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Televorot: The Role of Television Coverage in Russia's August 1991 Coup

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Victoria E. Bonnell  and
Gregory Freidin
Victoria E. Bonnell
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Gregory Freidin
Affiliation:
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University
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Extract

When the State Committee on the State of Emergency (henceforth the Emergency Committee) seized power in the early morning of 19 August 1991, it took steps immediately to assert control over Central Television, radio and the press. At one o'clock in the morning on 19 August, Gennadii Shishkin, first deputy director of TASS, was awakened by a phone call from Leonid Kravchenko, the conservative director of Gosteleradio (the State Committee on Television and Radio) and asked to come to Central Committee headquarters.2 By 2 a.m., the chief editor of the nightly news program "Vremia" had been awakened. Then, at dawn, military vehicles and paratroopers surrounded the Gosteleradio building at Ostankino.

Type
Review Article
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , Winter 1993 , pp. 810 - 838
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1993

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References

We are grateful to Elliott Mossman for proposing that we write a paper on Russian television coverage of the August 1991 coup. His support and encouragement helped us to complete this project. Joelle Ehre at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University, and PeggeJ. Abrams at the Media Center, Duke University, were extremely helpful in providing video tapes of Russian television broadcasts during the week of the coup. We would like to thank Nancy Condee, George Breslauer, Todd Gitlin, Eric Naiman, Anne Nesbet, Vladimir Padunov, Yuri Slezkine, Victor Zaslavsky and Reginald Zelnik for their valuable comments and suggestions. An earlier draft of the paper was presented at the Fourth Meeting of the Working Group on Contemporary Russian Cul ture, "Russian Culture/Soviet Hieroglyphics," held with support of the Social Science Research Council, the British Film Institute and the School for Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of London, 5-9 July 1993.

1. “A different drama is now playing …” Boris Pasternak, “Hamlet. ”

2. In February 1991, USSR Gosteleradio was renamed the All-Union State Company for Television and Radio Broadcasting. On the situation in Gosteleradio before the coup, see Tolz, Vera, “The Soviet Media,” RFE/RL Research Report 1, no. 1 (3 January 1992): 29–30 Google Scholar.

3. For details, see Bill Keller's interview with Sergei Medvedev, “Getting the News on ‘Vremia’ ” and the “Chronology of Events of August 19, 20, 21” in Victoria E. Bonnell, Ann Cooper and Gregory Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades: Eyewitness Accounts of the August 1991 Coup (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), part 5. Accounts of the coup and its aftermath may be found in the following Russian sources: Avgust-91 (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1991); Deviatnadtsatoe, dvadtsatoe, dvadtsat'pervoe…: svobodnoe radio dlia svobodnykh liudei (Moscow: Shakur-Invest, 1991); Krasnoe Hi beloe? Drama Avgusta-91: Fakty, gipotezy, stolknovenie mnenii (Moscow, 1991); Korichnevyi putch krasnykh, avgust ‘91: Khronika, svidel'stva pressy, fotodokumenty (Moscow: Tekst, 1991); Khronika putcha: chas za chasom: Sobytiia 19-22 avgusta 1991 v svodkakh Rossiiskogo Informatsionnogo Agentstva (Leningrad, Agentstvo 1991); Putch: Khronika trevozhnykh dnei (Moscow, 1991); Stepankov, V. and Lisov, E., Kremlevskii zagovor (Moscow: Progress, 1992 Google Scholar. English language sources on the coup include the following: Billington, James H., Russia Transformed: Breakthrough to Hope: Moscow, August 1991 (New York: Free Press, 1992 Google Scholar; Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades: Eyewitness Accounts of the August 1991 Coup; Dunlop, John B., The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993 Google Scholar); Gorbachev, Mikhail, The August Coup: The Truth and the Lessons (New York: Harper Collins, 1991 Google Scholar); Amy Knight, “The Coup that Never Was: Gorbachev and the Forces of Reaction,” Problems of Communism (November/December 1991); Stuart H. Loory and Ann Imse, eds., Seven Days That Shook the World (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1991); Michael Mandelbaum, “Coup de Grace: The End of the Soviet Union,” Foreign Affairs 71, no. 1 (1991-1992): 164-83; William E. Odom, “Alternative Perspectives on the August Coup,” Problems of Communism (November/December 1991): 13-17; Remnick, David, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York: Random House 1993)Google Scholar; Lilia Shevtsova, “The August Coup and the Soviet Collapse,” Survival 34, no. 1 (Spring 1992); Shub, Anatole, “The Fourth Russian Revolution: Historical Perspectives,” Problems of Communism (November/ December 1991): 20–26Google Scholar; Smith, Hedrick, The New Russians (New York: Random House, 1991 Google Scholar; Sturua, Melor, “The Real Coup,” Foreign Policy, no. 85 (Winter 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Resolution No. 1, issued by the Emergency Committee on 19 August, decreed that a specially created organ under the GKChP would “establish control over the means of communication.” Resolution No. 3, issued on 20 August, gave further details concerning Gosteleradio's control over all Central and local TV and radio broadcasting in the USSR. The resolution prohibited television and radio broadcasts by the RSFSR channels, especially “Moscow Echo,” because they “do not promote the process of stabilization of the situation in the country.” The USSR KGB and MVD were authorized to take measures to carry out the resolution. Avgust-91.27, 75-76.

