Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

Wednesday, August 21: The day breaks cold and wet. Kostya and Larisa and I go to the Parliament, where we find a damp version of the previous day’s rally. We want to see where the men were killed last night—the three fatalities, apparently the only ones so far, occurred at 1:00 a.m. in a tunnel as they attempted to block the observation slit in an oncoming infantry fighting vehicle—so at about noon we head off together toward Smolenskaya. Where the bodies were dragged after the shooting, flowers are scattered; perhaps a hundred people have gathered to speak of the tragedy.

A young man who looks like some early Bolshevik, or like the student from a Chekhov play—unshaven, wire-rimmed spectacles, crumpled cap held in a tense, pale hand—comes running from the barricade. He announces through a megaphone that tanks are approaching and asks for volunteers to come and stop them. Without discussion, we all follow him to the outer limit of the many-tiered system of defenses we have built and range ourselves along it. We are prepared for anything, though there have been so many rumors of tanks that none of us really expects to see one.

In fact, they arrive within minutes. I am petrified; facing down tanks has not previously been a part of my job description. But I am also exhilarated by the intense purposefulness of our stance. I have never before had to defend my ideals this way, and though doing so in this instance is frightening, it also feels like a privilege. There is something oddly romantic about our encounter with brutality. The soldier in the first tank explains that they have come to destroy the barricade and orders us to move, adding that they will have to run us down if we do not give way. The man with the megaphone responds that we are holding our ground not in aggression, but to defend the rights of the people. “We are only a few, but there are tens of thousands at the Parliament, and across all this country,” he says. He speaks of democracy and reminds the young men in the tanks of the terrors of the past. Others join in; Kostya and Larisa both declaim to the drivers. We emphasize that no one can force orders on them. “If you do this, it is because you have chosen to do it,” says the man with the megaphone.

The soldiers look at one another and then they look at us. We are so wet, so cold, so impotent in all but the courage of our convictions—so entirely persuaded that we speak in the name of righteousness, but so transparently lacking in material defenses—that the soldiers might easily laugh. Instead, after staring at us intensely for a full minute, the driver of the front tank shrugs as though he were doing nothing more than giving way to the inevitable course of destiny. “We must bow to the will of the people,” he says, and instructs us to move aside so the tanks can make U-turns. It takes a lot of space and some time for a tank to make a U-turn.

“Why do you think they are really leaving?” I ask Kostya.

“Because of us,” he replies. “Because we are here, and because of what we’ve said.”

All of us—friends and strangers—embrace, then stand and cheer until we are hoarse.

Only after it is over do we feel the particular enthralling mixture of our receding fear and our brush with heroism. Then we decide that we have had enough of bald courage for the moment, and so we collect friends, to whom we enthusiastically recount our adventure, and go back to my hotel, where we have a good lunch and are proud. My visa expires today, so I leave for the airport after lunch. The others are going home to sleep and recover and make phone calls and prepare for the night’s vigil.

But that vigil does not come. By the time I check in for my flight, the coup has failed, defeated in part by internal argument and in part by soldiers who deferred to human barricades.

For the artists, this has brought another kind of liberation. Freedom has always been their obsession; in these three days they have had the luxury of physically defending it. “We won the war,” says Kostya when I speak to him later on the phone. “You, me, and all our friends.” He pauses for a second. “But it was my flag.”

RUSSIA

Young Russia’s Defiant Decadence

New York Times Magazine, July 18, 1993