Johnson's Russia List
#6428
10 September 2002
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From: Alexander Domrin ([log in to unmask])
Subject: An excerpt from Iona Andronov's book "My War"
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2002
On the eve of the 9th anniversary of Yeltin's bloody coup,
I'd like to offer to the JRL readers an excerpt from a book "My War"
by Iona Andronov, the last Chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet's
Committee on Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations.
The excerpt takes us back to what was correctly described by the late
Dev Murarka as a "a defining episode in contemporary Russian politics" -
the brutal suppression of the first democratic parliament of Russia
by President Yeltsin in September-October 1993.
Among other things, the excerpt gives the details of Andronov's
nighttime visits to the U.S. Embassy on October 3-4, 1993, and attempts
of the Russian Supreme Soviet leadership to prevent bloodshed in Moscow.
That would be a major understatement to say that Yeltsin's Decree #1400
of September 21, 1993, was a "shock" to many of us in Russia.
Sergey Karaganov, head of influential Council for Foreign and Defence
Policy and hardly a "red-brown", later admitted that he fell down
in a faint (in his words, for the first time in his life)
when he heard Yeltsin reading his notorious decree on the Russian TV.
I hope David Johnson won't mind if I repeat what he said in
an introduction to my old piece "President Yeltsin vs. the First Russian
Parliament: Forgotten Lessons?":
"Western journalists, Western academics, and Western government officials
(with rare exception) all contributed to the undermining of democratic
institutions and practices as they encouraged Yeltsin's authoritarian
tendencies and the adoption of policies that had little public support.
We, and Russia, continue to live with the consequences of that crucial
period"
(JRL, 1 May 1997).
Andronov's book is available in the State Duma's bookstore and
several other places in Moscow.
Alexander Domrin,
Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD, University of Pennsylvania Law School),
Senior Associate and Head of International Programs,
Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law (under the RF Government)
---------
Iona Andronov. MY WAR.
Chapter XV. Yanks and Tanks
Mark Zlotnick was the last official emissary from Washington to visit us at
the parliamentary White House, and he carried out his special mission
with rare audacity.
An elegant gentleman in his fifties, with a distinguished streak of gray
hair,
he visited me on September 22, 1993, a day after the Kremlin putsch,
accompanied
by two diplomats from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. These attendants served
to underscore his high rank. I was most intrigued by the guest's calling
card,
which read: "National Intelligence Council-The United States of America."
No spy had ever introduced himself to me so directly. This prominent
operative,
however, dispensed with the usual charades and informed me that he had
flown in
from Washington specifically to ascertain the Russian Parliament's ability
to resist Boris Yeltsin. His questions were very direct:
"How long would you be able to withstand a militarized blockade of the
Parliament?"
"As long as humanly possible."
"How many guards do you have here?"
"Their number is unknown to me."
"What kind of weapons do they carry?"
"I don't know." I laughed. "But even if I did, I wouldn't tell you."
The American visitor flashed a phoney smile. I responded in kind.
During my 11 years as a journalist in the U.S. I came to know well
the standard-issue smile of the business Yankees. The guest, acknowledging
a draw on the smile front, changed the subject:
"Mr. Andronov, should your side prevail in this struggle, what would that
portend for U.S.-Russian relations?"
"U.S.-Russian relations would be good and stable."
"Really?"
"Yes. That's because the relations would be put on an equal footing.
We in the Parliament are not anti-American. Would you like to hear it
from a politician far more authoritative than myself?"
"With pleasure. But who would that be?"
"Should I ask Speaker of Parliament Ruslan Khasbulatov to meet you?"
"Excellent."
On that day the White House telephones were still working, so I called
Khasbulatov's office and asked the Speaker to receive a guest from
Washington,
accompanied by the Embassy escort. Soon came the answer:
the Speaker would see the delegation in 15 minutes. Upon hearing this,
one of the American diplomats stirred:
"No press, no TV cameras!"
"As you wish."
Despite this assurance, the diplomat was clearly nervous:
"Could we call our Embassy from here?"
"Of course."
He spoke to the U.S. Embassy; five minutes later they called back and asked
to speak to their diplomat. Afterwards he made the gloomy announcement:
"Our Ambassador, Mr. Pickering, strongly recommends we not meet the Chairman
of the Russian Parliament. Please accept our profound apologies for any
inconvenience."
