ABSTRACT
Between its inception in spring 1990 and its catastrophic demise in the fall of 1993, the Russian legislature underwent an extraordinary transformation. Having elected Boris Yeltsin chairman of the Supreme Soviet by a slim margin at the first Congress in May–June 1990, the Russian deputy corps gave nearly a two-thirds majority at the ninth Congress in March 1993 to a motion to remove him from the presidency. By summer 1993 the leadership of the Supreme Soviet had been taken over by its most conservative elements. Virtually no liberal committee chairs remained in office. The confrontation between parliament and president over the president’s powers brought about a protracted constitutional crisis, which Yeltsin persistently sought to resolve by extraconstitutional means, such as forcing a national referendum on a new constitution and assuming extraordinary powers himself. Yet although the parliamentary leadership opposed Yeltsin’s constitutional and policy plans, its confrontational stance made the deputies neither popular nor powerful. The culmination of the crisis occurred in September 1993, when Yeltsin decreed the dissolution of parliament, stripped all one thousand deputies of their powers, and called for new parliamentary elections. A better understanding of the radical shift in the political balance within the deputy corps can shed light on the evolution of Russian democratic institutions in the immediate postcommunist period. The case may also illustrate the dynamics of the development of young representative institutions in a highly turbulent environment.
