In the meantime, the prisoners, having lost my protection, fearfully
ran to a building entrance on their own. I turned around, looking for
the person who grabbed my glasses. I noticed that there were no glasses
smashed on the pavement. I saw a group of men and a blonde woman,
whose face turned out to be familiar upon closer inspection.
This not-so-young woman used to read political verses at rallies run
by Anpilov, the red ultra-radical. She was known as an admirer of his.
As soon as I approached her, the woman pulled her right hand behind her back.
"Give me back the glasses!" I said to her.
"What glasses?" she screamed.
"My glasses!"

I grabbed her right hand and saw the twisted frame in her clenched fist.
I managed to pry her palm open and to reclaim my damaged treasure.
I was lucky: the lenses were intact. But the wire-rimmed frame was all
twisted and bent. I sat right there on the pavement and started straightening
the delicate metal wires.
While I busied myself with this task, playing out the comical misadventure
in my mind, the events were escalating: the rebellious crowd captured
the Mayor's Office.

The assault was already over when I joined the excited citizens by
the shattered glass-covered entrance to the Mayor's Office.
An elderly mustached man in a green uniform climbed on top of a cement
awning jutting out over the smashed-up entrance. He was standing there
with his head erect, wearing a black beret a la Che Guevara.
Only instead of a Cuban cigar, this valiant soldier was holding
up a megaphone.

"There will be no more mayors, no more peers, and no more khers!"
he thundered.("Kher" is a slang Russian vulgar word which means penis.)
The crowd laughed approvingly: "Bravo, Makashov! Long live our General!"

Albert Makashov, a general with no military victories or even experience
on the front lines to his name, managed to become famous in Russia
because of his soldierly sense of humor and snappy one-liners.
A lot of our people like that. During the 1991 presidential elections
almost four million Russian citizens voted for him.

Since those days the general has taken to calling his opponents
"son of a bitch," or "rascal," or "rat," or "dirty Jew" in public.
He also called for either castrating them or hanging them by their balls
from lampposts. Even his apolitical compatriots provoke Makashov's anger:
"Neutrality is the piece of shit that's flattering in the middle of
an ice hole", he is fond of saying.

General Rutskoi, who also likes a juicy turn of phrase, appointed Makashov
a commander of the White House defenses. After the assault on the
Mayor's Office, Makashov took it upon himself to carry out Rutskoi's order
to capture the Ostankino TV-center, so that the new president could
proclaim his victory in front of the whole country.
I saw Makashov leave the Mayor's Office with a dozen men armed with
machine guns and return to the square in front of the White House.
There, hundreds of enthusiasts were waiting to march to Ostankino.
I saw Makashov quickly form a column of about a dozen trucks and
smaller cars, captured earlier from the OMON. Unarmed volunteers
filled the commandeered vehicles. Embarking on this super-risky raid,
the self-confident general took along just 18 men armed with machine guns.

Only one Supreme Soviet Deputy, Ilya Konstantinov, joined the Makashov
brigade.
He was respected for his personal courage, but the rest of the deputies
refrained from the apparent insanity. However, by that time, the opinion
of Parliament did not make much of a difference. Rutskoi, by himself,
gave the order to storm Ostankino. The People's Deputies were left out
of the thrilling game, played out by out-of-control generals and street
fighters.

I felt helpless and apprehensive as I watched the Makashov brigade take off
from the now half-emptied White House square. The threat to Parliament
itself did not disappear, yet its most able defenders were gone.
As I suspected, Rutskoi gave the order to storm Ostankino spontaneously
and without much planning. This was pure idiocy, since even if the assault
were successful, the Kremlin could have easily switched the TV broadcast
signal from the Ostankino studios elsewhere.
However, what actually happened was even worse.

....

