Black October, Part 1

The Coup at the Beginning—and the End—of Russian Democracy

First off, we now return to your regularly scheduled programming. Thank you, dear subscribers, for your patience: you can now expect again a steady diet of posts. I also have some exciting news: my book, When The Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, now has a cover, a release date, and is available for pre-order. Now, I know the release date might look a bit of a ways off, but I’ve been told pre-orders are extremely helpful to ensure the success of the book, so if you feel like ordering your copy now I’d greatly appreciate it. You can order it online, or, even better, ask your favorite local independent bookseller for it. I’m really looking forward to sharing it with all of you! Today, I have a little 90s nostalgia for you; an event that is actually connected to my book in a somewhat surprising way.

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(Michael Euler/ AP)

October 3 and 4 marked the 30th anniversary of what’s called the “October Coup” or “Black October” in Russia. On October 3, thousands of demonstrators led by the “National Salvation Front” broke police barricades around the House of Soviets, Russia’s parliament building, linking up with the deputies who had barricaded themselves inside. Then, they took over the office of Moscow’s mayor and attempted to seize the city’s TV station complex. The following day, president Boris Yeltsin, who just two years earlier rallied crowds to defend parliament against the forces of a military junta attempting its own coup, ordered the army to shell parliament and crush the revolt. It was the city’s bloodiest street fighting since the October revolution of 1917—Red October—claiming the lives of 143 Muscovites and wounding 437 more.

At the time, newborn Russian democracy seemed to many, especially those in the West and among the intelligentsia, to have been rescued, but arguably it had just been smothered in its cradle. Or, better yet: pulled apart by its own contradictions. In any case, much of the present state of Russian politics and society would be visible in the shards and fragments of Black October.

The attempted coup of the 3rd and counter-coup of the 4th were the culmination of a several months long constitutional crisis. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Soviet Federative Republic became an independent country, the Russian Federation, and its new president, Boris Yeltsin, once “Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFRS,” became its first president. Although a revolution had taken place and an empire had fallen, the old Soviet constitution of 1978 remained in place. The Russian “parliament” was actually two bodies: the directly elected Congress of People's Deputies of Russia was made up 1,068 directly elected deputies that met twice a year, but then that number elected from its ranks the Supreme Soviet of Russian Federation, 248 deputies that formed a more permanent legislative body. But that body itself divided into two chambers: the Soviet of the Republic and the smaller Soviet of the Nationalities. Then the entire chamber was directed by a Presidium with a chairman, which had its own quasi-executive powers. But a referendum in 1991 had created a new role of president and Boris Yeltsin won 57% of the popular vote to become the first holder of that office.

Suffice it to say, this was a big mess. The Soviet constitution had never been intended to provide a working representative system: it had been meant to give the appearance of democracy but in actuality was dominated by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. On top of that, it was essentially parliamentary, with its executive—the Chairman of the Presidium—elected from its own members. Now, parts of a presidential system had been tacked on to it. The powers and responsibilities of each branch were ill-defined and ill-understood. A Constitutional Court was set up as a referee, but of course, its decrees had to be obeyed. And on top of all this, there was no real disciplined party system, just a mass of disorganized deputies who were free to wander in and out of caucuses as they saw fit.

Under the best of circumstances, presidential systems contain an implicit tension between the two competing claims of democratic legitimacy: that of the directly-elected executive and legislature. Under situations of crisis, like those prevailing in post-Soviet Russia, this is a recipe for disaster. As Richard Sakwa writes in Russian Politics and Society, “The principles of parliamentary and presidential government are both equally valid, but the tragedy for Russia was that both were being pursued with equal vigour at the same time; like two trains approaching on the same track, the collision would be disastrous for both.” In fact, Karl Marx had already diagnosed this issue in his classic work on Napoleon III’s coup, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis-Napoleon: “This constitution, made inviolable in so ingenious a manner, was nevertheless, like Achilles, vulnerable in one point – not in the heel, but in the head, or rather in the two heads it wound up with: the Legislative Assembly on the one hand, the President on the other.”

