Yeltsin dissolved parliament on 9/21/1993. Of his televised appearance announcing dissolution of parliament, English speaking announcer says @:02, “Yeltsin reached for a cup of tea to show Russians he was not drunk." Video clips include BBC, CBS News and ABC News. You Tube video, “Russian Constitutional Crisis- Day 1: Yeltsin declares himself dictator.” :47, “All the powers of the Russian Federation have been annulled,” announcer quotes Yeltsin. Subsequent female interpreter is identified in on-screen graphic as “Lynn Visson.” Ms. Visson is a former UN interpreter. You Tube page text: “Yeltsin issues decree dissolving Parliament. He is impeached and replaced by Alexander Rutskoi.” English speaking announcer says @7:00 Yeltsin has recently visited crucial internal military units which are “on standby to seize control of parliament if ordered to do so.” @7:30, “Significantly, a few days ago he [Yeltsin] gave them [the military] their second pay rise in 6 months.
CBS News Roger Mudd @5:40 says that Bill Clinton downplayed “the crisis,” and later phoned Yeltsin to express his support. VP Al Gore @5:55 says US supports Yeltsin and his efforts at democracy and a “free market economy….We feel Boris Yeltsin is the best hope for democracy in Russia.”
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Added: In Oct. 1993 Yeltsin sent tanks to attack parliament. Scores were killed, hundreds wounded, US still didn't say Yeltsin is Hitler. Bill Clinton said, "President Yeltsin had no other alternative but to try to restore order."
10/5/1993, “Yeltsin crushes revolt,“ UK Guardian, Jonathan Steele and David Hearst in Moscow
“President Boris Yeltsin moved swiftly last night to stamp his absolute power on Russia by suspending a range of political movements and closing opposition newspapersafter the surrender of his main parliamentary opponents in the wake of the assault on the Russian White House.Under a decree following the state of emergency that Mr Yeltsin imposed on Sunday, the National Salvation Front, the Russian Communist Party, the United Front of Workers and the Union of Officers were banned, while Pravda, the former organ of the Soviet Communist Party, and a number of other papers were told to cease publication. An overnight curfew was also imposed throughout Moscow.
The ministry of justice justified the clampdown on the grounds that the groups banned had supported the armed uprising launched by hardliners on Sunday afternoon.
With elections promised in December for a new bicameral parliament, the bans will severely limit the options for Russians who oppose Mr Yeltsin. They will also remove the risk that those unhappy with the government’s tough economic reforms will vote for communists on the model of Poland.
The bans, which were formally signed into effect by Yuri Kalmykov, the justice minister, also hit opponents of Mr Yeltsin in the army.
Beside the Union of Officers, a radical movement called Shield was also outlawed. Mr Yeltsin clearly wanted to send a powerful signal to the army that political activity was forbidden.
There is no doubt that the leaders of the groups banned were among the defenders of the White House.
As if to underscore this, arrest warrants were issued last night for Ilya Konstantinov, co-leader of the National Salvation Front and another prominent hardliner, Viktor Anpilov.
But Mr Yeltsin ‘s ban echoed his action two years ago in banning the Russian Communist Party. The Constitutional Court later ruled that he had no right to ban an entire organisation because of the actions of its leading bodies.
With the collapse of the parliamentary opposition, most of its key figures were under arrest last night, including the former vice-president, Alexander Rutskoi, and Ruslan Khasbulatov, parliament’s speaker.
But it emerged that on Sunday night police had detained two deputies of the Moscow City Council, Boris Kagarlitsky and Vladimir Kondratiev, who had no connection with the rebellion. The men were reportedly released last night.
After a grisly 10-hour gun battle in which tanks punched holes in the front of the White House,all but an unknown number of last-ditch snipers surrendered.
The indiscriminate exchanges of fire left hundreds injured and an unknown number dead. The assault set fire to the riverside front of the building and reduced whole floors to rubble.
