« click on image to enlarge »24 HOURS IN AN OCTOBER REVOLT
by Michael Hammerschlag
10th Anniv. radio retrospective report (audio)-7:20 min - Oct 4, 2003
Russian October Revolt - Moscow '93, Radio
South Africa Talk Show, White House,Yeltsin
March- Old Square,Ostankino TV Center battle,
White Hs battle (audio)- 34 min
(Realplayer) Oct 3-4, 1993
BACKGROUND: For a year and a half a savage
political struggle was waged between Yeltsin
and both his Vice President Alexander Rutskoi,
and the Speaker of the Parliament- Khazbulatov,
who controlled the Communist-era body with
an iron hand. They tried to impeach him,
they forced a referendum on his rule in April,
they instantly countermanded almost every
Kremlin order, and they tried to revert to
Communist controls. On Sept 21, 1993, Yeltsin
finally fought back, ordering the disbandment
of Congress; with new elections to follow
in December. Hundreds of delegates holed
up in the White House (Congress bldg) for
12 days, surrounded by a cordon of Moscow
police- many without power, heat, and water.
Besides the White House militia, hundreds
of weapons were smuggled in to the violent
extremists who had joined the representatives.
On Oct 3, everything hit the fan.
Oct 3, '93 Sunday began as a respite from the political circus; I needed
a break, and it was a sunny warm day (rare
in Oct, we had had a week of freezing and
snow) so I went to a palace estate. After,
I met a girl at McDonalds and was going to
go dancing at a new club. "Something
is happening at the White House... Yeltsin
has declared a state of emergency,"
she said. Tensions had been ratcheting upward
since Yeltsin's coup against the Congress
and Constitution in the name of democracy.
From Tuesday to Saturday, thousands of AYF
(anti-Yeltsin forces: communists, nationalists,
neo-nazis, conservatives, and people troubled
by his actions) had been doing battle with
OMON riot police near metro station Barricadnaya,
trying to reach the sealed off White House,
where even journalists were denied access.
Every day the police used more and more force,
and pitched battles erupted on the Garden
ring as AYF's tried to close the main Ring
Road with barricades. Everyone was tired:
police and soldiers who went days without
decent sleep; parliamentary deputies, who
had no electricity, water, clean clothes,
real food; protesters who waged battle while
the populace remained apathetic. On Wednesday,
in the underground passageway near McDonalds,
OMON police chased and beat protesters who
had taunted them, including innocent bystanders.
A guy in a suit buying a candy bar at a kiosk
was clubbed to the ground from behind. My
friend, 5 seconds behind me, was gassed.
When we arrived at 9pm, it was spooky. The police and barricades
had disappeared, and crowds were freely milling around the White House. It
didn't make sense. On the way, a water or gasoline tanker truck burned as an
ominous portent, people strolling by 25 ft from it, until an explosion drove
them back... to 50 ft.. Russians are incredibly blasé to danger. When cars come
barreling at them, people will nonchalantly clear them by inches. 3 trucks
loaded with AYF "soldiers" were roaring off to attack the Ostankino
television center, which Vice President Rutskoi had urged them to do several
hours before. A Reuter's woman was
talking into a cellular phone, alone, which I thought imprudent. The mood was
strange and dangerous, but I had no idea what had happened that day. Big crowds
of AYF's (10,000) had marched along the Ring Rd. 2 miles to Octybryskaya
Square, where they first overran police forces, then returned, and again
overran government troops near the old Arbat. Then they broke through the
police at the White House, who largely stood aside, many running and
surrendering their weapons. At Rutskoi's encouragement, the rebels commandeered
trucks and rammed through the front of the Mayor's City Hall, a 30 story modern
skyscraper. Here there was the first gunplay of the confrontation, and people
had been killed. Rutskoi had given a fiery speech and thousands had already
left for the TV center. I had blundered into a war.
