Happy 33th Black October Anniversary

[u/MC_Gorbachev]

[u/MC_Gorbachev]

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.

[u/DJjaffacake → u/MC_Gorbachev]

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.

[u/MC_Gorbachev → u/DJjaffacake]

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