After a short pause the Americans resumed their polite smiling, and soon
they left my parliamentary office at the Committee on International Affairs.
There were no more foreign diplomats at the White House after that.
It was clear my visitors were diplomats in name only, and the delegation
was led by an experienced spy. They were interested in a single question:
how soon will our resistance to the coup d'etat weaken?
....
The U.S. government's complicity in the crushing of the Russian Parliament
is still a top secret in Washington. This bloody, shameful affair is just
as evil
as the American assistance provided to General Pinochet when he carried out
a putsch in Chile, bombing and burning the Presidential Palace in Santiago,
executing hundreds of his opponents, deposing the duly elected President
Salvador Aliende.
Washington's support for the Kremlin's Pinochet revealed once and for all
the hypocrisy of American declarations in favor of universal parliamentary
democracy and citizen's rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
I still have the old issues of the Washington Post and the New York Times
from October 1993, when the reports from Moscow on the siege and the storming
of our White House filled the front pages. This pogrom is presented as
a great triumph of democracy. The supporters of the Parliament are
characterized as a "gang of rebels," while Yeltsin is referred to as
"the man who saved Russia from the supporters of the Soviet regime."
Later on, the praise lavished on Yeltsin in the U.S. grew fainter,
yet he is still revered there for brutally suppressing the power of
the Soviet, for dismembering the hated rival superpower, for dismantling
its strong army and defense industry, for restoring capitalism in Russia,
and for forcing his weakened country into a dependent relationship with the
West.
That is why to this day no historical account of the meddling by Yeltsin's
Washington accomplices during the tragic autumn days of 1993 has been
published
in the United States. Yet it is possible now to compile a chronology of the
U.S.-Kremlin conspiracy against the Russian Parliament, although it would
necessarily be incomplete.
Two weeks prior to the putsch, Yeltsin sent his Foreign Affairs Minister
Andrei Kozyrev to Washington with a secret mission: to inform the
U.S. government of the coming suppression of the highest legislative organ
in Russia. Kozyrev so informed Secretary of State Warren Christopher
on September 13. Christopher was not surprised. On September 2 he and
President
Bill Clinton had received a coded message from the CIA station in Moscow,
detailing Yeltsin's preparations for the anti-constitutional coup.
Later on, during the coup itself, the New York Times would acknowledge,
"Clinton Administration officials blessed Mr. Yeltsin's dissolution
of the Parliament." (New York Times, Oct. 4, 1993, p. A11.)
Three months later, professor Stephen Cohen, a specialist in
the Russian history, commented: "I'm sure that in September 1993,
our leaders knew in advance what was about to transpire in Moscow.
The U.S. supported and, quite possibly, encouraged Yeltsin's extremist
policy.
I consider the U.S. government responsible for Yeltsin's extremism."
On September 21, prior to broadcasting his dictatorial ukase on TV,
Yeltsin dispatched the text of this decree to U.S. Ambassador Thomas
Pickering.
The Russian President also instructed his aides to keep the Ambassador
informed of subsequent actions against the defenders of the Parliament.
Pickering immediately informed Clinton of the developments, and the
U.S. President telephoned Yeltsin without delay to express his assent.
That same day Clinton publicly declared his support for Yeltsin's actions.
On the fifth day of the coup d'etat, Yeltsin again dispatched Foreign
Affairs Minister Kozyrev to the U.S. to get specific approval of his plan
for a complete siege of the Moscow White House, including the deployment
of armed soldiers and barbed wire around the building. On September 29,
Kozyrev received the approbation personally during a meeting with Secretary
of State Christopher and President Clinton. Following this encounter,
the Russian newspaper Segodnya reported from Washington: "Kozyrev delivered
to Clinton a message from Yeltsin. Afterwards, Kozyrev publicly thanked the
U.S. President for his support."
On October 3, when Yeltsin was ready to storm Parliament, the New York Times
revealed a curious aspect of the plan: "The American Embassy in Moscow
was serving as the liaison to the Russian Government, with Ambassador
Thomas Pickering maintaining contact with Mr. Yeltsin's forces and
passing on messages to Washington." (New York Times, Oct. 4, 1993, p. A11.)
