In the first years of the existence of the Russian Federation, the confrontation President Boris Yeltsin and the Supreme Council led to an armed clash, the shooting of the White House and bloodshed. As a result, the system of government bodies that had existed since the times of the USSR was completely eliminated, and a new Constitution was adopted. AiF.ru recalls the tragic events of October 3-4, 1993.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Supreme Council of the RSFSR, according to the 1978 Constitution, was empowered to resolve all issues within the jurisdiction of the RSFSR. After the USSR ceased to exist, the Supreme Council was a body of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation (the highest authority) and still had enormous power and authority, despite amendments to the Constitution on the separation of powers.
It turned out that the main law of the country, adopted under Brezhnev, limited the rights of the elected President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, and he sought the speedy adoption of a new Constitution.
In 1992-1993, a constitutional crisis erupted in the country. President Boris Yeltsin and his supporters, as well as the Council of Ministers, entered into a confrontation with the Supreme Council, chaired by Ruslana Khasbulatova, most of the people's deputies of the Congress and Vice President Alexander Rutsky.
The conflict was connected with the fact that its parties had completely different ideas about the further political and socio-economic development of the country. They had especially serious disagreements over economic reforms, and no one was going to compromise.
The crisis entered its active phase on September 21, 1993, when Boris Yeltsin announced 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. He was supported by the Council of Ministers headed by Viktor Chernomyrdin And Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov.
However, according to the current Constitution of 1978, the president 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. Ruslan Khasbulatov even called his actions a coup.
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 and electricity were cut off and there was no water. 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 Alexander Rutskoy 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.
A special forces detachment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs “Vityaz” arrived in Ostankino to defend the television center. An explosion occurred in the ranks of the fighters, from which Private Nikolai Sitnikov died.
After this, the Knights began shooting at the crowd of supporters of the Supreme Council gathered near the television center. The broadcast of all TV channels from Ostankino was interrupted, leaving only one channel on the air, broadcasting from another studio. The attempt to storm the television center was unsuccessful and led to the death of a number of demonstrators, military personnel, journalists and random people.
The next day, October 4, troops loyal to President Yeltsin began storming the House of Soviets. The White House was shelled by tanks. 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.
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.
During the day, the defenders of the Supreme Council began to leave the building en masse, and by the evening they stopped resisting. Leaders of the opposition, including Khasbulatov and Rutskoy, were arrested. In 1994, the participants in these events were granted amnesty.
The tragic events of late September - early October 1993 claimed the lives of more than 150 people and injured about 400 people. Among the dead were journalists covering what was happening, and many ordinary citizens. October 7, 1993 was declared a day of mourning.
The events of October 1993 led to the fact that the Supreme Council and the Congress of People's Deputies ceased to exist. The system of government bodies left over from the times of the USSR was completely eliminated.
Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
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 1993, a historical event took place for Russia - the shooting of the White House. What are the reasons for this action by the authorities? Was this action legitimate? What are the victims of the action and its consequences for modern Russia? Has the influence of this event on current processes in the country faded or not?
In 1993, Americans shot in the backs of Russians
Have you ever experienced a feeling when just a few words changed your entire understanding of something very important? I experienced it when I became acquainted with excerpts from the work of the State Duma commission on the impeachment of Boris Yeltsin, which studied the events of October 1993 in Moscow.
I was then 20 years old and in St. Petersburg those events were not particularly discussed in my circle: in principle, many were satisfied with the formulation according to which the leader of the new Russia Yeltsin suppressed the creeping vermin of the Soviet counter-revolution, which consisted of the Supreme Council and several dozen lumpen people who passionately wanted street riots . The only embarrassing thing was that the footage of the shooting of the White House was broadcast to the whole world by the American television channel CNN. When I once found myself in those places where there was shooting, I saw a wooden cross, flowers and inscriptions saying that heroes who defended their country died here. I admit, at that moment something trembled in my heart: “the rabble that television portrayed the supporters of the Supreme Council as is not capable of remembering their comrades like that!”
And here I am reading fragments of the report of the commission that collected incriminating materials against Boris Yeltsin with the aim of removing him from the post of president. Transcript of the meeting of the special commission on September 8, 1998, when General Viktor Sorokin, who in October 1993 held the position of deputy commander of the Airborne Forces, whose units participated in the operation to disperse the Russian parliament, gave testimony. I will quote the most important passage:
“...somewhere around 8 o'clock the units advanced to the walls of the White House... During the advance of the unit, 5 people in the regiment were killed and 18 were wounded. They shot from behind. I have observed this myself. The shooting came from the American embassy building... All the dead and wounded were shot from behind...
