By Poul Funder Larsen
MOSCOW — The full-scale military attack on the White House (October 4), ordered by Yeltsin, and taking a terrible toll of some 500 deaths, is by all accounts the opening chapter of a dictatorship along the lines that leading members of the Russian liberal elites have been calling for. The closing down of the whole opposition press, arrests and the banning of practically all opposition parties are further proof of the trajectory taken by the former "democrats", to loud applause from the West.
Yeltsin's coup d'etat on September 21, outlawing the democratically elected parliament and suspending the constitutional court, opened this Pandora's box.
After a week of pro-parliament demonstrations, Yeltsin escalated the conflict by blocking off parliament and establishing a de facto state of emergency in the region around the White House, where thousands of heavily armed special troops were busy beating up increasingly aggressive and frustrated demonstrators.
On Saturday, October 2, the anger of the protesters exploded in street fighting and the erecting of barricades on the Moscow Ring Road. On the following day, a demonstration of the conservative "Working Russia" went all the way to the White House through the cordons of militia and troops.
At this moment the political adventurism and total miscalculation of the relationship of forces by Alexander Rutskoi and the leadership of the Supreme Soviet triggered off the disaster. Drawing on the parliament's armed defenders — a ragtag "army" of Afghan veterans, extreme nationalists, and hard-lime Stalinists — they organised impromptu militias to attack the office of the Moscow mayor and the TV centre at Ostankino.
This insane gamble, a break with mass-based, democratic forms of struggle, was immediately seized and utilised by Yeltsin. Though it seems clear that the forces stationed at the TV centre were the first to open fire at the approaching militias, there are no excuses for the tactics adopted by the parliamentary leadership. In turn they were used to legitimise Yeltsin's slaughter at the White House.
The latter attack was not made for any military reasons — the defeat of Rutskoi was obvious even before the bombardment began — but for political ones: to exterminate the leaders of the opposition (even physically) and send an unmistakable message to regions and parts of the armed forces inclined to side with the parliament.
For the time being this message seems to have been received, and a terrible apathy prevails, while repression gets under way. The methods employed by the parliamentary militias have obviously alienated many people at a crucial point, when public opinion was slowly turning against Yeltsin, and the president can now for a period count on a certain renewed popular support by default, so to speak.
For the left this experience — apart from the vital issue of preserving structures and organisations — poses serious questions about full independence from any part of the bureaucratic apparatus. The lack of will from parts of the left to openly criticise the fact that armed bandits, including supporters of neo-fascist groups, were accepted as "defenders of parliament" — because such criticism could "harm the cause" — is a case in point.
For the Western left, it must now be a top priority to support democratic socialists in Russia and protest against the infringements of democratic rights that are now the order of the day here.