Early in the morning of October 4, Yeltsin's storm troopers attacked the
White House, and in the evening of the same day the New York Times reported:
"President Clinton received hourly updates on the fighting in Moscow as
he traveled in California on Sunday night. But he felt so confident that
Mr. Yeltsin would succeed, aides said, that he went to bed shortly after
arriving at his hotel in San Francisco. Aides proclaimed Mr. Clinton
'four-square' behind the Russian president."
(New York Times, Oct. 5, 1993, p. A19.)
There was one other American diplomat, besides Ambassador Pickering,
providing hourly updates on the Moscow bloodletting to President Clinton,
special envoy Strobe Talbott. He is an old friend of Bill Clinton's;
they studied together. Talbott mastered Russian; his dissertation was
on Russian poetry. Later he switched to politics; he worked in the Soviet
Union
as a reporter for Time magazine and published several books about the country.
Under Clinton, Talbott was assigned to lead the Russian Desk at the State
Department
and to coordinate Washington's policy vis-â-vis the former Soviet Union.
He was engaged in this task directly during the assault on the Moscow White
House.
All day October 3, that night, and the morning of October 4, Talbott was
conducting
telephone negotiations from Washington with key Yeltsin advisers.
They were talking about tanks and machine guns firing at the White House,
about slaughtering those who remained in the building. On October 6,
after the carnage, Talbott addressed the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
relaying a filtered version of his conversations with the Kremlin coup
plotters:
"Ambassador Pickering and I were in touch with Russian officials during
the early hours of Monday morning as the troops began to move in.
We were told that President Yeltsin had two options: one, quick and dirty,
to rush in like gangbusters with guns blazing; the other, a slow, phased,
piecemeal retaking of the building, giving those inside maximum chance
to surrender. Even though the loss of life was still substantial, we find it
significant and heartening that President Yeltsin opted for number 2."
(Statement of Ambassador-at-Large Strobe Talbott to House Foreign Affairs
Committee, Oct. 6, 1993.)
In exonerating Yeltsin, the Russian President's American admirer also
expressed
contempt for the hundreds of freshly slaughtered Russians: "The forces of
New Russia, personified by President Yeltsin, were committed to democracy,
reform, respect for human life, and civic peace." (Ibid.)
Five months later, I tried to remind Ambassador Pickering of his partner's
words.
On March 9, 1994, Ambassador Pickering held a reception for the recipients
of American grants and stipends at the House of Scientists in Moscow.
During the Ambassador's speech the attendees were invited to submit written
questions. I sent my question along, but it was ignored.
So I had to approach the podium where Pickering was seated and address
the Ambassador in a loud voice: "Mr. Ambassador, could you please tell us
about the discussions you had with Kremlin officials regarding the various
ways of storming the parliamentary White House on the morning of October 4
of last year? And could you please provide more details then did your
colleague
Strobe Talbott recently?"
Three Americans trying to push me away from their Ambassador instantly
surrounded me:
"You can't do this!" Washington's freeloaders in attendance were annoyed.
Pickering, however, could not pretend to be deaf. He said: "Well, I know
who you are. We've met before. I will answer your question: on the morning
of October 4 I personally did not discuss any preparations for storming of
the Moscow White House with the Russian leadership. I had no such
discussions."
The Ambassador turned away from me and, having bid farewell to the audience,
left the podium, disappearing behind the curtain. The curtains are still
drawn
over the political stage, where in 1993 a deathly drama played out under the
American co-direction.
....
On the fourth day after the coup d'etat, the Congress of People's Deputies,
sitting in the White House, elected me chairman of the Committee
for International Affairs.
At the time I knew little of the collusion between the two presidents,
Clinton and Yeltsin, against us. I was, however, familiar with the long-term
antipathy towards Russia on the part of Washington politicians; I knew of
their self-serving alliance with Yeltsin and of their desire to crush
his opponents.
Twenty days prior to the putsch I had read in the International Herald
Tribune
a prophesy, which came to pass: "Yeltsin can bring about Parliament's
premature death. He will probably have to send in armed men to enforce his
will."