I found these lines in Dmitry Rogozin’s book “Hawks of the World. Diary of the Russian ambassador on pp. 170 - 171. Dmitry Olegovich directly took part in the work of that commission and personally asked questions to the witness-general, and the text is taken from the minutes of the meeting.
Now think about these five words: “the shooting took place from the building of the American embassy... That is, snipers fired at Russian army personnel in order to provoke aggression and force the soldiers, who saw the death of their comrades, to suppress the “rebellion harshly and evilly.” This was extremely necessary to do, because the paratroopers knew that they were going to war with their own people, which means that some kind of devilry was happening! Naturally, everyone had in their memory the events of 2 years ago, when Soviet officers and soldiers refused to fight against Yeltsin’s defenders, and there was a great risk that the young Russian army would not go against the people.
Yegor Gaidar and snipers in October 1993 (Ren TV "Military Secret" 2009)
A bloody massacre outside the walls of the Russian parliament, when on October 3, 1993, the “chief rescuer” Sergei Shoigu gave a thousand machine guns to the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Yegor Gaidar, who was preparing to “defend democracy” from the Constitution.
More than 1000 units. small arms (AKS-74U assault rifles with ammunition!) from the Ministry of Emergency Situations were distributed by Yegor Gaidar into the hands of “defenders of democracy”, incl. Boxer's fighters.
On the “pre-execution” night, crowds of Hasidim gathered at the Mossovet, where Yegor Gaidar called on TV at 20:40! And from the Mossovet balcony, some people simply called for killing “these pigs who call themselves Russian and Orthodox.”
Alexander Korzhakov’s book “Boris Yeltsin: From Dawn to Dusk” reports that when Yeltsin scheduled the seizure of the White House at seven in the morning on October 4 with the arrival of tanks, the Alpha group refused to storm, considering everything that was happening unconstitutional and demanding the conclusion of the Constitutional Court. Vilnius script 1991, where “Alpha” received the most vile blow, as if a carbon copy, was repeated in Moscow in October 1993.
Both there and here “unknowns” were involved snipers, who shot the opposing sides in the back. In one of the communities, our message about snipers was followed by a comment that “these were Israeli snipers, who, under the guise of athletes, were placed in the Ukraine Hotel, from where they fired aimed fire.”
So where did those same armored personnel carriers with armed civilians (!) come from, which FIRST opened fire on the defenders of parliament, provoking all further bloodshed? By the way, the Ministry of Emergency Situations not only had “white KAMAZ” trucks from which they distributed weapons at the Moscow City Council, but also armored vehicles!
A year earlier, on the night of November 1, 1992, Shoigu, sent by the same Gaidar (then acting prime minister) to Vladikavkaz to resolve the Ossetian-Ingush conflict, transferred 57 T-72 tanks (along with their crews) to the North Ossetian police.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, in addition to the official testimony of the general, who saw shooting at soldiers from the American embassy building, there will be witnesses from the defenders of the White House of October 93, who saw that the same shooters were killing civilians - after all, the fact of the death of several hundred participants in the events and bystanders undeniable.
And, finally, the main thing: having such evidence, we can accuse the American government of direct interference in our internal affairs, because even if the snipers were not Americans, providing the roof of a sovereign embassy for such needs puts an end to the innocence of American intelligence in that bloodshed. The Americans got their hands dirty with blood.
For me, this fact became a turning point in the assessment of modern Russian history: it turns out that the late Yeltsin not only used the services of economic advisers from the United States and political strategists who helped him win the elections of 1996 (a feature film was even made about these events in the West), but he actually sold himself and sold out the country, allowing the Americans to participate in the massacre. By the way, the armed reprisal against the Supreme Council itself was provoked from the Kremlin: negotiations were officially supposed to take place between Yeltsin and Rutsky, but they did not see any results and an order was announced to open fire.
We are now wildly rejoicing that the American protege Yushchenko, whose legal wife worked for many years in US intelligence, has been excommunicated from power in Ukraine; however, it turns out that our “dear Boris Nikolaevich” was on approximately the same friendly relations with the States. And it also turns out that American terror, exported to Iraq, took its first steps not in Serbia, when Belgrade was bombed in 1999, but on the streets of Moscow six years earlier.
Giving a new assessment of the events of 17 years ago, we must not become despondent, but honestly admit: yes, we were cruelly raped, deceived in words and even shot in the back, but it is very important to get to the bottom of the truth at least after so many years. Yes, we were betrayed at the very top, but this does not mean that the entire people are ready to come to terms with this “after many years. The sacred words “No one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten” begin to acquire a new, relevant meaning. Let's be together, dear friends!
