Yeltsin shelled his own parliament to force through shock therapy

Evidence

After elected lawmakers tried to stop him, President Boris Yeltsin, a close ally of Washington, illegally dissolved the Russian legislature and then sent tanks to shell the Parliament building. Russian elites rapidly privatized Soviet assets and removed controls on prices. This was the capitalist version of “under the stones, the beach”—once the command economy had been shocked to death, functioning markets would simply grow from the rubble. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 110

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the volume’s running theme of Washington encouraging undemocratic strongmen in the name of liberal economics.