The distance between the White House and Ostankino is about 12 kilometers.
As soon as the Makashov column reached the Sadovaya Ring Road, they
were met by a checkpoint of about twenty APCs and Interior Ministry trucks.
The soldiers were armed with machine guns. But, instead of stopping
the rebels' motorcade in its tracks, the soldiers let them through
without a word, followed them, passed them and then speeded away
to Ostankino. General Makashov, a graduate of two military academies
could have figured out (or so it would seem), that his unarmed followers
were heading into a fiery trap near the TV-center.

For some reason, neither Rutskoi nor Makashov used the captured
Interior Ministry mobile communications center R-142M to coordinate
their actions. The lack of awareness on the part of both generals
resulted in a situation where no one at the White House could dissuade
the arrogant commander from storming the TV center.

The Ostankino TV center encompasses two buildings, divided by
a narrow strip of asphalt, which is Korolyov Street. That is where
the Makashov brigade disembarked. By that time gunmen of the
Interior Ministry Special Forces already occupied both buildings
of the TV center. They barricaded themselves inside and established
firing positions on the roofs and in the windows.

Makashov, having realized that he was late, delayed assault on
the TV center in the hope of later arrival of numerous opponents
of the Kremlin TV propaganda. While they were making their way
to Ostankino, a noisy rally was held on Korolyov Street for about
two hours. Makashov, through his megaphone, addressed the people
inside the TV center: "Hey, rats, get out! Hey, you, rats! Rats!
Any one who comes out voluntarily will have one of your balls spared!
Rats! Get out! Resistance is futile. Yeltsin betrayed you.
You are surrounded by the superior forces!"

But the superiority was not on his side: a crowd on the street
and Makashov's 18 men armed with machine guns were swirling between
the two buildings where 900 fighters of the Interior Ministry Special
Forces were deployed. And 24 APCs armed with long-range guns
were parked nearby.

However, Makashov continued with his oratory: "If there were some
imbeciles who were to open fire on us, we would make sure there is
only one way out for them: suitcase, airport, Israel!"

At 7 p.m. one of Makashov's trucks went through the glass doors
of the TV center Technical Support Department. The general
shrieked that he was ready to use his grenade launcher.
And then death rained out of the TV center upon the unarmed
crowd in the middle of the street. Fire from the APC gunners
put a finishing touch to the bloodbath: 46 people lay dead, 124 wounded.
It was a mass execution for the crowd caught unaware.
Makashov, alive and well, soon returned to the White House in a car.
His high opinion of himself was also intact: "I went to Ostankino
and did what I could there."
Those who would later blame him for the tragedy at Ostankino were
threatened with castration by the general once again.
Rutskoi later regretted his call to storm the TV center:
"I admit that my first impulse was not well thought out."

Five days prior to the Ostankino bloodbath Rutskoi received
a friendly visit in the White House from Stanislav Govorukhin,
a well known film director and a public figure. On the evening of October 3,
Govorukhin happened to be in the TV center on an unrelated business
and he was caught in the crossfire. He remained a friend with Rutskoi
afterwards, yet at the time he wrote in his diary:
"Rutskoi made a charge against himself publicly, in front of the TV cameras,
when he mouthed the call 'To Ostankino!'... After those words,
'To Ostankino!', he might as well have gone up to his office on the third
floor,
thought about it for a minute, pulled out his foreign chrome plated gun
and sent a bullet straight to his heart. He did not do it.
Neither then, nor later-when the tanks opened fire on the White House,
on women and children. It's not for me to judge him. But for me it
remains a mystery."

Just as the Interior Ministry Special Forces were slaughtering
the unarmed crowd near the TV center, all live broadcasting was switched
from Ostankino studios elsewhere, on orders of the Kremlin.
People watching TV at home saw the following false statement on their
screens:
"The broadcasting on channels 1 and 4 has been interrupted by an armed mob,
which has entered the TV center."

After about ten minutes, a man's head on a thin neck appeared on the
TV screens. A youthful-looking dark-haired head began to lie:
"According to information coming from Ostankino, there is fighting in the
On-Air studio going on right now. That's why we are broadcasting from
elsewhere.
According to our reporters inside the TV center, whom we have spoken to
by telephone, the attackers have captured one section of the building using
armed personnel carriers, grenade launchers and machine guns."