Sergey Stillavin
01.08.2013
Chronicle of the shooting of the White House and the establishment of “Constitutional Order”
(Dispersal of the Supreme Soviet of Russia)
1. Reasons for the shooting of the White House. At least three of them can be distinguished.
Formal- inconsistency of the Soviet Constitution of the RSFSR of 1978, which established the power of the Supreme Council and was unbalanced by the removal of the article on the leading role of the party, with the realities of the presidential republic.
Real- the contradiction of the socio-economic course towards forced liberal reforms and plunder of the country to the interests of the majority of citizens in the conditions of maintaining spontaneous mass democracy.
Operational- the desire of Boris Yeltsin’s entourage to force a political cataclysm before it had yet matured for socio-economic reasons: in the spring of 1994, Yeltsin, according to the calculations then available, no longer had any chance of retaining power.
2. Illegitimate action. The shooting of the White House in 1993 was experienced very acutely at the time:
3. Victims stock. The organizers of the action carried out a deliberate extermination of people in order to “knock out” and intimidate the most active layer of society, to discourage the people from the very idea of influencing their destiny. According to available estimates, the number of people killed was an order of magnitude higher than the official data - about 1500 people
4. The powerlessness of Rutsky and Khasbulatov. Rutskoy and Khasbulatov turned out to be worse leaders than Yeltsin. The abilities of the first were demonstrated during his governorship in the Kursk region (the virtual disappearance of small businesses, even roadside ones); under the second, Russia could have come to a direct ethnic dictatorship (although there would most likely not have been any Chechen wars in their direct form).
5. Consequences of the action. They are as follows.
Russia still lives entirely in the reality created by the shooting of the White House.
04.10.2010
“Was the 1993 White House shooting necessary or a mistake?” — V. Ilyukhin VS G. Satarov
In the fall of 1993, the conflict between the branches of power led to battles on the streets of Moscow, the shooting of the White House and hundreds of victims. According to many, then the fate of not only the political structure of Russia, but also the integrity of the country was being decided.
This event has many names - “Execution of the White House”, “October Uprising of 1993”, “Decree 1400”, “October Putsch”, “Yeltsin’s Coup of 1993”, “Black October”. However, it is the latter that is neutral in nature, reflecting the tragedy of the situation that arose due to the unwillingness of the warring parties to compromise. [C-BLOCK]
The internal political crisis in the Russian Federation, which has been developing since the end of 1992, resulted in a clash between supporters of President Boris Yeltsin on the one hand and the Supreme Council on the other. Political scientists see in this the apogee of the conflict between two models of power: the new liberal democratic and the moribund Soviet one.
The result of the confrontation was the violent termination of the Supreme Council, which had existed in Russia since 1938, as the highest body of state power. In clashes between warring parties in Moscow, which peaked on October 3-4, 1993, according to official data, at least 158 people were killed, and another 423 were wounded or otherwise damaged.
Russian society still does not have clear answers to a number of key questions about those tragic days. There are only versions of participants and eyewitnesses of the events, journalists, and political scientists. The investigation into the actions of the conflicting parties, initiated by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, remained unfinished. The investigative group was dissolved by the State Duma after a decision was made to grant an amnesty to all persons involved in the events of September 21 - October 4, 1993.
Remove from power
It all started in December 1992, when at the 7th Congress of People's Deputies, parliamentarians and the leadership of the Supreme Council sharply criticized the government of Yegor Gaidar. As a result, the candidacy of the reformer nominated by the president for the post of chairman of the government was not approved by the Congress.
Yeltsin responded by criticizing the deputies and proposed for discussion the idea of an all-Russian referendum on the issue of trust. “What force pulled us into this dark period? - Yeltsin thought. - First of all, there is constitutional ambiguity. The oath is on the Constitution, the constitutional duty of the president. And at the same time, his rights are completely limited.”
On March 20, 1993, Yeltsin, in a televised address to the people, announced the suspension of the Constitution and the introduction of a “special procedure for governing the country.” Three days later, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation reacted, recognizing Yeltsin’s actions as unconstitutional and seeing them as grounds for removing the president from office.
On March 28, the Congress of People's Deputies became involved, rejecting the project to call early presidential and parliamentary elections and holding a vote on Yeltsin's removal from office. But the impeachment attempt failed. 617 deputies voted in favor of removing the president from office, with the required 689 votes.
On April 25, a national referendum initiated by Yeltsin took place, in which the majority supported the president and the government and spoke in favor of holding early elections of people's deputies of the Russian Federation. Dissatisfied with the results of the referendum, opponents of Boris Yeltsin went out to a demonstration on May 1, which was dispersed by riot police. On this day the first blood was shed.
