THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2023 25 Anti-Yeltsin activists, who had barricaded themselves inside the White House, surrender after the Russian army’s action. COURTESY OF LOUIS SELL under cover, draw their curtains, and stay out of all rooms that faced in the direction of the White House. Eventually, the tension turned to violence. Chanting and carrying placards saying, “Down with Yeltsin” and “Kill the Jews,” demonstrators seized Smolensk Square, in front of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and built a wall of flaming barricades. Muscovites gathered in the dusk, gazing in apprehensive silence at the angry wall of fire blocking Moscow’s main thoroughfare. As I listened to their comments, it was clear that the bulk of the bystanders had little sympathy either with the demonstrators or with the authorities. “What will become of us?” one woman asked, crossing herself. “This will end badly,” another man muttered gloomily. It was a view the Yeltsin administration would have done well to heed. b That Sunday, after our telephone conversation, Ambassador Pickering walked into the embassy looking as relaxed as if he had been out for a weekend stroll. After a quick briefing on the current situation and a phone call to Washington, Pickering summoned the senior members of the embassy staff who happened to be on hand that Sunday evening to the “bubble.” Calling for the Foreign Affairs Manual, he read systematically through the pages that describe what embassies should do in times of crises, assigning responsibilities to appropriate officers as he went along. It had an immediate positive effect on pulling the embassy team together and calming emotions. All nonessential embassy personnel and family members on the embassy compound were told to assemble and remain in the embassy gym, which was partially below the ground and had no external windows. Embassy personnel living off compound were informed what was happening and told to remain at their apartments. Meanwhile, after breaking out of the White House and milling around in front of the embassy for some time, the crowd split into two groups. One headed for the Russian Ministry of Defence about a mile away. They shouted for the army to join them and made a few half-hearted efforts to get inside before dribbling away. Later, a deputy minister who happened to be working in the building that afternoon told me that his first inkling of trouble came when security guards rushed into his office, handed him a Kalashnikov, and sent him with a couple of senior military officers to guard one of the entrances to the nearly deserted building. Calls for police protection apparently went unanswered for some time. What could have happened if the mob had gained control of this building, where two of Russia’s three “nuclear briefcases” reside, does not bear thinking about. A larger and better-armed group headed in commandeered trucks for national television headquarters, located at the Ostankino Television Tower on the outskirts of the city. Fortunately, just before the mob showed up, a small detachment of special police loyal to the government arrived and took up defensive positions inside the building. For the next couple of hours, a firefight raged in the darkening square. Scores were killed, but the parliamentary forces never got beyond the entrance hall before they disappeared back into the darkness. As these events were unfolding, courageous TV personnel set up an alternative site where government and public figures loyal to Yeltsin broadcast appeals to the people of Moscow to rally in support as they had done in 1991. Watching the parade of brave, intelligent, but clearly deeply shaken personalities was CHUCK NACKE/ALAMY The House of the Government of the Russian Federation, known as the “White House,” burns. On Oct. 4, 1993, at the height of the crisis between the executive branch and the legislature, President Boris Yeltsin ordered an attack on the government center.
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