At that very moment, dozens of wounded and dying Muscovites were laying
in pools of blood on the street between the two buildings of the TV center.
The Special Forces snipers and the gunners from the APCs, which by then
moved closer to the action, were finishing them off. That evening and
all night long until dawn, the TV talking heads, one after the other,
were lying and misinforming the nation. Nikolai Svanidze, Svetlana Sorokina,
and Sergey Torchinsky competed against each other in the field of sophistry.
They were doing so live from two State TV studios-on Shabolovka Street and
on 5th Street off the Yamskoye Field.

In the beginning of this ominous night, at 9:30 p.m., the fleshy-faced
vice-premier Yegor Gaidar materialized on TV screens. He issued a militant
call to the Yeltsin supporters in the capital to quickly organize street
self-defense units in order to prevent a recurring nightmare of Gaidar's
from taking place: "Let's not allow our country to be turned into
a huge concentration camp once again!"

A popular film actress Liya Akhedjakova personified Gaidar's TV ecstasy
in a more artful fashion: "Today in Moscow policemen are being killed!
They are defending us from those who would defend the Constitution.
So, what kind of a damned Constitution is it? And where is our Army?
Why doesn't the Army defend us from this damned Constitution?"

Grigory Yavlinsky, a politician, proclaimed from the screen:
"The President must display maximum toughness and determination
in repressing the bandit gangs. All the fascist-leaning,
extremist elements are grouped under the auspices of the White House.
If the law enforcement agencies are not capable enough to repress them,
the issue of using regular Armed Forces must be given consideration."

Late at night, Prime Minister Chernomyrdin made the announcement:
"The criminal elements, egged on by the White House, have spilled
blood in Moscow. Tonight, the Army troops will be deployed in Moscow."

Shortly before midnight, I met Deputy Nikolai Pavlov on a dimly
lit staircase landing inside the White House. The bonfires on the
street were clearly visible through the large windows. The red flames
outside were giving out enough light to see my friend's troubled
expression. He said he was just at the Kiyevskoye highway in the
suburbs of Moscow, where he saw columns of military vehicles from
the Tamanskaya and Kantemirovskaya Divisions moving towards the capital.
Those were the divisions that were usually called into Moscow in the past
by the Kremlin conspiracy-mongers and coup-plotters. A month before,
Yeltsin, in preparation for the putsch, visited the garrisons of both
divisions near Moscow and promised their commanders all kinds of rewards.

At nightfall, the multi-storied White House, its electric power
disconnected, resembled a disturbed anthill. Men armed with machine
guns were silently fashioning fortified firing positions out of safes,
refrigerators, and tables in the building's darkened corridors and landings.
Outside hundreds of people were trying to reinforce the flimsy barricades
with whatever was available: some rusted iron bars, spare wood,
construction debris. It would only take a minute for a tank or an APC
to crush these fortifications.

How much time do we have before the assault on Parliament?
I was asking myself. One hour? Two? Do we have until dawn, or not?
Is a repeat of the Ostankino massacre inevitable here? In an attempt
to somehow prevent this, I went in darkness to the nearest office,
that of Deputy Speaker Valentin Agafonov. I asked Khasbulatov's deputy
to alert his boss to the fact that for the last time I was going
to try to reach the U.S. Embassy in hopes of convincing the Americans
to facilitate a cease-fire agreement between us and the Kremlin.

That night, for the first time, there was nobody outside the perimeter
of our barricades. I walked over to the gates of the American Embassy
without a hitch. Behind the gate, by a guard-booth, a marine was
on duty, clutching his carbine. He was wearing a helmet, a camouflage
uniform, and a bulletproof vest. Inside the guard-booth I told the
sentry of my desire to see Mr. Sell urgently. Soon after, a young American
appeared and asked me to follow him into the Embassy courtyard. It was
midnight.
After walking for about fifty meters we were in front of a long
two-story building, the Embassy residential quarters. Each duplex apartment
has its own entrance, complete with a stone staircase and a wrought-iron
fence.