5. “Radio Rossiia” and “Ekho Moskvy,” both established in 1990, continued to broadcast from the White House and other locations during the coup, as did several other stations on short and medium wave frequencies (Putch: khronika trevozhnykh dnei, 91-92). The nine newspapers permitted to continue publication were: Trud, Rabochaia tribuna, Izvestiia, Pravda, Krasnaia zvezda, Sovetskaia Rossiia, Moskovskaia pravda, Leningradskoe znamia and Sel'skaia zhizn'. During the coup, Soviet citizens with short wave radios were able to receive news from foreign stations, most importantly Radio Liberty and the BBC.

6. The following television programs were viewed for this essay (all dates refer to 1991): “Vremia ”: 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25 August, 19 September; Vzgliad “: 22, 23, 25 August; ” Fakt “: 20 August; ” Piatoe koleso “: 20 August; ” 600 sekund “: 20 August; ” Vesti “: 21, 22 August; ” Novosti “: 19 September; ” Do shestnadtsati i starshe “: 19 September. Televised press conferences: Gennadii Yanaev et al: 19 August; Vladimir Shcherbakov: 21 August; Mikhail Gorbachev: 22 August; Arkadii Vol'skii et al: 21 August. Other coverage: session of the Russian Parliament: 21 August; funeral: 24 August; interview with Yeltsin: 25 August.

7. On Soviet television before 1985, see Hopkins, Mark H., Mass Media in the USSR (New York: Pegasus, 1970 Google Scholar; Mickiewicz, Ellen Propper, Media and the Russian Public (New York: Praeger, 1981 Google Scholar); idem, Split Signals: Television and Politics in the Soviet Union (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); ; Feigelson, Kristian, L'U.R.S.S. et sa television (Paris: Institut national de l'audiovisual, 1990 Google Scholar). The last years of Brezhnev's regime saw a torrent of jokes about his slurred speech and the official doctoring of recordings. In one of the most popular jokes of this type, audio engineers are trying to puzzle out what Brezhnev had in mind when he offered praise to sosiski sranye (crappy hotdogs). They finally realize that what he meant to say was sotsialisticheskie strany (socialist countries) and spliced those words into the tape.

8. For a perceptive discussion of the early impact of glasnost’ on television, see Mickiewicz, Split Signals; James Dingley, “Soviet Television and Glasnost',” in Julian Graffy and Geoffrey A. Hosking, eds., Culture and the Media in the USSR Today (New York: MacMillan, 1989); Feigelson, L'U.R.S.S. et sa television; Brian McNair, Glasnost, Perestroika, and the Soviet Media (London: Routledge, 1991); Marsha Siefert, ed., Mass Culture and Perestroika in the Soviet Union (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

9. In addition, Kravchenko interfered with the broadcasts of “TSN,” a news program that provided an alternative to the official news, “Vremia.” His move to suppress “TSN” in March 1991 was a response to the program's coverage of the events in Lithuania and Latvia in January. Under his leadership, Central Television broadcasts “constantly criticized the RSFSR leadership and the democratic forces opposing the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). See Tolz,” The Soviet Media,” 29-30 for more details on Kravchenko's efforts to curb glasnost’ on Central Television.

