ABSTRACT
The shelling of the White House in Moscow in October 1993 cast a long shadow over Sergei Kovalyov’s career. The new Russian Constitution was founded on the blood of the 147 Russian citizens who were killed in the conflict that took place on October 3 and 4. For all his explanations, Kovalyov was criticised by many of his contemporaries for supporting political expediency. The result was to undermine his reputation as Russia’s leading human rights activist, at least within certain intellectual circles, and to provide ongoing material for his harshest critics. A seed of doubt was also planted in the minds of the democratic public, tarnishing his once unblemished reputation as Russia’s custodian of the principles of non-violence and evolutionary politics. Talk of his unfaithfulness to those principles raised the question of whether he would resort to a similar position again. He was not to fully recover his reputation until the beginning of the Chechen war in November 1994.