It's an architectural copy of old New England towns.
I was escorted into a warm and comfortable living room with a fireplace,
furnished with soft armchairs, floor lamps, and a tapestry on the wall
depicting a bouquet of beautiful flowers. I had a bitter thought upon
seeing all this foreign comfort: "My God, when would the Russians
concentrate on making our own life better instead of fighting each other?"
My host-a wide-shouldered, fit man with graying hair-shook my hand and
showed to an armchair. The diplomat who escorted me in sat next to me
and opened his notebook.

"Would you object to his transcribing our conversation?" Mr. Sell asked.
"No."

"Should we get to the point of your visit?"
"Of course. You must already know a motorized army division has entered
the city. They are preparing an assault on the White House. A terrible
bloodbath is almost inevitable. Being a Russian, I would like to prevent
a mass slaughter of Russians by Russians. We are foreigners to you.
But you have your own long-term state interests to look after.
I am sure your friend in the Kremlin would be victorious tomorrow.
However, I don't think the United States' political interests in Russia
would be well served by having a tsar soiled by the blood of Russians.
It would be much more profitable for you to act as peacemakers now,
at this critical moment for the Russians. You can do so without denying
your friend the triumph he so craves."

"Who authorized you to make us such an offer?"
"The Speaker of Parliament Khasbulatov."

"And what about Rutskoi?"
"If his sanction is necessary, it would be arranged."

"So, what specifically do you want from me?"
"To act as a mediator between us and the Kremlin."

"What would you offer to the Kremlin?"
"An immediate meeting between their representatives and our leadership,
with no pre-conditions. There is only one immediate goal-to prevent
bloody mutual extermination."

"Well, I think your initiative is worthy of respect, although
I do not share your opinions. And I can not be an intermediary
between the Kremlin and the White House, because we do not interfere
in Russia's internal affairs on principle. Still, I do not reject
your request outright out of humanitarian concerns. Would you like me
to inform the closest advisers to President Yeltsin of the White House
request?"
"Yes, please do."

"How can I relay their answer to you?"
"All the communications at the White House have been cut off.
I can return here at an agreed upon hour."

"Very well. Return in an hour. At 1:30 a.m."
He gave me a penetrating look and suddenly said:
"How may I help you personally?"

The unexpected question was probably due to my appearance:
surviving two weeks of a blockade does leave a mark on one.
But I was surprised. I thought my appearance was different from most
of my fellow People's Deputies. Most of them stopped wearing ties
and shaving, taking on a rather disheveled look. I, on the contrary,
found myself two buckets, which I filled with water whenever I could,
so as to be able to cleanse myself, to shave, and to wash my shirt.
I also kept a jar of eau de cologne, which I used sparingly.
I purposefully tried to maintain the demeanor of the only international
professional left in the White House. All the others like myself long ago
left the Parliament. Even the people manning the street barricades looked
approvingly at a neatly dressed People's Deputy, sporting a foreign-made
tweed jacket and a tie.

Still, something in my appearance drew the American's compassion.
I laughed: "A double whisky would be helpful enough."

Warmed by the Scottish whisky, I returned to the damp darkness of
the White House. By this time men armed with machine guns patrolled
all the entrances. The corridors leading to any of the floors from
the stairs were barricaded with massive safes, so one could only get
there by squeezing through narrow passageways. The guards there shined
a flashlight or a candle on a visitor and conducted an impromptu inquiry:
"Who are you? Where are you going? Are you armed?" I, however,
was recognized and not interrogated.
I passed unimpeded through three more checkpoints on the fifth floor
on my way to Khasbulatov's office. His secretary picked up a candle
from his desk and escorted me through the huge lightless office of
the Speaker and into a small study. To my surprise, a flickering
electrical bulb lighted the room. As it turned out, the light was
hooked up to a lamppost outside.