10. Later in April 1991, the union recalled Kravchenko as its representative to the USSR Supreme Soviet, a position to which he had been elected by the union in 1989. Among those who resigned were Vladimir Pozner, Vladimir Tsvetov, Aleksandr Liubimov and Vladimir Molchanov (ibid.).

11. In the era of glasnost', the Leningrad studio produced some of the most probing and provocative programs on television anywhere in the USSR, including “600 Seconds,” “The Fifth Wheel” and “Alternative” (Sergei Aleksandrovich Muratov, “Soviet Television and the Structure of Broadcasting Authority,” in Siefert, ed., Mass Culture and Perestroika: 174).

12. See the interview with Anatolii Sobchak, “Breakthrough: The Coup in St. Petersburg” in Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades, part 3; Fiegelson, 85.

13. “Script,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary, is, among other things, “a text of a play, broadcast, or motion picture; especially the copy of a text used by the director or performer. ”

14. For a pioneering discussion of a similar symbiosis between television and politics in the United States, see Gitlin, Todd, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media, in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980 Google Scholar.

15. Burke, Kenneth, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969 Google Scholar); Turner, Victor, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphor: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974 Google Scholar; Hermassi, Karen, Polity and Theater in Historical Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977 Google Scholar); Geertz, Clifford, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power,” in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 121–46Google Scholar, idem., Negara: The Theatre State In Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Iu. Lotman, “Teatr i teatral'nost’ v stroe kul'tury nachala XIX veka,” Stat'i po tipologii kul'tury (Tartu; Tartuskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1973), 42-73; Iu. Lotman and B. Uspenskii, “The Stage and Paintings as Code Mechanisms for Cultural Behavior in the Early Nineteenth Century” in The Semiotics of Russian Culture, Michigan Slavic Contributions no. 11, ed. Ann Shukman (Ann Arbor: Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, 1984). For a study of bolshevik holiday celebrations as political theater before the era of television, see Geldern, James von, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1921 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993 Google Scholar.

16. Gorbachev, , The August Coup, 23 Google Scholar. Gorbachev echoes here almost verbatim the statements he made in interviews immediately following his return to Moscow on 22 August 1991. In his televised press conference on that day, he also used such terms as “tiazhelaia drama” (a heavy drama) and “fars” (farce) to describe the coup d'etat. In his 25 August interview with Soviet TV, Yeltsin, too, resorted several times to the term “script” in describing the plotters’ course of action. Aleksandr Kabakov, a popular writer and the author of the sensational 1991 best-seller Nevozvrashchenets, claimed in the TV program “Vzgliad,” aired on 23 August 1991, that his most recent novel, Sochinitel', had scripted in advance many of the developments that took place on 19-21 August (we thank Nancy Condee for the reference to Sochinitel’). Characteristically, General Aleksandr Lebed’ who, together with his commanding officer General Pavel Grachev, did most to prevent the storming of the White House, entitled his forthcoming memoirs SpektakV nazyvalsia putch (the show was called putsch). The memoir is currently being serialized in Literaturnaia Rossiia (the first installment, Literaturnaia Rossiia, no. 34-35 [24 September 1993]).

17. The following were issued at the inception of the coup: a decree by Gennadii Yanaev announcing his assumption of power because of Gorbachev's ill-health; an “Appeal to the Soviet People” from the Emergency Committee; “Resolution No. 1 of the Emergency Committee ” ; a declaration from Yanaev, Pavlov and Baklanov; Yanaev's appeal to foreign nations and the United Nations Secretary General. In addition, there was a statement by A. Luk'ianov, president of the USSR Supreme Soviet on the Union Treaty.

18. Scott McMichael, R, “Moscow Prelude: Warning Signs Ignored,” Report on the USSR 3, no. 36 (1991): 8–11Google Scholar.

