The balanced and well-researched film was released in 2013, to the 20th anniversary of the “Bloody October”, when most of the direct participants of the events were still alive.

In his author’s project “White House, Black Smoke”, NTV columnist Vladimir Chernyshyov is trying to find the true causes of what happened in October 1993. The film crew managed to collect versions of what happened from almost all participants in the events and build from this mosaic a picture of the turmoil into which society plunged after the collapse of the USSR.

Backup at Rumble.
The transcript of the film is further down.

Related materials from our past publications

• “The Yanks Gave the Order: Fire!” – Witness Testimony of Iona Andronov, a Defender of the “White house”
• Newspaper “Pravda” commemorating the 30th anniversary of the “Black October” of 1993
• The Bloody October of 1993. Retrospect. The Last Interview with Ruslan Hasbulatov
• Shooting of the “White House” in October of ’93 in the recollections of the contemporaries
• Yeltsin declared communism defeated. Forgetting to clarify that there were still Communists left in his own country. June 20, 1992
• Sergey Shahray: the first and main reason for the collapse of the USSR was the destruction of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)
• If you think the collapse of the Soviet Union was good for the people, you should think again
• Mama-Motherland – A song by Oleg Gazmanov and Alexander Marshal, with lament by Mihail Zhvanetsky
• Soviet Union – Kersari Music Video

The People Will Curse Yeltsin

Towards the end of the documentary, fragments of Yeltsin’s address from October 4, 1993 are given.

The complete text of Yeltsin’s address from October 4, 1993 can be found on the site of the Historian Magazine. A recording on the YouTube channel of Yeltsin Centre (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GERxlYw5d2k) only shows a part of the speech.

The epochal document is unique in that not a single word of the address corresponds to reality, there is not a single grain of truth in it. But Yeltsin successfully applied the Western principle of blaming your opponent for what you have done yourself. On October 4, 1993 a fascist-capitalist counter-revolution that had been in progress in Russia ever since August of 1991, was concluded.

On the afternoon of October 4, 1993, when the shooting in Moscow began to subside, Boris Yeltsin addressed the nation with an explanation of what had happened. According to him, “communist revanchists” and “fascist leaders” were to blame for everything.
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