A minute later, trying
to record some hammering sounds, a communist babushka (grandmother), the
fearsome powerful machines that used to be the backbone of this country (they
really are a different species bred by Stalin), screamed "What's he got in
his hand, a gun?", and I was seized, first by 2 babushkas, then by 100 of
the rabid crowd, who ripped my pockets, broke my flash, and wouldn't let me go
for 5 minutes until they explained how mad they were about "Clinton's
support of Yeltsin". Yeah, it was all my fault. Rattled, I left for the Ostankino tower, one of the tallest
structures in the world, with a restaurant at about 1000 ft. level. On Novy
Arbat, 10 people were rocking an enclosed bus stop bench back and forth, till
it toppled over, almost impaling them on 3’ spikes pulled from the ground. Changing subway lines near Red Square, I
came up to street on a hunch, and joined
a pro-Yeltsin crowd, urged out by a TV address
by Yegor Gaider, marching to Old Square (Government
buildings) to show their support. For the
next 10 minutes I marched with 3-4 thousand
democrats cheering for Yeltsin through the
center of the city, heartened by the sounds
of freedom. Thousands more had blocked Tverskaya
St., the way to the Kremlin, and kept a weaponless
vigil in front of the City Hall. Then I went
on to the Ostankino tower, under siege since
7pm. A friend from Houston had just moved
into an apartment overlooking the tower,
where we camped out, listening to a war:
heavy and small arms fire in bursts lasting
up to 10 minutes, continuing through the
night. Sometimes tracer bullets laced the
sky. I phoned friends and journalists, collecting
information. A photographer for Time Magazine
had gone in on the first wave and gave me
the scoop. First the AYF's had milled around
and given speeches, then decided to penetrate
the building. Armed with 200-250 Kalashnikovs,
a rocket propelled grenade and a mortar,
they repeatedly rammed trucks through the
door. When they blasted it with the RPG ,
the OMON troops inside finally opened fire
on everyone outside, including journalists
packed around the door, blithely filming.
A NY Times photographer said it was chaos,
with everyone firing everywhere. A British
cameraman, Rory Peck, was killed, his videocamera
and light shining up blindly into the night.
2 other TV cameramen: Russian and French
were fatally wounded. 3 other journalists
were seriously wounded, including a New York
Times photographer hit in the chest. A young
American lawyer from Baton Rouge, Terry Duncan,
pulled wounded to safety.. until he was shot in the head. All night warriors, journalists, and wounded
huddled in a little underground passageway between the two buildings of the
Telecenter. After doing a radio feed for Radio South Africa, I was torn between
approaching the fighting and staying put. It was night, a lousy time to
approach a pitched battle between entrenched forces, I had no video camera, or
even very fast film, no idea of the layout of the battle, and the gunfire never
stopped for more than a couple of minutes until 7am. What I could do was get myself killed. Cowardice and caution won
out: I stayed put. At 7 I set out for the telecenter 1/2 mile away. In dawn's
light old women went along their business with their wheeled bag carts,
heedless of the mini-war that had raged all night. Expecting dozens of bodies,
I was shocked. There were none outside. Studying the CNN raw footage a week later,
ambulances were pulling people out from 8-12PM during lulls in the fighting,
and groups of spectators watched crouched only 50 ft. from the battle.
Looking like something out of the Empire
Strikes Back, APC's poured tracer bullets into the first floor, trying to
dislodge the AYF's who'd captured it.
Nervous young soldiers
on the 15 APC's ringing the buildings screamed at me to get back, cocking and
aiming their machine guns. TV people who worked in the building got the same
treatment. the road was strewn with shattered buses and trucks that had ferried
the AYF's from the White House and a blood trail ran hundreds of feet along the
sidewalk. Among the crowd were AYF's, returned to survey the damage. A 40 year
old , Boris, said many of the 2-4000 AYF's were kids, 15-16 year old, including
some who carried the Kalashnikovs. It was well organized, with people coming
from other areas in commandeered buses, he said. "Less than 100 soldiers
held off 5000."
In reality it was
worse: the elite "Knight" detachment soldiers raced the AYF's to the
Telecenter, actually driving in formation with them and waving to them on the
Ring Rd. at 5pm. They arrived only 30 seconds before and only 25 took up positions
in the Olympiad studio building. Had they lost the race and the rebels taken
the center intact, they could have broadcast their message to the entire
nation, and possibly prevented the government retaking of the White House; in
which case it might now be President Rutskoi, not prisoner Rutskoi. The
Olympiad center was destroyed, the front of it smashed in, and had been
occupied on the first floor, while soldiers defending it from within.
