Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

by Michael Parenti

A socialist critic of communism, Boris Kagarlitsky argued, “In fact, there was no coup at all.” The soldiers were unarmed and confused, the tanks called out were undirected, “and the leaders of the so-called coup never even seriously tried to take power.” The real coup, says Kagarlitsky, came in the aftermath when Boris Yeltsin used the incident to exceed his constitutional powers and dismantle the Soviet Union itself, absorbing all its powers into his own Russian Republic. While claiming to be undoing the “old regime,” Yeltsin overthrew the new democratic Soviet government of 1989-1991. In late 1993, facing strong popular resistance to his harsh free-market policies, Yeltsin went further. He forcibly disbanded the Russian parliament and every other elected representative body in the country, including municipal and regional councils. He abolished Russia’s Constitutional Court and launched an armed attack upon the parliamentary building, killing an estimated two thousand resisters and demonstrators. Thousands more were jailed without charges or a trial, and hundreds of elected officials were placed under investigation. Yeltsin banned labor unions from all political activities, suppressed dozens of publications, exercised monopoly control over all broadcast media, and permanently outlawed fifteen political parties. He unilaterally scrapped the constitution and presented the public with a new one that gave the president nearly absolute power over policy while reducing the de...