(International Herald Tribune, Aug. 31, 1993, p. 4.)
The majority of our deputies, however, do not read foreign papers,
and so they held an illusionary hope that western parliaments would
assist the Russian Supreme Soviet. The most naòve among them even
proclaimed repeatedly at the rallies, held in front of the White House,
that the U.S. Congress and the British House of Commons voted in favor
of lifting the blockade imposed by Yeltsin on our Parliament. The crowds
earnestly applauded this nonsense.
They were demanding that I call on the foreign saviors to come and rescue us.
It was impossible to convince the stubborn dreamers that there were no
foreign saviors. The Supreme Soviet leadership, including Chairman Ruslan
Khasbulatov and his First Deputy Yuri Voronin, were pestering me with
questions:
"How can we influence the western powers?" Even though the very idea seemed
futile to me, I could not reject it by myself for fear of being declared
a vicious saboteur.
I had to go along with my comrades' self-delusions. Day after day
I was composing appeals to western parliamentarians and to the delegates
to the United Nations. I did not, however, beg them to come and rescue us,
but merely asked for objective observers to be sent to Moscow in order
to witness "the violations of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of
the Russian citizens," i.e., the beatings administered by the police to
the Muscovites in the vicinity of the Parliament building, which was
surrounded by soldiers and barbed wire, with water, electricity, heat,
and communications cut off.
These appeals could only be sent abroad surreptitiously. Each document
was smuggled out of the White House by a messenger who had access
to some Moscow office outfitted with international communications equipment.
It was quite risky to use a fax machine, and so each office could only be
used once for this purpose. Besides, the messenger himself could not return
to the White House, which was blockaded by troops and police. At the end,
only two employees assigned to our parliamentary committee remained with me.
Marc Royse, a Canadian journalist who visited the White House during the
siege,
managed somehow to obtain some Kremlin documents related to the minutiae of
the blockade. Here is one of his trophies:
Resolution.
Moscow, Kremlin.
Administration of the President of Russia.
September 25, 1993.
To immediately investigate former deputy Andronov's use of international
fax communications in establishing contacts between the White House
and foreign parliaments. To investigate his connections at the
Communications Ministry and at Glavkosmos [Russian Space Agency].
As they say, fear has no bounds. The same day as this resolution, on
September 25,
I was the subject of speculation in the pages of Komsomolskaya Pravda,
a newspaper that was at the time obedient to the authors of the resolution:
"Deputy Andronov, dreaming of becoming the Foreign Affairs Minister of
Russia,
is paving his way to the coveted goal."
Yeltsin himself later revealed the origins of this speculation in his
Memoirs.
According to him, he anticipated resistance by the Russian deputies to
the dissolution of Parliament as early as in the beginning of September of
1993:
"They would, in all likelihood, convene a Congress of People's Deputies,
declare impeachment of myself, and produce president [Alexander] Rutskoi.
They would probably form a 'government' in a hurry, appointing the militant
Iona Andronov as minister of foreign affairs."
For some reason, Yeltsin's supposition about me was converted to the "truth"
a year later by Stolitsa, a Moscow magazine: "Iona Andronov is a former
'White House' foreign affairs minister." Later still, an American journalist
David Remnick repeated the same fable in his recollections of the suppression
of our Parliament. But all the mythmakers did not know something I knew
very well: Rutskoi, if he were to become President, would never have
allowed me to become the Foreign Affairs Minister, because of latent
mutual enmity. Besides, prior to the putsch, Khasbulatov had prevented
my election to the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee because
of what he perceived as my "inflexibility." Such people are never appointed
to cabinet posts in our country.
Anatoly Chubais, a Kremlin insider who participated in organizing the
White House blockade, repeated publicly a second legend he heard from
the high security officials: "A representative of the U.S. Embassy was
discovered trying to approach the Parliament building. Measures were
taken to prevent such attempts."
This is yet another bogus bugaboo. On September 30, I did speak over a
wireless
phone to Louis D. Sell, Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs, Embassy
of the United States, and invited him to come to the White House.
He flatly refused. Our conversation was in English, and apparently
the counter-intelligence radio-eavesdroppers' language skills were not
up to par. They compelled their frightened bosses to hunt for my
interlocutor, who all the while remained at the Embassy.
