Constitutional crisis in Moscow, when Yeltsin destroyed the opposition

(To Lorenzo Lena)
24/12/24

On September 21, 1993, the first President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin appeared on television to announce with decree number 1400 that the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation (renamed in April of the previous year) was to be considered dissolved and its members dismissed.

Here are some of the passages in his speech: “[…] The majority of the Supreme Soviet is directly hostile to the will of the Russian people. […] Power within the Supreme Soviet has been seized by a group of individuals who have made it the center of decision-making for an uncompromising opposition. […] I, as the guarantor of the security of our state, have the task of proposing a way out of this dead end, of breaking this vicious circle.”

Yeltsin announced his intention to rewrite the 1978 Constitution, which stated that his actions were effectively illegal, laying the foundation for Russia's current institutional model of splitting the State Duma and the Federation Council (lower and upper houses).

The reaction of the Soviet, dominated by communists and ultranationalists divided on everything except hatred towards the Russian president and his economic reforms that were dragging Russia into social decay, was immediate. Yeltsin was removed from office and replaced by vice-president Alexander Rutskoy.

Hero of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, a military pilot shot down by a Pakistani fighter, he was handed over to the Soviets under pressure from the CIA to prevent his killing by the militias from ruining the negotiations for withdrawal from the country. He had been chosen by Yeltsin as a vice-candidate for the June 1991 elections for the presidency of the Russian Federative Soviet Socialist Republic and, when this became the Russian Federation, he had kept his post.

The relationship between the president and Rutskoy had worsened because of the latter's criticism of the economic reforms, to the point that Yeltsin had suspended him from his duties on September 22. But the Soviet had boycotted this decision too, which therefore did not come into legal force, and Rutskoy was able to take over as acting president on the night of September XNUMX.

Legally Yeltsin was wrong, but in reality the constitutional crisis would have been resolved by force of arms.

As more and more pro-Soviet volunteers began to gather outside the Soviet headquarters, the huge White House building that now houses the Federation government, to protest Yeltsin, the deputies announced that they were calling for new elections the following year. Among the volunteers who had come from all over, eager to do away with Yeltsin, were members of the Nazi movement. Russian National Unity, the extremist communists of Worker Russia, veterans of Soviet special police units previously deployed in the Republics that had broken away. Among the many, also Yuri Beljaev, deputy of the Leningrad Soviet, pro-Serbian volunteer in Bosnia, then head of a criminal group and after 2014 volunteer in Donbass with the “Batman” unit of the Lugansk insurgents. In the pages he dedicates to the events of 1993, the French journalist Pierre Sautreuil reports Beljaev's memories. “We wanted to take action, for Christ's sake, make blood flow and make things worse. […] In the hemicycle the priests organized great masses and gave blessings.”

As the first deaths were being counted in the streets, Yeltsin ordered the water, gas and electricity to be cut off from the White House, which was surrounded by riot police. Between October 2 and 3, groups of demonstrators (in effect armed insurgents under the command of Colonel General Albert Makashov) broke through the security cordon and stormed Moscow City Hall, while an attempt to seize state television was foiled by the police and dozens of people died. Among them was the American lawyer Terry Michael Duncan, who worked in Moscow and had decided to take to the streets to help the wounded.

It was during this time, according to Beljaev, that Rutskoy ordered him to organize a commando to reach Yeltsin and assassinate him in order to put an end to the crisis. Beljaev claims that, after hours of waiting, he instead found Rutskoy hiding in his office, dead drunk and shocked by the events. Disillusioned, Beljaev then managed to escape the security forces and leave the capital.

Whether this testimony is reliable or not, the massacres of October 3 and the storming of the city hall were indeed the turning point of the crisis, but not as the Soviet had hoped. The Russian army, which until then had tried to keep its distance from the political crisis, openly sided with the president and intervened on his behalf. These are the famous images of the Soviet building in flames, hit by tanks of the Second Taman Guards Motorized Division stationed on the Novy Arbat Bridge. After the bombing, the building was attacked by the special anti-terrorist units Vympel and Alpha, who regained control one corridor at a time.

Gone into history as the Constitutional Crisis of 1993 and costing (the official version) around six hundred dead and wounded, the war between Yeltsin and his opponents in the Soviet Union was won by the first who was able to rewrite the constitution, legitimising his actions ex post and nullifying any opposition to presidential power in Russia, a trend that Vladimir Putin would have greatly accelerated after him.

Yeltsin's victory, however, was short-lived. With his country bankrupt and his own alcohol addiction growing more severe, Boris Yeltsin would be caught up in the disaster of the first Chechen war the following year, one of the greatest humiliations in Russian military history. But to recount every disaster Russia encountered in the 1990s here would be impossible.

Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin died in 2007 from heart problems aggravated by his lifestyle. It was the second term of Putin, the man to whom he had handed over the country in 1999. Rutskoy is still alive and has continued his political career, tying himself in particular to the Kursk oblast, but in the 2016 legislative elections his party, Patriots of Russia, did not pass the threshold.

For the pieces reported on Beljaev: Sautreuil, P. The Lost Wars of Yuri Belyaev, Einaudi, 2022

Photo: OpenAI / RIA Novosti / web