Re: Spinning Boris, directed by Roger Spottiswoode
Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2018 6:13 am
Power Crisis Rocks Russia: Yeltsin Wins Vital Support Of Military
by James P. Gallagher and Howard Witt
Chicago Tribune
September 22, 1993
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
MOSCOW — President Boris Yeltsin apparently won the support of key military and security officials after his stunning announcement Tuesday night that he was dissolving Parliament and calling new elections for Dec. 11-12.
But parliamentary leaders, who bitterly oppose the reformist Russian president and his market economic policies, immediately launched a frantic counterattack. Declaring that Yeltsin had forfeited his office, they swore in Vice President Alexander Rutskoi as the new acting head of state.
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin announced that his government-including the crucial ministers of interior, security and defense-would continue taking orders from Yeltsin.
Moscow and the rest of the country greeted the president's latest assault on the legislature with apparent calm.
By day's end, Rutskoi could claim to be president only of some 130 legislators who witnessed his hastily arranged oath-taking inside Russia's barricaded Parliament building-called the White House-and of a few thousand noisy pro-Communist demonstrators who gathered in the cold outside.
That could change on Wednesday.
Yeltsin's nationally televised address, in which he asserted that the legislature was "in a state of political decomposition" and "had ceased to be an organ of rule by the people," was delivered at a time when much of Russia was asleep.
The first test of whether parliamentary leaders can mobilize significant opposition to Yeltsin will come Wednesday, when regional officials begin to make known which of the two presidents they will recognize.
Late Tuesday, Parliament Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov called on regional legislatures-many of them even more conservative than the fractious national parliament-to condemn Yeltsin and rally behind Rutskoi.
With Yeltsin seeming to be in firm control of the key levers of power in Moscow-at least for the moment-Parliament's best hope is that a number of key regions will turn their backs on him, raising the specter of civil unrest and perhaps giving him and his allies second thoughts.
It wouldn't be the first time that Yeltsin had backed away from what he termed a definitive confrontation with his legislative enemies. Twice in the last year, after declaring all-out war against Parliament, he eventually sought a compromise.
In five far eastern regions of Russia, where daylight arrives nine hours before it does in Moscow, officials declined Wednesday to immediately support Yeltsin. They said they would think about it.
Khasbulatov also appealed for a general strike of the nation's workers to drive Yeltsin from office.
But no more than 4,000 Yeltsin opponents, all of them communists and nationalists, gathered Tuesday night outside the famed White House where in August 1991 Yeltsin climbed atop a tank to rally national support for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and against a coup attempt by old-line Communists.
Tuesday night's crowd was a familiar one. Many had participated in dozens of similar anti-Yeltsin protests in the last year.
The only difference was that this time they started erecting barricades to protect the White House against a military assault that never materialized. Old women and young toughs alternately ripped up cobblestones and gathered rubble from a nearby construction site to pile in front of the building's parking lot.
The rest of Moscow seemed oblivious.
There was nothing unusual going on outside the Kremlin or in Red Square-only at the Russian Central Bank, where 35 truckloads of Interior Ministry troops from the elite Dzerzhinsky division had been deployed.
The lightly armed soldiers said they had been stationed there for four days as part of an anti-mafia crime sweep and that they had been given no special orders relating to Yeltsin's announcement.
Inside Parliament, deputies wasted no time in convening an emergency all-night session.
"We are talking about the beginning of a civil war now," said a breathless Ilya Konstantinov, leader of the ultra-nationalist National Salvation Front.
Rutskoi, a hero of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan who split with Yeltsin last spring, immediately seized the chair on the dais reserved for the president, then took an oath of office and swore to uphold the Soviet-era constitution that Yeltsin wants to replace with a democratic, Western-type model.
Khasbulatov, dressed in a black shirt and black suit, called the session "the most dramatic minutes of my life."
Soon afterward, Rutskoi retreated to his office-protected by two machine-gun-wielding bodyguards-and began to form a rump Cabinet. Among his first appointments was Viktor Barannikov to the post of security minister-a job Barannikov held under Yeltsin until he was dumped last month for alleged corruption.
Khasbulatov called an emergency session Wednesday of the Congress of People's Deputies, Russia's supreme legislature. But he predicted that Yeltsin would attempt to keep Congress deputies from reaching Moscow by denying them seats on state-owned airlines and trains.
Under the constitution, only the Congress can impeach a Russian president, and a formal motion to oust Yeltsin undoubtedly would be the first item on the agenda if the Congress manages to convene.
Russia's constitutional court, which sided with Yeltsin's foes in earlier confrontations, ruled early Wednesday that the president could be impeached because he had violated the constitution. Specifically, the court said Yeltsin had violated a constitutional amendment passed by the Congress last December which specified that the president would forfeit his office the moment he tried to dissolve Parliament.