19. The “Appeal to the Citizens of Russia” was co-authored and cosigned by Ivan Silaev, chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers, and Ruslan Khasbulatov, acting chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet.

20. “Decree of the President of the RSFSR No. 59” (declaring the Emergency Committee unconstitutional, its actions null and void, and those involved subject to criminal penalties); “Appeal of the President of the RSFSR to Soldiers and Officers of the USSR Armed Forces, KGB, MVD ” ; and “Decrees of the President of the RSFSR” nos. 60, 61, 62, 63. The texts of all the preceding appear in Avgust-91: 34-42, 61-62.

21. “Chronology of Events of August 19, 20, 21,” in Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades.

22. Sergei Medevdev's 19 August “Vremia” segment discussed below included a Moscow intellectual who explicitly drew the connection between the events in Vilnius and the August coup. For A. Akhmedov, a member of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan who went to Moscow during the coup, this association was also self-evident. As he said during the funeral on 24 August: “I came to Moscow as soon as the coup started… .It was a continuation of the bloody events in Baku and Vilnius, where I was during the January bloodshed. And the three boys whom we are burying today died for the same cause that people in other republics have given their lives for” (V. Konovalov, E. Maksimova and L. Savel'eva, “Proshchanie,” Avgust 91: 217). See also Valerii Zavorotnyi's “Letter from Leningrad” which recounts that the leader of the team building barricades in Leningrad on 19 August had learned barricade construction in Vilnius where he helped to guard the Parliament building as a member of the Leningrad detachment of young volunteers (Bonnell, Cooper, Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades, part 4).

23. Prior to glasnost', television announcers read their texts “practically by rote, and words like T and ‘I think’ were excluded.” The style of the announcer and anchorperson had been changing under Gorbachev; on the day of the coup the style of presentation reverted back to the old form. On changes in style under glasnost', see Muratov, “Soviet Television and the Structure of Broadcasting Authority,” in Siefert, Mass Culture and Perestroika in the Soviet Union, 175.

24. The statement was dated 18 August 1991 and signed “Gosudarstvennyi komitet po chrezvychainomu polozheniiu v SSSR.” When the text was published in Izvestiia on 20 August, it was given the title “Appeal to the Soviet People. ”

25. These are the closing words of the “Appeal to the Soviet People.” The original Russian text is reprinted in Avgust-91: 20-24. A translation can be found in Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades, part 1.

26. In the days before perestroika, Gosteleradio characteristically responded to dramatic official events, such as the death of a leading official, by replacing regular TV programming with classical music and ballet.

27. It is quite possible that the members of the Emergency Committee taking part in the press conference were not aware that the press conference was being broadcast live. The cameras were not turned off right after the press conference drew to a close but lingered for a minute or two, long enough for the viewers to be privy to the following exchange between an enterprising reporter and Yanaev. The reporter: “Gennadii Ivanovich [Yanaev], can you give us assurances that this press conference will be broadcast in its entirety?” Yanaev: “Well, I don't think I am the man to answer this question. You shouldn't really address it to me…” The reporter: “Can you give us assuarances that this press conference will be broadcast to the public in its entirety?” Yanaev: “No really, you should not adress this question to me. It is not up to me to decide. .. ”

28. An English translation of the press conference appears in Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades, part 1.

29. Lisov, Stepankov and, Kremlevskii zagovor, 89–91 Google Scholar.

30. Aleksandr Tiziakov was president of the Association of State Enterprises and Industrial Construction, Transport and Communications. Vasilii Starodubtsev was chairman of the Peasants Union. Oleg Baklanov was first deputy chairman of the National Defense Council and leader of the military industrial complex.

31. Remnick, , Lenin's Tomb: 473–74Google Scholar.

32. The question about Yanaev's health was asked by the correspondent from La Stampa. It was a double-entendre question, referring not only to the alleged sickness of Gorbachev, but also to the answer Yanaev gave when he was asked about his health at the Supreme Soviet at the time he was being considered for the post of vice-president. “My health is all right,” he responded, “My wife ain't complaining.” The question about Pinochet was asked by the correspondent from Corriere delta Sera. A Russian transcript of the press conference appears in Avgust-91: 43-61. An English translation can be found in Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades, part 1.

