24 OCTOBER 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Mamedov. As I spoke, I could almost hear the deep intake of breath at the other end of the line. When I finished, Mamedov said simply, “I understand. I’ll get back to you.” Mamedov never did call me back, but as the evening progressed, it was clear that the Russian authorities had much more on their mind than protection of the U.S. embassy. Unfolding in the streets of Moscow was an armed struggle for the future of Russia—one that Boris Yeltsin came within a whisker of losing. Had he done so, the consequences for Russia and the world would have been grave, indeed. b My own direct involvement in the crisis had begun on Sept. 21, when my regular contact in Yeltsin’s office, Foreign Policy Adviser Dmitry Ryurikov, asked me to come to the Kremlin. He told me that Yeltsin would be making an important speech to the nation that evening. I asked if Khasbulatov would like the speech, but Ryurikov simply smiled and advised me to keep an eye on “our neighbors” in the White House. In the beginning, only loose lines of police surrounded the White House. They stood around talking, smoking, and looking in a bored way at the barricades the Supreme Soviet defenders had erected just across the street. Sometimes, however, riotequipped police suddenly deployed in grimly massed ranks, as if awaiting an order to attack. Generally, the police commanders seemed to have little idea about what was going on. One told me that, as far as he could tell, no one had any idea how things would turn out except for Yeltsin—and as for him, the policeman shrugged and spit on the ground … not exactly a sign of high confidence. During the first week or so, I strolled around what the parliamentary forces called “Freedom Square” for a firsthand impression of developments in what was a combination crisis and street theater. Sometimes I brought along my wife and daughter, which always elicited a smile from the babushkas in the crowd. Gradually, things changed. Fewer people were milling about, and there was a much larger proportion of angry-looking young men, some dressed in black shirts, some in cast-off army uniforms, and others in civilian clothes. Many had been drinking, and all seemed to be spoiling for a fight. The older people still hanging about were not the genial Soviet-era pensioners who delighted in telling me how wonderful things had been under the benign rule of Josef Stalin but the crazies who screeched obscenities at Yeltsin, Clinton, and the nearby U.S. embassy at the slightest provocation. Most alarming was the evidence of weapons. Black-shirted Kalashnikov-toting young men stood guard at the entrances into the White House. Stacked inside were stockpiles of Molotov cocktails. As the crisis heated up, Ambassador Pickering asked the defense attaché to draw a diagram showing which parts of the embassy could be hit by gunfire coming from the 18 stories of the nearby White House; the results were alarming. Most office areas and almost all the apartments where families lived were vulnerable. In response, personnel were instructed to keep Russian police at the barricades in central Moscow in October 1993. COURTESY OF LOUIS SELL
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