Moscow Bulletin / Bolshie Ballet
Bernstein, Jonas
Bolshie Ballet by Jonas Bernstein As we go to press, Boris Yeltsin and his Communist parties among them, most in enemies from the dissolved Soviet parlia- this crowd are the kind who love...
...This struck me as too witty to have Jews out...
...Perhaps you and Ruslan Khasbulatov...
...While there are scrawled: "Who sold Russia...
...Bolshie Ballet by Jonas Bernstein As we go to press, Boris Yeltsin and his Communist parties among them, most in enemies from the dissolved Soviet parlia- this crowd are the kind who love Stalin ment appeared to be nearing a show- but hate Lenin, Trotsky, and the other down, as troops loyal to Yeltsin were original Bolshies...
...Russian Television (Channel 2), however, did, and in general has been much more objective in its reporting...
...The leading light of the grouplet is former KGB general Aleksandr Sterligov, who sports a Radovan Korotich hairdo and has never been seen smiling...
...In his French TV interview prior to the Yeltsin decree, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn made the same point...
...A new pro-Yeltsin newspaper called President has suddenly appeared, put out by the "Moscow Regional Fund to Support the First President of Russia...
...A week before, the staff of Itogi (Results), perhaps the most respected news analysis show in Russia, had resigned en masse, citing interference from the Yeltsin administration...
...Still, some good democrats are beginning to question Yeltsin's hard line...
...over and over again, just to been done by the typical supporter of drive the point home...
...Its thesis is that the previous defenders of the White House—those who opposed the August 1991 putsch—were Israeli agents...
...In the wake of this kind of behavior, gibes about madmen calling themselves Napoleon have gotten a lot of mileage in Moscow since September 21...
...When he returns to Russia, the writer said, "I will not evade the press, yet I must say that the press today (so that you should not delude yourselves) is by far not independent...
...We're not going to shoot the people," he replied...
...A lone demonstrator that here you could enlist as a White stood at the first barricade inside the House "defender...
...Who were Jewpreparing to storm the White House, Masons, you see...
...In a satirical Lifestyle section, it shows a photo of Russian Constitutional Court judge Valery Zorkin, who ruled Yeltsin's edict unconstitutional, and in a Russian wordplay implies that he is a criminal...
...It appears to be trying to match the opposition's level of discourse...
...As I approached the square along with a horde of music lovers, a series of loud explosions suddenly echoed around the city...
...My next purchase was the house organ of the Russky Sobor (Russian Council) movement...
...Ex—parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov is generally distrusted by the lighter-skinned "national patriots...
...minute report from our man in Moscow: I made my first visit to the Russian parliament building the evening after M ichael and I were relieved to Yeltsin gave the hard-line legislators see the phalanx of special inte- their pink slips...
...Next to it was a call these people Communists would not Yeltsin poster, at the top of which was be completely accurate...
...The young soldiers remained cool...
...issuing edicts and proclamations...
...The Commies, who had already made Barrikadnaya a kind of forward base, went ape...
...Most of the men are apparently through the DMZ," he muttered...
...summoning imaginary troops from the Russian heartland...
...During one of my visits to the parliament, the crowds outside listened attentively as the loudspeakers broadcast an attempt by Sergei Baburin, the pretty-boy leader of the fascist/Leninist Russian Unity parliamentary bloc, to replace Khasbulatov...
...Petersburg...
...They surrounded the vehicles and berated the soldiers—who looked all of 18—for carrying out the orders of the "criminal Yeltsin...
...Commonwealth Television (Channel 1) has become a virtual mouthpiece for the president...
...A couple of full dumpsters had been were constantly interrupted by a middlespray-painted with the words "Gaidar's aged woman yelling "Foreigners out...
...Those on the back page are straight VOlkischer Beobachter: for example, a caricature of a Jew (with a star of David on his shoulder, so you don't confuse his prominent nose and five o'clock shadow with Arafat's) kneeling on the Torah and kissing a statue of a calf (marked "gold" for the slow-witted...
...I feel a little sorry for Ruslan Imranovich...
...Then why are you wearing that...
...Perhaps I'm being too—well, American...
...Box...
...It also calls him a limitchik, a word referring to workers from the provinces who, during the Soviet period, were given special permission to come to Moscow and work at menial jobs...
...Channel 1 carried no report of the regional leaders' opposition to Yeltsin's decree the day after they met in St...
...White House "de rior ministry troops and OMON fenders" with Kalashnikovs slung over riot police as we left the White House their shoulders were running all over the grounds...
...one was asked...
...certainly many members of Russia's new People were crowding around someone who was selling newspapers...