As a result, the State Security people failed to detect my get-together
with the American diplomat when it actually took place three days later.
Now I can explain how and why it happened.
....
On the tenth day of the White House siege, over 50 of its defenders were
in dire need of medical aid, to which we had no access. It was mainly those
who manned our barricades around the Parliament 24 hours a day, exposed
to cold winds and rain, who suffered from severe colds, heart ailments,
and physical traumas.
At night, the selfless warriors slept in shifts on the cold marble floor
of the first floor vestibule. There, several volunteer doctors took care
of the sick, but they soon ran out of the most needed medications.
On September 30, one of those volunteers, Alexander Dalnov from the
Sechenov Medical Academy in Moscow, complained to newspaperman Alexander
Gamov:
"People around the White House are exhausted. They are stressed out.
Many are suffering from high blood pressure, headaches, and heart pains.
There are also physical traumas. We are not in a position to help them.
We lack medical equipment, bandages, and especially painkillers.
The deliveries are blocked. The other day, a truck carrying supplies
for the White House medical office was stopped. As was explained by
the police, we are denied bandages and medicine 'in accordance with
the President's decree.'"
On September 26, doctors from the White House appealed to the Health Minister
for at least one ambulance. But this request was denied. A second such
request
was denied even after an elderly defender of the White House was felled by
a heart attack on September 30. The poor man died.
That same day I asked for Khasbulatov's permission to make yet another
attempt to save the most sick in his name. By that time the futility
of appeals to western democracies was quite evident. At the same time,
our own democrats and the most well known human rights activists were
issuing truly bloodthirsty pleas to Yeltsin, calling on him to
"crush the monster" (meaning the Parliament), thus exceeding in their
zeal even their western friends.
Under such circumstances, I reasoned, only the Americans could be
compelled to influence Yeltsin, if they were threatened with public
charges of their ally's criminal indifference to the plight of his
sick compatriots. I proposed to demand a humane intervention from the
U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Khasbulatov acceded to this plan.
In order to get to the U.S. Embassy from the White House one only has
to cross Konyushkovskaya Street. In September 1993, though, a front line
ran along this thoroughfare. On September 30, upon exiting the Parliament
building, I first approached the people manning our street barricades
and got their permission to climb through a jungle of metal pipes,
cement blocks and two-by-fours. However, on the other side of the street
I came to a long metal fence. Behind it there was a row of policemen
armed with sub-machine guns.
Behind the gunmen there was a brick wall, and behind the wall lay the
U.S. Embassy compound. The diplomats' living quarters could be seen from
the street, and behind them towered the lifeless multi-story Embassy
office with its windows covered over: All the walls, floors, and ceilings
of the building were filled with KGB bugs. The secret eavesdropping system
was revealed to the U.S. ambassador in 1991 by the last KGB Chairman
Vadim Bakatin, but even after two years the Americans were still too
wary to utilize the spy-structure in any way.
For over an hour I stood on the street, next to this monument to
the Cold War (which Moscow lost), trying to argue with police officers
and not getting anywhere. Anybody could leave the sealed off White House,
but I would not be allowed back inside, the officers warned. All my pleas
and arguments against this prohibition fell on deaf ears.
The police officers were hostile and rude to me. They reeked of vodka.
One of them was especially brash; he was smoking American Marlboros and
made an effort to exhale the fumes, along with the strong alcohol odor,
into my face.
I retreated to the Parliament building, where all the phones were turned off.
Khasbulatov, however, had a wireless phone, although one could use it only
for up to half a minute before the connection was jammed with a cacophony
of rattle, whistles and crashing sounds.
On the other hand, I noticed the reporters for major U.S. TV networks,
who had stationed themselves in the White House second floor hallway,
talking over their cell phones without any outside interference.
This privilege was afforded the Americans because they spoke to
their colleagues in English. In those days Russian was a politically
suspect language on Moscow's airwaves.
Moreover, American journalists at the White House could come and
go through the police lines, while the officers were vigilant in not
allowing the Russian reporters near the Parliament. A U.S. passport
and a stack of green bills open a lot of doors in our country.
