ABSTRACT
Chapter 11 discussed the major political developments in the first years of post-Soviet Russia, through the end of 1995. By that time the democratic hopes raised during the Gorbachev era had ended in disappointment, as Russia drifted toward an authoritarian presidential regime. The political opposition to the Yeltsin government, led by the revived Communist Party, had come to dominate the duma. However, as we saw, that body possessed little power under the constitution that President Yeltsin and his associates pushed through in 1993.
