765
SUMMARY
764
SUMMARY
defeat of the reactionary coup, the downfall of the Communist Party
and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In the last months of 1991 another historical threshold was
crossed. The victory over the putschists cleared the way politically
for economic reforms and strengthening of power in Russia itself at
the expense of the center. Both had uneven consequences. The Russ-
ian model for transition to a market economy led to the drastic and
uncompensated decline in living standards for millions of people and
the growing exacerbation of social problems in the country. Reform
of the state led to the strengthening of its executive branch, dissolu-
tion of the USSR parliament and the weakening of Russia’s parlia-
ment. A new political configuration was taking shape. On the one
side, the Russian parliament was gradually falling under the control
of revanchist, nationalist-communist forces which reflected and per-
petuated the social discontent in the country as a means of attempt-
ing to take over the power. On the other side stood the institution of
the presidency. It represented a coalition of new-old bureaucrats and
the democratic intelligentsia. The democrats, who ensured the com-
munication between the president and supporters of reform in the
country, played an auxiliary role from the beginning in this coalition.
In 1992—1993, earlier conflicts were pushed aside, the author
shows, by new ones no less acute. Confrontation was mounting and
became more severe. At every Congress, starting with the sixth,
political battles unfolded. The president’s influence on the parlia-
ment was weakening. The parliament itself was falling under the
sway of irresponsible leaders, and instead of turning into a platform
for reconciling the interests of the elites and society, it was drawn
into their internecine battle and became the political stronghold of
one side. Attempts to find a compromise that would help save parlia-
ment and strengthen parliamentarianism collapsed one after another.
The «rules of the game» were violated by both sides.
The book pays special attention to the problems of Russia’s new
Constitution which took central place in the political struggle of
1993. The author examines the performance of the Constitutional
tarianism and parliaments in the twentieth century. Pre-Revolution-
ary Dumas, Soviet quasi-parliaments and the USSR’s and Russia’s
Congresses of People’s Deputies all faced complex, and in many
ways, similar problems.
Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika marks the starting point of
modern Russian parliamentarianism. The book depicts how the
process of change began, including the hardships and contradictions
it faced from the outset, and how politicians and experts reacted and
rationalized first the emerging and then the actually occurring histor-
ical shifts. The critical moment was introducing relatively free and
competitive elections. The election campaigns of 1989 and 1990 saw
the emergence of new political forces that undermined the monopoly
of the administrative structures of the Communist Party. The Inter-
Regional Deputy Group first manifested itself as opponent political
force at the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR. With
extraordinary speed, society seized the opportunity to exercise some
of the fundamental freedoms granted by the reformers in the party
and State leadership. The emergence of the Congress of People’s
Deputies of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, which
in its early days positioned itself as the alternative center of power,
marked the crossing of a historical threshold. The «revolution from
above» had come to an end. The political class had split irrevocably.
The book examines in great detail the course of events that fol-
lowed: the vigorous campaign of democrats who joined with influen-
tial groups in the Russian bureaucracy, the standoff between Yeltsin
and Gorbachev, the move by the Communist Party nomenklatura to
adopt anti-reformist positions, the internal decomposition of the rul-
ing party that was coming to an end of its century-long life. In
1990—1991 the battle focused on two problems: the path of further
economic development (the transition to a market economy) and the
fate of the USSR (1991 Referendum, development of a new Union
Treaty, and attempts to preserve the Soviet Union by force). This
battle, which took quite a few dramatic turns, ended with the total