To the Abyss and Back

LENIN would have said, “I told you so.” There are no kind ways to stage a coup. It matters not whether the coup is mounted by sitting presidents or against them, in the name of democracy or in opposition to it. Boris Yeltsin’s action on September 21 was a presidential coup. It overturned lawful, if widely loathed, authority and an established, if unworkable, constitution. Like any coup worthy of the name, it was backed by overwhelming force.

Clausewitz said that, though war does not have its own grammar, it has its own syntax. So it is with any kind of force, and so it was this past fortnight. At a critical point in the presidential-parliamentary struggle, Yeltsin disregarded this syntax. Miraculously, his error roused his opponents, Aleksandr Rutskoi and Ruslan Khasbulatov, to folly. So deranged and dramatic was their folly that it provided the means of Yeltsin’s deliverance. Had they desisted, Yeltsin would have had to choose between international approval and the crushing of his opponents. On Monday, October 4, he secured both.

JS

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James Sherr

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LENIN would have said, “I told you so.” There are no kind ways to stage a coup. It matters not whether the coup is mounted by sitting presidents or against them, in the name of democracy or in opposition to it. Boris Yeltsin’s action on September 21 was a presidential coup. It overturned lawful, if widely loathed, authority and an established, if unworkable, constitution. Like any coup worthy of the name, it was backed by overwhelming force.

Clausewitz said that, though war does not have its own grammar, it has its own syntax. So it is with any kind of force, and so it was this past fortnight. At a critical point in the presidential-parliamentary struggle, Yeltsin disregarded this syntax. Miraculously, his error roused his opponents, Aleksandr Rutskoi and Ruslan Khasbulatov, to folly. So deranged and dramatic was their folly that it provided the means of Yeltsin’s deliverance. Had they desisted, Yeltsin would have had to choose between international approval and the crushing of his opponents. On Monday, October 4, he secured both.