Fatal decree
But Yeltsin’s confrontation with the Supreme Council, headed by Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov and Vice President Alexander Rutsky, was just beginning. On September 1, 1993, Yeltsin, by decree, temporarily suspended Rutskoi from his duties “in connection with the ongoing investigation, as well as due to the lack of instructions to the vice president.”
However, Rutskoi’s accusations of corruption were not confirmed - the incriminating documents were found to be fake. Parliamentarians then sharply condemned the presidential decree, considering that it had invaded the sphere of authority of the judicial bodies of state power.
But Yeltsin does not stop and on September 21 he signed the fatal decree No. 1400 “On phased constitutional reform in the Russian Federation,” which ultimately provoked mass unrest in the capital. The decree ordered the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Council to cease their activities “in order to preserve the unity and integrity of the Russian Federation; leading the country out of the economic and political crisis.” [C-BLOCK]
A coup was brewing in the country. According to political scientists, Yeltsin's opponents had motives for removing the current president. By the time the Congress of People's Deputies was dissolved, Khasbulatov had lost his constituency, since Chechnya had de facto separated from Russia. Rutskoi had no chance of winning the presidential election, but as acting president he could count on increased popularity.
As a result of Decree No. 1400, in accordance with Article 121.6 of the current Constitution, Yeltsin was automatically removed from the post of president, since his powers could not be used to dissolve or suspend the activities of any legally elected government bodies. The post of head of state de jure passed to Vice President Rutskoi.
The President acts
Back in August 1993, Yeltsin predicted a “hot autumn.” He frequented the bases of key army units in the Moscow region, and at the same time they increased officer salaries two to three times.
In early September, by order of Yeltsin, the head of the Constitutional Court, Valery Zorkin, was deprived of a car with a special connection, and the building of the Constitutional Court itself was cleared of security. At the same time, the Grand Kremlin Palace was closed for repairs, and deputies who lost their work premises were forced to move to the White House.
On September 23, Yeltsin reached the White House. After deputies and members of the Supreme Council refused to leave the building, the government turned off heating, water, electricity and telephone. The White House was surrounded by three cordons of barbed wire and several thousand military personnel. However, the defenders of the Supreme Council also had weapons.
A few days before the designated events, Yeltsin met with Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and Director of the Federal Security Service Mikhail Barsukov at the government dacha in Zavidovo. The former head of the presidential security, Alexander Korzhakov, told how Barsukov proposed holding command post exercises to practice interaction between those units that may have to fight in the capital.
In response, Grachev perked up: “Are you panicking, Misha? Yes, I and my paratroopers will destroy everyone there.” And B.N. supported him: “Sergeich has fallen and knows better. He passed Afghanistan.” And you, they say, are “parquet people,” keep quiet,” Korzhakov recalled the conversation.
Patriarch of All Rus' Alexy II tried to prevent the brewing drama. With his mediation, on October 1, the conflicting parties signed a Protocol, which provided for the beginning of the withdrawal of troops from the House of Soviets and the disarmament of its defenders. However, the White House defense headquarters, together with deputies, denounced the Protocol and were ready to continue the confrontation.
On October 3, mass riots began in Moscow: the cordon around the White House building was broken by supporters of the Supreme Council, and a group of armed people led by General Albert Makashov seized the Moscow City Hall building. At the same time, demonstrations in support of the Supreme Council took place in many places in the capital, in which the protesters came into active conflict with the police.
After Rutskoi’s call, a crowd of demonstrators moved to the television center intending to seize it in order to give the parliamentary leaders the opportunity to address the people. However, the armed units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were ready for the meeting. When a young man with a grenade launcher fired a shot to break down the door, troops opened fire on the demonstrators and their sympathizers. According to the Prosecutor General's Office, at least 46 people were killed in the area of the television center and subsequently died from their wounds. [C-BLOCK]
After the bloodshed near Ostankino, Yeltsin convinced Defense Minister Pavel Grachev to order army units to storm the White House. The attack began on the morning of October 4. The lack of coordination in the actions of the military led to the fact that large-caliber machine guns and tanks fired not only at the building, but also at unarmed people who were in the cordoned off zone near the House of Soviets, which led to numerous casualties. By evening, the resistance of the White House defenders was suppressed.
Politician and blogger Alexander Verbin called the October 4 action “paid for by the military,” noting that special riot police units and specially trained snipers, on Yeltsin’s orders, shot defenders of the Constitution. According to the blogger, Western support played a significant role in the president’s behavior.
