Yeltsin’s Use of Force against Parliament in October 1993 Set Stage for Rise of Putin, Gromov Says

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, Oct. 4, 2023) With each passing year, it becomes more obvious that the events of the end of September and beginning of October 1993 when Boris Yeltsin used force against the Russian parliament and essentially solidified presidentialist rule in Russia were “one of the key turning points in present-day Russia,” Andrey Gromov […]

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The Russian Idea Revisited

File Photo of Red Square, Kremlin, Environs, adapted from image at state.gov

(Kennan Institute – wilsoncenter.org/program/kennan-institute – William E. Pomeranz – June 6, 2023) William Pomeranz is the Director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, Some years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, President Boris Yeltsin initiated a national search for a new Russian idea. The past was too raw and controversial, however, to reach any consensus on or reconciliation as to what […]

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1996 Russian Elections Made a Putin Inevitable, von Eggert Says

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, June 2, 2021) Twenty-five years ago, Russia had its last presidential election in which the outcome was not ordained. But after Boris Yeltsin’s orchestrated victory, Konstantin von Eggert says, the country entered yet another non-democratic era in which the rise of someone like Vladimir Putin was inevitable. In that sense, the independent […]

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JRL NEWSWATCH: “How Putin pushed aside the oligarchs and made Russia his own” – Washington Post/ Anders Åslund

Vladimir Putin file photo with VOA logo; screen shot from video still

In her deeply researched new book, Catherine Belton tells a dark tale of … Putin’s rise to power and … 20 years as [Russian] leader …. ‘Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West‘ […]

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The Devil and Mr. Putin

File Photo of Vladimir Putin at Podium with United Russia Logo, Gesturing

Subject: The Devil and Mr. Putin Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 From: Norman Pereira <9ngop6@gmail.com> The Devil and Mr. Putin By Norman Pereira Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Dalhousie University The post-Soviet era presents new challenges for the student of Russian history. It is not difficult to find fault with the USSR over the course of its seventy plus years’ […]

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JRL NEWSWATCH: “Boris Yeltsin’s shrine in Yekaterinburg brings tears for a legacy smashed by Putin” – Sunday Times (UK)/ Matthew Campbell

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

“… An ailing Yeltsin is believed to have chosen Putin, a former KGB officer, as his successor, because he had a reputation for loyalty. He knew he could count on Putin to protect him and his family. … [H]e made Putin promise to ‘look after Russia.’ In the eyes of Putin’s supporters, he has … [brought] relative prosperity … making […]

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Skepticism About US Intentions and Other Enduring Consequences of Russia’s 1993 Crisis

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

(Russia Matters – russiamatters.org – Paul Saunders – October 4, 2018 – russiamatters.org/analysis/skepticism-about-us-intentions-and-other-enduring-consequences-russias-1993-crisis) Paul Saunders is the executive director of the Center for the National Interest. Twenty-five years ago this week, a confrontation between Russia’s then President Boris Yeltsin and the country’s parliament culminated in armed standoffs that left more than 100 people dead and became unambiguously one of the […]

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Putin’s ‘A Solid Man’: Declassified Memos Offer Window Into Yeltsin-Clinton Relationship

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Mike Eckel – WASHINGTON – August 30, 2018 – text with links and graphics: rferl.org/a/putin-s-a-solid-man-declassified-memos-offer-window-into-yeltsin-clinton-relationship/29462317.html) On September 8, 1999, just a few weeks after promoting the head of the country’s top intelligence agency to the post of prime minister, Russian President Boris Yeltsin took a phone call from a […]

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JRL NEWSWATCH: “Bill and Boris: A Window Into a Most Important Post-Cold War Relationship” [Excerpt] – Texas National Security Review/James Goldgeier

File Photo of Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton Playing a Saxophone, Lloyd Bentsen and others, adapted from image at whitehouse.gov

[Full text: tnsr.org/2018/08/bill-and-boris-a-window-into-a-most-important-post-cold-war-relationship/] “Against the backdrop of an enormous power differential between their two countries, Clinton and Yeltsin established a close personal rapport. … to interact effectively even when … frank in their disagreements, the most serious of which were over NATO enlargement … and the Kosovo War …   As many were decrying the lack of any formal record […]

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NEWSLINK: “Russians Get a Revisionist View of Soviet Union’s End; A new narrative paints from a former vice president paints Yeltsin as a tool of the U.S. in thwarting 1991 coup by hardliners” – Bloomberg/Leonid Bershidsky

