Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 6, 1993 TAG: 9310060268
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"We're about a stone's throw from the White House," High said during a telephone interview Tuesday, referring to the Russian parliament building stormed by government troops. "We've had a bird's-eye view of the whole thing.
"It's just been incredible. We could hear the gunfire; we could hear the bombs going off. Last night it looked from our balcony like the CNN From the 11th floor of 49 Ulitsa Gertsena, John High and his wife, Katya, watched and listened as forces loyal to Russian President Boris Yeltsin pounded the parliament building with artillery and gunfire. coverage a few years ago from Baghdad," when U.S. warplanes began bombing the Iraqi capital.
From the 11th floor of 49 Ulitsa Gertsena, High and his wife, Katya, watched and listened as forces loyal to Russian President Boris Yeltsin pounded the parliament building with artillery and gunfire.
"On a personal level, it was pretty intimidating," said Katya, director of the America Center in Moscow, a U.S. government-funded library. "The shots started and it ricocheted everywhere."
Except for a 20-minute walk, Katya High stayed in Monday, choosing the safety of her apartment over the exhilaration - and danger - of the streets.
"It's definitely an experience for those of us in the States who aren't used to that kind of action," she said. "I'd say by the end of the day my stomach was in knots. For about 10 hours, [the fighting] was non-stop."
John High, a Fulbright scholar from San Francisco State University, chose the streets - three times. He joined a rally of 100,000 pro-Yeltsin supporters near the Kremlin, and later walked the streets during the shelling of the White House.
By Monday evening, it appeared to be over. The ringleaders - Vice President Alexander Rutskoi and parliamentary Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov - had surrendered, along with scores of their supporters. But some snipers remained, heightening tension among Muscovites moving along streets near the blackened White House.
High said he was more frightened Tuesday as he headed to his office at Moscow Linguistics University, where he teaches creative writing and contemporary American literature. A "surreal quiet and stillness when you can actually hear everything" hung over Moscow streets, he said.
Based upon talks with ordinary Russians on the street and at the university, High said he sensed widespread, if temporary, support for Yeltsin's military action. "If he had stormed the White House first and made a hero out of Khasbulatov and Rutskoi, it might have been different."
Public opinion polls reported in the Russian press have found a marked degree of indifference to the persistent political squabbling between Yeltsin and his parliamentary rivals, High said. But their brazen power grab and the ensuing violence appears to have tipped the scales - for now.
A more frightening notion: What could have happened - or could happen - if the Russian army splits into warring factions, possibly unleashing the accrued might of the Red Army against Russians?
For tense hours Sunday and Monday, High said, the Moscow rumor mill had a tank division heading to the White House with the intention of supporting Rutskoi, a former Soviet commander in Afghanistan. And the crack Dzherzhinsky troops had decided to fight for Khasbulatov, rumor-mongers said.
Both were wrong.
"If the army had split, who knows what would have happened?" High said, underscoring the gravity of events. "It's not over yet."
Memo: story ran on A2 in the Metro edition.