Russia, 1993 - The Road Taken, Part One

Twenty-five years ago this month something extraordinary happened in Russia.  Nobody knew it at the time, but the road to what is now known as “Putinism” started here.  A little more than two years after an abortive coup failed to topple Mikhail Gorbachev [but had the unintended consequence of hastening the Soviet Union’s demise], another crisis happened that may have rolled Russia back to Soviet times.

In September 1993, the Soviet Union hadn’t been on the ash-heap of history for two years when the Russian Federation faced its first constitutional crisis. The question was this - who was in charge – the country’s president, Boris Yeltsin, or the federation’s parliament?  With American support, Yeltsin had introduced an economic program that would turn the old Soviet command economy into one that is market-based.  The process of privatizing state-owned enterprises saw many of these enterprises concentrated firms in the hands of corrupt, politically-connected oligarchs.  Price and currency controls were lifted which led to hyperinflation [with money becoming virtually worthless], state subsidies disappeared.  This was called “shock therapy”.  There was a lot of shock, but not much therapy.  This was the basis of the disagreement between Yeltsin and the parliament.

In April 1993, Russia held a four-part referendum on the confidence of Yeltsin’s government.  In effect, it was a nationwide vote of confidence on Boris Yeltsin.  The referendum asked four questions:

1.      Do you have confidence in the President of the Russian Federation, B. N. Yeltsin?

2.      Do you support the economic and social policy that has been conducted since 1992 by the President and Government of the Russian Federation?

3.      Should there be early elections for the President of the Russian Federation?

4.      Should there be early elections for the People's Deputies of the Russian Federation?

Parliament liked things the way they were. There had been amendments to the Russian constitution [which had been around since the Brezhnev era] that temporarily allowed Yeltsin to rule by decree.  Those “emergency powers” had a sunset provision, with Yeltsin’s decree powers due to expire at the end of 1992.  The largest bloc of deputies in parliament was a combination of Communists, nationalists, and retired military officers.  They wanted a weaker president and a stronger parliament. Yeltsin had a very simple campaign – he asked for a “Da, Da, Nyet, Da” result, and that is exactly what he got.  Yeltsin saw the results of this referendum as a mandate to change the constitution.  After the referendum, Yeltsin released his vision of what the next Russian constitution should look like.  The Congress of People’s Deputies did the same.  Neither proposal looked like the other.

As Yeltsin and the Congress of People’s Deputies argued over what a new constitution should look like, the Supreme Soviet [a subset of the Congress of People’s Deputies that met more often] took it upon themselves to try to enact its own foreign policy and its own economic policy.  A contemporary Russian commentator noted "The President issues decrees as if there were no Supreme Soviet, and the Supreme Soviet suspends decrees as if there were no President."  In September 1993, Yeltsin tried to suspend his own vice president, Alexander Rutskoi.  Yeltsin cited “accusations of corruption” as the pretext for his action.  The Supreme Soviet refused to recognize this action.  Yeltsin proposed early elections for both president and parliament.  The Supreme Soviet ignored him.  Yeltsin appointed Yegor Gaidar as deputy prime minister.  The Supreme Soviet rejected him.  On September 21, Yeltsin upped the ante by announcing he dissolved the Supreme Soviet.  He didn’t have the authority to do so, but legal niceties didn’t stop Yeltsin.  He felt emboldened because the Russian people gave him a vote of confidence the previous April.  The Constitutional Court affirmed that Yeltsin couldn’t dissolve the parliament.  The Supreme Soviet removed Yeltsin [or so they thought].  Pro-parliament protesters stormed the national television center at Ostankino.   They also attacked the Moscow mayor’s office.  People died, and Yeltsin called in the tanks.

The seat of the Congress of People’s Deputies and the Supreme Soviet was the White House.  In 1991, this building was the symbol of resistance against the abortive coup against Mikhail Gorbachev two years earlier.  It was here that Boris Yeltsin mounted a tank to condemn the coup.  And two years after the coup, the army tanks opened fire on that same White House.  Boris Yeltsin was clever to categorize those who disagreed with him as Communists, Fascists, bandits, revanchists and relics from the Soviet era who wanted to turn back the clock to a time before the Soviet Union collapsed.  The “debate” thus framed, Bill Clinton supported Yeltsin’s action.  Yeltsin proved Mao’s axiom that “political power comes from the barrel of a gun”.  Yeltsin had the gun, he used the gun, and got the constitution he wanted.  He got a strong presidency, in which the president could appoint a prime minister and a cabinet and dismiss them at his pleasure.  His candidates for Prime Minister were subject to Duma approval, but if the Duma rejected a candidate for Prime Minister three successive times, the president had the power to dissolve parliament and call new elections.  He also got sweeping powers to issue decrees. 

Yeltsin’s newly-won power to appoint people without the parliament voting themselves out of a job is significant.  After the 1998 financial crisis that cratered the Russian economy, Boris Yeltsin was a very unpopular figure.  Between 1998 and 1999 he went through four Prime Ministers [Sergey Kirienko, Viktor Chernomyrdin, Yevgeny Primakov, and Sergei Stepashin] before settling on Vladimir Putin.  Under this new constitution, if a president dies, resigns, or is otherwise incapacitated, the Prime Minister becomes Acting President.  When Yeltsin chose Putin as his last Prime Minister, he also designated Putin as his successor.  At that time Putin was an unknown quantity.  But after his appointment as Prime Minister, the dominos to his ascent to ultimate power began to fall.  Without Putin, there would not have been the apartment bombings in 1999.  Without the apartment bombings and the naming of Chechens as the culprits, there probably would not have been a Second Chechen War.  Without a successful prosecution of the Second Chechen War, Putin’s popularity would not have skyrocketed.  And without this heightened popularity, it’s doubtful that Yeltsin would have felt comfortable enough to give up the presidency in favor of his designated successor. Yeltsin resigned the Russian presidency on December 31, 1999 with Putin becoming Acting President until he was elected president in his own right in 2000.

The new constitution created a bicameral legislature, which included a Duma and a Federation Council.  What has emerged since then is a “managed democracy”.  There is an opposition, but really in name only.  People can run for political office, provided they don’t make too many waves and obtain government approval to do so.  To keep Vladimir Putin in power, the ruling party [United Russia] has engaged in massive vote fraud to include voter intimidation, carousel voting, and blatant ballot box stuffing.  Vladimir Putin enjoys the spoils of this constitutional framework laid out by his predecessor.  

It is ironic that the man who benefits from this system [Vladimir Putin] was put in place by the guy [Boris Yeltsin] who was supported by Bill Clinton, the husband of the 2016 Democratic nominee for president [Hillary Clinton], who got on Vladimir Putin’s bad side and whom Hillary Clinton continues to blame for her electoral loss.