In that room I saw all our leaders seated on two couches and some chairs
around
a coffee table. Khasbulatov and Rutskoi were holding a consultation
with generals Achalov, Barannikov, Dunayev, as well as with Khasbulatov's
deputies Voronin and Agafonov.
Khasbulatov listened to my report of the visit to the U.S. Embassy and
then turned to Rutskoi:

"We should continue our attempts at peacemaking with the help of
the Americans. Do you agree, Alexander Vladimirovich?"
"Yes," Rutskoi agreed. "Proceed, Iona."

Voronin said, "I doubt the Americans would be of much help in light
of yesterday's fiasco, the collapse of negotiations with the government
through the good offices of the Patriarch. We were close to a bloodless
solution at the Svyato-Danilov Monastery. Why, then, did we assault
the Mayor's Office and the TV center?"

"Just whom would you like to declare the guilty party?"
Rutskoi was clearly angered.
"It's no use arguing about it now," Agafonov interjected.
"Those mistakes can not be corrected at this point."

There was ponderous silence in the room. Khasbulatov got his lighter
out and started smoking his famous pipe. The politicians who were
so animated just a few hours ago were stonefaced now, and
I had a strange sensation of being in a wax museum. It seemed like
these losers, with whom I had intertwined my fate, were sending me
out to the U.S. Embassy without any hope.

Khasbulatov, as if he read my mind, asked if I had a weapon.
"No."

He unbuttoned his jacket, unsnapped a holster from his belt, and
handed it to me. Inside a leather holster adorned with an Oriental
ornament was an officer's revolver. The present was symbolic in
an Oriental sense, too. Its meaning was clear:
There was no way back for me. I knew it as well.

"So, will you be without a weapon then?" I asked Khasbulatov.
"I will get another one." He smiled.

Rutskoi came back to life and said sarcastically:
"Iona, do you know how to handle a gun?"

"Why do you doubt it?"
"Well, you come from the intelligentsia."

"It's true. I come from the Russian intelligentsia, unlike the aids
and advisers you had brought here from the Kremlin.
Tonight they all split, while I, of the intelligentsia,
remain here with you."

He didn't take offense and put his hand on my knee amicably:
"Don't get upset. Everybody knew you would not sell out and
would remain here until the end."

Having left Khasbulatov's apartments, I proceeded to my second
appointment with Mr. Sell. As I was climbing over one of our street
barricades, one of the guys manning it yelled out:
"Look at People's Deputy Andronov running away! Shame on the coward!"
"Shut up!" I snapped back. "I will be back in an hour."

I don't think I was believed. In those late hours, not
a few people had lost faith and gone quietly home.
By the gates of the American Embassy, inside the guard booth,
the same diplomat who escorted me to Louis Sell earlier was waiting for me.
We went to the same apartment again. There I took off my down jacket
but declined a polite offer from Mr. Sell to hang it for me.
I did it myself. Otherwise the diplomat would have felt the gun
weighing down the light jacket. Unauthorized weapons are strictly
prohibited in any embassy.

Inside the living room, Mr. Sell handed me the phone:
"You may call Vitaly Churkin, the acting foreign minister."

"Where is the foreign minister Andrey Kozyrev?"
"It seems he is leaving our country to return to Moscow at this very moment."

"If Churkin is in charge of foreign affairs, is he authorized to discuss
the confrontation between the government and the White House?"
"Look at his phone number if you have any doubts about it."

The diplomat handed me a piece of paper with seven digits scribbled on it.
The first three digits were 206.
"Is it clear?" he asked.
"Yes, this is a number of a government residence on Staraya Ploschad."
"Well then, call Churkin there."

I knew Vitaly Churkin since 1985, when I was a journalist in the U.S.
and his diplomatic career was just beginning. He served as a secretary
in the Soviet Embassy in Washington. A privileged graduate of the Moscow
State Institute of International Relations, he demonstrated such passionate
obedience to Communist ideals while stationed in imperialism's lair that
in two years' time he was transferred to the Central Committee of the CPSU.
Yet as soon as Yeltsin had the CPSU banned, Churkin turned anti-Communist
and an ardent Yeltsin supporter. For this, he was promoted to
a deputy foreign minister. According to his coworkers, this sudden
career move turned Churkin's head around; "Vitaly Ivanovich Churkin
is arrogant, self-confident, and thinks he can do no wrong."

