A Brief History
On October 4, 1993, Russian Army tanks bombarded the Russian parliament, incredibly in the capital of the second most powerful country on Earth. While we were tempted to try other titles, such as “Tanks, but No Tanks,” or “Tanks for the Memories,” or even “Tanks A Lot!” the main point of this cautionary tale is “Could it happen here?”
Digging Deeper
In 1989, Beijing, China, was the site of another tanks vs. protestors battle in what we call the “Tiananmen Square Massacre.” China was the third most powerful country and is currently the second most powerful economic powerhouse on Earth.
Could such a scenario happen again? In 2023, a column of mercenary tanks of the Wagner Group were heading to Moscow, again threatening the Russian capital. In January of 2021, some claim that the US teetered on the brink of an attempted coup, which of course would have elicited a military response. Scary stuff indeed!
Question for students (and subscribers): Will you see tanks in Washington, D.C. in your lifetime? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Mara, Wil. The Tiananmen Square Massacre. Children’s Press, 2013.
Minayev, Boris. Boris Yeltsin: The Decade that Shook the World. Glagoslav, 2015.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Bergmann at Japanese Wikipedia of the burned facade of the Russian White House after the storming, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
