored personnel carrier, but he himself was hit by machine-gun fire. Among the dead was even US lawyer Terry Michael Duncan, who was pulling the wounded out from under heavy fire.
Near Ostankino, along with Duncan, there was another foreigner - journalist Paul Otto. Otto fled from the fire behind a massive flower bed and kept shouting to the military that he was a foreign journalist, asking them to stop shooting and let him leave. During such “negotiations,” someone from Vityaz allowed them to leave. Paul Otto rose from the flowerbed and was immediately wounded in the stomach by a shot from the ASK-3 building. The Vityaz fighters did not allow anyone to crawl to Paul Otto to provide assistance, shooting at anyone who tried to approach the wounded man. Duncan, being nearby, encouraged Paul Otto with words and talked to him so that the wounded man would not lose consciousness. This went on for a long time, until Duncan was wounded by one of the machine gun bursts. He fell silent and did not speak again.
According to the investigation, 46 people were killed or subsequently died from their wounds in the area of the television center. Another 124 people were injured of varying degrees of severity.
The next day, October 4, troops loyal to President Yeltsin began storming the House of Soviets. The White House was under direct fire from tanks deployed to the Krasnopresnensky Bridge. There was a fire in the building, due to which its façade was half blackened. Footage of the shelling then spread all over the world. I still remember the slack jaw of a CNN commentator commenting on the live broadcast of the storming of the database, when the tanks began to shoot at the parliament, and pieces of the walls of the database began to fall off the walls of the database and glass began to splash from the shells, and tongues of flame and puffs of black thick smoke burst out of the windows.
And in fact, there was reason to fall into a stupor. It's not every day that you see a Latin American-style showdown take place in a nuclear power that only recently influenced the global political climate. Just two years ago, the evil Bolshevik satraps were afraid to take a sin on their souls - to give the order to the KGB special forces and paratroopers to break through the living ring around the database and clean out its insides. This decision became the death sentence of the USSR, and a new political springboard for Yeltsin. But a democrat and a fighter against the totalitarian past, Yeltsin, without any hesitation, went to shoot the parliament and, in general, very easily began to shed blood.
Onlookers gathered to watch the shooting of the White House, but they put themselves in danger because they came into the sight of snipers positioned on neighboring houses. Regarding the death of dozens of people (yes, victims of their own stupidity, but this is not a reason to kill innocent people) there are still more questions than answers. And I'm afraid we won't know the answers any time soon. If we find out.
In these tragic October days of 1993, representatives of the creative intelligentsia, “masters of thought” and other “brains of the nation” showed themselves stunningly well.
Their appeal to Yeltsin, known as the “Letter of the 42,” published in Izvestia on October 5, immediately after the forceful suppression of the opposition, is nothing more than a call to unleash a new civil war on the ruins of the USSR. The quintessence of this appeal echoed from the TV screens with the shrill demand of the famous movie clown “Crush the reptile!”
It was very revealing how honored and sometimes very talented people, the opposing “sixties”, children of Khrushchev’s “thaw”, haters of repression, totalitarianism and all kinds of injustice, who tirelessly branded and denounced Stalinism from books and from TV screens, finally pulled out the stuck fig from pockets and turned into disgusting signatories of the tsidulka, openly proposing that the authorities open a hunt for dissidents. Truly, Lenin was right when he characterized them as “shit of the nation.”
We all know very well what happened next. The further path for Yeltsin and his team was cleared. The system of government bodies that developed under the USSR was completely eliminated. Before the elections to the Federal Assembly and the adoption of the new Constitution, all power was in the hands of President Boris Yeltsin. On December 12, 1993, a popular vote was held on the new constitution and elections to the State Duma and the Federation Council.
In Russia, the Great Khapok continued on a grand scale, Kozyrevism in foreign policy, the war in Chechnya and the extinction of Russia, stopped with great difficulty at the very abyss during the 2000s.
It cannot be said that Russia would have had a better fate with the victory of supporters of the RF Armed Forces. The top opponents of the current government were no better than Yeltsin. If you carefully dig into the biographies of Rutskoi, Khasbulatov, Makashov, Umalatova, then behind each of them there will be enough dirt to come to the understanding: an attempt to change the enemy into soap was not worth the blood that was shed on the streets of Moscow in October 1993.
The bottom line is. From October 3 to October 4, 1993, a small two-day civil war occurred in Russia: 123 killed, 384 wounded. No one suffered any criminal or political responsibility for this bloody massacre. The February amnesty reconciled both sides. The tops, anyway. Both sides breathed a sigh of relief when the Prosecutor General's Office was forced to close criminal case No. 18/123669-93. Moreover, each of the organizers of the October events released a “memoir” in which they easily shifted responsibility for the murders onto their political opponents.
The amnesty that buried criminal case No. 18/123669-93 suited everyone because, contrary to the will of Yeltsin’s leadership, investigators from the Prosecutor General’s Office investigated the actions of not only supporters of the Supreme Council, but also government forces, which were largely to blame for the current situation and the grave consequences of what happened.
The true heroes of the October events are the fighters of Vympel and Alpha, who did not stain their hands and honor with the execution of criminal orders and the blood of their compatriots, who saved the lives of dozens of people from the besieged and burning White House. Punished later by the hound Boriska for their humanity, honesty and integrity. But that's a completely different story.
English version :: Read in English: Two-Day Civil War