The figure of Yeltsin as the leader of a state built on the fragments of the USSR completely tripled the West, primarily the United States, so Western politicians actually turned a blind eye to the shooting of parliament. Doctor of Law Alexander Domrin says that there are even facts indicating the Americans' intention to send troops to Moscow to support Yeltsin.
There is no unanimity Politicians, journalists, and intellectuals are divided in their opinions about the events that occurred in October 1993. For example, academician Dmitry Likhachev then expressed full support for Yeltsin’s actions: “The president is the only person elected by the people. This means that what he did was not only correct, but also logical. References to the fact that the Decree does not comply with the Constitution are nonsense.”
Russian publicist Igor Pykhalov sees Yeltsin’s victory as an attempt to establish a pro-Western regime in Russia. The trouble with those events is that we did not have an organizing force capable of resisting Western influence, Pykhalov believes. The Supreme Council, according to the publicist, had a significant drawback - the people who stood on its side did not have a single leadership or a single ideology. Therefore, they were unable to agree and develop a position understandable to the broad masses.
Yeltsin provoked the confrontation because he was losing, says American writer and journalist David Sutter. “The President has made no effort to engage with Parliament,” Sutter continues. “He did not try to influence legislators, did not explain what his policies were, and ignored parliamentary debates.” [C-BLOCK]
Yeltsin subsequently interpreted the events between September 21 and October 4 as a confrontation between democracy and communist reaction. But experts tend to see this as a power struggle between former allies, for whom resentment over corruption in the executive branch was a powerful irritant.
Political scientist Evgeny Gilbo believes that the confrontation between Yeltsin and Khasbulatov was beneficial to both sides, since their policies did not have a constructive reform program, and the only form of existence for them was only confrontation.
“A stupid struggle for power” - this is how publicist Leonid Radzikhovsky categorically puts it. According to the Constitution in force at that time, the two branches of government squeezed each other. According to the stupid Soviet law, the Congress of People's Deputies had “full power,” writes Radzikhovsky. But since neither the deputies nor the members of the Supreme Council could lead the country, the president actually had power.
August 1991 coup
Since 1989, the power of the party-state nomenklatura has been steadily decreasing. New commercial and political structures slowly but steadily gained strength. All this caused open and hidden protest from the “ruling class”. The last straw that pushed the party and state leadership of the USSR to act was the threat of signing on August 22, 1991, a new Union Treaty, which was developed during negotiations between representatives of the republics in Novo-Ogarevo, at a government dacha near Moscow.
According to this agreement, the republics included in the new Union received significantly more rights, and the center was transformed from a manager into a coordinating one. In reality, only issues of defense, financial policy, internal affairs, and partly tax and social policy remained in the hands of the union leadership. Some republics refused to sign even this fairly liberal agreement (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia).
In order to disrupt the signing of this agreement and maintain their powers of power, part of the top party and state leadership tried to seize power. On August 19, 1991, a state of emergency was introduced in the country, troops, including tanks, were brought into the streets of Moscow and a number of other large cities, almost all central newspapers, with the exception of Pravda, Izvestia, Trud and some others, were banned, all channels of Central Television, with the exception of the 1st program, and almost all radio stations stopped working. The activities of all parties except the CPSU were suspended.
The coup was led by the “State Committee for the State of Emergency” (GKChP) consisting of: acting. O. President of the USSR G. I. Yanaev, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, First Deputy Chairman of the Defense Council O. D. Baklanov, Chairman of the KGB of the USSR V. A. Kryuchkov, Prime Minister of the USSR V. S. Pavlov, Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR B. K. Pugo, Chairman of the Peasant Union of the USSR V. A. Starodubtsev, Minister of Defense of the USSR D. T. Yazov and President of the Association of State-Owned Enterprises A. I. Tizyakov. The State Emergency Committee saw the main task of the coup in restoring the order in the USSR that existed before 1985, that is, in eliminating the multi-party system, commercial structures, and destroying the sprouts of democracy.
The main political rival of the central leadership of the USSR was the leadership of the RSFSR. It was against him that the main blow was directed. Troops were concentrated around the building of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR ("The White House"), who were supposed to occupy the building, disperse the parliament and arrest its most active participants.
But the coup failed. The population of the country basically refused to support the State Emergency Committee, while the army did not want to use force against its citizens. Already on August 20, barricades grew up around the “White House”, on which there were several tens of thousands of people, and some military units went over to the side of the defenders. The coup was received very negatively abroad, where statements were immediately made about the suspension of aid to the USSR.