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

“Only 27 years after the failure of a coup meant to keep the Soviet Union alive, some of the people who helped crush the revolt are doing their best to blacken their own victory. It’s been many years since Russia celebrated an anniversary of those three days, Aug. 19-21, 1991. Resolute action by Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, and by […]

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Russians have Three Serious Misconceptions about 1993 Constitution and Its Implications, Shelin Says

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, June 6, 2018) Twenty-five years ago this week, Boris Yeltsin convened a constitutional convention in Moscow which produced a draft that was then ratified by referendum after “a small civil war” took place in which Yeltsin crushed “the Khasbulatov parliament,” Sergey Shelin says. Because of that congeries of events, the Rosbalt commentator […]

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Sobchak Campaign Teams Up With Igor Malashenko, Who Once Helped Yeltsin

Ksenia Sobchak file photo

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 24, 2017) In her first press conference since announcing her bid for the presidency, Ksenia Sobchak on Tuesday said Igor Malashenko, who once helped Boris Yeltsin to the presidency, would be joining her campaign team. Sobchak unexpectedly announced last week she would run in presidential elections in March next year. Although President Vladimir Putin […]

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[1993] NEWSWATCH: “Yeltsin crushes revolt; Parliament taken in tank battle; Opposition parties and newspapers banned” – The Guardian (UK)/ Jonathan Steele, David Hearst [from Oct. 5, 1993]

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

[From 1993 archived article:] “President Boris Yeltsin moved swiftly last night to stamp his absolute power on Russia by suspending a range of political movements and closing opposition newspapers after the surrender of his main parliamentary opponents in the wake of the assault on the Russian White House. * * *  After a grisly 10-hour gun battle in which tanks punched […]

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For the Chekists, Navalny is the Yeltsin of 1987, Portnikov says

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – July 22, 2017) Many have forgotten that in May 1987, Boris Yeltsin, then head of the Moscow city committee of the CPSU, received representatives of the chauvinist and anti-Semitic Pamyat organization, thus sending a signal that he was someone the KGB and its allies could count on to defend their interests, Vitaly Portnikov […]

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Russian Protests Don’t Threaten Kremlin Because There’s No Opposition in the Duma, Portnikov Says

Russian State Duma Building file photo

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, June 12, 2017) Both the Kremlin and the Russian people are afraid of a Maidan, but they needn’t be because for a Maidan to take place in Russia there would have to be something that does not now exist, a genuine opposition in the Duma ready and willing to serve as a […]

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Might Putin Name His Own Successor? — and for Same Reasons Yeltsin Did in 1999?

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, May 6, 2017) Most Moscow commentators believe that Vladimir Putin will run and win re-election in 2018, but some are speculating that he might decide to depart the scene by naming his own successor, thereby defining the future course of the country and protecting himself much as Boris Yeltsin did with his selection […]

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President Trump’s Boris Yeltsin Moment

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leonid Bershidsky – February 15, 2017) Leonid Bershidsky is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru. President Donald Trump is irritated about the media furor surrounding the departure of his national security adviser. “The real scandal here is that classified information is […]

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NEWSWATCH: “This Week Marks the 10th Anniversary of Anna Politkovskaya’s Murder; The legacy of the fearless Russian journalist’s muckraking reporting still lives on.” – The Nation

Anna Politkovskaya file photo

Katrina vanden Heuvel, Publisher and Editor of The Nation, memorializes slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya on the 10-year anniversary of Politkovskaya’s assassination, and considers some of the dangers and other challenges impacting Russian journalists. It is 10 years since Russia and the world lost a great and courageous journalist. The killing of Anna Politkovskaya on October 7, 2006, was horrifying […]

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Russia’s future under the microscope at Yeltsin Forum

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

Experts analyze the reforms and the mechanisms of the Yeltsin’s times to help creating a system of transformation for the future. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – NADEZHDA USTÍNOVA, SPECIAL TO RBTH – December 17, 2015) Nearly a quarter of a century after the collapse of the Soviet Union and founding of today’s Russia, experts have met to discuss […]

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NEWSWATCH The New Yorker/Masha Gessen: “Boris Yeltsin Quietly Challenges Putin”

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

Writing in The New Yorker, Masha Gessen reports on the first three major exhibits at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Centre opening in Yekaterinburg. The core exhibit’s organizational principle is called ‘The Seven Days That Changed Russia,’ and it takes the visitor through a series of rooms that recall the earth-shattering events of the Russian nineteen-nineties. Click here for The New […]

