MOSCOW POSTCARD OORA! OORA! By Liesl Schillinger By midnight Sunday in Moscow, the government tanks were pulling up to the White House and to Ostankino, Russia's state television station, from which, five hours earlier, a photographer and I had been running, as the machine-gun fire started to patter and the crowd started to scream. We had watched as a green truck of the anti-Yeltsin contingent rammed the doors of one of the Ostankino buildings, the crowd crying "Oora!, Oora!" and waving red flags. As the truck backed up, then slammed into the doors again, glass shattering, metal buckling, there was still a sense that this must not be for real, that the drab, old-fashioned trucks were part of a giant model-train landscape gone haywire, a vehicular Jurassic Park. In spite of the thousands of angry and sometimes armed men, including government soldiers who hid behind metal shields; in spite of the pro-Yeltsin snipers inside the buildings, shadowed against windows; in spite of the relentless rush of honking cars and commandeered trucks and buses carrying more protesters, who whooped from windows triumphantly; and in spite of the military trucks that passed, blaring orders for everyone to leave--the first shots came as a surprise. The shots were followed by more shots, and then the clang of metal dropping into grenade launchers, and then there was an explosion, and, soon after, there was fire. The ground shook, and as we fled, Russians who were taking cover further up the road asked us what was happening back at the doors, and took to their heels for the mile run to the metro station when we told them. By morning, Ostankino had been taken back by Yeltsin's army, and the White House was under siege. At 7 a.m., from the balcony of my apartment 800 yards from the White House, twenty-four floors up, I watched the tanks and personnel carriers roll down Novy Arbat toward the building. Within the hour, the balcony shuddered. There was an exchange of machine-gun fire. Later, shells exploded and the sky shook. On the morning news, the anchor said, "I cannot wish you good morning today, on a day when innocent people have shed blood." There had been a tendency not to take the growing discontent of anti-Yeltsin demonstrators too seriously. Life was improving in Yeltsin's Moscow--for the small minority of the criminal, the foreign and the lucky, at least. And, despite the painful reforms and the inflation, the less fortunate majority still had hope that it would be better off than it had been before. On Saturday, the 500-year anniversary of the Arbat, Moscow's picturesque pedestrian zone, shoppers stopped to watch a man with painted lips and a ruffled shirt standing grandly in front of a banner for a company that sells state-owned property to private investors. The audience, heavily cloaked and eating hot dogs, watched as the performer took a dagger and placed the handle between his lips. He held the knife in his mouth, and then, with a subtle gesture, balanced an elaborate candelabra on its tip. Craning his neck, he performed delicate arabesques to the song, "The show must go on." The audience applauded in relief as the candelabra remained aloft. But at the other end of the Arbat, on Garden Ring Road near the new McDonald's, all balance was lost. Hundreds of imperialists, hardliners, Communists, fascists, army fans and other anti-Yeltsin people were building barricades. Police and militia flanked the road, but did nothing to stop them. The barricades, some seventy yards wide, were made of corrugated steel, wooden crates, iron rods, smashed stoves and an occasional car. Old men dragged unwieldy sheets of metal along the road, shoring up the piles, and children helped their parents by throwing bottles of gasoline onto the heap. "You Americans, you are killing the Russian people," the fanatics shouted. "Yeltsin is an asshole," another cried. Some of the protesters tried to smash the windows of the McDonald's, which had to be closed. Then a match was thrown onto the barricade, and the fire caught, hissing as it grew. A car exploded, black smoke hung in the air and somewhere between McDonald's and a store called Success the new Russia seemed to go up in flames. The next morning, Sunday, the White House was flanked by a semicircle of orange trucks and bordered in loops of clean, silver razor wire. Though the 19-year-old militiamen in dusty faux-fur hats and wool overcoats grandiosely denied entry to all comers, they seemed more like gatekeepers of the Emerald City of Oz than soldiers who were about to enter into the bloodiest fighting in Moscow since 1917. Journalists pleaded to be allowed into the White House, where, they said cynically, they would offer the parliamentary holdouts, who had been complaining about their lack of fresh linen, clean underwear for quotes. They did not expect much of a story, but a few hours later one came, when the boys in furry hats were beaten by Aleksandr Rutskoi supporters; and the boys started beating back. The protesters, who had massed at October Square earlier, singing patriotic songs and selling Communist dailies and pamphlets with names like Yids ("the curse of Russia"), had whipped themselves into a frenzy, and run en masse to the White House, where Rutskoi exhorted them to take over Ostankino. Today, people in Moscow are calling the White House the Black House. Rutskoi and Ruslan Khasbulatov are in prison, and Yeltsin has reasserted his fragile hold on power. It was clear who were the good guys and who were the bad guys in the weekend's battle; when the anti-Yeltsin forces took over Ostankino, they cut off all the television stations. When Yeltsin's forces took Ostankino back, the television stations were turned back on, with their Western ads, their videos and their spots for privatization and exchange rates. Democracy-- in the sense of the right to advertise--was back. But on Tuesday, in several normal, non-Communist newspapers, there were white spots where editorials with anti-Yeltsin content were to run. On the streets, Yeltsin's state of emergency was felt, as troops with machine guns stopped and searched any car they wanted. There were rumors of skirmishes in Leningrad, but they were not being reported in Moscow, and there was a sense that, once again, the Russian people were going to be put through another form of government imposed by dictat; this time, capitalism. Liesl Schillinger is a freelance writer.