If that was not bad enough of a contradiction lets add a few others. The so-called “democrats,” those that had supported Yeltsin’s suite of economic and constitutional reforms, failed to either win mass public support or a workable parliamentary coalition. As bourgeois democrats, they ought to have been firm parliamentarians. Instead, they relied on a president who was increasingly ruling by decree and ignoring the legislative branch to pursue their favored policies. At the same time, all the partisans of dictatorship and enemies of democracy and pluralism, the strange alliance of Communists and far right nationalists, found themselves in control of parliament. The majority of the deputies were not members of the liberal intelligentsia or the representatives of the regional bourgeoisie sent to the capital to represent their interests—there wasn’t really one of those yet—but former functionaries and lower and middle managers in the old regime. It was a parliament of bureaucrats who stood to lose a lot from the passing of the old regime. One member of the body described their program with the contradictory formula “parliamentary autocracy,” as they attempted to strip Yeltsin’s prerogatives and gather powers to themselves. Instead of being its own source of positive law and policy, parliament became mostly a veto on the policy-making initiatives of the executive.

The main issue of contention was “shock therapy” economic reforms backed by Yeltsin’s Minister of Finance Yegov Gaidar. These had devastated the standard of living and led to both skyrocketing inflation and mass unemployment. Industrial production had also plummeted. The Vice-President, once an ally of Yeltsin, called the reforms “economic genocide.” But the opponents of Yeltsin had further, ideological objections to his rule. They also bemoaned the the loss of Russia’s superpower status, the break up of the old empire into new nations, and what they felt was the degrading rise of Western consumerism. They had some reason to believe the public was on their side: the reforms were in fact resented and a heavy burden on the people. Yeltsin counter-attacked, calling his opponents a “red-brown alliance” of former Communists and neo-fascists that sought a new dictatorship.

Both sides were right. Yeltsin’s characterization of his opposition was by and large correct: the National Salvation Front coalition that formed the core of both extra-parliamentary and parliamentary opposition was actually made up of "Reds and Browns.” But the reforms in question were growing unpopular and burdensome for the Russian people. Just to add to the confusion, another referendum intended to break the deadlock and resolve the issue returned strong public support for both Yeltsin and his suite of reforms. The situation was hopelessly muddled.

The intellectual mouthpiece of the National Salvation Front was a newspaper called Deyn, the Day. It’s editors and contributors would become known as notorious fascists: Eduard Limonov, Aleskandr Prokhanov, and Aleksandr Dugin. Most of its staff had supported the junta that Yeltsin and Gorbachev faced down in August 1991. They sent a reporter to interview David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and recent Republican candidate for Governor of Louisiana and president of the United States. “I want Russia to be a strong power, a stronghold between East and West,” Duke told the reporter Vladimir Bondarenko. “In my opinion, the destruction of white Russia would be a great explosion for all of Europe. It would be the end of the European blood heritage. If Russia is destroyed, all of us—including Americans—will be destroyed.” Asked if he supported the paper’s proposal to replace Yeltsin’s “treacherous” government with a “white general,” Duke replied, “Undoubtedly I will support a man or a party in Russia who will help Russians become strong. I don’t care if they follow certain articles of the constitution or not. I think Russia needs a strong personality in order to overcome all the difficulties.” When NPR sent a reporter in October 1992 to interview Dyen’s editor-in-chief Aleksandr Prokhonov, one of his aides was wearing a David Duke button. Here’s what Prokhonov told the American radio outlet: “The Soviet Union will be restored. It will be called maybe something else. It won't be socialist Soviet Union. It won't be the Russian empire, but a great state and this territory will inevitably rise. I want to turn the will of history back. I want to see Russia, that great mighty nation that I saw in my youth.”

Shortly after the interview aired in the States, Yeltsin attempted to ban the National Salvation Front. But in February 1993, the Constitutional Court reversed his ban: the National Salvation Front was a legal, constitutionally-protected entity.

But this is getting rather long, so I will have to write a Part 2 tomorrow. Till then!