...I was Jonas Bernstein is a freelance journalist lucky enough to purchase a copy of living in Moscow...
...The soldiers asked me for cigarettes...
...In fact, there has been a lot of speculation that, with all of his pronunciamentos, insults, and predictions of war, he has finally lost his mind...
...a (The following evening, the group's CNN cameraman had been beaten with a leader, Col...
...Here is a last- could call them National Bolsheviks...
...Inside the White House, the opposition luminaries were appointing a defense minister here, a security minister there...
...Inside were some 300 troops from the interior ministry's elite Dzherzhinsky division, awaiting deployment—among those who would move into position tostorm the White House a few days later...
...It is a solution, it must be said, that he appears to be contemplating...
...imum during our half-hour walkabout...
...Some paid no attention to the taunts, while others fielded them...
...S everal blocks away from the White House, at the big Stalinist building in front of Barrikadnaya metro station, twenty or so military trucks had arrived...
...Everyone in the crowd looked startled for a moment, but as we entered the square the music became audible, and we realized that we were hearing the finale to the "1812 Overture...
...Whatever one thinks of Zorkin, and he is hardly a figure worthy of admiration, this term is derogatory in the extreme, and reflects an elitism among Muscovites that is the result of their formerly high position in the Soviet pecking order...
...To the Elders of Zion...
...t must be noted that Yeltsin's rule since September 21 doesn't exactly comport with our ideas of town-meeting democracy...
...I tried to catch the NSO performance in Red Square on Sunday, September 26, but was running late...
...would call an oasis for two expatriate American Jews...
...But poor Khasbulatov is a fish out of water among the White House defenders—a Chechen politico in a sea of racist, xenophobic Russian nationalists...
...At this writing, even his vice minister Sergei Shakhrai has come out in support of a compromise—for simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections...
...It feels like crossing back place...
...Get it...
...political tracts, one of which made Anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, repeated references to the Protocols of and paranoia are the order of the day...
...continued his interlocutor, pointing to his flak jacket...
...Theirs is the politics held by supporters of Aleksandr Rutskoi of resentment, big-time...
...Because it's warm...
...The wall along the main n a side street, several hundred road leading into the White House is now yards from the White House, a adorned with graffiti: "Yeltsin—Agent of TV crew was attempting to inthe USA," "Yeltsin—Yid," "Kozyrev— terview several OMON riot police...
...When I held out the pack, one old bag roundly cursed me out...
...At the highest echelon of the White House defenders were fighters from the Irgun and Beitar, assembling under the white-blue Zionist flag...
...A wall nearby was police cordon, waving a huge red flag pasted with various proclamations and reading "Our home is the Soviet Union...
...A country emerging from three-quarters of a century of totalitarianism is not going to conduct politics like a PTA meeting...
...CI 84 The American Spectator November 1993...
...The one on the front page shows Yasir Arafat raising the Israeli flag, with dollar bills hanging out of his pocket...
...Why are you going to shoot the people...
...Even prior to the decree, there were signs that parts of the state media were feeling government pressure...
...Watching Khasbulatov on TV, dressed in a black double-breasted jacket, black shirt, and purple tie, I was reminded of former Noriega crony Rigoberto "Rigo" Paredes, a gold-Rolexwearing anti-Yankee "legislator" from Panama's ruling Revolutionary Democratic Party, who drove around town in a Jeep Cherokee with i Yo digo Rigo...
...First of all, the opposition newspapers—Sovietskaya Rossiya, the fascist weekly Dyen, etc.—are still churning out far worse invective, without interference from the government...
...I had volunteers from the Union of Officers, an told him to keep the English to a min- organization of fascistic military men...
...President" Aleksandr Rutskoi and At the main entrance of the parliaRuslan Khasbulatov...
...abortive attempt to enter the CIS military Indeed, the territory of the rebel command center, in which a policeman Russian government is not what you and an innocent bystander were killed...
...I suspected an out- ment building was a cardboard notice side prankster...
...They Yid...
...emblazoned on the side...
...Yeltsin could appear to the free world in a very different guise if he chooses a violent, Waco-style solution to the White House impasse...
...Inside is a fascinating article entitled "Revolution in the Person of Rostropovich," obviously timed for the maestro's Red Square concert with the National Symphony Orchestra...
...Stanislav Terekhov, led an lead pipe the previous day...
...In one TV interview, asked where he will end up at the end of this, he replied: "Jail, probably...
...Svyatoy Gorod (Holy City), which bills The American Spectator November 1993 83 itself as "the Russian-Palestinian voice...
...Its specialty is clever political cartoons...
Vol. 26 • November 1993 • No. 11