The coup was extremely poorly organized and prepared. Already on August 22, he was defeated, and the members of the State Emergency Committee themselves were arrested. As a result of the events of August 19-21, 1991, three of its defenders were killed near the White House.
Immediately after the defeat of the putsch, mass demonstrations against the CPSU took place in almost all major cities, which served as a convenient reason for suspending the activities of the CPSU in the country. By order of the President of the RSFSR B.N. Yeltsin, the buildings of the CPSU Central Committee, regional committees, district committees, archives, etc. were closed and sealed. Since August 23, 1991, the CPSU has ceased to exist as a ruling state structure.
Simultaneously with the cessation of the activities of the CPSU, a number of newspapers were temporarily closed by decree of the President of the RSFSR. In September, all Union republics that had not yet declared their full sovereignty and independence made these declarations.
After the events of August 1991, the importance of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR came to naught. The next Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, held at the end of August - beginning of September 1991, was the last. The congress declared self-dissolution.
In September - November 1991, sluggish attempts were made to prevent the final economic and political collapse of the former Soviet Union. The work was carried out in two directions: the creation of an economic union and the formation of new political relations.
In September, the Interrepublican Economic Committee (IEC) was created, headed by I. S. Silaev. The greatest success of the IEC was the preparation of an economic agreement, which was signed by nine republics: the RSFSR, Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. This agreement was a real step designed to stop the collapse of a single economic organism.
The contradictions regarding the political union were much more serious. The Baltic states, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia refused to even discuss this problem. The first preliminary negotiations took place only in the second half of November, with the participation of the presidents of seven republics. As a result of negotiations, the presidents came to the conclusion that it was necessary to create a new state on a confederal basis.
After the declaration of independence, relations between the republics on border issues worsened. A number of peoples of the North Caucasus, part of the RSFSR, declared independence and sovereignty and made political and territorial claims both to the RSFSR and to their neighbors. This was most clearly manifested in the emergence of the Chechen Republic. Events in Chechnya and a number of other regions of the North Caucasus, the ongoing war in South Ossetia - all this brought the Caucasus by the end of 1991 to the brink of a comprehensive civil war.
The economic situation in Russia and other states of the former USSR in the fall and winter of 1991 was rapidly deteriorating. Inflation rates increased sharply, reaching 25-30% per month in October - November, and industrial and agricultural production declined. All this, coupled with an increase in the issuance of new money, led to the fact that by the end of 1991 there were practically no industrial goods or food products left on store shelves. Problems arose in supplying the population with the basic necessities: bread, milk, potatoes.
October 3 - 15 years ago (October 3-4, 1993) there was an attempted coup in Moscow. This event is also known as the “Constitutional crisis of 1993”, “Coup d’etat of 1993”, “Execution of the White House”, “Execution of the House of Soviets”, “October uprising of 1993”, “Decree 1400”.
The crisis was the result of a confrontation between two political forces: on the one hand, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the executive branch controlled by him and his supporters, and on the other hand, Vice President Alexander Rutsky, the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation headed by Ruslan Khasbulatov, the Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation, and their supporters. The confrontation ended with the forceful dispersal of parliament and the victory of President Yeltsin.
After the seizure of the Moscow City Hall building by supporters of the Supreme Council and clashes near the Ostankino television center, President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin declared a state of emergency in Moscow. An assault on the White House was organized. The result of the confrontation was armed clashes on the streets of Moscow.
On the night of October 3–4, a plan was prepared to storm the White House, in which about 1,700 people, 10 tanks and 20 armored personnel carriers took part; the action was extremely unpopular, the contingent had to be recruited from five divisions, about half of the entire contingent were officers or junior command personnel, and the tank crews were recruited almost entirely from officers.
At 9:20 am on October 4, tanks located on the other side of the river began shelling the upper floors of the Supreme Council building. In total, six T-80 tanks took part in the shelling, firing 12 shells.
At 15:00, Special Forces Alpha and Vympel were ordered to storm the White House. The commanders of both special groups, before executing the order, tried to negotiate with the leaders of the Supreme Council on a peaceful surrender.
“Alpha”, having promised security to the defenders of the House of Soviets, managed to persuade them to surrender by 17:00. The Vympel special unit, whose leadership refused to carry out the assault order, was subsequently transferred from the FSB to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which led to the massive resignation of its fighters.
After 5 p.m., by agreement with Yeltsin’s supporters, a mass withdrawal of defenders from the Supreme Council began. According to the assurances of those who stormed, there should have been no shelling. However, those leaving the building had not walked even 100 meters when fire was opened over their heads.