33. These statements appeared in an interview with Korsak, “Nam byl otdan prikaz arestovat’ Popova, ,” Literaturnaia gazeta (11 September 1991)Google Scholar. A translation appears in Russian Politics and Law: A Journal of Translation 31, no. 1: 16-20.

34. See the interview with KGB Major General Viktor Karpukhin and subordinate officers, “Oni otkazalis’ shturmovat’ Belyi dom,” Literaturnaia gazeta (28 August 1991): 5, translated in Russia Politics and Law 31, no. 1: 8-15.

35. The interview with Sobchak was conducted by Golovkova, A. and Chernova, A. and appeared originally in Moscow News, 26 August 1991 Google Scholar. An English translation of the interview with Anatolii Sobchak, “Breakthrough: The Coup in St. Petersburg,” can be found in Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades, part 3.

36. Beginning on 1 January 1968, “Vremia” appeared every evening at 9 p.m. The program lasted 40-45 minutes, sometimes longer on the occasion of a major policy speech. American research on Soviet television, published in 1987, disclosed that “Vremia” generally covered 22 news items, with precedence going to domestic news. In the second half of the 1980s, some modifications in “Vremia” took place, such as the inclusion of more foreign news. Around the time of the coup, on a typical evening “Vremia” had an average viewing audience of 150 million people or over 80% of the adult population in the Soviet Union ( Mickiewicz, , Split Signals: 8–9Google Scholar and chap. 3). See also Dingley, “Soviet Television and Glasnost'” in Graffy and Hosking, eds., Culture and the Media: 8-9.

37. For Medvedev's comments on the circumstances surrounding the preparation of the segment, see his interview with Bill Keller, “Getting the News on ‘Vremia’ ” in Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades, part 5.

38. Whatever the source of the clip of Yeltsin on the tank, it was not acknowledged in the 19 August “Vremia” broadcast. See “Getting the News on ‘Vremia’ ” in Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades, part 5.

39. The Russian text has been reprinted in Avgust-91: 35-36. For an English translation, see Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades, part 3.

40. The flag has a long history in Russia, dating to 1799 when it was introduced as the country's merchant flag. In 1883 it became an alternative civil flag and in 1914 Tsar Nicholas II added a double-headed eagle, the symbol of the monarchy. The flag, minus the eagle, served the Provisional Government but was abandoned after the bolsheviks seized power. Resurrected after 1985 as a symbol of Russian national identity and citizenship, the tricolor flag encapsulated a set of substantive, symbolic and rhetorical issues that remained central throughout the crisis.

41. This information was conveyed by Aleksandr Petrov, CNN general manager of Soviet sales and liaison with Soviet TV in Moscow. He observed: “We can thank the coup plotters for their ineptitude in underestimating the power of CNN” (Betsy McKay, “From Coup to Champagne,” Advertising Age 62, no. 35 [26 August 1991]: 37).

42. See the Interview with Medvedev, “Getting the News on ‘Vremia’ ” in Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades, part 5, 297-98.

43. Ibid., 298.

44. Ibid.; Remnick, , Lenin's Tomb, 474 Google Scholar.

45. Medvedev, “Getting the News on ‘Vremia, ’ ” 298.

46. Bonner's remark came at the mass rally held at the White House at mid-day on Tuesday. Sobchak made the remark that evening on the Leningrad television news program, “Fakt. ”

47. Medvedev, “Getting the News on ‘Vremia, ’ ” 298.

48. Literally perevorot means the turning of things upside down. In modern usage, however, the term has a clear political connotation. The 1939 edition of the Ushakov Tolkovyi slovar1 russkogo iazyka, vol. Ill, eds. B.M. Volin and D.N. Ushakov (107) defines a perevorot as a sharp change in the existing social and political order, such as the October perevorot of 1917.

49. This segment was put together by R. Oganesov and B. Antsiferov and concentrated on the Moscow scene in Manege Square.

50. For a provocative discussion of style, see Hebdige, Dick, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1983 Google Scholar.

