The Penguin History of Modern Russia

about policies, and each side accused the other of bad faith in their negotiations.

Characteristically it was Yeltsin who took the initiative in breaking the stalemate. He plotted simply to disperse the Supreme Soviet, hold fresh parliamentary elections and propose a new Russian Constitution to the electorate. The plan was his own, and he approached his military and security ministers about it at the last moment in summer 1993. Chernomyrdin was on a trip to the USA when the discussions were held, and was told of them only upon his return.²⁵ Yeltsin planned to lock the Supreme Soviet deputies out of the White House. But he had made no allowance for his plan being leaked to Rutskoi and Khasbulatov. At least this is the kinder interpretation of his activity; the other possibility is that he was out to provoke a violent showdown with his adversaries and therefore wanted them to know of his intentions.²⁶ What is beyond dispute is that he flaunted his intention to resume the government’s campaign for a market economy; for on 18 September he pointedly brought back Yegor Gaidar as First Deputy Prime Minister.²⁷

In any case, when on 21 September the President duly issued his Decree No. 1400, Rutskoi and Khasbulatov were ready for him. Together with hundreds of Supreme Soviet deputies, they barricaded themselves inside the White House: they had arms, food and a determination to topple Yeltsin. Immediately Yeltsin, hero of the peaceful defence of the White House in August 1991, ordered his Defence Minister Grachev to lay siege to the same building. In fact there continued to be much entering and leaving of the White House, and the White House’s defenders attracted a group of prominent enrages to their side, including Albert Makashov, Vladislav Achalov and Viktor Anpilov. Makashov and Achalov were army generals who had long wanted Yeltsin deposed by fair means or foul; Anpilov had founded a Russian Communist Workers’ Party which rejected Zyuganov’s Communist Party of the Russian Federation as being altogether too respectable. A violent outcome was not inevitable, but neither side was greatly predisposed towards reconciliation.

Rutskoi and Khasbulatov had become hostile to any compromise with Yeltsin and by now thought of themselves as protectors of parliament and legality; and indeed Yeltsin’s act of dispersal was a breach of the limits of his constitutional authority.²⁸ Yeltsin for his part affirmed that the parliament had been elected in 1990 whereas he had put his policies to a referendum in April 1993. The country’s government, he added, should not be held permanently in abeyance because of the perpetual stalemate between president and parliament.

Doubtless most citizens of the Russian Federation would have preferred a compromise. But it was not to be. Rutskoi, cheered by the crowd of supporters outside the White House, thought that a popular majority was on his side; he declared himself Acting President and announced that Achalov was his Defence Minister: it did not occur to him that this was bound to throw a wavering Grachev into the arms of Yeltsin. On Sunday, 3 October, Makashov’s armed units tried to storm the Ostankino TV station in Moscow, and Rutskoi recklessly urged the crowd outside the White House to march on the Kremlin. Yeltsin resorted to direct armed action. In the early hours of 4 October, he and Chernomyrdin pushed Grachev into retaking the White House.²⁹ A gaping hole was blasted in the building before Rutskoi, Khasbulatov and their supporters would concede defeat. They were arrested and detained in the same Sailors’ Rest Prison where several of the August 1991 plotters were still being held.

These ‘October Events’ were quickly exploited by Yeltsin, who sanctioned further steps towards the construction of a market economy. According to an optimistic calculation, average personal incomes had recovered by the end of 1994 to a level only ten per cent lower than they had held in 1987.³⁰ Privatization of companies, under Chubais’s direction, proceeded apace. By the end of 1994 two fifths of the working population in the Russian Federation were employed by private enterprises.³¹ Shops, stalls and street-vendors began to offer a variety of consumer products not seen on open sale for over six decades. Even more remarkable was what happened in the bakeries. The need to secure cheap basic foodstuffs for the towns had troubled governments in the Russian capital throughout the century. The question of grain supplies had been the touchstone of every ruler’s claim to efficient governance. Yeltsin put his confidence on parade: in the last quarter of 1993 the remaining price controls on consumer products were lifted; in particular, bakeries were at last permitted to charge what they wanted for bread.