At 4.50pm local time 300 people, many of them deputies, came out with their hands over their heads, and walked in single file down the steps to waiting buses. Gunfire still crackled overhead.
Earlier in the day, a brief but fierce exchange took place about 200 yards along the embankment, and tank artillery was blamed for starting a fire at the Mezhdunarodnaya hotel.
Two hours after the assault began, Mr Yeltsin appeared on television and laid the blame firmly on Mr Rutskoi’s and Mr Khasbulatov’s shoulders.
Mr Yeltsin said: “We have not been preparing to make war. We were thinking it was possible to make a deal and preserve peace in the capital. Those who began to fire against this city and unleashed this bloodshed are criminals.
“All that was and still is going on in Moscow was an armed revolt planned in advance,” he said. “It was organised by Communists seeking revenge, by fascist leaders and some of the former lawmakers. There can be no forgiveness, because they lifted their hand against peaceful people.”
After parliamentary supporters were seen to fire the first shots on Sunday, breaking through police lines and launching a bloody attack on the Ostankino television centre, which left 69 dead, Mr. Yeltsin wanted to justify his use of heavy armour to crush the rebellion.
Mr Rutskoi and Mr Khasbulatov were among the last to surrender after the European Community, to whom they turned with a request to guarantee their safe passage, was assured by Mr Yeltsin ‘s office that no harm would come to the two men.
Mr Khasbulatov denied minutes before his arrest that the uprising’s leaders had ordered Sunday’s attack on Moscow’s main television centre.
“We never ordered the television attack. This was pure provocation,” Mr Khasbulatov told a French television crew. ‘I only heard about [the attack] on my way to the parliamentary session. All this was organised in order to discourage our sympathisers.’
The Russian prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, said the two men had earlier rejected opportunities to surrender.
Other rebel leaders, including General Albert Makashov and Vyacheslav Achalov, the parliament’s “defence minister”, were seized earlier in the assault.
Last night, the Itar-Tass news agency reported that hardline gunmen might still be inside parliament, and there was sporadic shooting. The agency itself came under fire, and troops killed one of the attackers and arrested eight others.
It was impossible to determine the final death toll, although the authorities quoted medical officials as saying that 62 people were confirmed killed, and 400 wounded, in Sunday’s assault on the television centre.
Western leaders, warned in advance of the assault, promptly declared support, but urged a speedy return to constitutionality amid fears that the Russian leader could become a political hostage to the armed forces.
“It is clear that the opposition forces started the conflict, and President Yeltsin had no other alternative but to try to restore order,’ the US president, Bill Clinton, said.
“The US supported Yeltsin because he is Russia’s democratically-elected leader,” he said. “I have no reason to doubt the personal commitment that President Yeltsin made to let the Russian people decide their own future in elections.’
In Blackpool, the Prime Minister, John Major, said: “What is now necessary is that normal order is restored and that the Russians move forward to the elections they planned in December.”
In Brussels, the European Commission announced emergency medical aid of 300,000 ecus (around £235,000) for those wounded in the fighting.
China was the only major power not to back Mr Yeltsin. “We are deeply concerned about the recent bloodshed in Moscow,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.
“As a friendly neighbour, we hope to see an end to the conflict and a proper solution to the current situation in the interest of the stability, unity and economic recovery.'”
Last night, special forces barred around 1,000 demonstrators opposed to Mr Yeltsin from entering the television studios of St Petersburg.”
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Added: Dec. 1993: “U.S. backing remained constant after the disastrous election results in which Yeltsin’s party received only 15 percent of the vote and the Constitution barely passed the referendum.”....This after US gave Yeltsin $12 million US tax dollars to help his Nov. 1993 election and provided election experts on the ground in Russia.
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Nov. 27, 1993, “Yeltsin Threatens to Pull Opponents’ TV Time : Russia: In a sign of how much the president values his constitution, he forbids campaigning against it on the air.” LA Times, Richard Boudreaux, Times Staff Writer, Moscow
“Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin warned Friday that political parties campaigning on television against his proposed constitution will lose their right to broadcast free pre-election advertising.
