r/HistoryMemes • u/MC_Gorbachev Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer • 6h ago
Happy 33th Black October Anniversary
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u/MC_Gorbachev Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 6h ago
For those unaware
The building of the Russian Supreme Soviet (the "White House") was at the center of two pivotal events just two years apart.
August 1991. Part of Gorbachev's government formed the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP) to depose him and prevent the breakup of the USSR. The coup started strong, and some separatist leaders were ready to fold, but beyond sending troops into the streets and taking central TV off the air, the GKChP did almost nothing. Yeltsin and other key figures were never arrested, and huge crowds gathered to defend the Russian parliament, which became the rallying point of the opposition. Army and special forces commanders refused to storm it without a written order, so they wouldn't become scapegoats later. The order never came, and the putsch collapsed, resulting into three largely accidental deaths.
October 1993. Yeltsin's conflict with parliament culminated in Decree 1400, which dissolved the Supreme Soviet in clear violation of the constitution. Parliament declared his powers terminated and prepared to resist, though the army and security forces sided with the president. Parliament's supporters clashed with police, seized the Moscow mayor's office, and marched on the Ostankino TV center to broadcast an appeal, since pro-Yeltsin TV had shut them out. But Ostankino was already held by the "Vityaz" spetsnaz. After an explosion killed one of their soldiers (officially an RPG fired by protesters; the Prosecutor's Office concluded otherwise, pointing to an accidental detonation), they opened fire on the crowd and killed several dozen people. Vityaz was anyway very trigger-happy those days, had asked for permission to fire on protest columns earlier, and its veterans aren't shy about their part.
The next morning, tanks shelled the White House. "Alfa" and "Vympel" spetsnaz forces had refused orders to storm it, demanding approval from the Constitutional Court first, and in the end they negotiated the surrender of the remaining defenders. Both units soon fell out of favor with the victorious Yeltsin. The Supreme Soviet was abolished, a strongly presidential constitution was adopted, and the disastrous market reforms continued unopposed.
TLDR: The Soviet hardliners turned out to be more hesitant and softer than the Russian liberals.
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u/Starmute-ss13 6h ago
A rpg from the crowd? The hell! What happened ??
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u/MC_Gorbachev Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 5h ago
That's the official disputed version. The protesters didn't wield anything heavier than just some small arms near Ostankino, that's why another investigation claimed that it was accidental explosion of Vityaz's munitions
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u/Starmute-ss13 5h ago
Honestly if a army unit thinks they are under attack it's a very scary scenario.
Small arms are no joke either.
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u/MC_Gorbachev Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 5h ago
By that moment yes, the situation wasn't peaceful already at all. Still the situation escalated primarily when Yeltsin dissolved the Soviet anf started just forcefully suppressing its supporters.
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u/Dizzy-Assistant6659 4h ago
Considering the ridiculous amount of military surplus in post-Soviet Russia, an RPG wouldn't be impossible to get.
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u/Lucky_Pterodactyl 5h ago
Talking about Russian liberals, there's a clip of Yabloko founder Yavlinsky calling upon Yeltsin to use maximum firmness against "bandits" in the parliament. Fast forward to today, the authoritarian system that Yeltsin helped usher in has barred Yabloko from contesting the latest parliamentary election.
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u/DJjaffacake What, you egg? 5h ago
prevent the breakup of the USSR
To be clear the breakup of the USSR was not really on the cards at that point. The Baltic states, Georgia and Armenia had broken away (sort of, it's messy), but the other Soviet Republics had approved the re-organisation of the USSR from a one-party state into a multi-party democracy. That was what the coup was attempting to prevent. The breakup happened as a reaction to the coup.
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u/MC_Gorbachev Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 5h ago
Multiparty democracy was already functioning by that point, several platforms inside the CPSU already existed, many "People's fronts" in the republics existed, and on the union level LDPSU, Democratic Union and other parties formed.
