ABSTRACT
The alliance between Boris Yeltsin and Democratic Russia would provide the man with the weapon and the organization with the leader to proclaim Russia’s sovereignty. In the months after Yeltsin’s election in May 1990 as chairman of the Russian parliament, political developments conspired to allow him to play the role for which his personality had destined him -7 that of the lone rebel challenging the established power to trial by combat. On 12 January 1991, just hours after the attack by Soviet Interior Ministry troops on the Lithuanian television tower and with Mikhail Gorbachev still out of sight, Yeltsin issued a harsh condemnation of this action in the name of the Presidium of the Russian Supreme Soviet. In the fall of 1991 the Russian Congress bowed before this logic. Only seventy of the 1,068 deputies opposed the proposal to give Yeltsin the sweeping powers he sought.