My New York-accented English is the only valuable item I brought back
from America, but it served me well at the White House, along with
a cell phone belonging to ABC-TV. The network reporter complained
about the low batteries and the impossibility of their recharging,
yet he did let me call the U.S. Embassy. The TV-man wanted to know
why I was calling there. His curiosity also served my purpose:
There was an opportunity to publicize in the western media the
Kremlin's villainous policy of refusing medical aid for
the Parliament defenders.
An American woman picked up the phone at the U.S. Embassy.
Speaking in English, I told her my name and, after proceeding
to inform her of my Parliamentary rank and of where I was calling from,
asked to connect me urgently with Ambassador Pickering. The woman asked
me to wait for a couple of minutes. Then she said Pickering was traveling
outside the Embassy and could not be reached, so an Embassy councilor,
Louis Sell, would talk to me instead. He came on right away and immediately
made clear his rank - "number two at the Embassy." Now, any diplomat
or international journalist can tell you what "number two" does at
any embassy.
As it happened, the phone dialogue between Mr. Sell and myself was being
monitored by Russian counter-intelligence, although they did not dare jam it.
I informed my interlocutor of the Kremlin's impediments to delivering medical
supplies for the sick people at the White House. As I reminded Mr. Sell,
President Clinton approved of Yeltsin's repressions against the Russian
Parliament, and, therefore, United States bore moral responsibility for
the illegal harm done to my fallen comrades, as well as for torture by
the deprivation of heat, food, and medical supplies.
"So, what do you want from our Embassy?" asked the American.
"You can influence the Kremlin at least to allow deliveries of medicine
and hygienic supplies to the White House."
"And who would make the actual delivery?"
"If you were able to get the humanitarian aid embargo lifted we could
ask the Moscow mission of the International Red Cross, or go to some
of the charitable foundations funded by your government. I would like
to discuss this with you at the Embassy. However, the armed police
besieging the Parliament would not allow me back in to coordinate
the medical aid deliveries."
"Well, that's a Russian internal problem for you to deal with."
"True. But maybe you can pay an unofficial visit to the White House?"
"No. Absolutely not."
"Can we meet in a neutral zone on the street halfway between the embassy
and the White House?"
"No. There are too many journalists and other nosy people around."
"In that case, I am going to try again to see if I can insure I could
get back into the White House."
"Okay. We'll be expecting you. We have a request of our own, though.
We have received some disturbing information about a possible attack
on our Embassy from the White House. We have noticed men with machine
guns in the windows facing the Embassy. We have women and children here.
So, let's think of helping each other out. Would you inform the parliamentary
leadership of our concern?"
"Of course. And let me assure you, none of our people are going
to shoot up your Embassy."
"Thank you."
I relayed his concerns immediately to Khasbulatov and to the
"power ministers" appointed by the Supreme Soviet, State Security
General Barannikov and Interior Minister General Dunayev. All three of
them pledged to protect the American neighbors from any militant actions
by any provocateurs in our midst.
In order to calm the U.S. Embassy personnel I once again called them
on the ABC cell phone:
"Speaker of Parliament Khasbulatov and our security ministers Barannikov
and Dunayev would like to make an official assurance: Your Embassy
is under no threat from the White House. We have taken all measures
necessary to prevent any actions by some extremist against your diplomats
and their families."
Mr. Sell thanked me again. Two months later, a New York magazine,
Lies Of Our Times, provided a summary of my contacts with the U.S.
Embassy in Moscow:
"According to the State Department's Russia Desk, Iona Andronov had been
instrumental in negotiations with the Russian Parliament to ensure that
foreigners, especially Americans from the nearby Embassy, were not hurt."
(Lies Of Our Times (New York), Dec. 1993, p. 7.)
At the time, of course, I was most keen on getting medical aid for
the defenders of the White House who were sick. They were the reason
I had to go to the American Embassy and then get back through the police
lines.
For that my English language tricks on the cell phone were not going to work.
So I had to call the headquarters of the Moscow police chief General
Vladimir Pankratov from Khasbulatov's office, using his cell phone.
I got an officer on duty at the Pankratov headquarters on the phone.
