“Our heroes are there!”

20 years ago there was the last sharp burst of political confrontation in Russia, many of its characteristics are repeated today.

In the office of Yegor Yakovlev, a bulletproof vest appeared. We did not see him put on, but when the editor-in-chief of Obshchaya Gazeta convened the editorial board, we noticed an object hanging on a brace, hooked on the outside of the door of one of the compartments of an ordinary office wardrobe. Why did Yegor Vladimirovich need him, we didn’t ask: it’s clear that the “commies”, who surrounded the parliament with their armed detachments, which was then quartered in the White House on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment, could have claims against the former author of a dozen books of “Leniniana”, who since the beginning of perestroika became one of its ideological engines. And these claims could well fire.

The night before, when I was returning from the printing house in an editorial car, I saw a group with red flags on Leningradsky Prospekt, surrounding a huge extraterrestrial riot policeman. "What do you want? - I asked an old woman in a construction helmet. “Our heroes are there!” she replied. There - it's near the building of the Main Intelligence Directorate, "Aquarium", and the heroes are members of the Union of Soviet Officers Stanislav Terekhov, who for some reason stormed the object of the Ministry of Defense. They fired, there were casualties...

On September 30, my wife, a parliamentary correspondent, came to the White House for the last time - there was already a police cordon around, but until now, at least, journalists were allowed in, but everyone was let out. Before leaving, she managed to talk with our deputy friend - he, unlike many colleagues from democratic factions who supported the decree of 1400 and left the doomed Supreme Council, was not going to leave the building, although he understood the dangers (showed the gas pistol that he was given, as many others, it is not clear why). This geologist friend, who had never been a member of any party, was elected in one of the republics of the RSFSR, in a district where he was opposed by powerful officials (he asked not to be identified, since he is now in the civil service), was “thrown” on food, counted, how much food will be enough for the besieged. And he said that although he did not support either the communists or the supporters of Ruslan Khasbulatov, he could not leave, leaving the quartermaster duties that his comrades had entrusted to him.

The next day, October 1, that is, 10 days after Yeltsin's decree-ultimatum to dissolve parliament, the cordon no longer let anyone into the White House, even accredited journalists. The blockade has begun...

So at the editorial board, we were only interested in where the editor of a non-state newspaper got a bulletproof vest - then still a subject of strict accountability. “The guys from counterintelligence gave us away,” Yegor Yakovlev replied. And continued planning. There was talk of unsuccessful talks at the St. Danilov Monastery under the patronage of Alexy II, where Valery Zorkin tried to reconcile the rebellious parliamentarians of the left-right opposition and the Yeltsin administration. We thought about how to find out who the snipers were working for, shooting at random passers-by on Novy Arbat from points that were usually occupied by government guards (then I didn’t know Vladimir Dzhigkaev, with whom we recently recalled those days, and he said that just in this time he managed to push himself into the window of the Metelitsa, and behind him the glass shattered from the shot).

On October 3, detachments led by Makashov broke through the blockade, attacked the mayor's office and the Mir hotel, where the police were based, and in the evening they stormed Ostankino, demanding reliable information from television. The government (its part, which seemed to remain loyal to Yeltsin) was confused. When I arrived at Red Square at about seven in the evening, journalist Volodya Kuzmishchev from Chimes, who was standing next to Igor Kharichev and our other acquaintances from the then political party, said, referring to them, that a helicopter with Gennady Burbulis and Mikhail Poltoranin had just landed in the Kremlin . They seem to have demanded drastic measures from Yeltsin. Then, by the way, we went to the Kremlin easily, presenting editorial certificates without any preliminary formalities.

It was dark, between the Kremlin and the Moscow City Council, sympathizers of the democratic camp, onlookers and journalists wandered in a dense crowd. The absence of any organization was evident, people rushed to the center on Gaidar's radio appeal, but no one worked with them further. Three fat men, Gavriil Popov, Yuri Luzhkov and Yegor Gaidar, stepped out from the balcony of the Moscow City Council one after another. Gaidar offered to hand out weapons in order to resist the Makashov detachments. In contrast to him, the popular MP-TV star Alexander Lyubimov called for people to go home. The police were nowhere to be seen, the army did not show itself in any way, trucks with red flags rushed through the streets. Ostankino stopped broadcasting.

I approached one of the Democratic Russia activists I knew and offered to organize the security of Ekho Moskvy, one of the few operational media outlets that had not yet come under attack by the “White House defenders”. Many radio stations also lodged in the Ostankino area, and Echo broadcast from Nikolskaya. Directly under the balcony of the Moscow City Council, I was given a dozen and a half armbands (there were no other weapons), volunteers from the crowd put them on, and we set off from Tverskaya to Nikolskaya.

On the way, we were overgrown with sympathizers from the same turbulent mass; in a short journey, there were more than a hundred of us. Almost at the editorial porch, they met Major Nikolai Moskovchenko, deputy of the Moscow Council from Democratic Russia, with the butt of an old army carbine looming over his shoulder. It was at least like a weapon, although, of course, he could not stop a truck with fifty armed "rebels".