For 2 hours, we
weren't permitted to approach the building, as ambulances took out bodies and
wounded. But other things were happening. The assault on the White House, which
was inevitable after this, had begun; tanks rolling into position from 6:30 am.
I returned to the apartment, forced to take a huge detour because of closed
streets, did another S. Africa radio report, and collapsed for an hour. After
rising I did a radio report for the local English station, and hustled off to
the White House on the other side of the city, on the way wandering into Detsky
Mir (Children's World-a toy and sports store), where a silent somber crowd was
watching CNN, wincing as tank shells slammed into the White House. This
Congress was stupid, recalcitrant, unrepresentative-- a dinosaur from a
vanished empire and era--but they were a legally elected body. I couldn't help
wondering how I'd feel if the President did this to the US Congress, something
AYF's asked me many times in the last 2 weeks. In a country without real laws
or justice, the President was destroying the only other branches of power, and
the only checks on his power (within a few days the Supreme Court, City
Council, and City Soviets across Russia would also be dissolved).
Emerging from the
supposedly closed Metro Smolenskaya, the Ring Road was lined with dozens of
tanks and APC's and a crowd of thousands pressed forward into police barricades
on Novy Arbat Pr. A sniper started shooting from an 11 story building across
from Arbat Restaurant and the crowd fled back in a panic. Heavy machine guns
pounded the sniper's position (there were 4 snipers in that position that took
the soldiers till the next morning to clear out). Kids approached soldiers with
tentative hopefulness-- they weren't going back to the past, that chapter was
ending by fire and steel. Heading down back roads, I and a dozen other
erstwhile historians clambered through a derelict building and emerged onto
Novy Arbat, where a flock of smashed and burned vehicles lay: an armored car on
it's side, a bus with smashed windows and doors was full of people, watching the
action as if at a ball game. A crowd was staring at something below ground
level to the left, when a guy in a flak jacket approached them waving a '45 an
a loose way, ordering them away. AYF or Government, I never knew. Kept 1000 ft.
back for a week, for the final assault, the government let thousands crowd
around the White House, even between it and the shattered Mayor's bldg (which
had been retaken in the morning), as bullets whizzed overhead.
The first tank blast had hit Khazbulatov's
office just as Yeltsin made a TV address
at 9am, "a nice touch", said Lee
Hockstader of the Wash. Post, who had been
watching the action from grandstand seats
in the Ukraine Hotel across the Moscow River,
where most tanks were stationed.
Peering out the windows, 2 other guests were killed. The boat shaped
White House was burning out of 10 windows of the 11th floor, and another fire had started
on its end, though only 10 tank rounds hit
it. Rutskoi had made a panicked telephone
call to Supreme Court head Zorkin, "You've
got to help us, they're going to kill us
all. " Shoulda thought of that before,
Al. Negotiations had gone on for the last
3 days between the Patriarch, Parliament,
and Government, and almost reached a settlement,
screwed up by Khazbulatov's henchman. Red
tracer machine gun fire floated impossibly
slowly along arcs and angles, looking for
all the world like cheap fireworks. Return
fire erupted from a lower 3rd floor window
and was immediately returned, the bullets
whizzing 20 ft. over the crowd, who were
attentive and sometimes rowdy. Then 100-150
White House police were surrendering, and
I penetrated the lines with a TV crew to
shoot some close-ups (even other TV people
were kept back). As we were pushed back into
the crowd, an APC with a large Russian flag
and a bus roared off and the crowd broke
into cheers while soldiers unloaded their
weapons into the air. On the bus were Rutskoi
and Khazbulatov, on their way to the infamous
Lefortovo prison. Then tracer fire started behind us (from the
crowd, it seemed) and floated directly overhead in a long arc towards the
bridge. If anyone tried to respond to that, they would shoot into the crowd...
considering the Russian penchant for irresponsibility, not unlikely (when you
cross a street here, cars speed up and swerve at you). A bullet pinged about 10
ft to the right, a television-show ricochet, but infinitely more deadly
sounding, and we backed up 5 ft.. All day people had been doing that--backing
up a few ft. after someone near them was hit, then moving forward again. In a
crowd of hundreds you feel safe: someone else will get hit, not you. Also,
after a long while in this country, you're so fatalistic, you don't care. At
least a dozen spectators paid the ultimate price for their entertainment. The
video showed a motley pile of 20 bodies laid out by the White House.