Not everything went his way. Gross domestic product in 1993 fell by twelve per cent over 1992.³² And although there was a rise in general comfort in Moscow, things were much more unpleasant in most other cities, towns and villages. To some extent, the fault did not lie with Yeltsin’s government. He had taken office with the expectation that the Western powers would provide finance to enable him to set up a ‘stabilization fund’. Such a fund would have been of important assistance during the period of transition to a market economy: it would have helped both to sustain social-security benefits and to make the rouble freely convertible into the world’s other currencies. The Western powers, however, were impressed more by the limitations than the achievements of the Russian economic reforms.

Such limitations were considerable. Massive state subsidy was retained for the gas and oil industries; the fact that Prime Minister Chernomyrdin remained on friendly terms with his former colleagues in Gazprom made it unlikely that the subsidy would quickly be withdrawn. The kolkhozes, despite having been turned into private economic organizations of one kind or another, were another sector which continued to receive easy credit from the government. Ministers also refrained from introducing the long-awaited legislation on land privatization. Furthermore, there were persistent constraints upon entrepreneurial activity. The government did precious little to impose the rule of law. Businessmen did not have the predictable framework for their operations which they craved. The powers given to local administrations to grant or withhold trading licences impeded the emergence of an untrammelled market economy.

Yet much had been achieved under the premiership of Chernomyrdin, and Yeltsin acted to maximize his political advantage after the ‘October Events’ by arranging national and local elections and a constitutional referendum. The arrest of his Vice-President and Speaker removed his two most awkward antagonists from contention, and seemed to leave him free to devise a strategy unimpeded by considerations of compromise with the Supreme Soviet. He aimed to endorse the newly-formed political party of Yegor Gaidar, Russia’s Choice (Vybor Rossii); his favoured option was to go for a more drastic economic reform than Chernomyrdin approved. But Yeltsin had reckoned without the widespread revulsion caused by his action on the White House. The ‘October Events’ were an unsolicited gift to those of his opponents who claimed that he was violent and unpredictable.

Yet despite its roughness and imperfections, this was the first Russian parliamentary election where nearly all political parties could operate freely. The problem was that Russia still had a super-fluity of parties, and it made sense for electoral pacts to be formed among them. Russia’s Choice led a block committed to rapid economic liberalization. The Yabloko (‘Apple’) block favoured a somewhat slackened pace of change and a retention of subsidies for state-owned industry. There were also three blocks which brought together communist sympathizers; these were led respectively by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation itself and by the Agrarian Party and Women of Russia. Others stayed outside all blocks. Chief among these was the Liberal- Democratic Party, whose leader Vladimir Zhirinovski insisted that only his organization was not somehow linked to ‘the authorities’.

A bias in Gaidar’s favour was recognizable in both the amount and the content of central TV reportage. This was important; for rallies were few, posters were flimsy and unplentiful, newspapers were delivered intermittently and the local networks of the parties were patchy. Citizens got most of their information from their television sets. Yeltsin left nothing to chance: he even issued an instruction that no political broadcast could be made on television that referred critically to the draft Constitution.

Seemingly he obtained most of what he wanted. His Constitution draft secured the necessary approval of the electorate, albeit by a narrow majority. This meant that Yeltsin had virtually unrestricted authority to appoint his prime minister, to prorogue parliament and rule by decree. The static warfare between parliament and president appeared unlikely to recur. The new parliament was to be renamed the Federal Assembly. This Assembly would be bi-cameral: the first chamber was the State Duma, the second was the Council of the Federation. And the Council of the Federation, being constituted by leading figures in the legislatures and administrations of the republics and provinces, would be heavily influenced by the President’s wishes and would act as a check upon the State Duma. Of the 450 seats in the State Duma, furthermore, half were elected by local constituencies and half by national party lists. This system was designed to limit the ability of local political elites, especially those of a communist orientation, to resist the brave capitalist boys of Tsar Boris.

But not everything went well for Yeltsin. There had been signs of problems during the electoral campaign. In particular, Gaidar, a stilted public speaker at the best of times, was out of his depth. His pudgy, shiny face had never endeared itself to most voters and his language was as incomprehensible as ever; and even Yeltsin,