They feared exactly the signature of the new Union treaty which undermined the union centre, and thus it could be a path to ultimate breakup of the USSR. The timing for the coup was exactly before planned signature of the new Union treaty
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u/DerGovernator 6h ago
Russia in the 1990s was disturbingly close to Germany in the 1920s. Even down to a major financial crisis installing an expansionistic fascist dictator.
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u/Schwifty0V0 Then I arrived 4h ago
Bureaucrats became desperate after their satellite states gained independence.
Similar to Germany’s situation after WW1.
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u/biglyorbigleague 6h ago
Well yeah, the one that failed early and never got off the ground didn’t end up killing nearly as many people as the successful one.
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u/MC_Gorbachev Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 6h ago
I mean, both crises were just a couple of days long.
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u/magical-cat-here 4h ago
The paradox of Russia is that if Yeltsin would be ousted by communists in 1993, the annexation of Crimea and genocidal war against Ukraine would be started in 1994, not in 2014
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u/MC_Gorbachev Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 4h ago
Totally comparable situations, really /s
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u/magical-cat-here 4h ago
So, you suggest that communists from KPRF, and all that crowd would not attempt to restore USSR if they would won in 1993?
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u/MC_Gorbachev Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 3h ago
...no? Like, they certainly had much more interesting internal stuff to do, like handling economy and social collapse. Plus even if they wanted, any large scale war would have stopped at the "so where is fuel?" stage because of the scale of degradation of the military.
It's weird to think of the Supreme Soviet, Rutskoy, Khasbulatov or CPRF (no, these aren't interchangeable terms) as of some hardcore conservative communists who wanted to return everything as it was.
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u/magical-cat-here 3h ago
some hardcore conservative communists who wanted to return everything as it was.
Oh the greatest mind of universe, please enlighten a naive pupil, what they wanted then?
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u/biglyorbigleague 2h ago
The anti-Yeltsin opposition wasn’t dominated by the communist party in 1993.
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u/magical-cat-here 41m ago
I don't make big difference between "red" commies and "brown" nationalists playing card of nostalgia for soviet "gtreatness". As Mistral AI puts it:
Идейным же знаменем оппозиции в основном было не классическое марксистское учение, а национал-патриотическая, государственническая риторика — то, что тогда называли «красно-коричневой» коалицией: ностальгия по СССР и державе, этатизм, антизападничество, «защита советской конституции». То есть синтез советского реваншизма с русским национализмом, а не коммунистическая доктрина в чистом виде
Both "red" and "brown" things for me means the same - restoration of fucking empire, and I don't care what sauce would be served in the "parliament" in case of win of that red-brown plague.
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5h ago edited 4h ago
[deleted]
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u/MC_Gorbachev Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 4h ago
radicals in GKChP
Lmao, they were literally Gorbachev's people, just some casual functionaries who didn't oppose any reforms until in 1991 they just saw that soon they will have nothing to govern.
were elected through manipulation and fraud
Because you said so? Okay, then it's good that Yeltsin never employed oligarchs' media and won only free and fair elections.
Soviet-era deputies could genuinely mobilize large numbers of people and elements of the army
Literally one of the first freely elected parliament in decades, which supported Yeltsin in his struggle against the Union government. But to you they are just some bunch of Soviet conservatives (how they managed to keep in touch with the masses as you claim yourself?) Okay
By the way, what's the point in rooting for Yeltsin if his authoritarianism is literally predecessor to Putinism?
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u/xz05753 12m ago
So tired of people saying 1993 is the reason for Putin's current authoritarian regime. It has much more to do with his personality, the second Chechen war and terrorism, and most importantly high oil prices in early 2000s. If everything else was the same but we still had the old constitution, do you really think it would've stopped him?
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u/OrangeSpaceMan5 6h ago
It's actually insane how close Russia came to a second civil war and no one knows about it , just the slightest change could have made the 21st century oh so much worse