I asked him to relay my request to the general: I needed permission
to return to the White House after visiting an American diplomat,
Louis Sell, in order to coordinate with the U.S. Embassy a medical
aid delivery to the sick in the Parliament building. However, as soon as
I started saying it in Russian, there was only din, rattle, and clatter
on the line.
Nevertheless, I once again went to the front line on Konyushkovskaya
Street and approached men armed with machine guns by the metal barrier.
A fat colonel in a blue uniform was already waiting for me there.
He glanced at my People's Deputy ID and chuckled: "We have orders from
the headquarters: to let Andronov out of here, but not to let him back in."
Thus my negotiations with the Americans were interrupted.
Not for long, however. Although on that day, September 30, neither I,
nor the fat, smug colonel could have known that we would meet again
at the same spot during a street fight, and that afterwards,
late at night, I would enter the U.S. Embassy with a gun in my pocket.
....
On October 1, my attempts to attract the Americans' sympathy for the sick
inside the besieged White House became superfluous. Someone of much higher
stature intervened on their behalf-Aleksiy II, the Orthodox Patriarch
of Moscow and of all Russia. In the morning of October 1, he invited
representatives of the two warring centers of secular power, the Kremlin
and the White House, to his Svyato-Danilov monastery in the capital.
The Patriarch called on them to end the military standoff as soon
as possible, to work out a political solution, and, most urgently,
to remove all obstacles to delivering medical aid to the sick inside
and around the Parliament building.
"To the best of my knowledge, there is a medical office in the White House,"
said the Patriarch at the beginning of the talks at the monastery.
"If they lack medicine, it should be delivered."
The Parliament welcomed the Patriarch's peacemaking initiative.
So did the Kremlin. The deputies inside the White House selected
a delegation to take part in the monastery talks; I was included
in the delegation. The leader of the delegation was Yuri Voronin,
deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet. He and four other deputies
held sessions at the Svyato-Danilov monastery for three days.
The Yeltsin delegation was led by Sergei Filatov, the president's
chief of staff, and Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow.
As soon as the parties met in the presence of the Patriarch,
Voronin started asking the Kremlin emissaries to lift the embargo
on medical aid to the White House. Every time the issue was raised,
Filatov vowed to give orders immediately to deliver all the medicine
necessary without any inhumane restrictions.
In reality, however, we did not receive a single pill.
As we found out later, back at the Kremlin Filatov was recommending
to deploy against us the latest weapon of mass destruction-a quantum
laser beam generator, capable of blinding large numbers of street rebels.
All the attempts by the Patriarch to nudge the invited politicians
to a reasonable compromise were futile. Even there, in the holy
monastery, they continued to argue and to insult each other.
On the third day of scandalous bickering Aleksiy II had a heart attack.
At the same time, fierce clashes erupted in Moscow between the soldiers
of the Interior Ministry and the demonstrators rallying in the streets
in support of Parliament. On October 3, at 6:00 p.m., the talkathon
at the Svyato-Danilov monastery ground to an inglorious halt.
Three hours prior to the collapse of the monastery negotiations,
several thousand Parliament supporters started marching from
Kaluzhskaya Square along the Sadovaya Ring Road towards the White House.
After about an hour, the brave marchers managed to rush through three
different police lines, on the Crimean Bridge, on Zubovskaya and
Smolenskaya squares. There, during clashes with the OMON [Police Special
Troops],
the citizens captured a lot of police shields, nightsticks, helmets,
and bulletproof vests. Thus equipped, this human wave crushed the last
remaining police barricades around the White House and the crowd swirled
around the building, shouting victoriously: "Hurrah! Freedom! Comrades,
do not hesitate to kick Boris out!"
The deputies inside the White House were happily saluting our liberators
from the windows. Caught up in the clamor, all of us rushed out of our
sanctuary to exchange hugs and kisses with the unexpected saviors.
For those of us who had spent the last two weeks in the White House,
this was an incredible celebration. It was the most memorable day in my life.
But the celebration was short lived.
The joyous revelry that broke out on Free Russia Square, adjacent to
the White House, was interrupted by the thundering rat-tat-tat of machine
gun fire. The shooting came from the Konyushkovskaya Street, not far away.