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Museum to Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin opens to public

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

November 25 saw the official opening in Yekaterinburg of a museum dedicated to Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first president. Besides documenting Yeltsin’s tenure as leader of the country, the museum also explores the turbulent history of the 1990s. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – MARINA OBRAZKOVA, RBTH – November 27, 2015) A museum to Boris Yeltsin has been unveiled in […]

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[From 1993:] Russia Mourns Victims of Uprising

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anne Barnard, David Filipov – October 8, 1993) Moscow mourned the human cost of this week’s political bloodshed Thursday, as President Boris Yeltsin suspended the Constitutional Court he has accused of complicity in the violence. Several thousand friends, strangers and comrades in arms filed past the coffins of six policemen killed last Sunday and Monday […]

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Like Stalin, Putin hasn’t Changed the Rules of the Game; He’s Destroyed Them, Portnikov Says

Vladimir Putin file photo with VOA logo; screen shot from video still

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 28, 2015) The Anschluss of Crimea and the murder of Boris Nemtsov were not continuations of the rules of the game that had existed before, with the first following the 2008 Russian actions in Georgia and the second that of murders like Galina Starovoitova and Anna Politkovskaya, Vitaly Portnikov says. Instead, […]

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BOOK REVIEW: “We are in power; that is democracy”

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Chris Weafer in Moscow – August 11, 2015) “Boris Yeltsin was able to have a constitution adopted in a referendum that guaranteed him broad powers and an almost complete lack of checks and balances – the first major step toward the poisoning of Russia’s political institutions and guaranteeing the transition to Vladimir Putin”. That […]

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OBITUARY: Gennady Seleznyov, night rider of Russia’s rowdy parliament

Russian State Duma Building file photo

(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Nick Allen in Berlin – July 23, 2015) With President Vladimir Putin’s executive fist dominating the ‘vertical of power’, while parliament toes the Kremlin line, it’s easy to forget Russia’s heyday of real rough-and-tumble oppositional party politics in the first years after the Soviet collapse. So defiant from the outset was the legislature, still […]

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NEWSWATCH New York Times/Andrei Kozyrev: Russia’s Coming Regime Change

Tower and Building Inside Kremlin

Writing in The New York Times, former Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev addresses the future of Russian governance in the face of multiple economic, political and international challenges. The firmness of the West in protecting the sovereignty of Ukraine and restoring its territorial integrity is a prerequisite not only to rein in the Kremlin’s aggressive impulses, but also to engage […]

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Primakov was Putinism’s ‘Godfather,’ Russian Analysts Say

Yevgeny Primakov file photo, with William Cohen in partial profile

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, June 28, 2015) Many Western obituaries and appreciations of the late Yevgeny Primakov portray him as an alternative to Vladimir Putin and someone who would have led Russia in an entirely different direction than the current Kremlin leader. But two Russian analysts argue that in fact Primakov laid much of the groundwork […]

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Interfax: Poll: Russians say Aug 1991 events are tragedy, not triumph of democracy

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

(Interfax – August 19, 2014) A relative majority of Russians (41 percent) see the August 19, 1991, putsch in the former Soviet Union as a tragedy which had harmful implications for the country and its people. The number has grown 14 percent in the past 20 years, from 27 percent in 1994, the Levada Center pollster told Interfax, referring to […]

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RIA Novosti: Yeltsin’s Grandson Developing Hollywood WWII Film

Movie Theater file photo

WASHINGTON, November 5 (RIA Novosti) ­ Boris Yeltsin, the grandson and namesake of Russia’s first president, is producing a movie titled “Night Witches” about female Soviet pilots during World War II and has recruited an award-winning Hollywood screenwriter to pen the screenplay, the US entertainment website Variety.com reported. The project is based on the true story of Soviet female air […]

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Autumn 1993 through American eyes

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Wayne Merry, special to RBTH – October 3, 2013) Wayne Merry, a retired diplomat who served at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow 20 years ago, recalls October 1993. E. Wayne Merry was in charge of the analysis and reporting of Russian domestic political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow 1991-94. October 3, […]

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Split of ruling elites causes October 1993 events in Moscow – poll

