ABSTRACT
In 1991 the self-declared ‘democrats’ came to power, but this did not necessarily entail the triumph of democracy, and it soon became clear that post-communism was a distinctive syndrome of its own and far from synonymous with democracy. The fall of the communist regime was a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the triumph of democracy. Between the collapse of the old order and the birth of the new there lay a period of disorientation and disorder, a new Time of Troubles like that in the first decade of the seventeenth century. The period between the disintegration of the USSR and the shelling of the White House, the seat of the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies, was one of increasing tension as parliament and the presidency fought for supreme authority that ultimately exploded into violence in October 1993. The struggle to adopt a new constitution would take until December 1993, and included one of the most dramatic confrontations between branches of power in modern politics. The legacy of this false start in the development of Russian democracy still influences Russian political discourse.