51. For accounts of the Emergency Committee's failure to persuade military and KGB officers to execute orders against Yeltsin and his democratic supporters, see introduction, in Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades; Remnick, Lenin's Tomb, 482-84; Lisov, Stepankov and, Kremlevskii zagovor, 171–80Google Scholar and elsewhere; “They Refused to Storm the White House” and “ ‘We Were Given the Order to Arrest Popov…’ ” in Russian Politics and Law 31, no. 1 (Summer 1992): 8-20 (Russian citations of these articles appear above in notes 33 and 34).

52. For the Russian text of the decree, see Avgust-91: 85-86. On 27 August, Kravchenko was replaced by Egor Iakovlev, chief editor of Moscow News. Iakovlev reversed some of Kravchenko's key decisions and restored “Vzgliad” as well as “TSN” with its controversial moderators (Tolz, “The Soviet Media,” 30).

53. TV programming returned to normal on Thursday morning (McKay, “From Coup to Champagne,” 37).

54. Three men perished: D.A. Komar', I.M. Krichevskii and V.A. Usov. At the time this report was aired, it was generally believed that the fatalities had occurred during an attack on the White House. Only in the days and weeks following the event did it become clear that, although a military attack on the White House had been planned, it never actually took place. The three deaths occurred when a column of APCs, trapped by the barricades, attempted to extricate themselves by ramming through a row of streetcars blocking an underpass. In the ensuing melee, two of the men were shot and a third crushed by an APC.

55. For an English translation of this speech, see Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia on the Barricades, part 3.

56. The text of Gorbachev's remarks was published in Pravda, 23 August 1991. It is reprinted in Avgust-91: 102-3.

57. For the Russian text of Gorbachev's speech, see Avgust-91: 109-12. Later that day he made another extensive statement to introduce his press conference. The Russian text appears in Avgust-91: 112-28. A partial English translation may be found in Bonnell, Cooper and Freidin, eds., Russia at the Barricades, part 3.

58. The Russian Orthodox funeral service was for Dmitrii Komar’ and Vladimir Usov and conducted in the Vagan'kovo Cemetery by the Patriarch; the Jewish service was for Il'ia Krichevskii. Jewish funerals are not held on Saturdays. An exception was made in this case to coordinate with the two Russian Orthodox funerals, which according to tradition were scheduled for the third day after the deaths. Because the Jewish funeral was held on the Sabbath, the rabbi and cantor (from one of Moscow's two synagogues, both Orthodox) could not offer a regular service in a synagogue.

59. On the political authority of martyrdom in the Russian intelligentsia tradition, see Mikhail Gershenzon, “Tvorcheskoe samosoznanie” and Sergei Bulgakov's “Geroizm i podvizhnichestvo,” in M. O. Gershenzon, ed., Vekhi: sbornik statei o russkoi intelligentsii, 2d ed. (Moscow, 1909), 84 and 37, respectively. On the special significance of the institution of martyrdom for eastern Christianity, see Brown, Peter, “Parting of the Ways,” Society and the Holy In Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982 Google Scholar. On the institution of martyrdom in Russian culture see Cherniavsky, Michael, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961 Google Scholar); and Obolensky, D, “Russia's Byzantine Heritage,” in The Structure of Russian History, ed. Cherniavsky, M. (New York: Random House, 1970 Google Scholar). Among the more recent works on this subject, see G. Freidin, “By the Walls of the Church and State: On the Authority of Literature in Russia's Modern Tradition,” Russian Review 52, no. 2 (April 1993): 149-63. See also the seminal work on the relationship between violence, martyrdom, and political authority by Girard, Rene, La violence et le sacre (Paris: B. Grasset, 1972)Google Scholar.

60. In eulogising the victims in Manege Square, Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov spoke of them as follows: “Volodia Usov, an employee at a joint venture, an entrepreneur; Dima Komar', a worker, and Afghan veteran; and Il'a Krichevskii, an artist. For six years they had been thwarted [by those who had opposed reform]. They had hindered Usov from being an entrepreneur, Komar’ from being a worker and Krichevskii from being able to create…” (cited in Dunlop, The Rise of Russia, 230).