In the yards opposite GUM, they found pieces of rebar, a barrel of gasoline at a construction site, and bottles in a kiosk for receiving glass containers. Under Kolya's supervision, gasoline was poured into them, handkerchiefs went to the wicks. And on the barricades - primarily scaffolding. The first one was built almost at the entrance of "Echo", there was no ordinary police guard at the door. They took over this function, let Matvey Ganapolsky pass, and Natella Boltyanskaya and her girlfriend were advised to go home - away from a possible "male business". It turned out to be a completely possible option when trucks with red flags appeared in the Nikolskaya alignment, but seeing an unfriendly crowd, the “rebels” drove on.

Closer to midnight, all lanes and streets around the radio station were blocked, Innokenty Smoktunovsky and the poet Sergei Gandlevsky were quietly talking about something at the head barricade, there were already about two thousand of us at five barricades. Acting politicians and simply intellectuals streamed past us in a stream, calling for resistance to the putsch.

Those who at first tried to look like a "third force" also wanted to take advantage of the instability. Our sentinels called me from the barricade that blocked the underground passage near the Historical Museum, they said: "parliamenters from Krasnov." Two rather vague talkers tried to persuade Alexander Krasnov, the former chairman of the Krasnopresnensky district council, to accept the leadership. It seems that he is the commander of the barricades, and indeed the savior of citizens and the fatherland from turmoil. We refused in a rather insulting manner.

On the morning of the next day, October 4, in Yegor's office, we watched the broadcast of the tank shooting at the White House. I, who had not departed from the night's experiences, rejoiced, assuring Yegor Vladimirovich that it was simply "smoking out" the rebels, and not killing supporters of legally elected deputies. True, they were no longer the majority. Yakovlev asked: Are we really happy with this resolution of the crisis? We are, among others, Sasha Arkhangelsky, Alla Latynina, Vitaly Yaroshevsky.

The first reports of casualties began to come in: first about those who had been injured during the storming of Ostankino, then about those who died in the ranks of the attackers (and bystanders next to them). All the charms of the civil war. By the morning of October 5, it turned out that the wife of a deputy friend had not heard from him for three days. Went to consult Yegor. He listened, was silent, and wrote on a piece of paper the phone number of his acquaintances from counterintelligence, probably those who gave out the vest. I called, explained why the newspaper was looking for the missing person. An hour later they called back: he was released home.

Here is my friend's story. He then used his mathematical inclinations to set up accounting in the pandemonium of the White House. They counted five thousand people who gathered after Yeltsin's decree. They were divided into rooms and floors, seniors were appointed, their needs were calculated: food, sanitation... Korzhakov's people accepted. Where the rest of the five thousand he counted went, he does not know how many of them died, and how many managed to leave earlier is unknown. In the side street I saw many corpses. On the embankment, they waited for buses for a long time, they did not let people go, then they began to deliver them to the police departments and other detention centers. They treated him, in fact, correctly, only when they got on the bus they hit him with a butt, and in the district department the officers went to the store, fed him with their own money. They let me go from Taganka, obviously, after my call.

He learned the most interesting thing when, together with the investigators, he went to the White House, to his office - to pick up things, including - and a gas pistol. Firstly, all the offices of the embankment from the 6th to the 19th floor were torn apart by shells, so the stories about “a few blank shots” are propaganda lies. Secondly, everything - telephones, then rare faxes, other clerical joys, televisions - disappeared under the vigilant supervision of internal troops. But there were a lot of "pencils" lying around - that's what the investigators called the weighty and unbending "fingers" sharpened at one end from tank tracks. To sharpen such a “pencil”, the lathe must work for more than one day. Prepared, it turns out, the fighters ahead of time. And then all the safes were opened with these "pencils", tank steel easily crushed bureaucratic doors, from a soldier's blow they folded like books. But, according to the deputy's opinion, the marauders did not find anything of particular value there ...

Such are they, our then heroes. And on the one hand, and on the other. Gaidar, Poltoranin, Burbulis, Luzhkov, Korzhakov, Khasbulatov, Makashov, Rutskoi, Oleg Rumyantsev, Ilya Konstantinov. Contradictions raged inside each of the opposing camps, each of the factions of one camp could be found congenial in the other, but the camps did not want to compromise among themselves. But they tried, as if in a gateway, to take each other "at a fright", not embarrassed by bloody provocations. Indistinct ideological left-right positions, weakness in decision-making - and cruelty in their implementation. Soon it will turn into Chechnya, then - "Nord-Ost" and Beslan. And society, not taught to live by the laws and confused in concepts, rushed along all the azimuths of omnivorousness.

Yes, there they are, the roots, many of our today's heroes come from there. Yeltsin allowed the security forces to learn how to deal with the opposition in the new conditions. And they learned not to put all their eggs in one basket. And they realized the attractiveness of the new service with the help of "pencils" and raider seizures. It's a pity that the democratic opposition still hasn't learned to understand the "deception".