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 2, 2013) Eighty percent of Russians remember the standoff between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov’s parliament that resulted in disturbances in Moscow in October 1993, sociologists told Interfax. Sixteen percent of the 1,600 respondents polled in 130 towns and cities in 42 regions in September learned about those events from the sociologists. Most […]

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How October 1993 led to President Putin

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexander Kolesnichenko, special to RBTH – October 3, 2013) Twenty years later, the changes to Russia’s political system enacted in the aftermath of the October 1993 attempted coup still reverberate. On Oct. 3, 1993, post-Soviet Russia faced its first major political crisis. The two-day conflict between then-President Boris Yeltsin and the State Duma […]

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Black October Revisited

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 3, 2013) See the Black October Revisited Photogallery: www.themoscowtimes.com/multimedia/photogalleries/black-october-revisited/5114.html People commemorated on Thursday the 20th anniversary of Black October, a 10-day standoff between President Boris Yeltsin and the parliament that ended in military force and the deaths of at least 187 people. Members of the Alfa special forces and other law enforcement agencies who […]

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Putin chief of staff: 1993 constitution saves Russia’s ‘sovereignty and unity’

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

(Interfax – MOSCOW, September 26, 2013) President Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff has credited Russia’s 1993 constitution with making it possible to “preserve the sovereignty and unity of Russia.” “The constitution has made it possible to preserve the sovereignty and unity of Russia. It has made it possible to step back from a very dangerous point and put political processes […]

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New Issue of Konstitutsionny Vestnik on the the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

From: “Alexander Domrin” <adomrin@rumyantsevconsulting.ru> Subject: new issue of  Konstitutsionny Vestnik on the the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 Dear David ­ I am pleased to tell you and JRL readers that a new Konstitutsionny Vestnik issue of  can be downloaded from the web site of the Russian Foundation for Legal Reform: http://www.rfcr.ru/news_upload/kv3.pdf The issue […]

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A Dividing Issue, 20 Years On: Russia’s 1993 Constitutional Crisis

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

(RIA Novosti – Konstantin von Eggert – September 23, 2013) Konstantin Eggert was Diplomatic Correspondent for Izvestia in the 1990s and later the BBC Russian Service Moscow Bureau Editor. Konstantin has also spent some time working as ExxonMobil Vice President in Russia. Conflict is raging in Russia again. Luckily, not on the streets but in the country’s spirited blogosphere. The […]

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Zyuganov fears ‘Yeltsin tragedy’ may repeat itself if current government is not replaced

Kremlin and Moscow Environs Aerial View

(Interfax – MOSCOW, August 19, 2013) Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said a putsch similar to the one that occurred in Russia in August 1991 may repeat itself in Russia if Russia does not change its development direction. “I have talked to many Middle Eastern leaders and they said go on like this if you want, the Yeltsin tragedy will […]

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Yeltsin’s Bear Will Retire to Better Digs Outside Moscow

File Photo of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – July 31, 2013) The brown bear that former president Boris Yeltsin gave to the Moscow zoo will be moved to a new location so that he can meet his old age “with dignity,” the zoo’s director Sergei Popov said at a press conference Tuesday. The zoo had previously received numerous letters from visitors, complaining that […]

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Re: Moscow October 1993

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

Subject: Re: Moscow October 1993 From: lsell52354@aol.com (Louis D. Sell) Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 In catching up on my reading I saw an exchange of e-mails on the events in Russia in October 1993.  At that time I was the acting number 2 at the US Embassy in Moscow, which as those familiar with Moscow know, is only a […]

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[Yeltsin and Parliament: 1993 Crisis] re: Adomanis/1993

File Photo of Parliament Building Billowing Smoke in 1993

From: Stephen F. Cohen <sfc1@nyu.edu> Subject: re Adomanis/1993 Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 In his important revisiting of Yeltsin’s violent destruction of Russia’s elected parliament, and indeed its entire constitutional order, in October 1993, Mark Adomanis (JRL #113, 2013) endorses my longstanding argument that the country’s de-democratization began not with Putin but with that horrific event. I am grateful for […]

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NEWSLINK: Putin’s Artful Jurisprudence

File Photo of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin

[Putin’s Artful Jurisprudence – The National Interest – William Partlett – January 2, 2012 – http://nationalinterest.org/article/putins-artful-jurisprudence-7882] Writing for The National Interest, William Partlett examines aspects of rule of law issues in post-Soviet Russia within the broader context of Russian political and economic power, including unfolding developments under the Putin regime(s). First recalling some of the events of 1993: AT 8:00 […]

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