As darkness fell, it was becoming very dangerous.
Many in the crowd were AYF who had fought
in battles here the day before. If they fired
at the soldiers in the dark, government troops
probably would shoot into the crowd. I went
up to the deck of the Mayor's building which
the AYF's had looted for 15 hours; barely
visible Yeltsin troops peering out ominously
through the shattered facade. A soldier started
screaming and charging the 10 people on the
deck, yelling for them to get off, which
we did.. in a crouching run. The fighting
had died down and I left the burning White
House, charred to the top, walking through
the empty Arbat spot that had an explosion
of sniper fire a few minutes later (I later
discovered). 4 people were killed there.
Having exclusive photos, I took my film to
Reuters in the Radison Slavansky across the
river. Reuters photogs told of racing into
the Myezh hotel as plate glass windows disintegrated
around them and the person behind was wounded.
It, along with Tass News Service, Interfax,
and Moscovsky Komsomolets Magazine had been
attacked. They couldn't develop B+W, the
best shots, but I waited for the C-41 films
at a CNN TV near the entrance. In a fitting
ending to the night a businessman, like a
disoriented pigeon, walked full-force through
an 8 x 10 ft. heavy glass pane without breaking stride, shattering it. He could
have been decapitated, but he received only a scratched nose. Hopefully Russia
can be as lucky. An 11pm curfew was in effect, so I hustled home after 40 hours
with 1/2 hr sleep. It had been 24hrs of a 48hr war.
The final official*
death toll was about 150, 62 at Ostankino, and at least 6 journalists (9
wounded); hundreds and hundreds had been wounded; defiantly stupid Russian
spectators shot in the stomach who vowed they would do it all again. The big question was whether it was a set-up,
whether Yeltsin intended for such a denouement in order to liquidate his
enemies: from the beginning Int. Ministry troops didn't try to control the
crowd, they had no tear gas or water cannons, they were extremely thinly spread
(though there were thousands more troops in the city), they didn't try to block
the crowd from reaching the White House with trucks (although they had an hour
and had used that tactic many times before), they crumbled suspiciously fast
before the crowd, they told reporters they had orders to not stop the crowds,
trucks were abandoned in front of the White House with the keys in them, nobody
made an effort to block the convoys to Ostankino from 4 to 10 pm, and Yeltsin
was suspiciously absent on the day before his final ultimatum to surrender. It
is the Russian way: to give your opponents enough rope to hang themselves, or
wait till they touch the rope,.. and then shoot them. Then again, many in the military
and Interior Ministry supported the AYF's, or may have been waiting to see who
won before committing themselves. 200 Int. Ministry troops and 4 APC's went
over to the Rutskoi side. In the end... it doesn't matter: it was necessary, it
worked, the people supported it, and Russia's the better for it (as long as
Boris is around). Applying Western standards here doesn't work: it's a wild
place: uncivilized, brutal, recalcitrant, and no one knows that better than
Russians.
Enormous problems face
Yeltsin and Russia in building a new society, but he is a man a heroic decency
and courage. Russians have no word for "is", only "was" and
"will be", which is why they've been pathologically obsessed with
dead heroes or fanciful fantasies. On Thursday, Lenin's Tomb was stripped of
its honor guard for the first time in 70 years and they are going to bury him
in St. Petersburg. Russians are finally learning to live in the present.
Michael Hammerschlag is a political commentator for Moscow
Guardian, Moscow News, and Moscow Tribune;
a correspondent for Radio South Africa and KING-AM
Seattle, and has spent 17 months of the
last 2 years in the CIS and Soviet Union.