Churkin was true to form from the very beginning of our phone conversation.
"So, Iona Ionovich, even after their banditry at Ostankino,
your accomplices are still counting on our compassion?"
"Let's have a conversation without insults."

"No, let's talk honestly. Are you at the White House able
to control your bandits?"
"The White House leadership is now in a position to control
our supporters in the immediate vicinity of the Parliament.
Once again, I ask you to refrain from insults."

"Don't pretend something you are not."
"Your attempts to get me to answer in kind shall remain in vain.
I will not go for it. This is not just about the two of us.
You know very well of the impending attack on the White House.
It will be a colossal bloodbath. A lot of Russians will die.
Let's think about them."

"You talk about Russians, but why run to the American Embassy?"
"There is no other way to reach your bosses.
Here at the Embassy they know that I am no friend of theirs.
Still, I am grateful for their help. Tonight your petty words
about the American Embassy are out of place."

Churkin was vexed. My last remark made him realize that Mr. Sell,
who is fluent in Russian and is quite influential in the Kremlin circles,
was sitting next to me and listening to every word.
Finally, Churkin changed the tone and got down to business:
"What specifically are you offering?"
"A meeting between the government representatives and the White House
leadership, to be arranged immediately and without any pre-conditions.
There is only one goal,-to prevent bloodshed."

"Is this your personal initiative?"
"I am only an intermediary. And you?"

"I have full authorization from above. And who authorized you?"
"Khasbulatov and Rutskoi. And who authorized you?"

"For now, that's not the main issue."
"On the contrary, this is extremely important. Without an answer
to this question our conversation has no meaning at all.
Could you please name the person you are answering to directly?"

"The Prime Minister."
"When can we expect his answer?"

"Where can I find you in twenty minutes?"
"Here at the Embassy. You know the number."
"Very well."

....

Churkin called back in exactly twenty minutes. He spoke firmly,
but this time without insults or sarcasm.

"Your offer regarding the meeting has been rejected.
There will be no more meetings and no more negotiations with
your leadership. You can relay to them our demand, which is not
subject to any bargaining:
'Put down your arms. Leave the Supreme Soviet building.'"
"Is that all?"

"Yes. I repeat the answer of our government to those still
in the White House: 'Put down your arms and leave the building'."

"But this would most likely be unacceptable to our side..."
"There is nothing else to be discussed", Churkin concluded pointedly.

"Farewell then, Vitaly Ivanovich."
"Farewell."

Upon putting down the receiver, I heard the voice of Louis Sell
next to me: "We are very sorry it all turned out so dreadfully."
Yes, this was a crushing blow to my desperate attempts to save
the White House and to prevent a bloody denouement.
The exact time of my fiasco is fixed in my memory: 2:15 a.m., October 4, 1993.

Two weeks later, New York Newsday described in detail how
"a Yeltsin opponent and a nationalist deputy Andronov" tried to get
the Kremlin to forego the assault on the White House in favor
of negotiations with the help of a "high-ranking U.S. diplomat."
By that time the results were well known: dozens dead. Vitaly Churkin,
in an interview to the American press, blamed me for what happened:
"`It all failed because I asked Andronov a single question:
What did they [the leaders of the Parliament] want to talk about?'"
`They wanted to have another political discussion about which decrees
would be canceled and how the elections should be held. At that point,
after the fighting has started, to start talking at two o'clock
in the morning about how to preserve the Constitution, seemed out of place
and too late.'" (New York Newsday, Oct. 20, 1993, p. 42.)