There, near the U.S. Embassy, is a glass-covered high-rise housing
the Mayor's Office, and the 12-story "Mir"("Peace") Hotel. It was in this
hotel,
despite its name, that the Interior Ministry troops besieging the Parliament
had their temporary headquarters. This was also where the troops retreated
after their defense lines were smashed by the people.
The Muscovites standing next to me in the square fell silent, peering
uneasily
into the open windows of the hotel building. "One of ours is dead!" someone
screamed. In a flash, the crowd's mood turned from good-natured to furious.
At this moment, we heard the nervous voice of neo-president Rutskoi,
addressing the crowd through a megaphone.
Rutskoi was towering above us on the second floor balcony of the White House.
There were bodyguards on either side of the general, holding open
in front of him a bullet proof vest, which covered most of his body,
save for the head.
"We have to storm the Mayor's Office and the Ostankino TV-center!"
Rutskoi shouted.
Following his command, hundreds of men rushed out to Konyushkovskaya Street.
But they first attacked the Mir Hotel, not the Mayor's Office. There was
no fire coming from the hotel. The Interior Ministry officers abandoned
in fear not only their headquarters, but also their equipment, about half
a dozen military trucks and a communications vehicle. I saw an army APC
by the entrance to the hotel trying to get away, unsuccessfully. It was stuck.
This APC was backed against the hotel's stone stairway. In front of it
a huge water truck was parked. The trapped APC was trying to push the
water truck away in fits and starts, but the latter, apparently, had
very strong brakes. In the meantime, three men, armed with just-captured
machine guns, climbed on top of the APC and were trying to pour gasoline
out of a bottle into the vehicle. One of them had a box of matches ready.
When I saw this, I shouted "Hey, you guys, don't you dare set it on fire!
I am a Deputy of the Supreme Soviet. I forbid the extra-judicial retribution."
They followed my order without enthusiasm. The APC stopped jerking
back and forth. Out of the vehicle's front section two periscopes appeared.
Looking into the periscopes' oval mirrors, I said loudly:
"Get out of there while you are still alive. I, Deputy of the Supreme Soviet,
guarantee your safety. My name is Andronov. Get out!"
The periscopes went down into their nests, and the APC crew again tried
to push the water truck out of the way. The guys on top of the vehicle
did not heed my protests any more and set the spilled gasoline on fire.
The APC was in flames. For the first time, I, as a People's Deputy,
felt powerless in the face of street rioting evolving into civil war.
Fortunately, gasoline did not penetrate inside the APC, and the driver
did manage to nudge the heavy truck out of the way. The APC, its top
in flames, speeded away along the Konyushkovskaya Street.
On the steps leading up to the hotel I ran into a group of men exiting
the building. Having captured the Interior Ministry headquarters there,
they were dragging along two prisoners, a major and a colonel.
The men were kicking the officers.
The prisoners were sweating profusely; their faces white with fear,
their blue uniforms torn. The fat colonel recognized me, and vice versa.
He got even more scared and his fleshy chin started shaking.
Three days earlier he had chuckled contemptuously, turning down
my request to arrange medical aid delivery to the Parliament defenders
who have fallen sick.
"It's forbidden to beat prisoners!" I said to the men escorting the officers.
"Who are you to give orders here?" they asked.
"I am a Deputy of the Supreme Soviet. Here are my documents."
"What, then, should we do with those scoundrels?"
"Escort them to the White House; but no beatings."
"We don't have the passes to go there."
"I will get you through. Let's go!"
Having walked about 50 meters towards the White House we found ourselves
in the midst of a swirling throng. The crowd, driven by hatred and a thirst
for revenge, surrounded the captured enemies. Raised fists were all around.
Both prisoners were hiding behind my back. Once again I had to hold up
my People's Deputy ID and shout at the top of my lungs: "Don't touch them!
They surrendered without resistance. Make way!"
Slowly, we escorted the prisoners almost all the way to the nearest
White House entrance through the menacing crowd. Suddenly, someone
jumped on my back from behind, cat-like, and snatched my glasses away.
At that moment, every object and every living creature turned blurry,
as if I was submerged under water. I am severely nearsighted, -5.00.
I knew that without my glasses I would be all but useless at the White House.
I felt despair cut through my whole body like a knife.
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