The Mood in Russia

...It needs a strong hand...

...Enterprising private photographers persuade some families to take souvenir pictures with the stained White House as the background...

...Russians had counted on at least cheap bread while the prices of other necessities rose beyond their incomes...

...The kind that inflames the public when we need stability and order...

...Nor was Yeltsin ever the converted apostle of democracy Western governments chose to make him for their own interests...

...They are also the reason why Muscovites have been seething at the sight of entrepreneurs from the Caucasus who seem to be making their own rules and thriving...

...What they are really reacting to, I suspect, is the social and economic chaos caused by Yeltsin's economic reforms, which have upset the old order and driven millions of Russians below the poverty line...

...Russian generals, even in Soviet times, have never openly sought political positions...

...Moscow police claim they have been the source of up to 90 per cent of thefts, burglaries, assassinations, and Mafia-related extortions in the city...

...For his part...

...And he stripped the authority of hundreds of local governing councils across the country, because they harbored conservative politicians elected in the Soviet era and backed the national Parliament...

...None of these people fit the President's description of them, although there were some waving Soviet or Russian nationalist flags...

...Russia is a different place...

...What else was Yeltsin to do," he asks, "let Khasbulatov and Rutskoi take over...

...On the bridge across the Moscow River, at the very point where the tanks lined up to fire into the White House sitting on the shore a few hundred yards away, crowds gather and simply gaze at the 19-story building whose upper half had been engulfed by flames...

...He has already begun paying it off by quickly approving a broad strategic military doctrine General Grachev has sought in order to reorganize the Russian Army...

...Aleksei, a middle-aged, university-educated Russian, is troubled by the lack of clear answers to questions about the myatezh (the "revolt") on October 3-4...

...Moreover, it is well to remember that the bulk of the conservatives in and outside of the dissolved Russian Parliament were never quite the hard-line militants they often were portrayed to be in the West...

...You Americans complain about press censorship here...

...In addition, Yeltsin has imprisoned several of his most effective opponents...

...The uprising, however, particularly its bloody conclusion (the actual death toll is still unknown), had a deep political and psychological impact on the country...

...Yeltsin owes the military a large debt...

...Russians I have talked with, even in "liberal" Moscow, are delighted that the "blacks" are being run out of town...

...As we drive past the partly smoke-blackened white marble Russian Parliament building, we talk about its being attacked by Army combat troops and tanks...

...Elderly women marched alongside young men and women against Yeltsin too...

...The objective is a leaner, more mobile, purely Russian Army...

...Postmortem accounts of Russian civilian and military officials have revealed the government's vulnerability on Sunday afternoon, October 3, when street demonstrators smashed through security lines to link up with armed groups in the White House...

...He banned 15 newspapers and 10 political parties...

...As a result, Russia now is the only country in the world where two former vice presidents and two former Parliament chairmen are charged with conspiring to overthrow the government...

...In other times of crisis," says Aleksei, "the Army was always right outside of Moscow, prepared to move rapidly into the capital, but somehow not this time...

...In short, as the stark pictures of the Russian Army assault on the White House fade in memories, and the December parliamentary elections draw nearer, the debate over Yeltsin's economic reforms inevitably will resurface as a key issue...

...Having more or less assured himself of the military's support, Yeltsin needs to give legitimacy to his government...

...Such realities notwithstanding, there is still a large conservative body of opinion in Russia that is unhappy with the results of the President's "shock therapy" economic reforms—described by some Russian commentators as containing more shock than therapy...

...These feelings about the "cleansing" of Moscow may appear to be a sideshow in the overall drama of the Yeltsin government under attack by armed opponents, yet I think there is a connection that the President understands...

...If this means that the Caucasus Mafia seemingly in command of the capital at the street level will be wiped out, they say, and that law and order are finally being restored, they heartily approve...

...He is in a more commanding position to tell or advise the President on how to order the country than he was before putting down the October upheaval...

...Russian commentators began to question whether so much force had to be used against the opposition, and whether the President had the right to abolish the Parliament last September 21...

...Meanwhile, Interior Ministry forces in Moscow, under orders from Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, used the two-week state of emergency in the capital to expel thousands of Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, and Chechens—the "blacks," as Russians call them...

...The organizers of the first, in August 1991—who included the KGB chief, the Defense Minister, the Parliament Chairman and the Vice President—assumed power in the Kremlin for three days before they were forced to surrender...

...Maybe it is time to make a complete change—a new Parliament, a new president, people not connected with the old Communist system...

...Many of the dismissed Russian deputies represented factory managers, collective farm directors and Russian workers in provincial cities, who felt that the Yeltsin reforms were simply wrong for Russia...