In his televised address, Yeltsin said the current cumbersome parliament would be replaced in the December elections by a two-chambered body that would more closely resemble Western legislatures.
Yeltsin said this action is necessary because the "fruitless, senseless and destructive" power struggle raging between him and the legislature since last autumn has caused "a decline in the authority of state power as a whole."
"I am sure all citizens of Russia are convinced it is impossible, in such conditions, not only to implement difficult reforms, but simply to maintain elementary order," he said.
"One must say bluntly-unless political confrontation in the power structures in Russia is brought to an end . . . the situation cannot be kept under control, and our state cannot be preserved, and peace in Russia cannot be preserved."
Citing last spring's national referendum, when a majority of voters supported him and his economic reforms, Yeltsin accused the lawmakers of flouting the will of the people in attempting constantly to undermine his policies and his powers.
Only after a new legislature is in place will there be a hope of coming to grips with the country's wrenching economic problems, including dangerously high inflation, Yeltsin said.
"All the efforts of the government to alleviate the economic situation run into a wall of blind misunderstanding" erected by Parliament, he added.
Yeltsin's decision to try one more time to get the upper hand over his enemies came at a time when the political momentum provided by the referendum victory was running out.
His prestige was undermined when he failed to follow through on two pivotal initiatives: the enactment of a new constitution and the creation of an alternative parliament made up of provincial leaders.
The mercurial Yeltsin, who often shifts direction abruptly, sent conflicting signals about his intentions in recent weeks. Last month, he promised to resolve once and for all the power struggle between the executive and the legislature.
But last Saturday, after regional officials reacted coolly to the idea of sweeping the legislature aside, he suggested that elections be held next year both for president and a new legislature.
by James P. Gallagher and Howard Witt
Chicago Tribune
September 22, 1993
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
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MOSCOW — President Boris Yeltsin apparently won the support of key military and security officials after his stunning announcement Tuesday night that he was dissolving Parliament and calling new elections for Dec. 11-12.
But parliamentary leaders, who bitterly oppose the reformist Russian president and his market economic policies, immediately launched a frantic counterattack. Declaring that Yeltsin had forfeited his office, they swore in Vice President Alexander Rutskoi as the new acting head of state.
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin announced that his government-including the crucial ministers of interior, security and defense-would continue taking orders from Yeltsin.
Moscow and the rest of the country greeted the president's latest assault on the legislature with apparent calm.
By day's end, Rutskoi could claim to be president only of some 130 legislators who witnessed his hastily arranged oath-taking inside Russia's barricaded Parliament building-called the White House-and of a few thousand noisy pro-Communist demonstrators who gathered in the cold outside.
That could change on Wednesday.
Yeltsin's nationally televised address, in which he asserted that the legislature was "in a state of political decomposition" and "had ceased to be an organ of rule by the people," was delivered at a time when much of Russia was asleep.
The first test of whether parliamentary leaders can mobilize significant opposition to Yeltsin will come Wednesday, when regional officials begin to make known which of the two presidents they will recognize.
Late Tuesday, Parliament Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov called on regional legislatures-many of them even more conservative than the fractious national parliament-to condemn Yeltsin and rally behind Rutskoi.
With Yeltsin seeming to be in firm control of the key levers of power in Moscow-at least for the moment-Parliament's best hope is that a number of key regions will turn their backs on him, raising the specter of civil unrest and perhaps giving him and his allies second thoughts.
It wouldn't be the first time that Yeltsin had backed away from what he termed a definitive confrontation with his legislative enemies. Twice in the last year, after declaring all-out war against Parliament, he eventually sought a compromise.
In five far eastern regions of Russia, where daylight arrives nine hours before it does in Moscow, officials declined Wednesday to immediately support Yeltsin. They said they would think about it.
Khasbulatov also appealed for a general strike of the nation's workers to drive Yeltsin from office.
But no more than 4,000 Yeltsin opponents, all of them communists and nationalists, gathered Tuesday night outside the famed White House where in August 1991 Yeltsin climbed atop a tank to rally national support for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and against a coup attempt by old-line Communists.
Tuesday night's crowd was a familiar one. Many had participated in dozens of similar anti-Yeltsin protests in the last year.
The only difference was that this time they started erecting barricades to protect the White House against a military assault that never materialized. Old women and young toughs alternately ripped up cobblestones and gathered rubble from a nearby construction site to pile in front of the building's parking lot.
The rest of Moscow seemed oblivious.
There was nothing unusual going on outside the Kremlin or in Red Square-only at the Russian Central Bank, where 35 truckloads of Interior Ministry troops from the elite Dzerzhinsky division had been deployed.
The lightly armed soldiers said they had been stationed there for four days as part of an anti-mafia crime sweep and that they had been given no special orders relating to Yeltsin's announcement.
Inside Parliament, deputies wasted no time in convening an emergency all-night session.
