Russia, 1993 — palace coup attempt

Event Summary

The dataset records an event coded as a palace coupi in Russia on 23 September 1993, at the outset of the constitutional crisis that pitted President Boris Yeltsin against the country's parliament in a deadly power struggle. On 21 September Yeltsin, locked in conflict with the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People's Deputies over the direction of post Soviet reform, issued a decree dissolving parliament and moving to rule by decree, a step the Constitutional Court held to be unconstitutional. In response, on 23 September the parliament, led by Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, voted to impeach Yeltsin and proclaimed Vice President Alexander Rutskoy the acting president, and the lawmakers barricaded themselves in the White House, leaving Russia briefly with two rival claimants to the presidency.

Ten days of escalating street fighting followed. The confrontation was resolved by force on 3 to 4 October, when Yeltsin ordered the army, which had wavered, to shell the White House with tanks and storm it with special forces, crushing the parliamentary resistance and arresting Rutskoy, Khasbulatov, and the other leaders. Around 147 people died in the deadliest street fighting in Moscow since 1917.