Churkin lied. During our phone conversation I did not discuss with him
Presidential decrees or new elections, or ways to preserve the Constitution.
Nevertheless, Churkin's story was trumpeted by the Moscow newspapermen
loyal to the Kremlin, while my version was ignored. I had no voice then.
The Yeltsin ban on all opposition papers remained in effect until December.
It was only at the end of 1993 that I was able to publicly refute false
statements, made by Prime Minister Chernomyrdin's accomplice in extinguishing
the last chance to avoid the murder of so many compatriots.
This incident is still remembered by some. In the fall of 1997,
Yeltsin had Churkin appointed Ambassador to Canada. On this occasion,
the newly appointed Ambassador was invited to the State Duma to answer
some questions. Among the queries was the following:

"In the tragic days of October 1993, did you have a telephone conversation
with Andronov?"
"Yes, I had a telephone conversation with him," Churkin answered.
"And later there were some polemics with Andronov in the newspapers.
My call to him on October 4 was cleared with Chernomyrdin. It was 2 a.m.
The main point was that I was ready to meet Andronov any time, any place,
and as soon as possible in order to get the people who remained in
the White House safely out of there. However, I was not authorized
to discuss the constitutional issues that Andronov wanted to discuss at 2
a.m.
Therefore, unfortunately, there was no direct contact with him.
I did want the contact to happen and had full authorization for it
from Chernomyrdin."

The Ambassador's answer was a triple lie. First, he repeated his previous
false assertion about "constitutional issues" being discussed during
the nighttime conversation. Second, there was no mention of a meeting
between us, since we both were only intermediaries and were in no position
to conduct political negotiations of such importance.
Third, Prime Minister Chernomyrdin undoubtedly rejected my peacemaking
mediation since, as it is now known, he, together with Yeltsin,
was demanding the Army obliterate the White House and was not at all
interested in establishing any kind of negotiating channels.
As then government minister Mikhail Poltoranin now tells it,
the Prime Minister called the rebellious deputies "rotten shitheads"
and was screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs:
"F**k them! No pity for them!"

On October 4, Chernomyrdin raged inside his official residence on
Staraya Ploschad': "No negotiations! That gang should be exterminated!
Those are non-people, they are animals."

At the time I entered the U.S. Embassy the first time, at midnight,
I did not know that at about the same time Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin
were not very far from me, at the Defense Department headquarters on
Arbat Street. There they had ordered the generals to use tanks against
the White House. This is what Defense Minister Pavel Grachev told Moscow
journalists four days later: "We could have started the assault at 2 a.m.
But we did not do it, since there was no reason to hurry. We decided
to wait until dawn. Shortly before midnight on October 3, the President
and the Prime Minister participated in a meeting at the Defense Department.
There, the military was presented with a set of objectives. The Prime
Minister
then organized a command center at the Kremlin and the second command center
was established at the Defense Department under my leadership."

This is the reason that at the end of our phone conversation Churkin gave me
Chernomyrdin's ultimatum, knowing well in advance that the government demands
could not be accepted.
At the Embassy, when I was about to leave, Sell said to me,
"After you report to the White House you may ask for our assistance
to you personally."
I thanked him for an oblique offer of an asylum at the Embassy.
I told the diplomat I would remain in the Parliament until the end.
We shook hands. Mr. Sell and his junior assistant were looking at me
with pity in their eyes, as if I were already dead.

Later, the American press got very interested in my nighttime visit
to the U.S. Embassy. Journalists from Vanity Fair and the Russian service
of Radio Liberty flew in from New York and Munich, respectively, to
interview me.
Here is what Vanity Fair reporter later wrote: "After talking with Andronov
and other diehards, I understood for the first time why this tragedy had
to come to pass: the hardliners were determined to sully Russian democracy
with blood."
(T.D. Allman, "Yeltsin's Dark Victory," Vanity Fair, Dec. 1993, p. 244.)

Even more vicious in its reporting was Radio Liberty.

Copyright (c) 1998 by Iona Andronov.
Translation, by Misha Gutkin,
copyright (c) 2001 by Institute for Media Analysis, Inc.

********


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