Radio War Nerd #260 — Yeltsin's 1993 Coup, Part 1: Background (Patreon)

Recorded: December 22, 2020

We recover lost history from Boris Yeltsin's coup against the Russian parliament in October 1993. Yeltsin's coup came courtesy of his biggest sponsors: then-President Bill Clinton, the international financial institutions, and their waterboys in the western press corps, who falsely portrayed the US-backed coup as a heroic defense of Russian democracy, before flushing the sordid episode down the memory hole. 

In Part I, we look at the background and lead-up to the coup, from the 1990 Russian parliamentary elections that helped propel Boris Yeltsin's rise in the late Soviet era, to the controversial April 1993 referendum that Yeltsin used to justify bombing Russia's parliament 6 months later.

First, the War Nerd and Ames talk about UK lockdown follies & Henri de Monfried's book "Pearls, Farms and Hashish"...

At 26:58 - we start our series on Yeltsin's 1993 Coup...

Images:

*August 1991 coup fail: Boris Yeltsin — with support from the democratically-elected Russian parliament (background, "White House") plus covert support from the US National Security Agency — defeats a hapless antidemocratic coup by Soviet military-intelligence brass. 

*October 1993 coup success: Yeltsin — with overt support from President Clinton, the EU, and the western press corps — bombs the democratically-elected Russian parliament (background, "White House") into submission, killing hundreds.

Total time: 1:37:19

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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