A few minutes later, the attackers began shooting those leaving the building almost point-blank. According to eyewitnesses, it was at this moment that the greatest number of deaths occurred. The relatives of the missing people who came the next day could see up to three rows of troupes lined up along the wall in one of the nearby stadiums. Many of them had bullet holes in the center of their foreheads, like a control shot.
Before leaving the building of the Supreme Council, Rutskoi demonstrated in front of television cameras a Kalashnikov assault rifle, from which not a single shot was fired. He also demonstrated a small cardboard box containing cassettes with recordings of negotiations, including between Yeltsin and Luzhkov. A recording was shown in which a voice similar to Luzhkov’s was clearly heard, calling on the riot police and the Alpha special forces to “shoot mercilessly.”
The video sequence of the film “Secret Russia” also contains footage of one of the halls of the Supreme Council, where more than 30 shots from sniper rifles are visible at the level of the victims’ hearts. According to Rutsky, this is shooting to kill at those people who were in the Supreme Council at that moment. Rutskoy also pointed to the fact that in the corridors of the Supreme Council there were more than 400 corpses of the defenders of the Supreme Council at the end of the assault.
According to official data, the number of people killed during the riots was 150, the number of injured was 389. According to deputy Sazha Umalatova, 2,783 people were killed. As a result of an investigation by the State Duma Commission of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation for additional study and analysis of the events of 1993, B. Yeltsin’s actions were condemned and found to be contrary to the Constitution of the RSFSR, which was in force at that time. Based on the materials of the investigation conducted by the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, it was not established that any of the victims were killed with weapons at the disposal of supporters of the Armed Forces.
Parade of sovereignties (1988-1991) - a conflict between republican and union legislation associated with the declaration of the priority of republican laws over union laws, which resulted in the collapse of the USSR. During the “parade of sovereignties” during 1990-1991, all the union (the sixth was the RSFSR) and many of the autonomous republics adopted Declarations of Sovereignty, in which they challenged the priority of all-union laws over republican ones, which began the “war of laws”. They also took actions to control local economies, including refusals to pay taxes to the union and federal Russian budgets. These conflicts cut off many economic ties, which further worsened the economic situation in the USSR.
The first territory of the USSR to declare independence in January 1990 in response to the Baku events was the Nakhichevan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Before the August putsch, the State Emergency Committee announced independence of four union republics (Lithuania, Latvia, Armenia and Georgia), refusal to join the proposed new union (USG) and transition to independence - two more: Estonia and Moldova. At the same time, the autonomous republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which were part of Georgia, as well as the newly formed republics of Transnistria and Gagauzia in Moldova, announced non-recognition of their independence and their desire to remain part of the Union.
With the exception of Kazakhstan, none of the Central Asian union republics had organized movements or parties that aimed to achieve independence. Among the Muslim republics, with the exception of the Azerbaijani Popular Front, the independence movement existed only in one of the autonomous republics of the Volga region - the Ittifak party of Fauzia Bayramova in Tatarstan, which since 1989 has advocated the independence of Tatarstan.
On August 19, 1991, the signing of a new union treaty on the creation of the Union of Sovereign States (USS) as a soft federation was thwarted by the August putsch of the State Emergency Committee during an attempt to remove M. S. Gorbachev from the post of President of the USSR, immediately after which, during the massive collapse of the USSR, almost all the remaining union republics, as well as several autonomous ones (in Russia, Georgia, Moldova). On September 6, the USSR authorities recognized the independence of the three Baltic republics.
Although on November 14, seven of the twelve union republics (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) decided to conclude an agreement on the creation of the GCC as a confederation, after the referendum on the independence of Ukraine held on December 1 by the heads of the three founding republics of the USSR ( RSFSR, Ukraine, Belarus) on December 8, the Belovezhskaya agreements on its dissolution are signed, on December 21, this is approved by all eleven republics, and instead of the USG, the Commonwealth of Independent States is created as an international (interstate) organization. Moreover, by the time of the dissolution of the USSR on December 8, of all the union republics, only three had not declared independence (RSFSR, Belarus and Kazakhstan; the latter did so a week later, on December 16).
Some of the autonomous republics that declared independence later became the so-called. unrecognized (Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria) or partially recognized (Abkhazia and South Ossetia) states (while Gagauzia, Tatarstan and Chechnya did not retain such status).
MOSCOW, October 4 – RIA Novosti. The October 1993 putsch was not accidental - it was prepared for two years and in the end actually killed people’s trust in power, says Sergei Filatov, president of the Foundation for Socio-Economic and Intellectual Programs, former head of President Yeltsin’s administration.
