and RF delegate elections. The last point is significant in that, according to a decision of the Constitutional Court, the third and fourth questions, affecting the Constitution, required a constitutional majority. For this reason the referendum had a purely psychological impact, though a great one at that. It showed that with increasing conflict, neither the executive nor the representative branches of power enjoyed the support of the absolute majority of the population. Despite all the burdens of economic reform, the president and the government he formed still had a significant store of popular confidence. Taking into account Chechnya, where the referendum did not take place, and Tatarstan, where participation was little over 20 percent, voters in 28 out of 89 regions, including 14 national formations, did not express confidence in the president.
Appealing to popular support that he received in the referendum, Yeltsin first accelerated the process of revising of the new, “presidential” constitution, and in the fall he resolved the conflict with the representative branch by means of force. The congress was dismissed, and a vote was scheduled for the new constitution, as well as elections to parliament on the basis of this new constitution. See also: CONGRESS OF PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES; CONSTITUTION OF 1993; OCTOBER 1993 EVENTS; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKO-LAYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
McFaul, Michael. (2001). Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. McFaul, Michael, and Markov, Sergei. (1993). The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy: Parties, Personalities, and Programs. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Reddaway, Peter, and Glinski, Dmitri. (2001). The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press. White, Stephen; Rose, Richard; and McAllister, Ian. (1997). How Russia Votes. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.
A referendum of December 12, 1993, ratified a new constitution for the Russian Federation, which had long been sought by President Boris Yeltsin. The collapse of the USSR in late 1991 made the ratification of a new constitution most urgent. As the USSR no longer existed as a legal entity, its laws technically no longer had legal force. To fill this void, President Yeltsin and the parliament concurred that the constitution and laws of the former RSFSR would continue to be observed until a new constitution could be adopted. This was a necessary but unsatisfactory situation, since the 1978 Constitution of the Russian Federation was the product of the Brezhnev era and reflected the values of the now repudiated communist system.
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Throughout the period from 1991 to 1993, Yeltsin quarreled with the parliament over the outlines of a new constitution. In particular, progress toward approving a new constitution was delayed by heated disputes over three major issues: the allocation of powers between the executive branch and the legislative branch, the allocation of powers between central and subnational institutions, and the process for ratifying a new constitution. The deadlock was finally broken on September 21, 1993, when Yeltsin issued a decree dissolving the parliament. Anti-Yeltsin members of parliament refused to disband but were evicted by force on October 4, as Yeltsin ordered troops to fire on the Russian White House.
The violent events of October 1993 cleared the way for new elections to be held on December 12, in which voters were asked to approve a draft constitution favorable to the president and also to elect a new lower house of parliament (Duma), called for in the draft.
President Yeltsin issued a degree on October 15 calling for a plebiscite on his draft constitution. The document was made public on November 9, leaving only one month for debate and discussion. Yeltsin’s choice of terminology “plebiscite” rather than “referendum” was not accidental. According to the 1990 Law on Referenda, issues affecting the constitution required the support of a majority of all registered voters, rather than a majority of all those voting.
Voter turnout for the December 12 referendum was low compared to previous elections. Only 54.8 percent of eligible voters turned out, and of those, only 58.4 percent supported the new constitution. Had ratification of the new constitution depended on the referendum, it would have lost, since only about 31 percent of all eligible voters supported the new constitution. However, Yeltsin declared a victory for the new constitution in the plebiscite, and the document became generally regarded as the legitimate Constitution of the Russian Federation. See also: CONSTITUTION OF 1993; OCTOBER 1993 EVENTS; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Marsh, Christopher. (2002). Russia at the Polls: Voters, Elections and Democratization. Washington, DC: CQ Press. White, Stephen; Rose, Richard; and McAllister, Ian. (1997). How Russia Votes. Chatham, NJ: Chathan House.
On March 17, 1991, a referendum was held in the Soviet Union in which voters were asked the following question: “Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which the rights and freedoms of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?” The referendum was sponsored by the Soviet president, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who hoped it would make clear that despite rising separatist sentiments in many parts of the USSR, a majority of Soviet citizens wanted the country to remain unified. The six union republics where separatist aspirations were strongest-Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia (Moldova)-boycotted the referendum. However, their populations made up only approximately 7 percent of the total USSR population. Overall turnout was 80.0 percent, and 76.4 percent of those participating voted “yes.” In Russia, turnout was 75.4 percent, with 71.3 percent voting “yes,” while in Ukraine turnout was 83.4 percent, with 70.2 percent voting “yes” (the lowest percentage among all union republics). In all six republics with traditionally Muslim majorities, well over 90 percent voted “yes.”
The results were initially interpreted as a victory for Gorbachev and other defenders of the union. However, the significance of the referendum was undermined by the ambiguity of the question. It was unclear, for example, what was meant by “a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics.” In addition, some of the participating republics added supplemental questions to the ballot. In Russia, for example, voters were asked to endorse the establishment of a directly elected Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) president, which was understood as an opportunity to support the leader of the Russian government and Gorbachev’s principal rival at the time, Boris Yeltsin. In Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, voters were asked whether they supported their republic’s sovereignty as part of a new union, while in Kazakhstan the wording of the referendum was changed by substituting “equal sovereign states” for “equal sovereign republics.” In each case, the electorate approved the supplemental questions. Thus the referendum failed to resolve the Soviet Union’s crisis of territorial integrity. Nine months later, the USSR passed into history as a legal entity. Nevertheless, in the long term the referendum left a legacy of post-independence resentment in those areas where
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the electorate had voted in favor of a preserved union; many people felt that the USSR’s dissolution had been opposed by the great majority of Soviet voters. See also: GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKO-LAYEVICH
Brady, Henry E., and Kaplan, Cynthia S. (1994). “Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.” In Refer- endums around the World: The Growing Use of Direct Democracy, ed. David Butler and Austin Ranney. Washington, DC: AEI Press. Walker, Edward W. (2003). Dissolution: Sovereignty and the Breakup of the USSR. Boulder, CO: Rowman amp; Lit-tlefield.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, a movement began among Soviet Jews seeking permission to emigrate to Israel. Despite an agreement to allow emigrations, Soviet authorities subjected most of those who sought to leave to a