"We are talking about the beginning of a civil war now," said a breathless Ilya Konstantinov, leader of the ultra-nationalist National Salvation Front.
Rutskoi, a hero of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan who split with Yeltsin last spring, immediately seized the chair on the dais reserved for the president, then took an oath of office and swore to uphold the Soviet-era constitution that Yeltsin wants to replace with a democratic, Western-type model.
Khasbulatov, dressed in a black shirt and black suit, called the session "the most dramatic minutes of my life."
Soon afterward, Rutskoi retreated to his office-protected by two machine-gun-wielding bodyguards-and began to form a rump Cabinet. Among his first appointments was Viktor Barannikov to the post of security minister-a job Barannikov held under Yeltsin until he was dumped last month for alleged corruption.
Khasbulatov called an emergency session Wednesday of the Congress of People's Deputies, Russia's supreme legislature. But he predicted that Yeltsin would attempt to keep Congress deputies from reaching Moscow by denying them seats on state-owned airlines and trains.
Under the constitution, only the Congress can impeach a Russian president, and a formal motion to oust Yeltsin undoubtedly would be the first item on the agenda if the Congress manages to convene.
Russia's constitutional court, which sided with Yeltsin's foes in earlier confrontations, ruled early Wednesday that the president could be impeached because he had violated the constitution. Specifically, the court said Yeltsin had violated a constitutional amendment passed by the Congress last December which specified that the president would forfeit his office the moment he tried to dissolve Parliament.
In his televised address, Yeltsin said the current cumbersome parliament would be replaced in the December elections by a two-chambered body that would more closely resemble Western legislatures.
Yeltsin said this action is necessary because the "fruitless, senseless and destructive" power struggle raging between him and the legislature since last autumn has caused "a decline in the authority of state power as a whole."
"I am sure all citizens of Russia are convinced it is impossible, in such conditions, not only to implement difficult reforms, but simply to maintain elementary order," he said.
"One must say bluntly-unless political confrontation in the power structures in Russia is brought to an end . . . the situation cannot be kept under control, and our state cannot be preserved, and peace in Russia cannot be preserved."
Citing last spring's national referendum, when a majority of voters supported him and his economic reforms, Yeltsin accused the lawmakers of flouting the will of the people in attempting constantly to undermine his policies and his powers.
Only after a new legislature is in place will there be a hope of coming to grips with the country's wrenching economic problems, including dangerously high inflation, Yeltsin said.
"All the efforts of the government to alleviate the economic situation run into a wall of blind misunderstanding" erected by Parliament, he added.
Yeltsin's decision to try one more time to get the upper hand over his enemies came at a time when the political momentum provided by the referendum victory was running out.
His prestige was undermined when he failed to follow through on two pivotal initiatives: the enactment of a new constitution and the creation of an alternative parliament made up of provincial leaders.
After his victory in the October confrontation, Yeltsin presented the country with a new draft constitution that gave the president near-dictatorial powers. Under the proposed constitution, the Supreme Soviet would be replaced with a smaller body, the State Duma, which would have virtually no control over the executive branch. The president would have the power to appoint without interference all ministers except the prime minister, who would have to be confirmed by the Duma. If the Duma rejected three of his candidates for prime minister, the president would be able to dissolve the Duma. The president would have control over the budget and appoint the director of the Central Bank and the justices of the Constitutional Court. Removing the president would require a two-thirds majority of the parliament as well as approval by the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court. Laws would be passed by the Duma, but they could be vetoed by the president, and the veto could be overridden only by a two-thirds vote of the Duma, a near impossibility in a parliament expected to contain numerous factions.
The draft constitution was put to a vote simultaneously with elections to the new parliament on December 12, 1993, only a month after the publication of the text. In the referendum, 54.4 percent of eligible voters were said to have participated, with 58.4 percent voting for and 41.6 percent against the new constitution. [44] The constitution was thus supported by about 30 percent of the electorate. Technically this was enough: Yeltsin had established a rule whereby only 25 percent of eligible voters had to vote yes for the constitution to become law. [45] There were immediate suspicions, however, that the approval was fraudulent. Particular concern was focused on the appearance of nearly nine million unexplained ballots. [46] An independent analysis by Alexander Sobyanin of the pro-government Russia’s Choice Party showed that only 46.1 percent of the electorate had voted, not the 54.4 percent the government claimed, in which case the turnout was 3.9 percent short of the required minimum. The presidential team never explained the origin of the extra ballots and ignored all demands for an investigation. It is highly likely that the 1993 Constitution was never approved by the population. [47]
-- The Less You know, the Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin, by David Satter
The mercurial Yeltsin, who often shifts direction abruptly, sent conflicting signals about his intentions in recent weeks. Last month, he promised to resolve once and for all the power struggle between the executive and the legislature.
But last Saturday, after regional officials reacted coolly to the idea of sweeping the legislature aside, he suggested that elections be held next year both for president and a new legislature.