Twenty years ago, on October 3-4, 1993, clashes occurred in Moscow between supporters of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999). The confrontation between the two branches of Russian government, which had lasted since the collapse of the USSR - the executive represented by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the legislative one represented by the parliament - the Supreme Council (SC) of the RSFSR, headed by Ruslan Khasbulatov, over the pace of reforms and methods of building a new state passed on October 3-4, 1993 into an armed clash and ended with tank shelling of the seat of parliament - the House of Soviets (White House).
Chronicle of the events of the political crisis in the fall of 1993 in RussiaTwenty years ago, at the beginning of October 1993, tragic events took place in Moscow, ending with the storming of the building of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation and the abolition of the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Council in Russia.The tension was rising
“What happened on October 3-4, 1993, was not predetermined in one day. It was an event that had been going on for two years. Over the course of two years, tension grew. And if you trace it at least through the congresses of people’s deputies, it becomes clear that this was a purposeful fight on the part of the Supreme Council against the reforms that the government was carrying out,” Filatov said at a multimedia round table on the topic: “October 1993 coup. Twenty years later...”, held at RIA Novosti on Friday.
According to him, the two top officials of the state - Boris Yeltsin and the head of the Supreme Council (SC) of the RSFSR Ruslan Khasbulatov - failed to reach the “normal path of relationship.” Moreover, “absolute and deep mistrust” arose between the two top officials, he added.
Political scientist Leonid Polyakov also agreed with this opinion.
“In fact, the putsch of 1993 is a postponement of the State Emergency Committee of 1991. In 1991, these people, seeing hundreds of thousands of Muscovites who surrounded the White House, the leaders of the State Emergency Committee were simply, as they say, afraid. At first they themselves frightened them by bringing tanks into the capital , and then they themselves were afraid of what they had done. But those forces that stood behind it, and the people who sincerely believed in what turned out to be destroyed in August 91, they did not go away. And two years followed, the most difficult, the most difficult in our history, which included the collapse of the USSR and the disappearance of the state... By October 1993, this explosive potential had accumulated,” Polyakov noted.
Conclusions from the events of 1993, according to Filatov, can be drawn both positive and negative.
“The fact that we eliminated dual power is positive, the fact that we adopted the Constitution is positive. And the fact that we actually killed people’s trust in power and this continued for the rest of the 20 years is an obvious fact that we have to restore to this day We can’t,” he says.
In turn, political scientist Polyakov expressed hope that the events of 1993 were “the last Russian revolution.”
Film about the events of 1993
During the round table, a film about the events of October 1993 was presented, filmed by RIA Novosti specialists in a web documentary format, which has received worldwide recognition due to the fact that the viewer has the opportunity to interact with the content and has greater freedom of action than the viewer of a plot with a linear form of storytelling, where the course of history is predetermined by the director. This is the third RIA Novosti film in 2013 in an interactive format.
“For each of the participants in these events, it was part of his life, part of his inner story. And it was these people we wanted to talk about in our film, interactive video; to make it possible to see through their eyes, through their emotions, through their memories those difficult days. Because now it seems like some rather distant and somewhat unusual event in our country. I really hope that it will continue to be so, because tanks shooting from the embankment at the White House is an absolutely terrible sight. And, probably, for every Muscovite and every resident of Russia, it was something absolutely incredible,” RIA Novosti Deputy Editor-in-Chief Ilya Lazarev shared his memories.
The film contains photographs of people who were later found by RIA Novosti and who spoke about their memories of those events.
“We brought photographs to life and tried to bring some episodes of the video into our present time... Our colleagues, directors, spent three months working on this format - this is a very difficult story. You can watch the film episodically, linearly, but the main story and task is to make it immersive this atmosphere, draw your own conclusions, but rather just get to know the people who lived through this story and let it pass through them,” added Lazarev.
As a result of the tragic events of October 3-4, 1993 in Moscow, the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation were liquidated. Before the election of the Federal Assembly and the adoption of the new Constitution, direct presidential rule was established in the Russian Federation. By decree of October 7, 1993 “On legal regulation during the period of phased constitutional reform in the Russian Federation,” the President established that before the start of the work of the Federal Assembly, issues of a budgetary and financial nature, land reform, property, civil service and social employment of the population, previously resolved by the Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation , are now carried out by the President of the Russian Federation. By another decree of October 7, “On the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation,” the president actually abolished this body. Boris Yeltsin also issued a number of decrees ending the activities of representative authorities of the constituent entities of the Federation and local Soviets.
On December 12, 1993, a new Constitution of Russia was adopted, in which such a government body as the Congress of People's Deputies was no longer mentioned.
