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Melancholic Sovietwave

1993 Russian constitutional crisis

The 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, also known as the 1993 October Coup, Black October, the Shooting of the White House or Ukase 1400, was a political stand-off between the Russian president Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament that was resolved by military force. The relations between the president and the parliament had been deteriorating for some time.

The power struggle reached its crisis on 21 September 1993, when President Yeltsin intended to dissolve the country's highest body (Congress of People's Deputies) and parliament (Supreme Soviet), although the constitution did not give the president the power to do so. Yeltsin justified his orders by the results of the referendum of April 1993.

In response, the parliament declared the president's decision null and void, impeached Yeltsin and proclaimed vice president Aleksandr Rutskoy to be acting president. On 3 October, demonstrators removed police cordons around the parliament and, urged by their leaders, took over the Mayor's offices and tried to storm the Ostankino television centre. The army, which had initially declared its neutrality, stormed the Supreme Soviet building in the early morning hours of 4 October by Yeltsin's order, and arrested the leaders of the resistance. At the climax of the crisis, Russia was thought by some to be "on the brink" of civil war.The ten-day conflict became the deadliest single event of street fighting in Moscow's history since the Russian Revolution.

According to the General Prosecutor's Office, 147 people were killed and 437 wounded.