“The free time will be taken back from you if you deviate from your subject, and your subject is your platform,” he told leaders of 13 parties summoned to the Kremlin. “I ask you not to touch on the constitution.”
Except for a ban on six extremist movements and the newspapers that back them, Yeltsin’s statement was his firmest step to limit free debate before the Dec. 12 elections, in which voters will choose a new two-chamber Parliament and vote on a new constitution.
The warning was a sign that Yeltsin is far more concerned about the fate of the proposed charter, which would usher in a post-Soviet legal order and vastly strengthen presidential power,than the makeup of Parliament itself.
A majority vote for the constitution would allow Yeltsin to advance his [so-called] free-market reforms whether or not his alliesdominate the 450-seat Duma and 178-seat Federation Council. Drafted in secret without public debate, the new charter would give the president the power to dissolve Parliament and call new elections, for example, if it rejects his nominees for prime minister three times in a row.
Except for a ban on six extremist movements and the newspapers that back them, Yeltsin’s statement was his firmest step to limit free debate before the Dec. 12 elections, in which voters will choose a new two-chamber Parliament and vote on a new constitution.
The warning was a sign that Yeltsin is far more concerned about the fate of the proposed charter, which would usher in a post-Soviet legal order and vastly strengthen presidential power,than the makeup of Parliament itself.
A majority vote for the constitution would allow Yeltsin to advance his [so-called] free-market reforms whether or not his alliesdominate the 450-seat Duma and 178-seat Federation Council. Drafted in secret without public debate, the new charter would give the president the power to dissolve Parliament and call new elections, for example, if it rejects his nominees for prime minister three times in a row.
Four parties favoring Yeltsin’s reforms are in the race. But they are not assured of winning a majority of seats and, even if they do, might not work together on all issues.
Communist and nationalist parties, which led the Soviet-era Congress of People’s Deputies that Yeltsin dissolved this fall, are waging strong campaigns.
Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov is running for the Duma and also campaigning for a “no” vote on the proposed charter, calling it a Napoleonic code for one-man dictatorship.
All parties have criticized the draft, but most favor its adoption by voters, to be followed by amendments by the new Parliament.
“I don’t see why it cannot be openly and publicly discussed, as is the practice in any country about to adopt a constitution,” Zyuganov said Friday after attending the Kremlin meeting and rejecting the effort to limit the pre-election debate.
“Yeltsin’s constitution would destroy the separation of powers, allow free trading of land,” he said. “We are not going to discard our views in the next steps of our campaign.”
Stanislav S. Govorukhin, a popular film director who is running for Parliament from the Democratic Party of Russia, apparently provoked the president’s warning by declaring on television Wednesday night that the draft constitution was stained by the blood spilled Oct. 4, the day Yeltsin sent army tanks to crush the old Parliament.
“Even before its birth, this constitution has committed an evil deed,” Govorukhin said. “On a moral scale, it has thrown our society back into the times of totalitarianism.”
Yeltsin’s threatened restrictions apparently apply only to the one hour of free television time given each party to use in segments between this week and the election. That time is crucial because of television’s reach across Russia’s 11 time zonesand the cost–$700 per minute–of paid political advertising.
But Anatoly Sliva, deputy head of the president’s State Legal Department, suggested that the ban on criticism of the constitution was broader.
That logic underscores the biggest uncertainty of the campaign: What happens if voters reject the constitution? Many candidates assume that the new Parliament would convene anyway, as a constitutional convention, and write a basic law from scratch, but that is not clearly spelled out.
Worried by such a scenario, presidential Chief of Staff Sergei A. Filatov told regional leaders in the Kremlin last week that Yeltsin’s entire 1994 program would be ruined. “We will be in big trouble if we do not approve this constitution,” he warned.”
“Sergei Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.”
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