...Yeltsin resorted to demagoguery because he had to provide Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and other senior generals with justification for killing their fellow citizens, the most distasteful job that any army is called upon to do...

...Soon more money will be allotted to obtaining new weapons, and to providing housing and benefits for the tens of thousands of Russian officers and men being demobilized as the post-Soviet Red Army is scaled down to 1.5 million men...

...They had honest differences over the complicated task of moving from a centralized economy to a market system...

...That is clear from a rare Russian television broadcast of a Security Council meeting chaired by Yeltsin at which the General presented his proposal for a new strategic military doctrine...

...That could produce some surprises, and problems, for Boris Yeltsin...

...He ought to be kept in prison...

...He ordered people to take up arms and a lot of them were killed...

...Not only was the President at his dacha, but the Kremlin, the General Staff Headquarters and the Defense Ministry all were undefended...

...That the cost of a loaf of bread has gone up 300 per cent or more is bound to have a much greater effect on voters than the storming of the White House, or Yeltsin's banning fringe opposition parties and newspapers...

...And the leaders of the second this October—Parliament Chairman Khasbulatov and Vice President Rutskoi—came closer to succeeding than was realized during the fighting...

...What kind of press is being censored...

...Was the Army waiting to see what would happen, or did Yeltsin want the opposition to spill blood first...

...They express little or no objection to being stopped and having their cars searched by security forces dressed in flak jackets carrying Kalashnikovs...

...Yeltsin, in his power struggle with the opposition, often displayed his political experience as a Communist Party boss in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) and in Moscow, and as a candidate of the Politburo...

...The elections are stacked against the opposition, given that radical Left and Right parties are banned, as are the newspapers that represent their views...

...Yeltsin responded to the explosion of frustrations on October 3 by branding everyone who took up arms against him as a Communist or Fascist...

...Since the country has now experienced two wrenching coup attempts in as many years, perhaps that is understandable...

...More than one Russian has told me the country needs a strong hand—not a Stalinist reign of terror but firm direction...

...At the MosBusinessBank, a gray stone building in central Moscow constructed in Tsarist days, 1 ask Svetlana, a young businesswoman, "Would you vote for Boris Yeltsin for president...

...Reading the faces of these men and women, I have the sense that they cannot comprehend what happened...

...Especially in the Russian provinces, where most of the 450 members of the new Duma will be elected, people are likely to cast their ballots for deputies who promise law and order plus a better economic life, not for those who did or did not defend the White House in October...

...If there is a common thread running through my chance conversations and observations, it is one of profound doubt and unease about where Russia is headed...

...He dissolved the Constitutional Court for always tending to side with the Khasbulatov/Rutskoi clique...

...Since the Army saved his presidency...

...He knows the words "Fascist" and "Communist" summon up memories among Russians of vast destruction and mass murder...

...Not only has inflation continued to worsen the lives of 150 million people, but the government has freed bread prices...

...General Grachev now sits at the table of power...

...Those reforms—particularly the lifting of state-controlled prices and the attempt to turn state-owned enterprises into private companies—were the heart of the President's power struggle with the conservative Parliament...

...Yeltsin quickly took advantage of having prevailed to declare a state of emergency and root out other individuals and institutions he perceived as being opposed to him...

...It was the military's decision on October 4 to remain loyal to Yeltsin that saved the day for him...

...Moscow Dmitri, a 40-year-old Muscovite who knows the ways of this capital, makes his living arranging meetings and securing hard-to-get items for a variety of clients...

...IN THE WAKE OF THE OCTOBER COUP-2 The Mood in Russia by MARK HOPKINS MARK HOPKINS, a longtime contributor to THE NEW LEADER, is chief of Voice of America's news bureau in Moscow...

...Why didn't the Army move in more quickly on Sunday when the pro-Parliament demonstrators turned violent and linked up with armed groups inside the White House...

...Rutskoi is a criminal...

...But far more important is the fact that the government continues to control television, the source of political information for the overwhelming majority of Russians...

...Thus the balloting scheduled for December 12, when 107 million voters will choose the first democratically elected State Duma since Tsarist days, and vote on a new Russian constitution...

...But Russian television showed well-dressed middle-aged men grabbing metal pipes from construction sites to hit Interior Ministry soldiers defending themselves with shields...

...Nonetheless...

...But they have sat at the tables of power, whether at meetings of the Kremlin Politburo or at sessions of the Yeltsin government's Security Council...

...No," Svetlana replies, "not Yeltsin, but I'm not sure who else...

...You can speak in America about a free press...

...Look, Russia has never had democracy," Dmitri goes on, trying to rationalize the course of events...