Writers demand a Yeltsin coup ("Letter of the 42")
Writers Demand Decisive Action from the Government
"Izvestia" has received a letter addressed to fellow citizens from a large group of well-known authors. It reads:
We have neither the desire nor the need to comment extensively on what happened in Moscow on October 3rd. What occurred was inevitable, due to our collective carelessness and foolishness—fascists took up arms, attempting to seize power. Thank God, the army and law enforcement stood with the people, did not fracture, and prevented a bloody adventure from escalating into a catastrophic civil war. But what if they hadn’t? Who would we have to blame but ourselves? We "mercifully" begged after the August coup not to "avenge," not to "punish," not to "ban," not to "shut down," not to "hunt for witches." We so wanted to be kind, magnanimous, and tolerant. Kind... to whom? To murderers? Tolerant... of what? Fascism?
And the "witches," or rather the red-brown werewolves, emboldened by impunity, plastered the walls with their venomous posters right before the eyes of the police, crudely insulting the people, the state, and its legitimate leaders, salivating as they explained how they would hang all of us... What more is there to say? Enough talking. It’s time to act. These brutish scoundrels only respect force. Isn’t it time to demonstrate it with our young, but, as we’ve been reminded again, already sufficiently strengthened democracy?
We are not calling for revenge or cruelty, though the sorrow for the new innocent victims and the rage toward their cold-blooded executioners fills our hearts (and surely yours as well). But... enough! We cannot allow the fate of the people and the fate of democracy to continue to depend on the whims of a handful of ideological rogues and political adventurers.
This time, we must firmly demand from the government and the president what they should have done long ago, together with us, but failed to do:
1. All types of communist and nationalist parties, fronts, and associations must be dissolved and banned by presidential decree.
2. All illegal paramilitary, especially armed, groups and organizations must be identified and disbanded (with criminal prosecution where required by law).
3. Legislation enforcing strict sanctions for the promotion of fascism, chauvinism, racial hatred, and calls for violence and cruelty must finally be enforced. Prosecutors, investigators, and judges who have shielded such socially dangerous crimes must be immediately removed from their posts.
4. The press outlets that have been stirring up hatred and calling for violence day after day—and which, in our opinion, were among the main organizers and culprits of this tragedy (and potential culprits of many more), such as "Den," "Pravda," "Sovietskaya Rossiya," "Literaturnaya Rossiya" (as well as the TV program "600 Seconds") and several others—must be shut down pending judicial review.
5. The activities of the organs of Soviet power that refused to obey the lawful government of Russia must be suspended.
6. Together, we must ensure that the trial of the organizers and participants in the bloody drama in Moscow does not turn into the disgraceful farce that was called a "trial of the GKChP."
7. We must declare not only the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet illegitimate, but also all the bodies they created (including the Constitutional Court).
History has once again given us a chance to take a broad step toward democracy and civility. Let us not miss this chance again, as we have more than once before!
Signed,
Ales Adamovich, Anatoly Ananyev, Artem Anfinogenov, Bella Akhmadulina, Grigory Baklanov, Zory Balayan, Tatyana Bek, Alexander Borshchagovsky, Vasily Bykov, Boris Vasiliev, Alexander Gelman, Daniil Granin, Yuri Davydov, Daniil Danin, Andrei Dementyev, Mikhail Dudin, Alexander Ivanov, Edmund Iodkovsky, Rimma Kazakova, Sergey Kaledin, Yuri Karyakin, Yakov Kostyukovsky, Tatyana Kuzovleva, Alexander Kushner, Yuri Levitansky, academician D.S. Likhachev, Yuri Nagibin, Andrei Nuykin, Bulat Okudzhava, Valentin Oskotsky, Grigory Pozhenyan, Anatoly Pristavkin, Lev Razgon, Alexander Rekemchuk, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Vladimir Saveliev, Vasily Selyunin, Yuri Chernichenko, Andrei Chernov, Marietta Chudakova, Mikhail Chulaki, Viktor Astafiev.
Between 21 September and 4 October 1993, a constitutional crisis unfolded in Russia. On one side of the divide was Boris Yeltsin’s administration; on the other was the majority of the Congress of People’s Deputies (S”ezd narodnykh deputatov, then Russia’s parliament) as well as its chairman, Ruslan Khasbulatov (1942-2023), and Yeltsin’s own Vice President, Alexander Rutskoy (1947-). The source of the crisis was disagreement on the division of powers between the Congress and the president. Both had been elected democratically, and the Congress was instrumental in enabling Yeltsin’s anti-Gorbachev power plays in 1991. However, as Yeltsin implemented a widely unpopular package of economic reforms in 1992 and 1993 and bolstered his power to carry them out through additional referenda, the Congress increasingly opposed Yeltsin’s moves. In response, in September 1993, Yeltsin ordered the part-legislature, part constitutional-convention-like Congress that had originated during late perestroika to disband.
In their place, Yeltsin sought to install a newly formed Russian Duma and a reformed Russian Presidency, both legitimated by a new, “presidential” constitution. When Yeltsin issued his order, the Congress voted to impeach him. Subsequently, an armed confrontation began on the streets of Moscow between supporters of the Congress and of the president. It came to a head when the military, on the President’s orders, shelled the Congress building, the Russian White House. Because the congressional leaders who opposed Yeltsin most vehemently were members of the Communist Party, and because the defenders of the White House included an array of far-right figures from avowedly xenophobic groups, Yeltsin’s supporters saw the confrontation as a cut-and-dried battle between liberal democracy and a repressive “red-brown” alliance of “communists” and “fascists.”
The “Letter of the 42,” signed by writers and prominent members of the late- and post-Soviet liberal intelligentsia, expresses precisely this zero-sum view of the confrontation. The letter understands the Congress as a recalcitrant “Soviet” organ standing in the way of the formation of a new, democratic Russia. In retrospect, and especially after Yeltsin’s manifestly rigged 1996 elections, some signatories of the letter regretted their support of the once-“democratic” leader. That former Soviet liberals were willing to support Yeltsin’s use of emergency political violence highlights the complicated meaning of “liberalism” in late- and post-Soviet Russia.