Crowds Mourn Yeltsin Victory

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 10-3-2003 | Jukius Strauss

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Crowds mourn Yeltsin victory

By Julius Strauss
(Filed: 03/10/2003)

Ten years after Russian troops stormed the communist-held parliament, thousands of Muscovites will rally today to remember not the victory of democracy but the failure of the attempted coup.

Not a single supporter of the country's first democratically elected president, Boris Yeltsin, is expected to be in evidence at the rallies. Most of those who supported him look back on his time with a shudder.

Nadezhda, 53, was working as a cleaner in the Kremlin on the day of the battle. She spoke for many when she said yesterday: "Last time I was cheering for Yeltsin and democracy. I had no idea that in the years that followed he would rob us blind."

In the West, Mr Yeltsin's shelling of the White House was depicted as a necessary evil in the battle against unscrupulous communist revisionists seeking to grab back power from the fledgling democracy after almost a century of totalitarian rule.

In Russia Mr Yeltsin is remembered as a weak and corrupt leader, whose tenure was marked by robber capitalism, economic collapse and political turmoil.

A poll this week showed that two thirds of the people interviewed blamed him and his predecessor, Mikhail Gorbachev, for taking the country to the brink of chaos.

"What good has it done us?" asked Nikolai, 43, as he planted flowers outside the White House, now the home of the Russian government. "We have become a country where a few have immense riches and everybody else lives in filth and poverty."

Alexei Kurenkov takes a different view. He works opposite the White House in the glitzy Cafe 317, a favourite meeting place for the business and political elite. On the wall are pictures of Che Guevara and President Vladimir Putin. Ten years ago the premises housed a simple, Soviet-style food and tea shop.

Mr Kurenkov was a sailor in Murmansk in October 1993. He did not hear about the bloody fighting in Moscow until he was demobbed in December. He said: "If Yeltsin had not won, you would not be standing in a cafe now. It would probably be a collective bakery. I have no complaints: life is much better for me. What Yeltsin did may have been illegal, but at the time there were no real laws."

At least 160 people died in the battles in Moscow that autumn. The fighting, including infamous images of T-80 tanks firing into the parliament building at close range, was carried live on Russian television and on many international stations. It was the final chapter in a life or death struggle between Mr Yeltsin and hard-line communists occupying the then House of the Supreme Soviet.

When Yeltsin dissolved parliament, the hardliners barricaded themselves into the building surrounded by hundreds of heavily armed thugs and bodyguards. On Oct 3 they broke out and rampaged through Moscow, attacking the Ostankino television tower, where they were repulsed by heavy fire from the security services. Next morning, after a night of fierce debate, Mr Yeltsin sent in the tanks and crushed the revolt.

Muscovites rejoiced as the ringleaders were locked up in Lefortovo prison. But the aftermath was less popular. The president handed out lucrative government contracts to his allies to try to consolidate his gains. In one of his most infamous moves, he distributed huge tracts of property to supportive oligarchs.

Boris Makarenko, of the Centre for Political Technologies, said: "You can't blame Yeltsin for everything that went wrong in the 1990s. But October 1993 is certainly the point when a lot of Russians lost all faith in the presidency."