Russian Revolt Leaders Walk Out of Prison

Gleeful, unrepentant leaders of the bloody revolt that ended in flames at Russia’s White House last October walked out of prison over President Boris N. Yeltsin’s belated objections Saturday as an amnesty granted by the new Parliament took effect.

Former Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi, former Parliament Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov and five prominent extremists embraced family members and supporters amid a shower of bouquets, a flurry of red Soviet flags and cries for renewed anti-government activism.

“Well done, guys, it’s our day today!” shouted lawmaker Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, one of more than 200 well-wishers gathered in the snow outside Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison. An alliance of Communists and Zhirinovsky’s neo-fascists stunned the government by pushing the amnesty to approval Wednesday.

Rutskoi, hustled into the prison last Oct. 4 in combat fatigues and a bristling mustache, emerged Saturday in his medal-bedecked general’s uniform and sporting a bushy beard. “Rutskoi is president!” people chanted as the Afghan War hero smiled and waved. “Put Yeltsin’s gang on trial!”

The amnesty ends criminal proceedings against as many as 17 figures in the two-day revolt, which had aimed to cancel Yeltsin’s decree closing the Soviet-era Parliament and install Rutskoi in his place. More than 140 people died before the army crushed the uprising with a tank assault.

A dozen hard-liners on trial for the brief overthrow of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in August, 1991, and 11 others arrested for rioting last May Day also benefit from the amnesty. But they had been freed from jail long ago.

The fate of the imprisoned October rebels thus became the first serious test of Yeltsin’s willingness to obey his own 2-month-old constitution and avoid a showdown with the conservative Parliament elected at the same time voters approved it. The constitution gives the Duma, or lower house, unchecked power to grant amnesties.

But while the government complied with the law, its decision was the product of evident confusion and internal disagreement. The result seemed to offer little assurance of peace between Yeltsin and an opposition now emboldened by the liberation of its jailed heroes.

The government newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta published the amnesty Friday, making it official. But on Saturday, Yeltsin asked Prosecutor General Alexei Kazannik to delay it. The president also dispatched an aide to urge Ivan Rybkin, the Communist chairman of the Duma, to return the measure to lawmakers for “improvement.”

Yeltsin’s argument was extremely technical: The Duma had erred by wording its resolution as if it was a pardon, which only the president can issue, rather than an amnesty.

But before Rybkin could respond, Kazannik resigned, saying he could bring himself neither to sign an amnesty of “murderers” nor to obey an unconstitutional order to delay it. Within minutes, a deputy prosecutor signed the order allowing Rutskoi and company to walk.

Even after the rebels were free, presidential advisers continued to criticize the amnesty and accused the prosecutor’s office of acting in haste to apply it. One aide suggested the amnesty still might be modified.

“People who were ready to push Russia into a bloody civil war were freed without trial,” said Yeltsin spokesman Vyacheslav V. Kostikov, who accused the Duma of “encouraging political extremism.”

“The Russian president reserves the right to act in accordance with his constitutional powers in the illegal situation that has shaped up,” he added, explaining that Yeltsin might challenge the Duma’s decision in the courts but not resort to force.

The men freed with Rutskoi and Khasbulatov were accused of leading military attacks on the Ostankino television studios and the Moscow mayor’s office Oct. 3--under Rutskoi’s direction from the White House.

Supporters said their freedom was nothing less than a vindication of the cause of restoring the Soviet Union.

“I think Rutskoi should become president,” said Natalya V. Arkhipova, a 42-year-old schoolteacher standing outside Lefortovo Prison. “We received this country free of capitalism, and he can help us leave it to our children exactly as we inherited it.”

Yegor T. Gaidar, the free-market reformer who resigned last month as economy minister, predicted in an interview with a German newspaper last week that the pardoned rebels will “regroup and stage a new, better-organized coup . . . and set up a nationalist-Communist government.”

The rebels gave little hint of their plans, other than to go home for dinner. Rutskoi and Khasbulatov simply thanked their supporters, waved and sped off--the general in a Mercedes, the former chairman in a minivan escorted by four carloads of security guards from his native Chechnya.

“If I find that prices have fallen and people are living better, that means Yeltsin will have been right” about setting up a market economy, Anpilov told the crowd. “Otherwise, I will carry on fighting.”

Alexei V. Kuznetsov, a researcher in The Times’ Moscow Bureau, contributed to this article.